Is Marienburg Gone?

I've been busy lately and blogging has fallen victim of this. Oh well. Now I'm back.

But what's this? It seems that in my absence Marienburg - along with the rest of the Old World - has been destroyed by Chaos. Oops.

Although some of the larger models in the range look stupidly gorgeous - others simply stupid - the End Times thing in fantasy has rather passed me by. I'll have to catch up with the story at some point. Yes, I have seen all the endless chatter on social media, and I've even clicked through to look at some of the comments by older gamers lamenting the end of everything they hold dear. I'm not sure why they're complaining as most of them don't buy new models or play current rules anyway.

3rd edition lives on chaps.

I though, am quite interested in what 9th edition holds in store. A skirmish game with round bases would suit my collecting, painting and gaming habits very well. Either way, I am waiting for the new beginning with more of a sense of possibility than many other old farts.

I'll keep the Marienburg name for now... even though I seem to be publishing in exile...

Folk Art Wicker White - A Review With Pirates

It will come as no surprise to regular visitors that I've been distracted away from one project by the lure of another. But as this temptation is my original Marienburg project I don't see any reason to feel bad about that! However, rather than talk about how that particular army is progressing and the plans I have for it (more on that next week... probably) I wanted to do a quick review of the cheap and cheerful white paint that I've been using to base coat the metal minis I'm using. 

I always seem to have trouble with metal models because I never get the priming and base coating phases right. Not anymore though. Wicker White by Folk Art is a very basic art supply that I've had hanging around for a while and I thought I'd give it a try for achieving a good base coat on my Foundry pirates. The results were exactly what I've been after - a good, strong pigment and a thin runny paint that can be slapped on and moved around with an easy flow and matt finish - happy days. This was important because I've decided to paint my Marienburg folks in a highly stylised 'technicolor' scheme that's reminiscent of the costumes from 1950s and 60s Hollywood movies... should be an interesting experiment!

Climbing Sprue Mountain #4 - Marienburg

Ah, Marienburg, sweet Marienburg. The very inspiration for the start of this blog. It was around about a year ago that I read Marienburg: Sold Down The River for WFRP and got hooked on the idea of a human fantasy army to face up to all the grizzly and ghoulish nightmares of the Warhammer world. Since then I've played around with a whole host of ideas, bashed around a fair few minis, and found myself down numerous dead ends. Such is hobby life.

I've finally settled on a way forward though and it's really down to having a solid bash at climbing sprue mountain. As you'll see when I talk about my Genestealer Cult, I've found good uses for almost all the GW Empire figures as cult members (more on that tomorrow). I'm now set on making my Marienburg army completely from non-GW minis, specifically those that fit a more 'realistic' or 'historical' 25/28mm scale. This will make it entirely different from anything else I'm working on and thereby add some spicy variety to my time whittling.

To that end, the population of Marienburg has been stripped back to the swashbucklers and seadogs from Foundry and Black Scorpion, and a handful of LotR hobbits. From here on in I'm going to build a real/historic scale army that can be fielded in historical wargames as well as fantasy. The fantasy elements - a few halflings, elves, ogres and dwarfs scattered through the rank and file - can be added or omitted as seems fit. So, in an odd turn of events, while everyone has been going batty over Dark Vengeance I've been browsing Pike and Shotte box sets and dropping by the Perry Miniatures site.

A couple of salty fellows from the Foundry range accompanied by Pirate Long John from Freebooters Fate

These seafarers from Black Scorpion seem to be on the look out for something...

Hobbitses

New WFB Empire April 7th

Loads of news flying about just now (see here - no pictures yet), but for me, the two most important parts are:



In stores April 7th...

and

Empire Demigryph Knights 3 figures, plastic!

***UPDATE*** See HERE for pictures

Marienburg Handgunner - 'Sketch' Approach First Full Attempt

Following a handful of aborted experiments I've finally settled on my 'sketch' approach for painting - a fast way of getting troops ready for the tabletop that uses a painterly technique even though I'm working swiftly... I get the work done and also fortify my artistic sensibilities. I'm priming in white then applying a skeleton bone base coat, both with Army Painter sprays. Then I'm working up sepia tones over the whole model, first with the GW wash, then with a slightly diluted sepia ink from Daler Rowney. Then I set about developing colour using a variety of inks and washes. I'll discuss each of these briefly under the photos that follow:

The Marienburg colours are blue, red and yellow. For now I've decided to leave actual yellow out of my palette and work mostly with blue and red - I figure the skeleton/bleached bone is quite yellow anyway at this stage of development. Additional shading is being supplied by another Daler Rowney ink, Payne's Grey.  

I think the barrel of the handgun is probably where my different approach stands out the most in this example. I'm actually very pleased with it, although these pictures don't really do it justice. My self criticisms (getting those out of the way first) focus on the skin tone and the feather. I decided not to go back and highlight the skin - although I may do this at a latter stage - because I want to maintain the technique that works entirely with colour shading, leaving the sepia/bone as the top highlight. This might not work with the skin... The feather just didn't work. I may actually use yellow ink on these with a flesh wash, which is something that has worked on other models.

My colours - the blue, red and brown - are all mixed P3 inks and Model Color transparents in the first instance. I used just the inks to add some extra depth. I applied them using a broadly zenithal lighting approach, so the colours are thicker and darker where shadows/shade would 'naturally' fall. This is going to be the main area where my painterly approach combines with the three dimensional realities of model painting.  

Overall, I'm very happy with this first attempt: I do need to think a little about human skin and perhaps diverge from my original plan with those surfaces. Next month I'm aim to finish a full ten man handgunner unit.

February Pipe Dream - To Understand Painting (Properly)

Ah, February. It's like the feeble, underdeveloped and sickly cousin of the other months. I'm also away for over a week of it, so what to do, what to do...? At the beginning of the year I decided that annual to-do lists simply weren't for me - instead I'm going to have monthly 'pipe dreams' that will represent the current my whimsies will be flowing with for the next few weeks. It's a very loose structure and it suits my sensibilities. In that spirit, the February pipe dream is: to understand painting (properly).

By that I mean a few things really. First off I'm going to have a ponder on the artists that inspire me - primarily not miniature painters because I find most of the current fashions for mini-painting leave me unmoved (despite the fact that some people are insanely talented artists). The other thing I'm going to focus on is conceptualising my painting into two distinct but related approaches - a little like John Blanche's 'slow' and 'fast' techniques, but with my own twist. Oh, and as the picture below from this evening shows, in order to do this I'll be making my homeward journey to Marienburg.

Marienburg Greatsword WIP

Blog Redesign

I've decided to give the Gazette a redesign following some useful feedback from Lauby at House of Paincakes. Those of you who have visited before will see that the map of Marienburg has gone from my background - this is a shame, because it's such a lovely image, but now that the content has started to grow here in terms of posts and all the details in the sidebar, it wasn't really necessary anymore (mostly because my remit for the blog has developed since I first conceived it). I'll be using the map at some point as I GM an adventure in WFRP, so at least I will be able to share its gorgeousness a little more with my PCs... until then, here it is one last time...

  

Marienburg Battle Standard

My creative juices when into overdrive last night and I stayed up to the wee small hours working on a battle standard for my Marienburg army. Now, being Marienburg this model was alway going to have to be no the ostentatious side! So I picked up a model galleon from Revell, raided the bits box, and have finally put the undercoat on this:

The Revell Spanish galleon has been converted using bits from the Empire and Brets knights spures, along with other parts, including ogre barrels, a goblin wolf head, some classic shields, and even a wolf tail from 40k Space Wolves. 

The ogre is from the Dogs of War Golgfag's set, and I've used my favourite which has a metal cooking pan for a helmet. The captain has a state trooper body with arms from the general box - his shield is from the GW freelancer knight. The base is a 20mm, topped off with the ornamental plaque from the GW chapel sprues - this way, I've managed to fit quite a lot in a limited space. 

It's currently in three parts - the ogre and base, the captain, and the ship - so that it will be easier to handle and paint. Not sure at the moment when I'll get a chance to put a full paint job on this, but it certainly was fun to put together!