Author Archives: Alex

Mors Omnia Aequalia

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in AoS, AoS Undead

≈ 28 Comments

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Greetings, fellow humanoids. Wow, it has been quite some time since I posted anything – simple reason for that… it has been ages since I painted anything!! To be honest, I’ve been in a bit of a funk of late – life has been a bit up & down, and my motivation levels have been pretty much non-existent. I don’t think I’m back to 100% yet, but with gritted teeth, I managed to get some paint down. I don’t know about you guys & gals, but whenever I’m coming out of a slump, I like to tackle something straight forward to get my juices flowing. I find that undead are a great candidate for that, so after a quick rummage in the lead pile, I picked out some cool zombies from the ‘March of the Dead’ kickstarter from last year. Sculpted by the rather excellent Philip Hynes, these minis are the perfect addition to my eclectic undead horde and were all painted in an unfussy way, mostly with washes.

 

First up, let’s look at some of the ‘regular’ zombies from the range:

There’s a definite black humour, self-mutilation vibe going on with this group – for example, Mr. face-peeler is definitely processing some issues! Highlights in this group are the attitude farmer giving it the finger, and the manic grin on the headless lady. I’m chuffed to have another zombie lady and an undead dwarf to add to my army – death is an equal opportunities employer after all! The anatomy demonstration mini is a pretty cool concept too, and would be a great piece to include in a suitably macabre diorama.

 

Next, we have this trio of ‘big ‘uns’:

There is less humour on display here, but these guys are just straight-up awesome. The minotaur & Ogre add yet more diversity to my zombie horde, but I decided to paint the ‘crypt thing’ as a living creature – he/she/it is probably going to be the start of a small Ghoul contingent.

 

Finally, here we have the real reason I was drawn to the KS in the first place –  undead farm animals:

These three beasties really push the boundaries when it comes to adding diversity to my undead army – I love the image of all manner of corpses being used in an undead army… death cares not from whence the clay comes after all! I must admit, that pig is about the most disturbing thing I have ever painted… it’s enough to put me off bacon sandwiches! (ok, so that is an exaggeration – nothing could put me off a bacon butty)

 

Here’s the whole group together (minus the crypt thing):

 

Anyhoo, that’s it for now folks – I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these weird & wonderful additions to my legions of undeath! I’ll try and keep the momentum up and get back into the swing of things with some more Eru-Kin and maybe a bit of Necromunda. Catch y’all on the flip-side :-)

Olivia Neutron-Bomb

19 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in Fembruary Challenge, OldHammer

≈ 38 Comments

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Greetings Terrans, I hope you’re all well, and that life is being kind. I have a quick post to share with you today – ‘Olivia Neutron Bomb’ is the BOYL 2017 event mini, and is a beautiful sculpt by John Pickford, organised & designed by Old Hammer stalwart Axiom. Most intriguingly, she is closely based on this classic bit of Rogue Trader art:

I actually had Olivia based and primed as part of my Fembruary effort, but I didn’t get around to painting her because she didn’t quite fit the post-apocalypse gang that I had going on. However, she is such a brilliantly strong female mini, so I knew that I wanted to include her somewhere…  Then I remembered these guys from 2016, and I figured that Olivia would be the perfect unit leader for this bunch of reprobates. I broke out my Kantor Blue and started laying down some colour, keeping to the same palette that I used on the older minis but opting to follow the RT artwork rather than freestyling it quite as much as I did on the original guys. Here she is, in all her glory:

The trousers were a real pain – I wanted to keep close to the artwork, but also use the same palette as for the rest of the squad. I think I got there in the end, but her snazzy pants took a few iterations. Otherwise she was a joyful thing to paint – she’s a really lovely mini with such a great story. Here she is leading her team of ultimate bad-asses through the streets of some backwater shithole planet:

So that’s it for now folks, I hope you’ve enjoyed my take on Olivia! I’ll be going dark for a couple of weeks, (a lot of work & life stuff coming up), but I’ll catch you all soon enough. Have a good one :-)

Frogs of WAR!!!

13 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Eru-Kin

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Greetings Earthlings, sorry it has been a while, but I’ve been on a break, so meh :-)   I had a lovely time hiking with the kids last week – we racked up 60 miles (each) over five days, which is pretty incredible when you consider my youngest is only 8! I’d be back out there now if I could, and even though the weather was crap, the worst day out on the hills is way better than a sunny day in the office… But alas, RL demanded my return, so I have been easing back into the usual routine this week. As such, I only managed to finish up three more Eru-Kin for my planned BOYL army, but these three are kind of interesting because I didn’t really have a clear idea of how they would fit in to the overall army I have in mind… Undeterred, I’ve been painting them slowly in between other jobs & hoping for some inspiration along the way. See what you make of them:

Paint-wise, these guys got my usual Eru-Kin treatment, so nothing exciting to talk about there, (though I did try out the Windsor & Newton artist inks that I mentioned last month on the skin for a more vivid colouration). While painting, I did have the hoped-for inspiration in terms of how they would fit in with the army and theme. The two shield guys look kind of honour-guardy to me, so they could easily flank any character to provide some additional protection, but the other chap was more difficult to figure out… He is marketed as a Musician, and is a cracking mini, but I’m not sold on the whole ‘command group in space’ idea from the RT era – I don’t know why, but it doesn’t quite click for me, so I knew I wouldn’t be using him in his intended role. I did consider using him as some kind of sonic weapon specialist, or maybe a comms operator, but I discounted these ideas because I felt that he would become a bit too anonymous… To be honest, I love the mini and felt that deserved a more prestigious role! Then I had a major flash of inspiration:

Ya see where I’m going with this? That’s right folks, I’m going to use him as a Beast Caller – a rare and highly specialised caste among the Eru-Kin, and therefore worthy of respect and protection from an honour guard. I imagine that the Beast Caller uses his mysterious ululations to repel rare and dangerous indigenous reptiles from the settlement during peace time, but uses these skills to summon them and drive them to assault the enemy in time of war. I see four major attractions to this concept:

1: This should provide an interesting dynamic in-game, with a powerful assaulting force underpinned by a comparatively fragile single link… What would the beasts do if the Caller gets killed? Rampage? Escape? Revenge?

2: It gives me a perfect and long-awaited excuse rational reason to go and buy some lovely minis that I have had my eye on for ages – Toy-Hammer is well and good, but I have the perfect range of pulp dinos in mind for this part of the project… I’ll keep you guys guessing on that for a while ;-)

3: The visual impact on the army should be superb – it gets me out of the need for vehicles to add bulk and height to the force, but most importantly, Dinosaurs are frickin’ awesome, and any excuse to get them involved in an army should be grasped with both claws. Immediately.

4: I get to legitimately use the word ‘ululation’ in conversation.

So there we have it – a small but interesting development on the Eru-Kin project. So, what’s next? Well… I’m away on business the week after next so that kind of disrupts any major plans in the short term, but I want to get some more undead sorted out, and I have a load more Eru-Kin to get organised. It’s only(!) 14ish week until BOYL, and I still have heavy fire support, assault, and psyker support to add, plus some Dinosaurs to get sorted! It looks like I’ll be waiting a while for the weather to improve enough for a mass priming session so I suspect that the next week will be all about assembly & basing… It’s necessary work, but very boring for you guys, so I’ll try and finish a mini that has been sat around in her undercoat for a while & do a post before I hit the road again.

Cheers dudes, keep it (un)real ;-)