Skaven Slaves (pt 3) COMPLETED

yay!! ive completed my skaven slaves!
whilst having to fight back the urge to do fully detailed minis all the time, knowing full well ive got near on 100 minis to paint. i decided to just dip in and get these finished.
so for some reason i did 11.. i have no idea why but theyve turned out pretty good. and will look great on the board.

they have a total none uniform look to them. which was totally what i wanted to achieve.
i had really hoped to of gotten these looking a little more worse for wear. but at the end of the day. these are so i can play AHQ. and they are more than fit for the purpose
if you missed any of the previous slaves i had painted and now feature in the above shot.
they can be found
HERE 
and
pt 2 HERE

here are the additional slaves that make up this almost dirty dozen

so thats my second unit from the skaven bestiary completed
having painted up the rat ogres some time back now.

next up on this front ill be moving onto 2 separate units of clanrats (10 with swords & 10 with spears)
and a few champions thrown into the midst too.

gotta say i enjoyed painting these up. they allowed to me to trial a few things out. and at the end of the day the paint jobs never needed to be perfect. which is very helpful for me at the moment as my hands are getting pretty shaky these days.

anyways..skaven slaves down...clanrats next

Enjoy!!

IN THE SPOTLIGHT - FROSTGRAVE

i stumbled upon a few of the minis for this game over the last few weeks. and have really liked the look of them. got a nice old school feel to them. (im guessing the aid of mark copplestone helped there)
NORTH STAR MILITARY FIGURES
this game i dont believe is out yet but from searching on their facebook page i believe this is going to be available around june/july
i know very little of the game. but my understanding is its got kind of a mordheim vibe about it.
with small scale skirmishes with bands of wizards and mercenaries at their aid.

"Long ago, the great city of Felstad sat at the centre of a magical empire. Its towering spires, labyrinthine catacombs and immense libraries were the wonder of the age, and potions, scrolls and mystical items of all descriptions poured from its workshops. Then, one cataclysmic night, a mistake was made. In some lofty tower or dark chamber, a foolish wizard unleashed a magic too powerful to control. A storm rose up, an epic blizzard that swallowed the city whole, burying it deep and leaving the empire as nothing more than a vast, frozen wasteland. The empire shattered, and the magic of the world faded. As the centuries came and went, Felstad passed from history to legend and on into myth. Only a few wizards, clinging to the last remnants of magical knowledge, still believed that the lost city had ever actually existed. But their faith was rewarded. After a thousand years, the fell winter has passed. The snows have receded, and Felstad has been uncovered. Its buildings lie in ruins, overrun by undead creatures and magical constructs, the legacy of the empire's experiments. It is an evil, dangerous place. To the few hardy souls who inhabit the nearby villages, the city has acquired a new name, 'Frostgrave', and it is shunned by all right-thinking people. For those who seek power and riches, however, it is an unparalleled opportunity, a deadly maze concealing secrets of knowledge long forgotten... This new fiction anthology collects ten stories of wizards and adventures as they venture into the ruins of the Frozen City."




well it was the mercenaries that really caught my eye
or should i say FROSTGRAVE SOLDIERS

facebook description

"What is the Frostgrave Soldiers box set all about?
This is a set of 20 plastic 28mm sized figures. Their role in the game is to accompany the Wizards into the frozen city, fight opponents and grab treasure. The player designs his own band of followers, and arms them as they wish. So our box set is designed to allow you to do that. In the box there are 4 'frames' of plastic. Each frame has:
5 bodies
10 heads
25 different arms/ weapons
2 shields
+ selection of bags & equipment.
This means you can make 100's of unique figures, no two wizards band should ever be the same."

these would make excellent henchmen by any means. and with the options available from the description hopefully a great array of henchmen can be made. maybe even a few heroes too. i would probably dip into my bits box too, and hopefully create even more variation. these will be much sought after..if not. they should be,
again i dont believe these are available YET.
but as soon as they are. i think ill be nabbing a box of these. some of the other characters for the game look excellent too

along with a barbarian in a very familiar pose :)

and many cool wizards to choose from.

looking great right? what you guys think? 

The Dark Beneath The World (pt2)

so ive taken my first few steps. in creating the immense chaos troll that i wrote about in part 1.

firstly absolutely butchering a GW river troll that i had already glued up ready to be painted..but decided it would be best suited for this project.
pinned in a 3rd arm and roughly worked out what else i was going to be doing so here is the first few steps ive taken thus far.

as you can see. i have my arms in place.
also made a start on the 'gnarly skin as you can see on the forearms and over his right shoulder. this will continue over his back and shoulders
the chains are roughly in place. but not secured over the left shoulder as its still waiting for the gnarly rock like skin. ive decided that this troll was once a stone troll. it seems fitting for a dungeon dweller after all.
the chain will also be in place to hold the hammered warpstone into his flesh. and im hoping to get some nicely grotesque looks around these. possible with warpstone coursing between the rocklike skin like veins.

so my next steps will be to continue covering that skin up and then adding the details to the pincer to make it look like it was formed from chaos magics.

i may possibly add a few rough uneven spikes down his spine, sprouting through the rock like hide.

ive filed down some areas in readiness to add the boils and sores described. and once all of the skin is complete i will then be able to add further details like the baby head and so on.

now you will notice there is no head...because im going to sculpt this from scratch using a mish mash of ideas that have skipped by me over the last few days. these consist of a weird mash up of familar designs. but ultimately its all in aid of capturing that tortured beast look. pain wracked with agony. hate etc etc ill reveal more later once i get a better form of how it is going to pan out.
but for now heres a quick mock up of where i will be going next.

Skaven slaves (pt 2)

building upon my earlier start this month where ive been itching and itching to start painting skaven.  I decided to start with skaven slaves for my AHQ bestiary. havong painted the first 2 with a little trial i decided to continue.
making only slight variation changes to how I am painting them to see what bodes well for me.
im happy if the skaven slaves have no uniformity to them. as this would essentially be true to what they are.
and will hopefully in the long run help me discover what works best and so on for when i paint all of the others..because boy i have a lot to get through!

there is a weird transition on some of these between skin and fur. so i decided to mix up and try different things

obviously on the arms being a part where its hard to tell what is what and the back part where some are showing a little bit of a skaven booty! on this i decided to go with the for covered bottom and i felt showing more flesh on the top half would help show off those pustules.

This guy i decided to go for a base cadian flesh tone (all previous others have toyed with bugmans glow and ratskin flesh)
then washing the wole model with agrax earthshade then bringing the raised areas back upto cadian fleshtone.

honestly doesnt look much different from the others. but hopefully they all are subtly different enough to give some variation.

not a bad start so far. however i think im going to need to pick up the pace at some point. whilst my hobby time is limited these days. i do try to squeeze in a few hours a week....i just need to learn how to slap that paint on a little quicker i think :)

Goblin update

things have been slow on this front. im trying to change how i paint, as im finding im getting bored painting the same stuff over and over. so im going to be mixing up all of my projects and giving smaller updates as i progress.
so whilst ive got my chaos troll in the works.
and an army of skaven
im still going to progress with goblins as and when i fancy a change from the above. this should in theory yield more posts on my otherwise post shy blog :)

anyways enough yapping.
heres another gobbo into the dungeon.

i wanted to focus on the shield for this dude. the whole blue & white halves colour being a common theme from my previous Heroquest Henchmen. so i wanted to apply the same theme to this shield. as if a henchman was slain in this same dungeon many moons ago. his shield was looted and botched back together and now this goblin carries it!. simple

and here he is with the other already completed goblins.

rowdy looking bunch! i think on the work table. ive got about another 10 of these guys waiting to be painted. so expect further updates as i manage to get each one completed :)

and happy belated easter!! :)