Tag Archives: Oldhammer

Wolf Time Orks

24 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by in OldHammer, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? It has been a busy couple of weeks, with lots of building, sculpting, and general hobby ‘admin’, but not much in the way of finished stuff to share! That said, I do have another unit of ‘Ork Warriors’ finished for the Wolf Time campaign, (30 down, 72ish to go). As with the ‘Red Skwad’, these guys are all armed with Bolters and Bolt Pistols, and will lurk in Gov’ner Kulo’s inner sanctum (fnaar fnaar). This time, I’ve gone with a rather fetching orange as the squad spot colour:

 

These guys were slightly slow to get finished, mostly because I had a ‘small’ terrain project jump the painting queue last week. That project hit a bump & won’t be ready to show until next week, but here’s a teaser for you:

Hmmm!!! Mysterious, no?

 

I’ve also been prepping the next round of Orks to paint, which necessitated some more Greenstuff shenanigans. Here’s a sample WIP of some Ork Teknishuns wot all needed Greenstuff swords & pistols to go with their Plasma Guns (of course…):

Ok, so I know some of these are actually flamers, but fuck you internet – I’m calling them Plasma ‘because Orks’ :-)

 

Speaking of ‘pain-in-the-arse’ non-existent minis, I’ve also been thinking about the remaining Orks that I need to sort out – all of which have few or no ‘official’ models… You’d think that Skumbos (sword & pistol), and Ork Guards (Bolter, Chainsword & Power Armour), would be plentiful and easy to source, but they are not. I’ve already moaned about the complete lack of power armoured bolter/chainsword combos in a previous post, but you’d think that at least the Skumbos would be plentiful enough, right? Er… no. There are about 5 ‘official’ Rogue Trader RT02/4402 pistol & sword minis of the right age… and I need 25… *sigh*

My current plan is to use fantasy Orcs of the correct vintage, but, of course, they’ll all need converting to some extent. With that in mind, I’ve been playing around with press-moulding bits so I can produce the correct weapon options for these sods… I have had very little success so far, but I will persevere… You can say what you like about this sanity of tackling this project with such strict self-imposed restrictions, but it is definitely developing my hobby skills!

Until next time people – have a great week :-)

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Green-skinz & Green-stuff!

10 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by in Scuplting, Wolf Time

≈ 32 Comments

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Greetings Terrans! I hope all is well with you and that life is being kind. I have quite an exciting post for you today – I have another skwad of Orks completed & ready for Wolf Time, and I’ve also been pushing some Greenstuff around in a pretty major way! First up the painting – this time I’ve tackled one of three Ork Warrior units that are needed for the campaign – the list shows them as armed with Bolt Guns, Bolt Pistols and Combat Accessory (these all have a small pistol tucked away somewhere on their person):

I’m happier with these guys than with the first few skwads – I forgot to take a green glaze with me on holidays so didn’t use it on the first batch of Ork skin, but I tested it on these guys and am much happier with the resulting tone… I’ll have to remember to go back and glaze the others! Also, I cheated a bit on this unit – the leader (Thrug Bullneck no less!) was already painted on hols, but I re-did his trousers & shirt to tie him in with ‘Red Skwad’ a bit better, (and I also glazed the flesh).

 

I also had a look ahead to some more units that are needed for the scenario – the Ork Guard Units. These Guards are a bloody pain in the arse… They are meant to have Power Armour, Bolt Guns & Chainswords – all fine and good, except I can’t find a single OldHammer mini that matches this equipment loadout! All the Power Armoured Nobs of that time have Power Gloves, and all the sculpts would be really tricky to weapon-swap on in a convincing way… I could go for some newer Ork minis, but I really don’t want to deviate from the era too much. It’s a pickle, and one that I’ve been mulling over for several weeks now!

Anyhoo, yesterday morning, I had a brainwave – I thought I’d try and attack the problem from the other angle and try and sculpt power armour on a correctly armed Ork, (funnily enough, Thrug again)… I mean, how hard can that be, right? Well, turns out that it is bloody hard – several hours of fun later, and I got to this stage:

Hmmm… I am both pleased and frustrated at the same time – pleased that the basic shape is there, and happy that it clearly reads as “Hey fuckers, look at me! I’m that mythical non-existent Power Armoured Ork with Bolter and a Chainsword that Rick Priestley wrote into the Wolf Time campaign!”, but I’m also frustrated that it is so rough. Of course, it isn’t finished yet, but I’m in totally new territory here – I’m not sure how much I can refine it, whether it should be more refined now, how to add stuff, etc. I’m basically learning as I go, and have no idea were to pitch my expectations – the uncertainty is somewhat uncomfortable. Also, I’m thinking of the bigger picture – I need 19 of these buggers! 19 re-sculpts will take me bloody ages, and I run the risk of them all looking like kneeded dog shite at the end of the process… on the other hand, my sculpting will have improved hugely, and they might end up looking absolutely awesome… Decisions, decisions!

Well, I guess the thing to do is go balls-out to finish this guy to the best of my ability & then make a decision. I have some clay shaping tools on order (recommended by Jon – thanks dude!), plus some brownstuff (recommended by Jesper – thanks dude!!), and a cable rolling tool, so at least I’ll have the right gear to take this ‘eksperiment’ to the next level. I also ordered some mould making material, so at least I can make my own ‘period’ chainswords, and maybe even try and mould whole figures! Exciting times dudes and dudettes – it all feels deliciously old-school :-)

Anyway, that’s it for today – catch you homies all on the flip-side!

BOYL 2018, and a belated Space Bastard

10 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by in BOYL, OldHammer

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Greetings Terrans, wow, what a week! I had all the fun & mayhem of BOYL last weekend, so three days of solid oldhammer gaming, shooting the breeze with friends, checking out amazing minis & gorgeous terrain, and generally soaking it all in. As always, the Ansell clan were hosts beyond peer, and all those who make the event possible were superb. Also as always, I have a photo dump for you to pick through, so here we go!

Friday: First up, a great game of Rogue Trader (i.e. Warhammer 40k first edition) with my pal Titus (of gameoftravel fame). He pitted his newly painted and stunning Imperial Fists against my also newly painted & very bright Eru-Kin. I used Slaan rules from Rogue Trade, and loaded up on high tech kit, while Titus used a contemporary Space Marine army list. We set out some objectives, and also included some RT psychic powers on both sides. It was a cracking game, with the Marines taking a brutal toll on the Slaan, but the Slaan being more focused on their objectives. Highlights were the Slaan hopping all over the place thanks to their displacer fields, and the pivotal moment where my Slaan mage changed the allegiance of the Marine Dreadnought. Awesome game:

 

Next up I got involved with a classic WFB campaign, and played Terror of the Lichmaster. Wojceich (Frugelhofennews) had been working on collecting and painting all the correct buildings and minis for the campaign, (including some very rare and collectable pieces), but had only recently discovered the UK Oldhammer scene, so made the BOYL event at very short notice. It was a genuine pleasure to see how much he enjoyed his minis used in the campaign, and hopefully we’ll see Wojceich again next year for Revenge of the Lichmaster!

 

Saturday: I spent most of the morning hanging out with the WIPster posse – Axiom, Cheetor, Asslessman, Whisky Priest, AntiPixi and Airbornegrove, plus event-guru Garth and a few folks I am less familiar with. Collin (Whisky Priest) ran a game of ‘What a Tanker’ – kind of World of Tanks for the tabletop. It’s a neat game, and great fun to play – even with the chaos of managing 11 players! It was really good of the guys to fit me in at the last minute, even though it made for an odd number of players and skewed the game… they really are an awesome gang of Orky tankers 😊

 

The afternoon had the Space Bastards game happening on the Helsreach board, expertly handled by Curtis. The basic idea is a small unit of Marines (or a single Marine plus human henchies) warp in to Helsreach, and kick up as much mayhem as they can. Points were available for killing, graffitiing, boozing, and one or two less salubrious activities. The whole idea came off the back of a conversation last year about how awesome Marines used to be when the fluff had them as genetically engineered homicidal maniacs, and how well this would work when said Marines were on shore leave…  Even the goody-goody Ultra Marines were sociopathic bastards back in the day  ;-)

Here is my Bastard (finished the night before I left), and his henchmen, :

During the game, I ended up having my spree interrupted by Hambry and his gang of Helsreachers, so a right good ding-dong took place between my mob and his. By the time the game finished, I had almost wiped the impudent locals out, and had a hefty kill tally to show for it, (plus some graffiti here and there). And here they are in action:

 

Late afternoon I was lucky to be included in another WIPster game – this time Jon (Axiom) was running a bounty hunting skirmish, which was fast paced and very funny. Jon had thoughtfully created stats for a huge number of eclectic minis from his collection, and it was awesome to see them assembled in one place for a game. I ended the game with a pleasing number of credits:

 

I also managed to jump on another bandwagon on Saturday evening, and took part in a classic Rogue Trader scenario – the battle of Jadeberry Hill. It is designed as a follow-on to the famous Battle at the Farm scenario from Rogue Trader, and pits Crimson Fists against Orks. Aiden had provided the board and the Orks, while Drew provided some gorgeous Crimson Fists. I joined a few turns in, and helped Jesper with the defence effort. We managed to hold out long enough to get the escape signal, enter the tunnel and reset the demo charges before the swarm of Orks overran our position. Several heroic Marines sacrificed themselves in this effort – a flamer guy who held up the Ork advance to allow his brothers time to escape, and a single trooper who intercepted a pair of sneaky greenskins on the verge of slipping through the net, heroically killing both in melee before getting shot to pieces.

 

 

Sunday morning was a very groovy affair – I had the pleasure of setting up and GMing an impromptu game of Rogue Trader, with Jesper controlling my Praetorians, David running the Eru-Kin, Nibbel with his Scavvies, and Hambry with his Inquisitor and retinue. Titus also joined the party late with his Imperial Fists. I set up a small settlement and civilian population, and gave each general a set of goals – most of which clashed with at least one other player. It was my first time running a game this big, and it was certainly a challenge, but I really enjoyed the experience, and I think my players did as well. Trouble is, I was so busy, I forgot to take many photos! It ended closely, with a number of objectives achieved by most players. David nicked it in the end, with his surgical precision, strategic acumen, and cold-blooded xenos focus on his objectives.

 

And that was it for another year! Man, I had such a good time, and can’t wait for 2019. A bunch of us are already planning and scheming, with some great ideas bubbling away… I’m thinking of trying to run Wolftime, and I even hear whispers of a Slaves to Darkness warband challenge! Awesome :-)

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 :-)

The last Banshee (for now) – Candy

23 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Fembruary Challenge, Side projects

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Hello chaps & chapettes, I have a very quick update to share today – it has been a funny week with not too much painting, but I did wrap up the last of the Ghosts of Gia*. I’m calling this one ‘Candy’:

 

‘…but Alex, why is her skin blue?’ I hear you ask… (you were asking that, right?)   Weeeell… Candy is actually the oddest of ‘odd ones out’ in the range, because she is the only one who isn’t wearing either a helmet or a re-breather! I was mulling ideas about how to deal with this, including toying with the idea of converting her, but decided to keep her ‘as is’. I then I thought to painting her as a mutant – some genetic twist that allowed her to breath the toxic atmosphere of whatever sump/hive/deathworld that the Banshees happen to come from. The idea grew on me – it was fun from a painting perspective, but it also says a lot about the ethos of the Banshees I think… I really like that they would accept a mutant into the gang, and that their shared femininity is more important to them than anti-mutant prejudice. Speaking of the gang, here’s the whole heart-breaking, life-taking, bad-assery of ’em:

 

So, that’s it for this week – told you it was a quickie! That also wraps up the Banshees for the time being*, and I’m really happy to have focused in on painting a bunch of ‘realistic’ sci-fi women that were only ever made thanks to the determination of Annie Norman (of Bad Squiddo fame) to address the paucity of believable female minis in the hobby. Thank you too to Cupcakesandmachetes for including this effort on your ‘Celebrate the Ladies’ event – there’s some great stuff going on over there, and I’m glad that Annie’s work is represented.

Next week I’ll have a cool bit of scenery to finish & share with you all, (trust me, you’ll love it!), plus I have a few half-finished Eru-Kin that might get done as well. Hobby time gets a bit choppy after that with holidays & work travel coming up fast, but we’ll see how it all goes. Have a great weekend & catch you next week :-)

 

*I’m actually missing one mini from the first run of the Ghosts of Gia, (fuck knows where she’s gone!), plus the second Kickstarter is due to drop through my letterbox any time now… Yey!! :-)

Decembruary painting challenge completed!

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in AoS Undead, OldHammer

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Happy Friday folks, and I’m happy to report that my super death-dragon monster of deathly death is finished, thus comfortably getting me over the finish line for Azazel’s Decembruary painting challenge. As a reminder, the challenge was to paint a ‘big thing’ that has been put off for a while, and this certainly matches that brief – I’ve had this project in mind for months, but never seemed to have the motivation to roll my sleeves up and get cracking… You can probably see why – this was a complicated and intimidating kit bash to represent Arkhan The Black in an OldHammer stylee, and is based on the venerable Death Dragon from Grenadier, (still available from mirliton.it as ‘Arkor the Eternal’). This is what I ended up with:

So let’s talk a bit about the build… First things first, this old girl is a big lump of lead, and I made it more complicated by deliberately ignored the ‘correct’ pose to make her a bit more dynamic… much pinning and filling was required to make sure she was rock solid! I used an old GW skeleton cavalry mini to represent Arkhan himself, with some minor conversion work to swap the (MASSIVE) head, add a right arm, add a tilting shield, and sculpt a saddle & banner mount. He also got some manly man-chains to steer the bugger. The base got quite a lot of attention as well – Arkhan gets a bunch of spirit host attacks in AoS, so I wanted to represent this on the model. The banshees from the Mortis Engine kit fitted the bill nicely, while some trees & scatter filled in the gaps and added a third point of stability for the dragon. One final thing to note – cleaning the mould lines off such a big model created a lot of lead shavings and off-cuts. I glued all this gash to the base and used it as texture, thus avoiding any thorny issues with responsible disposal. I even managed to sneak the rider’s original massive head in there – waste not, want not!

In terms of painting, this piece (is it pretentious to call it a ‘piece’??) provided ample opportunity to cut loose and have some fun. First up, I wanted the spirits to look like they were really glowing, so I had loads of fun with OSL. I think it came off nicely, though I think I overdid it a bit on the dragon’s eye sockets… I’ll sort that bit out next time I have some skellies on the table, but otherwise I am really chuffed with how the glow effect worked. Another bit that got a lot of attention was the banner and (to a lesser extent) the shield, and I really got to push the boat out with the freehand here. I am delighted with how it came out – that banner ended up being one of my favourite ‘things wot I painted’ ever! The rest of the paint job was pretty standard – I painted the trees to match my woodland bases, and I took my usual approach making things look tatty and old. A smattering of leaves and tufts of grass complete the base, though I do need to just go back and add some OSL to the leaves, (they got glued on last, and I didn’t want to risk painting on to wet superglue).

Here are a bunch of close-ups from various angles & focus points – I’ve tried to capture all the interesting bits for your viewing pleasure:

 

So, that’s it folks, what do you think?! I’m delighted with how it all came together & hope you like it too :-)   Huge thanks to Azazel for setting the challenge and motivating me to tackle such a big & intimidating project – it is great to have such a mighty hero to lead my legions, and I wouldn’t have got around to it without this challenge, so high-fives to you dude :-)