Author Archives: Alex

Seros the Red, Thrice Cursed of Khaine

09 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by in AoS, Daughters of Khaine, Fembruary Challenge

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I have something a little different for you this week – no Orks for a change! However, I do have my first piece completed for Fembruary, who also happens to be the leader for my Daughters of Khaine warband that I’m building. One of the big draws of the DoK for me is the possibility of bringing a bit of Greek mythology into the AoS world… Medusae and Harpies – what’s not to like?? I’m sure I’m not the only one here who loved Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts as a kid ;-)

Anyway, here she is – Seros the Red, Thrice Cursed of Khaine:

She’s made from the tail of a Melusai, the torso from the Cauldron of Blood Hag Queen, and the head from the Bloodwrack Medusae. She was a fun little conversion, and rather nice to paint up! I’ve gone with a simple colour scheme, but I think it works nicely on such a weird and varied model. The base was fun too – I’ve tried to do something that might make sense in the AoS Realm of Metal… basically, she’s high-fantasy with a dash of Greek mythology. Here is some accompanying fluff:

Seros was ordained to be a Priestess of Khaine, a so-called Hag Queen, sworn to serve Morathi in The Helleheart, the first temple of Hagg Nar. As a Priestess of Hagg Nar, Seros was destined for a position of power and authority within Khainite society, yet in her heart, she knew she did not belong… Far from being nought but a cruel and bloodthirsty murderer, Seros held feelings of kindness and compassion for the weak and broken souls of the Leathanam within her heart, especially for a young Aelf male called Kaulgar. These feelings were reciprocated, and their despair at their forced separation was a terrible thing – even though both understood the necessity. Over time, Seros grew into power and majesty as a Priestess of Khaine, yet her feelings for Kaulgar remained, and she occasionally managed to abscond from her temple duties to illicitly meet him.

Of course, Morathi was aware of this situation, for she misses little that goes on in the hearts of those within her domain… however, she was prepared to overlook this frailty – after all, Seros was a High Priestess with great potential, and Morathi is nothing if not pragmatic. However, Seros was to commit one unforgivable sacrilege – she shared secrets of the inner temple of Helleheart with her lover, and this could not be ignored.

Seros was summoned to Morathi, who cursed her three times. The first curse was enacting the ritual of Slith-onoir, the rites used to create Bloodrack Medusae. Morathi’s second curse ensured that Seros retained her will and her personality, allowing her to appreciate the full physical horror of her transformation into a Medusa. The third curse was laid not on Seros, but on Kaulgar, who had been captured and brought before Morathi as Seros lay recovering from the terrible changes wrought upon her. Seros watched helplessly as Morathi burned the Doomfire runes into Kaulgar’s living flesh, and she screamed as she saw his love for her die within his eyes as the runes did their work. Kaulgar was left gaunt and ruined, with nought but the spite and pain that defines Warlock existence left in his heart

Her punishment complete, Seros was banished from Hagg Nar, and doomed to wander the Mortal Realms as a hideous monster, filled with the pain of love lost, and the enduring horror of her transformation. We join Seros as she ventures into Chamon, and the tale of her punishment begins to draw a small but dedicated band of followers from Khainite society. Here in the Realm of Metal, she seeks to grow her powerbase, and to try and find a way to break the curses laid upon her.

 

That’s all for now dudes, I hope you like Seros – there will be a few more Fembruary handmaidens joining her over the month, and I’m aiming to get ‘Mad’ D’onne Ulanti painted as well. I also intend to crack on with more Ork sculpting in the background as well, so plenty to look forward to! Have a good one dudes, catch you on the flip-side :-)

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More Scumbos, and the Fembruary Challenge!

31 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Fembruary Challenge, OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how are we all? It’s another quick one from me today – I have (yet) another 5 Scumbos completed for the Wolf Time campaign, but firstly I wanted to formally issue my 2019 Fembruary Challenge! As with last year, I would like to propose that we make Fembruary a time of year for us to collectively challenge the male domination of our collections, and commit to painting some female miniatures for a change. Whatever female minis you have on the to-do list, I challenge you to bump them to number one in the queue for the month and get some paint on ‘em! Drop a link to your efforts in the comments of any of my Fembruary posts and I’ll curate a round-up in time for International Woman’s day on the 8th of March. Simples!

For my part, I’ll be working on a few Daughters of Khaine for the challenge, plus (hopefully) a piece of Necromundan royalty – a real ‘A’ list celebrity ;-)

 

Now, back to the Scumbos – here are the latest 5, (taking me to 20 done & 5 to go):

 

Really not much to say about these guys that I haven’t said before, but as with my last post, I’ve been busy pushing putty in the background & have some WIPs to tease you with. For the first time in one place, here are the 18 Power Armoured Guards that I need for the final scenario of the campaign, all in various states of readiness:

 

Impressive, no? The front four are the most finished, and should give a good idea of where I’m going with this piece of the project. As a side note, I think getting the hang of this sculpting business, but I didn’t want to attempt sculpting Chainswords – I thought that would be just too damn fiddly and time consuming, so I got me some suitable bits from Spellcrow and cheated ;-)

 

So, that’s about it for this post – still a fair way to go with this project, but the finish line is in sight for the Orcs… Exciting times!

Catch you all next time dudes :-)

 

Somewhere over the Skumbo

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? Another quick post from yours truly today – I have another 5 Scumbos completed for the Wolf Time campaign:

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This takes me up to 65% completed for the Ork side of the campaign! Again, these started life as Fantasy Orcs, but were remodelled with pistols & swords to fit the scenario. These were a bit more involved than the last lot, due to being Archers in their former lives. This meant that there was a bit more ‘making good’ needed where their quivers were removed, and awkward arm poses were rationalised. Here’s a reverse shot to show all pouches and whatnot that I used to hide the cutting:

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I have been busy on the building side of things as well as the painting, and I know that seeing a trickle of painted Orks is somewhat repetitive for you guys so I thought I’d share a teaser for the next stage of the project. I have made quite a bit of progress on some of the named characters for the campaign… see if you can figure out who is who!

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Teenage Scumbo, baby!

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, I hope you are all well, and that you are enjoying getting back to normal after the festive season! After a slightly disjointed Christmas, I am back into the groove with my Wolf Time project – as a result, I have a new skwad of Scumbos to share with you:

As with almost all of my Scumbos, these guys are converted from various fantasy Orcs, with lots of bits sculpted on by yours truly. I’ve given them all a weathered & scruffy look, with plenty of rust & gunk… even the red spot colour is quite subdued – almost an oxblood brown rather than a true red. I hope that the overall effect is one of a mob of lower caste of Ork, (as described in the scenario), when compared to the better equipped and presented warrior skwads. Im pleased with them, and I hope you like ‘em too :-)

In other news, my buddy Ross and I have kicked off a little side project, based on the AoS skirmish rules presented in this month’s White Dwarf. We’ve both drifted away from AoS a bit recently, but this skirmish system has rekindled a bit of interest. In addition, Ross has precious little time for painting & modelling these days, while I’ll be fitting this in around the rather demanding Wolf Time project… Long story short, the small scale of the project suits us both well.

The ‘rules’ of the project are as follows:

  • Build & paint 100ish ‘renown’ points in Feb (to include our Generals), and 25ish renown per month thereafter, up to 250 pts. This should equate to a manageable 3ish minis per month.
  • The warband must be from a faction we don’t currently collect. Ross and I chose the faction for each other, with me getting Daughters of Khaine, and Ross getting Sylvaneth
  • Set in a common realm, (realm tbd), based & modelled accordingly
  • Push the modelling & painting – AoS28 style, crazy conversions, grim-dark, etc.
  • Lowest cost possible – beg/borrow/steal, freebees, scratch build, re-use, etc.
  • Narrative rather than competitive warbands – named characters, backstories, etc.

Should be a fun little distraction for Ross and I, and of course, we’ll be pitching our warbands against each other as we go. Furthermore, you can expect a growing background & narrative from me as the project progresses – I already have some cool ideas in that direction which I hope will make for a good read!

That’s all pretty exciting, (for me at least), but I would like to share that excitement with YOU! I therefore encourage you to take part & share your progress on your blog if you’ve got a hankering to do something a bit different this year. Simply choose a faction & follow the guidelines above – simples! Looking forward to seeing who signs up & what you come up with :-)

Anyhow, that’s all from me for now – catch you all soon!

A small hobby interlude – homemade Spoilpox Scrivener

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting

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Greetings Terrans, and happy new nominal start of the next orbit of Earth around Sol. A couple of posts ago, I dropped a little hint about a secret project that I had been working on… I had to keep it secret because it was an attempt to sculpt a surprise figure from scratch for my gaming bro Ross. Now some of you may know Ross’ work – he has the classic chaos daemons blogspot, and has a particular affinity for Papa Nurgle. Ross and I game a lot, including the occasional game of AoS, where he uses his gorgeous OldHammer Daemon horde, but a lot of the new Nurgle releases are not really his cup of tea… not a dissimilar issue to the one I discussed in my last post regarding Nagash in fact! One such mini is the Spoilpox Scrivener:

Anyway, long story short, I thought I’d have a crack at sculpting one up for him for Christmas – quite an ambitious decision! I made an armature from paper clips, and started building up the mini in stages over several weeks. Just before Christmas, I ended up at this point:

I’ve obviously copied the basic pose of the GW mini as a nod to the original, but I’ve tried to get more of an old-school flavour going… it’s bloody hard work sculpting, particularly getting things smooth, but the old Plague Bearers were very lumpy and misshapen, so this worked in my favour. I hooked up with Ross just after Christmas, and handed the Scrivener over with some nervousness… I knew I had done my best, but it’s not exactly a masterpiece! I needn’t have worried though, my Brother-in-Lead was delighted, and bumped it to the top of his painting queue. A couple of days later, I got these sent to my phone:

I was so relieved to see that it had painted up well, and that Ross had got it looking so amazing! I don’t mind telling you, it’s a weird feeling to sculpt something up and then have someone paint it for you – it’s such real honour to have someone appreciate all the effort you’ve put in, and then put in the extra love themselves to finish the job! I would recommend it to anyone :-)

I will certainly be continuing my journey into sculpting – maybe not too much in the way of whole minis, but this certainly gives me the confidence to take on even more ambitious modifications and conversions… I’ll have plenty of opportunity – we’re back to the Orks now, and once the Skumbos are painted, I’ll be moving on to Power Armoured guards and all the characters! Wish me luck ;-)

Not-Gash!!

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in AoS Undead, OldHammer

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Happy Deadcember Terrans, I hope you all had a good festive occasion as per your chosen proclivities! I know I did – way too much food, family visits, barely any arguments, and some solid hobby time! I’ve been batch-painting Orks for my Wolf Time project, but I also had time to wrap something up for Deadcember – an Old Hammer Nagash tribute. Now, most Grogards of a certain vintage will hear the word ‘Nagash’, and will think of this guy…

Yes, it’s the (in)famously gash Gary Morley sculpt of the arch-necromancer – widely considered one of the worst GW minis of all time. There is a strange story behind this mini – after all, Gary is no slouch when it comes to sculpting! Apparently, this was Gary’s first big multi-part mini for GW, and he was very much left to wing it… His original version had a zombie-like face, but the design team didn’t like it & sent it back to Gary for revision. Gary claims he then submitted the clownish skull face as a deliberately shite alternative, figuring that the tight production deadlines would make his original (and better) version the obvious choice. Much to his horror, the design team went with the big ol’ skull face, and this became the definitive version of Nagash right up until his reincarnation as the towering plastic tour de force that is all the rage these day. This presents something of a problem for a dedicated lead-head like me – how to have a version of Nagash that had that Old Hammer vibe while avoiding the Morley debacle! First world problems, eh?

Anyway, imagine my delight when the eminently talented Geoff (Oakbound Studios) showed me his own re-imagined OH version of ‘Gash across a beer-soaked table at the last BOYL… I jumped at the chance to grab one of the very few examples that he had cast in lead, and made a mental note to save it for Deadcember. Well, Deadcember is upon us, and so here he is – the Oakbound Not-Gash version of Nagash:

I embellished the original slightly with the addition of some spooky skulls whooshing around the place, but other than that, this mini is as intended. I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a huge improvement on the Morley original.

Anyway, that’s about it for today – I’ll be back in the new year with the last of the Wolf Time Orks before starting on the Space Marines needed for the campaign. I’ll also be fitting in the odd bit of fantasy as and when – my rather excellent Brother-in-Lead Ross got me a copy of Dragon Rampant for Christmas, and I’m really looking forward to giving it a whirl! Until then, I wish you all a Happy New Year!