Pact to the Future: Mutants!

Greetings all.

I hope my limited fanbase are all keeping well in these strange times.

I've been occasionally cracking on with a little painting, working on my Chaos Renegades again. Just a few more bits to do for them now, so I thought I'd just concentrate on getting them finished (which they still aren't, obviously).

Part of the attraction for this team is that most of the players can take mutations on a normal skill roll/primary skill. As a result, I needed a few mutated versions of my standard players. I had to rein it in a bit with these in fact, because there are SO many possibilities. However, players take so damn long to skill up on this team, chances are that I'm actually only going to have a handful of mutations at any time. I suppose I can always go back and add more, but chances are that I won't (ok I might, got some alternative Skaven mutations in mind).

Anyway, here are my current mutants (Claw x2, Two Heads, Horns):

In the new rules (BB2020), Chaos Renegades have the option of taking a (frankly rubbish) Thrower now. Obviously this meant I needed a new mini. I don't usually like minis holding a ball, but I wanted one that very clearly said "Thrower", as I didn't want to colour-code the bases for this team. I went with a 3rd edition Thrower, with a bit of conversion work to make him fit in with the 2nd edition minis I'm using for the rest of the team. This poor chap actually had no hands when I got him, so I transplanted some replacements from a Skaven Thrower and a Human Catcher. I also did a little sculpting to get that 2nd edition vibe. He'll be getting a bit of paint soon.

All that's left to do for this team is a couple Journeymen and a few Star Players (who may or may not make it into BB2020; that remains to be seen).

Comments welcome as ever!

Accidental Warcry warbands

 Greetings all.

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I haven't done much in the way of painting. I've been assembling a few bits and bobs, but that's not very exciting to look at. I did paint one thing, which I'll show you below.

What I have done is cobble together two Warcry warbands from models that I already had painted. I haven't actually played much Warcry, but everyone seems to love it, and if the world ever returns to normal I'll give it a bash.

Anyway here's my Nurgle warband:

And my Khorne warband:

I've also got a cool Gorehound model that I'm gonna add to these at a later date for an alternative leader.

Whilst I was messing around with my Bloodletters, I finally decided to convert an icon bearer for them, to bring the unit up to 10. I had a few odd broken bits from the original lot of Bloodletters, so I pinned them together and added a modern Khorne icon:

Till next time.

Necromunda: Underhive boxed set terrain finished!

 Greetings all, 

Another fairly short post from me today, but you should be used to those by now. I do have a decent amount of stuff to show off mind you. 

I was getting a bit burnt out with painting (and hobby in general), so I decided to paint my way through the terrain from the Necromunda Underhive boxed set. The idea was that it would be fairly straightforward and low stress, and I would be able to practice a few new techniques. Turns out I was exactly right. I didn't blast through it as quickly as I'd hoped, but I was only working on it as and when I had the motivation, so not too bad. Most of it is more or less the same colour (that colour being "rusty"), but that was kind of the point.

The last thing to finish up were these cool reversible loot crates:

With those done, it means I have the complete set finished:

On the whole I'm pleased with how it all turned out, and I learnt a few things along the way as well. I'm taking a short break from the hobby at the moment, although new 40k and new Blood Bowl are starting to get me all fired up again, so I'm sure I'll be back to it before long.

Till next time.

Saturated Rat: Blood Bowl Skaven team, and more Necromunda bits

 Greetings all.

Just showing you a little something that I'm off and on working on at the moment, and that's a 2nd edition Skaven team (the cool Jes Goodwin versions). No paint on these guys yet I'm afraid, but they're all assembled with a few little conversions. I'm possibly going to hold off doing any more BB stuff until I know more about how the new edition changes things. I like what I've seen of it so far, so I'm cautiously optimistic...

Anyway, some cool models from the past:

The whole team.

Rat Ogre and Star Players.

Coach, Apothecary, and counters.

Mutant versions of the Blitzers.

Journeymen.

Mutant conversions.

I probably won't bother getting any paint on these guys until the new version of BB, but I've already seen the Skaven roster and it's pretty much the same. Might want another Thrower, but that's it.

Apart from these guys, I've also been slowly getting through the rest of the Necromunda starter box:

I went with my now standard rust effect. I toned it down slightly on the terminals, just to make it look like they were actually still functional! Just a few crates and a couple more grenade piles, and then I'm done with all the scenery and bits.

Till next time.

Garrick Hagar (level one)

Greetings all.

I've got something slightly different to show you today, and that is my character for the Zoom 40k/Frostgrave mashup RPG we've been playing for the last couple months to get us through lockdown. It's all hosted and masterfully written by my good mate Alex, with me, Steve, and Mark bumbling our way through the adventures, failing to unravel the simplest puzzles, and solving most of our problems with violence. Yup, it's bloody awesome.

Anyway so the original intent was to play this out as a series of tabletop battles, but the 'rona put a stop to all that for the time being. We'll probably end up doing some follow-up tabletop based fun though, so we're all making minis of our characters. This is my guy, Garrick Hagar:

Basically he's an underhive scum and brawler type, mostly on the right side of the law, and usually makes a few credits as an escort for trade caravans and whatnot. The twist is that Garrick has latent psychic powers, the full potential of which he was unaware of (or unwilling to think about) until he got wrapped up in the mysteries of Spero Secundus.

The mini is a slightly converted underhive scum from 90s Necromunda, as it just fit exactly what I had in mind. I did a weapon swap to bring it in line with what Garrick carries, and slapped some paint on it. Since putting this mini together though, the party have gone through a number of important changes and level ups, and Garrick doesn't look quite the same! An encounter with a sump witch has allowed his full psychic potential to be unlocked, and the money the party made from harvesting giant spider eyes on that adventure allowed us all to invest in some very cool gear for the final mission. The upshot of this is that I'll be converting and painting an upgraded version of Garrick soon enough!

Till next time.

More quick and dirty terrain: Necromunda barricades and doors

Greetings all,

Whenever I hit a hobby slump these days (which seems to be a lot of the time at the moment, but these are strange times after all), I try and lift myself out of it by painting some "quick rusty shit". Being in such a slump at the moment, that's exactly what I've done. It gives me a kind of false sense of progress, because I can smash out a decent amount of stuff with minimal time and effort investment.

I've had the "new" (now not so new) Necromunda box sitting around begging for attention for quite a while now, so I decided to tackle some of the terrain for the 2D version of that:

Nothing fancy here, just lots of washing and stippling, but overall I think they turned out quite well. I'm actually quite keen to paint up some more Necromunda stuff, and I'm on the lookout for some decent walls that won't break the bank. Necromunda from the late 90s has a very special place in my heart (along with Blood Bowl from the same time), and it's nice to see a revival of both of them. I've got a Chaos Cult gang that I've been meaning to paint up for literally years now, so perhaps I'll get to that soonish... I've got a few odd accessories left to paint up, and then that'll be the whole box contents done (minus the gangs, which I no longer own).

Till next time.

Pact to the Future: Phase one complete!

Greetings all,

I've reached a bit of a milestone this week, albeit a fairly small one. I've managed to complete "phase one" of my Chaos Renegades team! Essentially this means I've painted a whole team, counters, and now coaching staff too. Given that I started putting these guys together about a year ago, I'm pretty happy with that. Now the reason it's only phase one, is that I have a handful of mutants, star players, and journeymen still to do, but none of those are required immediately to play the team, so they'll follow in phase two.

I'm pretty pleased with the achievement, even though it is a fairly modest one. I've been in something of a hobby slump for a while now (and still am tbh), so having something "complete" is pretty satisfying. At times it has been a bit of a grind to paint them, but overall I'm happy with how it all turned out.

Without further ado, some pictures!

The newest additions, the coaching staff:

And now some pics of the team as a whole, starting with the Renegades:

The humans:

The Big Guys:

Finally the markers, and all the team together:

I'm delighted to have these guys finished (not that they'll be seeing the table for a while, seeing as the world has ended and all that). I'm thinking of taking a little hobby break soon, but nothing too major. Just a couple weeks or so to come back feeling refreshed and revitalised, rather than seeing all this as a job that needs doing. I've got a few bits here and there that I want to finish off first though, so I wont be going anywhere just yet.

Anyway, in the meantime let me know what you think!

Pact to the Future: the last of the Renegades

Greetings all.

Another quick post from me, as per usual. I've managed to spend some of my limited hobby time finishing off the last of the Renegades for my team. With these guys done, I now have a full squad of "normal" players. I still need to finish off the coaching staff, and then move on to phase two (mutants and star players), but I'm getting there!

First up, Jizmak Da Gusha, the Orc Renegade:

And my Skaven Renegade, Oderus Urungus.

Once I'm done with the coaching staff, I'll get some decent pics of the whole team together too.

Feels good to have these guys done, as it means I now have a second fully painted Blood Bowl team to play with. Till next time!

Pact to the Future: Turn, Score, and Re-Roll markers / Spero Secundus

Greetings all, 

Just a quickie from me today, partly because I don't have much to show. I'm still working away on my Chaos Renegades/Pact team, and I've very nearly completed Phase One. In this case, I've just finished off some cool little markers for the team:

They're made from old school chaos familiars. I kept the integral bases visible and painted them gold, to make them look like heathen idols. Handily, this also ticks off a few more familiars from my "paint all the familiars" project. Unfortunately, I've had a minor issue with the varnish on these guys, but I'm hoping I can fix it. 

Because I always give everything two coats of matt varnish if it's for gameplay, the metal ended up very dull on these, and I wanted them to shine a bit. So I brushed on a little Citadel Ardcoat gloss varnish. Unfortunately, this is still slightly tacky several days later. I'm gonna hit them with a light coat of matt and then brush over some Vallejo gloss, to see if that solves the problem...

On an entirely different note: I'm currently taking part in a sort of Inq28/Frostgrave/RPG mash up, organised by my good mate Alex from Lead Balloony, and taking place on the world of Spero Secundus. One of the most important plot points is a mysterious alien key, so one of the other players, our mutual friend Mark from Heresy Of Us, 3D printed one for all the players as a cool surprise! I went to town on mine with rust effects just to see what I could achieve, and I'm rather pleased with how it turned out: 

I skinned the whole thing in green stuff and sanded it down, then just practised my heavy rust effects. Came out pretty well I think. I can't go without mentioning the excellent blog of our other player and friend, Steve over at Jedicorn.

Till next time!

Pact to the Future: Big Guys and Renegades

Greetings all,

It's been a little while again, I know, but I'm sure you're all used to that by now. In the fairly limited hobby time I have these days I've still been working away at my Chaos Renegades (Pact) Blood Bowl team. I fairly sensibly decided to get the boring human renegades out of the way first, so I've been able to work on the more interesting players that make up the team.

One of the key selling points for the Chaos Renegades team is the ability to have up to three (different) Big Guys. Unfortunately they're unskilled and unreliable, and fuck everything up all the time, but when they do actually do as they're told, it's great. Plus this is another excuse to use a bunch of cool models from 2nd edition Blood Bowl.

First up is the Minotaur, Beefcake the Mighty:

This is one of those weird Bob Olley sculpts I think, where you cant tell what anything is until you paint it, and then it looks cool.

Next up is the Ogre, Blöthar the Berserker (who btw is tiny compared to the modern Ogre!):

Last of the Big Guys is the Troll, Balsac the Jaws of Death. He's another wobbly Bob Olley sculpt that made no sense until it was finished, and then looked really cool:

With the big lads done, I moved on to the other flavour of the team, the Renegades. 

First up, the Dark Elf (and my only hope of scoring a touchdown), Sexecutioner:

The last of this bunch is the Goblin, Scroda Moon:

And here's the team so far:

On the whole I'm pleased with how they came out, and it's nice to be making some progress, albeit pretty slow. Progress is progress though, and I've been putting off starting this lot for ages now.

Till next time!