More Dark Elves Gallop Over The Horizon

I actually had mixed feelings about the first wave of new Dark Elves. The Witch Elves are great but grossly over priced. The Hydra is a little uninspiring. The models for the Blood Throne are fantastic yet the throne is rather odd. 

Now the second wave pictures are being leaked I'm slightly more cautious than before. No quick off the mark 'loving' this time around. However, this duel aspect to Dark Riders kit looks very promising. I don't know what they're called but you can just make out from the captions that they're bound to provide new souls for Slaanesh to save their own. 

I'm sure I can make some of these fit into my RoC Slaanesh army, kit bashing them with a few Daemonatte bits. And for once the in house GW paint jobs don't immediately put me off either. 

Climbing Model Mountain: Monsters

Last year I wrote a series of posts called 'Climbing Sprue Mountain' to illustrate my whole collection and think about where all this plastic, resin and metal was headed. At that time a great deal of what I had really was on sprues. Twelve months on and now almost everything is built, based and primed, with plenty of models sporting the beginnings of a paint job. Progress!

So for this second annual journey to the summit of my collection I'm going to call it Climbing Model Mountain. I don't have time to do lovely 'professional' level photography, so all the photos are going to be of my models in their natural habitat; that is, on the display cabinet shelves. To begin, let's take a look at all my large monsters.

I've got plenty of these because I just love big kits and large models. These over-sized nasties all fit into my Beastmen army although I'm sure I could drop them into just about any fantasy force I was fielding.

From left to right we have: (1) my converted Razorgor utilising a boar body and manticore head; (2) what I call the Razormaw, which is a lightly converted Hordes Troll; (3) the Warhammer Giant; (4) the Jabberslythe - you'll notice I have so much basing to finish on all these models; (5) a Ghorgon, which is a model I really love and must get around to finishing; (6) a Manticore tucked away at the back there; (7) a Cockatrice with a really grimy, layered paint job half done; (8) a Chimera from Meirce Miniatures that needs a great deal of greenstuffing; (9) the Incarnate Elemental of Fire (I can't work out how to paint this one. Should it be flames or something else?); (10) a Warpfire Dragon because everyone needs a dragon, right?; (11) a Cygor / Cyclops to round off the collection, this is another great model from Meirce Miniatures.

Dark Elf Recruits For The Realm Of Chaos Slaanesh Army

These pictures are from... well, they're all over the place. Roll on Saturday when the official previous go up. These are the models that will be on my Christmas list.

Proxy 40k Armies And The Ghost Of Oldhammer, Or, Every Army A Proxy

It's a no-brainer for me that proxy armies are an obvious choice in 40k. In an entire fantasy universe with millions of planets there should be possibilities that go miles beyond the limited number of army lists provided by GW. 

So I was pleased to see a 'mainstream' blog covering this idea building on the new Space Marines codex. Goatboy over at BoLS provides a number of fun sounding suggestions such as these:

White Scars...I always liked an army full of Horsemen and this would be a great place to start as some kind of Marauding band of Evil Knights. The plastic Chaos Knight set is a great place to start and you can easily add bits to make them more "futuristic" with daemonic steads, evil weaponry and other bits and pieces. Their ability to scout with a Special character could also be used as an Alpha Legion heavy striking force.

Iron Hands... Here you get into the army I think has the most gas in the tank of Counts As. I can see them being used for Iron Warriors because both armies love technology. I really can see people using this as the base army for Adeptus Mechanicus and allying in the Tau to create weapons from the prayers of Mars. I even can see them used as a crazy Death Guard force with their army wide FNP and It Will Not Die on their Characters and vehicles. The Sky is the limit with their chapter set as it feels basic enough to cover lots of options and still give you room to build and design.

Imaginative and independently spirited gamers will of course go far further than this and in that there is nothing revolutionary about these suggestions. To an old fart like me, it's hobby common sense. What really astonishes me, though - and by now it shouldn't - is how dim, ill-tempered, witless, and limiting (I could go on...) the comments on this article are. Never has the Oldhammer spirit been needed so dearly! 

I can only daydream that all these tournament-types are visited in the dead of night by the ghost of Oldhammer*, and that he shows them the error of their ways. Because in my hobbyverse, every army is a proxy army, imagined, built and storied uniquely by its creator. Anything else and it's just... a game.

*I realise this gives the impression that Oldhammer is dead. Forgive me. Clearly this is not the case.

Grumpy Fish Says This Hobby Has Ups And Downs

Maybe it was the second anniversary, perhaps something else; either way I've been pondering rather a lot recently. I think it was something to do with getting ready to photograph all my collection that did it. 

I just suddenly realised the scale of the task in front of me to bring all my models to a level that I aspire too. That actual reality of sprue mountain turned model mountain. That made me put on the blogging breaks for a while, although I'm far more settled now and ready to be more positively reflective.

So nothing much more than a funny picture to share today - normal service to resume tomorrow :-)

Two Years

Thank you to all followers of and visitors to the Gazette over the last two years. Thank you for the comments, the encouragement, and the page views. It's great to be part of this online hobby and gaming community. 

In celebration, the second annual 'Climbing Sprue Mountain' begins tomorrow, where I review (and photograph) my whole collection, and potentially suffer an existential crisis over all the money and time that's been poured into this hobby.

Mierce Miniatures Kermorannac WIP

Say what you like about Mierce Miniatures and their patchy background, they do make some fantastic fantasy models. The Kermorannac is one of their older pre-Kickstarter models and it's bursting with character and - a rare thing these days - humour: the squealing pig is a nice touch and this is the only anatomically correct model in my collection. I'm going all multi-layered and open-ended with this one, so I can enjoy myself and remember the simply joys of this great hobby. 

I'll probably use him as a Cygor in my beastmen army.

Building New Hobbyists: Getting The Kids Painting

I was sad to miss the Oldhammer event this weekend, so I set about doing a few things to make up for it. The first was to spend some time letting my kids join in with my hobby. My son has painted a little before, but it was a first for my daughter, and we all took turns base coating some Chaos Space Marines. I was pretty impressed with the care and attention that they took - just look at the concentration on my daughter's face! I think that when I get the chance I may pick up a few new cheap models - I'm thinking Termagaunts - and see what they can do totally on their own (my son mostly, with a little guidance). Next weekend we'll try some basic gaming.

                   

                 

Dear Fan Boys, Please Stop Breaking The GW Website!

For goodness sake, has the world gone utterly mad? I'm just a casual observer wanting to take a glance at some new toys. From what I can just about see, what's on offer is an almost-exactly-the-same tactical squad, a couple of ok-ish characters, and the weirdest bloody fat Space Marines I've ever seen. Seriously? You want to break the GW site in a stampede for these?!

Oldhammerers, I Wish You Well - Have A Great Weekend

I wish I could join you for what I'm certain will be a great weekend. Looking forward to all the photos and reports. Until next year....

The Army That Won't Parade - Re-Capturing The Slow Hobby Spirit

Sadly, Armies On Parade isn't going to happen for me this year. I found myself over the last week or so getting really anxious about having things at a certain stage and the amount of painting time I had left. 

I also realised that I was starting to paint in ways that I simply didn't want to: ultimately, I was losing my 'slow hobby' spirit and turning leisure into slog. Not a recipe for happiness.

So I returned all my Nurgle folks to their shelf and turned again to picking them off one or two at a time and experimenting away contently, while imagining that I'm a real artist. 

At least the tidying away led to more effectively presented shelves, so, dear reader, please take this humble photograph as a small prelude to my annual 'climbing sprue mountain' posts...

Inside Guillermo del Toro's Sketchbook

I have to share this art work with you because it's so very, very cool. It's from Guillermo del Toro's notebooks and I found it over at Geek Tyrant. I've always admired del Toro's work though I never realised he was such a talented artist - the rather vintage style of these sketches is simply terrific. I hope you enjoy them as much as I am. I'm really inspired to keep a sketchbook too.

The Disappearing Pleasures Of GW Metal Miniatures, Or, Am I A Leadhead After All?

How many more times will I start a hobby session with one of these blister packs?

Here we have Morghur, Master of Skulls. Still available direct from GW in a soulless white box. I got mine from eBay of course.

Looking at this pack I realised that this is a disappearing pleasure - certainly where GW is concerned, and considering the way things are going across the market, one that will become scarce with all manufacturers sooner or later.

I decided to share the pleasure as best I could with my kids. My daughter was allowed to open the pack and 'check over' the components. On close inspection she seemed happy enough with them ;-)

Then I asked my son to mix together his first ever batch of greenstuff, which he did with gusto. In the meantime I primed up the super glue (by taking the lid off), and we then sat together and 'super-green-stuffed' the little blighter together. Excess greenstuff came in handy for creating additional tentacles of mutation around the base (Morghur is a powerful and twisted shaman).

And there you have it. Primed in white and with a light coating of a sepia ink wash, ready to be worked on during the coming cold winter nights. A really great and characterful model and an utter - yet unexpected - pleasure to work with white metal. Perhaps I'm more of a leadhead than I realised!

Champions Of Slaanesh Progress Report - Realm Of Chaos Warbands

Some general progress has been achieved on my Slaanesh champions. I'm still experimenting a little with these colours, mostly through the retinue troops, and once I've figured out how to mix a few lighter blends I'll finish these perverted leaders. I'm really pleased with the colour scheme, which includes Citadel (Slaanesh Grey, Emperor's Children, Ice Blue, various washes), P3 (Murderous Magenta, Carnal Pink), Daler Rowney (Process Cyan), Model Color (Hull Red) and Army Painter (Dark Tone) paints.

Storing Paints In A KR MultiCase: The Ideal Solution For A Nomadic Splatterer

It seems that I've found an ideal solution for my nomadic painting lifestyle and I didn't have to look too far away - in fact, only as far as my excellent local games store, Firestorm Games. Yesterday I picked up a basic KR MultiCase and my paints have a new home that can easily travel around with me: around the house, to the in-laws, and to my new digs in Oxford (I'll be living there during the week from early October).

Here's how they fit:

Only a little modification required in order to fit the larger bottles - for these I simply slit down the dividers, taking care not to dislodge them completely, thereby creating larger sections. Simple stuff and really effective. Now I just need to demonstrate self control and not buy more paints...!