Monthly Archives: November 2016

Get your rocks off honey!

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Frostgrave

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Hello chaps, just a cheeky little post for you today – I’ve had barely any hobby time in my chaotic (small ‘c’) life, so I have had to focus on a few low-effort bits and pieces. Luckily, I had a few such pieces lined up for Frostgrave. My Brother-in-lead and I are slowly getting ready to tackle Thaw of the Lich Lord, but there is loads of stuffs to do for that! Boats, ice river, a cart, a bone wheel festooned with corpses (?)…, Anyway, we’re not quite there yet, so we’re planning a little appetiser before we get into it – ‘The Hunt for the Golem’ is a mini-campaign of three scenarios, and is perfect for our wizarding needs.

With that in mind, I’ve sorted out 10 dead/dying chaps for one of the scenarios, and I fancied taking on a properly big & scary Golem as well. The deaders had the bare minimum of effort applied – just inks & a drybrush, followed by a suitably terminal looking amount of blood. The Golem was even easier to paint – I faffed about with different colour sprays, added a bit of texture, finished with some heavy drybrushing & various inks and ting, even a little OSL around the eyes… All in all, they were perfect little projects for short bursts of time & effort. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:

img_0938 Mmmmm….. Stompy McStompface

img_0939 He’s a handsome devil!

The minis were a mix of ‘Dark Age Casualties’ from Gripping Beast, and ‘Slain Adventurers’ from Otherworld Miniatures. The Golem is also from Otherworld – the ‘Huge Earth Elemental’.

I also added a minor addition to my standing Frostgrave warband – a blood crow from Northstar:

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Not much to say about this little chap – again, inks & drybrush for a quick finish, but he pads out my warband nicely, (yes, I cheesed out and went with the Inn with Kennel and Rookery adds). Here’s the whole crew, trying to deal with Stompy, and then posing around the place like a bunch of posers:

 

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Hmmm…. Need a backdrop or two! Anyhow, that’s it for now chaps – it’ll be slow going for the next few weeks, but I do have some more undead undercoated and on the bench – I should be able to get a few done between now and Christmas. Just in time for a bit of Deadcember action, eh?

HO HO HO.

 

M is for…

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Side projects

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…a whole bunch of creepy/nasty things like Murder, Maim, Mayhem, MSG, Malice, Malevolence, Mc Donalds – a multiplicity of malignant, yet mellifluous, mutterings. But in this case, M stands for the creepiest, most sinister thing in this, or any other, world – Morris Dancing.

I wanted to paint up some ‘death cultists’ for Frostgrave, but fancied doing something a bit different from yer normal ‘hood ‘n’ cowl’ gig. The idea of how cool it would be to use Morris Dancers came up in chat with my OH, and a bit of Google-fu turned up these fine chaps sold by Gripping Beast. For those who aren’t in the know, Morris is a traditional English folk dance. Of particular interest to me from an aesthetic perspective are those that practice ‘Border Morris’, which goes in for darker clothing and heavy face paint… in fact, traditionally, they went full ‘black-face’ (though this practice is a bit contentious for obvious reasons). In many ways, these guys are like clowns, but with sticks, and it’s one of those quaint, funny little English things that I can’t help but re-imagine with a sinister twist… I do love peeling back the bucolic charm of folksy England to reveal something altogether evil… polite of course, unfailingly polite, but evil none the less. In movies, classics like ‘The Wicker Man’ spring to mind, or check out ‘League of Gentlemen (especially Papa Lazarou), or the movie ‘Hot Fuzz’ for more contemporary examples of this trope. Terry Pratchett also had good fun with this idea, (and in fact came up with ‘Dark Morris’ – I term I rather like!), so I’m in good company I feel.

Anyway, enough of the history and rationale, let’s get down to it, shall we?  I’ve gone with classic ‘death’ colours of black, purple & red, and I painted up the sticks to look like carved bone. I also had a crack at the heavy face paint that characterises Borders Morris, (I went for a black/purple split, and tried to suggest a painted skull rather than full on face paint). A wee bit of blood spatter and some general dirtying up, and here we are:

img_0933 The stick men… what is in that bag?

img_0932 The guns… mostly drunk I suspect

img_0931 Musician and ‘hobby’

img_0934 The whole ‘side’ together

 

So there we have it – the Dark-Morris of Death!!! Game-wise, these guys are intended to be death cultists for Frostgrave’s ‘Thaw of the Lich Lord’ campaign, but they could easily be a new warband in their own right (guns as archers). I think that they would also work nicely for pulp, or even sci-fi games at a push. I hope you like ‘em – I’m not very good at face paint, (and don’t think that bit works very well if I’m honest), but I just can’t help really liking these crazy dudes 🙂   Thoughts?

Blood Bowl 2.0

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Hello peeps, sorry but still no painted minis to share – still horribly busy with studying, working and Dadding. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom – I was up in the Nottingham area on the weekend, and took the opportunity to swing by Warhammer World with my tribe:

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Blogging maestro Wugugast recently did a brilliant series on the many awesome displays that are housed there, so I’m not going to re-do what has already been done so well. However, there was a new display regarding the much anticipated relaunch of Blood Bowl, and I thought you folks might like to take a look:

img_0911 Box contents 1

img_0912 & 2

img_0913 Push-fit Orks

img_0914 and Humies

img_0915 Assembled Humies

img_0916 and Orks

img_0917 Alternative pitch on the reverse

img_0918 The Gouged Eye painted up

img_0919 and The Skavenblight Scramblers

img_0920 and the Reikland Reavers

 

I also snapped this, because nothing says ‘f*** you’ like an armoured company.

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So that’s it for now dudes, sorry for the lack of anything new painted. My super-evil death cultists are close, but not quite there yet… but soon my pretties, soon…

M is for Murder

M is for Malice

M is for Malevolence

M is for…. ?

Bits and pieces

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Greetings fellows! It has been a while since I last posted, and there’s a good reason for that. I’m finding my hobby time severely restricted at the moment – my degree course is hitting a critical point, and is consuming way more time than usual. I’m on the home stretch though, just 6 months to go before I’m done. In the meantime, I’m afraid that you can expect a slow-down from me in terms of hobby output.

It hasn’t been entirely barren though, me and my eldest had a session building Gargoyles for his fledgling Nid hoard:

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He did a great job of focusing on this, and zero accidents! We’ll be walking through these over the next few weeks, so I’ll post up the results as we progress.

Also, I took a day out to go to Brighton a few weeks back to check out an Ian Miller exhibition. For those that don’t know, Ian was one of the original artists with Games Workshop, and his art is threaded throughout the older books and magazines. It was fantastic to see his work in the flesh, having admired it from afar for some 28 years or so. I loved one piece in particular, and after some serious head vs. heart warfare, I dipped into my savings and bought an art. ‘Rote 1’ now takes pride of place on my study/games room wall:

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I have managed a little painting myself, but nothing that is ready to show yet… stand by though dudes and dudettes , because I’m putting together the most sinister, evil, vicious cult ever to grace this, or any other plane of existence! These guys piss all over Genestealers, kick the crap out of all Chaos cults, laugh in the face of Scientology and eat Satanists for breakfast… they didn’t even call Cultist Chan back after that crazy-hot afterparty at the 2013 Cult-con…  Seriously folks, these dudes are badass… be afraid.