Greetings Terrans, just a quick post today – I’ve been chipping away at members for Scynir’s warband since last post, starting with her human followers – three axmen and three swordsmen:
Not too much to say about these really – they are all Foundry vikings, so they fit well with the Norsca setting of the November event. I painted them up with orange cloth & yellow hair, and I added blue face paint to better tie them in with Scynir herself. The shields were fun – I used a bit of a pointillist approach to suggest a Tzeentch symbol… Kinda chaos with a small ‘c’. I’m quite happy with how they turned out!
Greetings Terrans, it feels great to be writing this after a 7 month break from the hobby! I have been up to my neck in studying an MBA, but have now happily finished & that’s it – I solemnly swear to never ever do any academic learning ever again. I actually wrapped things up in April, but I had to wait until last week for the results and I found I had no motivation to do any hobby at all during that time. It wasn’t just painting – I’m way out of date with following and commenting on other blogs, and I honestly just can’t see me getting caught up with that side of things… Fresh start and all that.
Anyway, with all that in mind, I really needed something to get my juices flowing again. Luckily BOYL is around the corner, and Aidan was cooking up a lil’ WFB game and was looking for some 20ish-strong Old World warbands for a trip to Lustria. Aidan always puts on amazing games, so putting my hand up was a no-brainer. I thought about buying some new minis for the occasion, but thought it would be a good idea to raid the mounds of unpainted lead first… I found I had enough assorted Fantasy minis to put together a force. You’ll see over the coming weeks that the group is somewhat eclectic, but I think it’ll all come together in the end. The gist is that a wizard has come to Lustria to raid the Temple of the Golden Frog for some wizardly reason, and has hired a rag-tag group of pirates, natives, trackers and mercenaries to keep his wizardly ass safe in the steamy jungles.
This first group forms the backbone of the warband – mercenary Spearmen of Nuln:
Now, anyone who knows OldHammer knows about the near mythical Spearman of Nuln from the C-series Fighters range… I won’t get into all the background but suffice it to say that the original was unreleased, and so the actual mini is as rare as rocking horse poo… Luckily I had a slack handful of fan sculpts that I assume I picked up at BOYL, though I can’t for the life of me remember who made ’em… (Pop in a comment below if you know please!)
The minis are very much on the nose in terms of capturing that OH vibe – sure, the proportions are crazy and some of the casts are pretty bad, but they just ooze character and joy – they actually remind me a bit of the monopose Nightmare Legion, and that’s no bad thing in my opinion. More importantly, they weren’t a daunting paint job, which is something that I definitely needed to think about after such a long hobby break! Here they are in smaller groups:
I checked the interwebs for suitable colours and a banner design – black, red, yellow and cannon imagery were very much the order of the day. I challenged myself to practice my freehand a bit & while the striped trousers were frustrating, I’m really glad I did them… I’m bloody delighted with that banner!
Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you well. I have some updates to share on my Stargrave crew – full disclosure, I’ve actually completed the crew, but I’m spreading them over a few posts for the sake of content :-)
So, last time I introduced Capt. Zebulon Scoville in his Combat (i.e. Power) Armour. Problem is, in the Stargrave rules, you need to pay a fee to use Combat Armour… I’ve played enough of Joseph McCullough’s games to know that D20s absolutely hate me & that there will certainly be times where I don’t have the credits for this, so I wanted to do a version of Zebulon in heavy armour & packing a shotgun. This gave me a great opportunity to use one of my absolute favourite Olley minis:
I gave Zeb a holstered pistol, but otherwise this mini is unconverted. Paint job is as for the Power Armoured version – Mantis Warrior Green contrast paint & Red & Cream cheque detail.
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Next I put together a 1st Mate for the crew – a combat Cyborg called ‘Borgan Freedman’. I imagine Borgan is an old combat servitor dating back to the Olleyan Expansionist Wars, and that he was found & freed by Zebulon before becoming his loyal and capable Number 2:
Borgan is big fella, and is packing an oversized ‘Rapid Fire’ weapon arm conversion from one of the AdMech kits, the size of which probably explains his phenomenal quads! This is another superb model, and I wanted to really lean in to all the gribbly bits on this sculpt & I picked out as many of the little wires and doodabs as I could find. I went with a dark skin tone for some variety,, but otherwise he was painted in the same palette as Zebulon.
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Next up is BB-Q, a Burner Droid with code that is so corrupted that it actually seems to enjoy what it does:
BB has a simple conversion on the weapon to make it look more like a flame thrower / burner type weapon, but is otherwise unchanged. Nothing much else to add here, it’s a goofy sculpt but good fun, and looks decent in the crew colour scheme.
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Last one for today is ‘Doc’ Legg:
Doc had some conversion work to give him a syringe-gun thingy in his right hand, but otherwise he’s a standard Olley Squat from back in the day. The palette is also consistent, but with a bit more white & a medic cross on the shoulder guard for easy gameplay.
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And that’s all I want to share for now – more to come I promise :-)
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