Mantic Trolls And Plotting A Chaos Troll Army

Mantic are spending the next week showing us examples of the tons of Kings Of War miniatures that are on the way in the summer; here are some trolls:

What do you think? There's a Hordes influence here I'd say, but they look reasonable. I mean, what does a troll actually look like anyway?! The possibility of an all troll chaos army led by this guy takes a step closer...

Oldhammer - Paul's Khorne Army WIP

So for the Oldhammer event later in the summer I'm going to be locking horns with my brother Paul. Being a busy fellow, Paul doesn't blog (although he reads plenty) so I'm going to proxy blog for him on the Gazette. This way fellow Oldhammerers and others who are interested can see the development of both of armies in the run up to the big bash at Foundry. Here then, is Paul's WIP Khorne army:

As you can see, Paul's rather like me in his miniature tastes. Plenty of new plastics and resin here. Of course he's following the appropriate way of configuring his units around the Khornate number: eight. This lends itself very well to what is a fine looking army in the making, I'm sure you'll agree. In the coming weeks we'll focus on some selected units as the paint gets slapped on and I hope Paul will follow my example and create a narrative for his army centred on his champions and their retinues. 

Oldhammer - Davey's Slaanesh Army WIP

Well folks here it is, my current pride and joy, my little chaotic children, spawn of my alliance with the Dark Prince; behold, my Realm of Chaos Slaanesh Army. Here it is in all it's WIP goodness. 

Over the last couple of weeks I've been putting the final additions into place and base coating as much as possible with Slaanesh Grey to achieve a cohesive look from the outset. The next stage will be to do all the bases. This kind of army production technique is a departure from my usual ambling approach to miniatures, but it's the best way to ensure that everything is ready for Oldhammer at Foundry in August.

The basic background narrative for the army is that they're a force loyal to a chaotically corrupted Marienburg nobleman turned Chaos Champion, who has become a recluse in his heavily fortified mansion. In the grounds of his estate, the by-products of his sorcerous experimenting are animated trees - Slaaneshi Beastmen carved from flora. Three are Minotaur-sized and form the Champion's Warband. The greatest, most ancient tree, has mutated into a beast akin in power to a Chimera - a monstrous host.

In the catacombs below, mutated Witch Elves and Chaos Centaurs partake in debauched rituals, served by Chaos Goblins and attended by Human Chaos Cultists, and overseen by a twisted Wizard; the followers of two other Champions: a Sorcerer and a Dark Elf. A dim-witted but mighty Troll completes these warbands.

Chaos Marauders and Warriors - all publicly nobles and covertly skilled fighters - make up the elites; some Marauders riding Mounts of Slaanesh. While the remainder of the army is comprised of Dark Elves: some corrupted Sea Elf traders, others devious and twisted Corsairs, and still others raiders riding Cold Ones who dwell in the Wasteland. 

Everything here is a currently available miniature, or a kitbash from current parts. As I've said before, the Oldhammer ethos is what's important for me, and as you can see, the army units (and most of the warband units too) are in multiples of six. Over the coming weeks I'll chart the development of this army AND the opponents it will face in a show down 25 years in the making... my brother's Khorne army, which I'll unveil tomorrow.

Warriors Of Slaanesh - Realm Of Chaos Oldhammer Army

This week I'm away at a conference with work, which means zero hobby time. I'm having withdrawal symptoms! (I'm also missing my family about the same amount ;-) So to keep in some kind of touch with everyday life I'm looking over some preparatory photos for my Slaanesh army for the Oldhammer event in the summer. Here is my unit of six Slaaneshi Chaos Warriors. Using Realm Of Chaos rules these guys are super tough, making a unit of six entirely viable - can you imagine that in 8th ed?! You probably recognise Sigvald the Magnificent - the others are Chosen with heads left over from the Helstrider kit.

The Helfly And The Herald Of Nurgle

Firstly, apologies for the odd nature of these photos. As usual I'm trying to experiment with too many projects at the same time and everything is a rush. So here are a couple of shots of this evening's works in progress. 

Most prominently there's the Helfly. On this I've finished all the greenstuff work and gone round the whole thing several times smoothing out the gaps and checking for anything I'd forgotten to clip off when getting the whole thing to actually stick together. Tomorrow the primer. Really looking forward to that. Nestled at the base you'll see the beginings of my Herald of Nurgle on palanquin. Here he is close up.

This should be a reasonably straightforward corpse cart plus converted Bragg the Gutsman. This will be pretty much as you see it now, with some work done on the ogre to ensure he's sufficiently nurgled. The corpse cart is a nice little kit that I've wanted to get for a while; really easy to put together and insanely gruesome (in a good way obviously). Luckily, I can use the necromancer it comes with in the undead cohort that's forming part of my Cult of Slaanesh. How economical of me!

Icon Of Chaos

This icon of chaos apparently appears in the new 'special edition' versions of the Chaos Daemons codex. I'm not sure whose work this is - it's rather brilliant though, isn't it?

A Crazed Cohort Of Converted Chaos Cultists

When the CSM codex came out I thought a massed mob of the maximum number of 35 cultists was an excellent way to fill a troops slot. Looking at this lot now I'm not so sure... It's going to take a while to paint all these crazies up. Just look at all the little buggers!

To keep the task enjoyable I've kitbashed many of these using ghoul arms in the most part. Other changes have involved swapping arms and weapons around, then melting all the gaps with additional plastic shavings to give them a misshapen and mutated look. The melting approach is fun, swift and effective, and involves no greenstuff. All you need is a radiator to dry them on so that the melty gluey plastic stays in the pose you want. I'll be keeping the colour scheme very basic with these otherwise it'll take me weeks to get them done. The same green tones as the CSM on weapons and boots, simple flesh, then white hoods and clothing. Simple. 

Warriors Of Chaos Coming In Feb!

Well take a look at this lot! Picture from Faeit 212.

The Work Tray Of Nurgle

Apologies for the awful quality photo - I'm having a very lazy evening. I just wanted to give you a taste of all the nurgle goodness going on in these parts. I'll get my act together over the coming days and do a few reasonable work in progress shots.

A Really Rotten Start To 2013 - A Deep Winter Of Nurgle Goodness

Happy New Year to one and all. 2013 begins for me with a deep winter love affair with all things Nurgle. Over the coming weeks I'm focusing exclusively on my joint Chaos Marines / Chaos Daemons force for 40k. I have all the models I need and I'm getting properly stuck in - as coming up-dates will show - with an eye also on the rumours that the new Great Unclean One is due out within a month, and will be accompanied by some kind of Plaguebearers riding giant flies set (please, please, please be good!) Fortunately I have funds set aside for them.

Generally this year I'm going to be far more project focused, as I've really got into the swing of things with my painting style reaching a very pleasing point of development. This won't mean 'to-do' lists as I'm still not keen on them and still have nothing specific to prepare for - I don't play tournaments, but I would like to tour my finished forces around a few gaming clubs at the tail end of the year.

So the early winter months will be Nurgle focussed. Around March I anticipate commencing the final push to get my beastmen finished, and these will be fully themed as a chaos undivided army (some Tzeench ungor skirmishers will be heading this way, for example). That should take me up to the summer when I will embrace my Dark Eldar and compete with my brother in something like an army-in-a-month challenge (or something like that... he'll be doing Dark Angels I think).

Speaking of my brother, he's a big collector (plastic crack addict) but not a blogger so I plan to feature some of his collection and work in the Gazette. A few other regular features will begin to appear, including some snappy book reviews (probably). We'll see.

Later in the year... who knows, but I very much like the idea of doing some Imperial Fists, although that depends on the freeing up of some serious cash from selling the depths of my collection...

Alternative Nurglings Using Scibor Goblins, And Other Unclean Thoughts

First of all I should say that I picked up these Scibor goblins from the sinking ship Maelstrom Games, so they were a fraction of their normal price. Secondly, the idea for using them as alternative nurglings came to me as part of a more general money-saving-through-making-the-most-of-what-I-already-have scheme. So the idea is simply to base these up three to a 40mm round base and, hey presto, there you have it. I actually really like these as nurgling stand-ins. They have a little more substance to them than the GW offerings, which are OK, but I've never been particularly keen on them as grinning tiny impish things. These retain some of the impishness and fragility and also benefit from fitting into the look of my 40k Nurgle force more generally.

I also have these five old style plaguebearers, to which I'll add ten more from the new plastics.

And here's an old style Great Unclean One - stripped and pinned (my goodness, did that take a while!). Rumours abound that all the greater daemons will be replaced with new and suitably scaled-up plastic kits sometime around February, so I'm going to use this guy as a Herald of Nurgle, with him counting as riding a palanquin.

Plague Marine Conversions, Part The Second

For stage two of these guys I decided that third party backpacks just weren't going to cut it, so I delved into by double-Dark Vengeance box and fished out the backpacks from the chosen (which I'll replace with standard chaos ones from GW via mail order). Here are a couple in shiny-white primer, and a few more wearing a base-shade of Daler Rowney Antelope Brown ink, which has proved to be an amazing base-shader (with a littler medium and a drop of water added.

The first test model alongside my version of Typhus from Scibor

The base-shaded 'command group'

Some in white primer toting various weapons 

A bit of base shading done on the Scibor snail

Probably the best example of my base shading approach on a mildly kitbashed Helbrute

Avatars Of War Corruptors Of Apocalypse - Out Of The Box

Ah, new month, new toys. Today I'm doing one of my quick out-of-the-box reviews of the Avatars Of War Corrupters of Apocalypse. As always this is simply a series of photos of the basic parts that come with a set of miniatures - the kind of thing I would find useful if I was thinking of buying something, particularly if I was thinking of easy conversions. And that happens to be exactly what I'll be doing with this lot over the next week or so, as I turn them into my version of Plague Marines. Overall I'd say this was a pretty good quality set. It's the first time I've seen 'warcast' up close and it seems to be reasonable: not the best resin, certainly not the worst. There are a few slightly dodgy areas of casting, although nothing like finecast miscasts. The detail is generally crisp and pleasing and these are suitably characterful models. For a Warriors Of Chaos WFB army these would be absolutely brilliant. I, of course, will be slightly converting them 'John Blanche' style into the 40k universe.  

Here Come The Fatties! Pestigors And Plague Zombies

So far these guys have been a blast to work on. They're the epitome of value-for-money-gaming because they'll work as pestigors (bestigors) in WFB and as plague zombies in 40k (hence the round bases, which will slot into a movement tray when they're beastmen). Plenty more pustules and rashes to add along with additional chain mail, all in greenstuff. Pictured is the command group along with a couple of example conversions that will go with ten of the original pestigors to make a unit of 21. I'll just need to grab another box of gors and roll up a big nub of greenstuff to push towards a maxed-out squad of plague zombies.

Scibor Mutant Snail - Out Of The Box

This is probably the tiniest 'out of the box' I'll ever do! But I'm such a massive fan of Scibor that I wanted to take the opportunity to restate just how great their miniatures are. I got this little fellow as part of a hugely discounted order from Maelstrom Games (who may or may not be going out of business, sadly). As with everything else I've got from Scibor, this is bursting with character and great detail, and requires minimal preparation work. I love the mix of horror and humour in this series and I think I'll try to pick up more in the future. This model will most probably end up as a unit filler in my work-in-progress pestigors (more on those next week) and as a plague zombie for my nurgle space marines.

Climbing Sprue Mountain #6 - Alpha Legion

I've always fancied doing a chaos force for 40k but I've been put off by the fact that it always just looks like space marines with a few spikey bits thrown in. As the photo here shows I've picked up a few chaos models to have a play with, but never got around to doing very much at all (other than ponder doing a Death Company force for a while). With the arrival of Dark Vengeance, the allies rules, and the forthcoming chaos marines codex a whole world of opportunity has opened up. And that's about where I am really: on the precipice of opportunity. I'll have a double dose of the DV chaos troops coming my way soon and with all those cultists it seems that Alpha Legion is a good way to go... or will it just be an excuse to impulse buy chaosy things? Only time will tell...  

Starter Box Chaos Cultist First Picture?

Hopefully this is a genuine leaked picture I've just discovered, with others, over at Dark Future Gaming. The cultists are the models I'm most looking forward too as the Forge World models and conversion sets are rather pricey. If this is real and a fair example of what we'll get in the coming weeks then I'm a very happy boy.

New GW Chaos Daemons In August!

Well everyone seemed to think it was going to be Chaos Space Marines as the big release in August, but it now looks like it's going to be Chaos Daemons for both WFB and 40k. Rumours over at Faeit 212. Considering I've just picked up some Nurgle models I'm pretty happy with this... it also means I won't get too distracted from my Genestealer Cult... yet!

Artist's impression of me, looking happy

Everything's Coming Out Nurgle

And there I was thinking that that stench was my wife's feet! It turns out all along that it was this rather nifty miniatures exchange that I've just done with my brother. I gave him some Ogre Maneaters and Firebelly, and in return I received: 10 Pestigors, 5 Plague Bearers, a Great Unclean One, and a Daemon Prince. 

The GUO is quite an old sculpt now ('96) but it has enough character, so I think I should be able to do something interesting with it. As for the others, I've very happy. I'll base up all the daemons for 40k, while the pesties will fit nicely into my beastmen army.

Here Come The Beastie Boys (And Girls)

It looks as if this will be the month of the Brayherd. I've been farting around doing bits and pieces for rather too long so it's about time I put together some kind of concerted effort to actually finish something. To this end, here's my workload for the next four weeks:

The Brayherd: Part The First

This is partly a painting challenge - now I've got a method for painting fleshy and furry bits I'm really happy with I'm keen to plough on and refine several approaches - but it's also an opportunity to get the backbone of a force together to try out my developing home cooked ruleset (outlined in theory here). In sum this is my Pipe Dream for the month of May. 

This isn't the complete Brayherd, obviously. I have some plans for a chariot, some cunningly converted harpies (deamonettes with tyranid wings) and spider mutated centigors (hmmm, foul beasts...). I'm also on the lookout for ungor type proxies (skirmishers essentially) that are female, in order to complete this frenzied rabble.