PsychosisPC's The Madhouse Workshop

Evil Midget Marauder with a Mohawk

2012-01-30T18:47:00.000-06:00

Avatars of War's dwarves continue to infatuate me. They have some really good looking stuff. This piece happens to the be the standard top. A very wide pose for rank and file, my plan is to use the miniature on the flank.

Often when I build my fantasy armies I spend extra time with the miniatures on the front rank and also like to make those out on the flanks look just as aggressive.

Still have a bit of gap filling to do on the back, but you get the idea.

WAB News and tidbits....

2012-01-29T18:53:00.000-06:00

Haven't felt good for a couple days, Papa Nurgle is visiting me and has this yellowish substance oozing out of my nose...and I think someone is turning the screw on the C-clamp that was accidently put on my head.

So that said, no progress on truck, no progress on the go-kart, no-progress on the Crusaders, no-progress on the chaos midgets to report. Just sat and slept in the couch in front of the Rolex 24 at Daytonna, and I won't be going to race the kart indoors in Illinois next month, next winter I will be doing that. My old man has made plenty of progress on his kart and has it about ready to go, we should be faster with the chassis and set-up changes. And I did invest in a CE Armored leather jacket, tired of banging up my elbows.

Now onto the news, stuff that I'm looking forward to. My WAB Armies of Antiquity book showed up, didn't expect it for a couple more weeks. Paged through it and noted a few things. Think my Romans will be played as Middle Imperials. Lots of options for the Crusaders to play as knights also...and I like the expansion of the Middle Ages. Pat at The Historical Wargames Podcast site did a review of the first third of the book, well worth the listen to if you like the greeks and the early stuff.
http://www.historicalwargames.org/

Speaking of Middle Ages....Fire Forge is getting ready to ship their Teutonic Knights. I just put an advanced order in for two boxes, I'm looking at the AoA book and thinking about Knights and Vikings. Although, mine won't be Teutonics, they'll be more of a western variety. Once I receive the boxes, I'll definitely do a review of them.

Victrix is getting into the Ancients game, they made an announcement that their greeks will be coming out soon. I'm really looking forward to that, once I see them, that will determine if I ever do any greeks. Not like I need another project, though.

Santa Claus Came Late and Delivered an Animal to my house

2012-01-23T18:22:00.001-06:00

I'm always amazed at what UPS or Fedex will leave on your door step in front of your house. I get home and there is a $400+ Animal sitting a box in the snow in front of my door. At least the box does not look like it was dropped.

This is not a normal animal, this one lives on straight pump gas. Was built by Briggs & Stratton in Milwaukee, and comes in at 206 cc. So now I have an Animal 206 to go with my 198 cc Clone engine. The box stock Clone is about 8 Hp in good engine on a good day and one that meets good tolerances, but that's hard to find. The Chinese are not very particular on tolerances. The Animal is about 10 Hp and more torque, built on stricker conditions, now that does not mean you can't go out and spend $500 to 800 for a specially built Clone engine. Of course my Clone was $79.99 plus tax, plus a $8 cam. So yes Butcher, this engine would make you go faster on my dirt track, you just have to remember to keep your foot of the brake. Gas pedal is on the right. I kid because I care. We'll have to get Butcher back in a kart this summer without the fuel pump issues, he'll be faster.

On this side you can see the Factory seal next to the two yellow caps in the front of the motor. Briggs makes this engine specifically for kart racing and seals it for easier technical inspection at the tracks.

So yea, this could have been a nice easy find if someone knew what they were looking for. Looking forward to sitting it and myself in my kart and get racing.

Edit: I'm having trouble with Blogger tonight, sending me to blank screens.

@DeanM: It's what happens when you are your own Santa Claus sometimes. I'm looking forward to having fun with it, and also to do some very serious racing.

An Obnoxious Midgetgor....

2012-01-22T09:08:00.000-06:00

Well the little rune things can be covered easily with chaos bits. I knew that I had to use the screaming gor head with the #1 salute, it was just too obvious. I do like Avatars of War's sense of humor.

Using up some of the Procreate with these models. I've decided I like GS and Brownstuff much more. Very subtle differences, but noticeable to me.

So if that works, then I know of something else that works.

Yep....Midgetgor's....Avatars of War Dwarves Work Well.....

2012-01-21T08:59:00.000-06:00

Having done lots and lots of beastmen, I have tons of beast stuff in my bitz boxes. So this is a good use for them. Very simple conversions sometimes are just what is ordered.

Eventually, I think some with hooves will be in order.

Midgetgor!!! Tainted Avatars of War Dwarf

2012-01-19T07:38:00.000-06:00

Fusing a beastmen gor head to an Avatars of War Dwarf berserker, is a pretty simple conversion. And if you like mutant marauders like I do. It gives you even more variety.

Not all of my beast-mutants have horns. So this one did not get any. Next one probably will.

The Butcher's Bill ... A Converters Encyclopedia

2012-01-16T18:37:00.000-06:00

I would like to point everyone's attention to a brand spanking new blog that I have linked up in my blog roll. And I do mean everyone. Doesn't matter if you are into 40k, Fantasy, Steampunk, Warhammer Ancients, or Historical gaming. That blog is the Mike Butcher's: The Butcher's Bill, found at the following link: http://mikebutcher-thebutchersbill.blogspot.com/

I've known Mike for quite awhile, we bounce ideas back and forth often, and attend a lot of tournaments together. I've been after him for a long time to start up a blog, so if you don't like it you can certainly blame me for it. Mike has been painting, collecting and playing with 28mm miniatures for over 25 years, and is in my opinion for us who love to game with massively cool armies is one of the premiere converters / modifiers of miniatures out there. There are alot of people that can concentrate efforts on building pretty one-off display pieces, but its hard in my opinion to make huge themed and unique armies, and Mike is one of those rare people with that ability.

He has countless awards over the years a Silver in Golden Demon competition, a WH40K GT, numerous best painted, players choice, and best army awards over the years as well as being featured in White Dwarf several times , and twice Citadel Journal. Most recently he has won the WAB singles title at Adepticon (2010 and 2011) and his Greek City States Army was featured in Wargames Illustrated the magazine.

So as a sampling for those of you, if its 40k that you like, check out my Old Stuff Decemeber post showcases one of his armies against my army:
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/old-stuff-wednesday-december-cerulean.html
or Check out his post converting a chimera to carry Ogryn.
http://mikebutcher-thebutchersbill.blogspot.com/2012/01/orgyn-sized-chimera-circa-2009-wh40k.html

Or if you like Ancients checkout his post on his Greek Army that was featured in Wargames Illustrated:
http://mikebutcher-thebutchersbill.blogspot.com/2012/01/greek-city-states.html
Or if you like Fantasy and Chaos like I do checkout his conversions of standard ogres into Khorne Ogres:
http://mikebutcher-thebutchersbill.blogspot.com/2012/01/olde-stuffkhone-ogres-circa-2008-9-whfb.html
This is all just a sampling of some his work. I'm sure there is more to come in the future, and if not I'll pester him some more and force him to go go-karting with me.

Slaanesh Standardbearer Mutant....

2012-01-15T09:41:00.001-06:00

Somehow while building all of my marauders I forgot to build some standard bears. So I'll be building a few more mutant marauders. This is the first one.

Not an "ungor", but a mutant marauder with a small amount of armor and conversion. I do love the Flagellant heads. They are very cool looking pieces.

Slaanesh banner from the demonettes. The arm with the mace is a Flagellant.

Not much on the back, but the overlapping scale armor on the shoulder has a bit of mail modeled in.

More to follow, I have some Avatars of War - Dwarf berserkers that need to feel the taint of chaos and mutation.

I'm WAB'n It.... Yes Warhammer Ancients News

2012-01-14T17:29:00.000-06:00

Most of you that read my blog regularly now that I thoroughly enjoy Warhammer Ancient Battles 2.0. Now the WAB: Armies of Antiquity book has also been released a supplement that is made of a few new rules and absolute ton of armies lists. I've yet to get my copy, mainly because of work and spending my hobby budget on a new racing engine for the kart, but I will get it eventually.

Well this month, there is a WAB sort of bring and battle tournament like set up of gaming being played in Waupaca, WI, at the appropriately named Waaghpaca, primarily a Warhammer fantasy event that is attempting to expand into a full-fledge Convention. More information can be found here:
http://www.wwhfb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2959 Fellow Grumpy Old Coot Mike Butcher is running the event. Tables and terrain being provided by the Waaghpaca Tournament Organizer, The Bear, over at this blog: http://www.youmagnificentbastards.com/

And this month I was made aware that a new Historical Wargames Podcast was around, put on by Adepticon Veteran and SoCal Maniac, Pat Lowinger. Can be found at http://www.historicalwargames.org/
Pat's second podcast was a reveiw of the first third of the new WAB: AoA book.

Old Stuff Wednesday - January... War Mammoth Conversion

2012-01-11T20:20:00.001-06:00

Back a few years ago, someone in Canada commissioned me to do a Chaos War Mammoth conversion using using a Lord of the Rings War Mumak.

This is one of the bigger conversions that I have worked on. I went through a lot of GS doing up the fur on the mammoth. I remembered struggling with the idea of the howdah and settled for using scored plasti-card construction.

The head was some of the most fun building up the armor. I decided to use a plasticard piece to make a large flat armored piece on the head and then blended the GS in to it.

The person who commissioned the model did not want me to build a beastmaster and did not have me build any marauders to go with the model. In hindsight, I wish I would have at least build the beastmater rider. One thing with the Mumak model is the wrappings and supports and harness for the howdah is already modeled for you.

Add a bunch of spikes and chaos shields and panels. Makes for finishing off the model.

Last year I purchased another of these models for myself. Hopefully this year I will get around to converting one for myself.

Odds and Ends and Observations

2012-01-10T00:39:00.000-06:00

Yea so tonight is one of those nights that I'm trying to unwind from a heated meeting with a community. I'm not going to go into detail, cuz it will bore you to death. Mr. Butcher can chime in and second the idea that you do not want to ask me what I really do for a living while eating anything. I often get worked up and have to take some time to unwind after these things. I won't sleep well, and especially now that I know there is more pressure ensuing as part of the project.

So how to unwind. For I visit some blogs, maybe do some window shopping on ebay, dream about running ovals in a go-kart at high speed, work out on my bowflex until I can no longer lift anything, and occasionally look for some sports to take my mind off of things.

I watched a video linked up on Tabletop Gaming News, from GW of all people, that showed their new Vampire Count models. Oh MY. Too bad I'm uninspired by 8th Edition, and VC rules. Most of those models are awesome. Absolutely incredible detail. The mortis engine is what I think of when I dream of undead, besides dreaming about zombies and skeletons. I also really like the black knights and wraith things...And the Wight King. Krell to me is like this awesome Chaos Exalted Undead Champion.

One thing I watched, just turned my TV on while I sat down to surf on-line, is a E60 showing on Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers, quarterback. His back story is something I find inspiring. He is supremely confident in himself and his abilities and carries an absolutely massive chip on shoulder to prove to people that he is not just a good or great QB but that he is also that same person off the field. I was a naysayer, when they drafted him. I thought he would be another failed Cal QB. I did not think he was that good, and I did not know his back story prior to Cal. Honestly, I thought he would be another Rich Campbell, who also played for Cal and was drafted by the Packers and was a miserable QB on the field. Besides they still had the QB #4, someone I personally could not stand, still playing for them and not going away for awhile. Then the indecisive #4 made his choice to retire, and I like a Packer fan was now behind Rodgers in the #12, hoping that he would at least be as good as Lynn Dickey who also wore that number and despite all of the injuries was a very serviceable QB. Then #4 did his baby routine and decided that he wanted to steal the keys back from #12. And that is when Rodgers really won me over, his character did not falter. He faced more adversity than anyone I've ever seen in sports. It was out of his control, but he stood tall and believed in himself and carried that and his massive chip on shoulder all the way to a Superbowl win. I admire that. And yes I don't miss #4, he can go ride his tractor and send pictures reporters on his own time.

Ahhh....highlights of Denver...I hate the Steelers....Teebow time was great. Even old #7 was elated. Another of those stories of a person that everyone says you can't do something, and he goes out and does it.

Then as I'm watching that, redmanphill's awesome blog Subject to Stupidity, made me contemplate Beastmen names, like Gor and Ungor. Now granted I'm rambling on, typing and probably thinking about way too many things all at once, but that happens with me often, so excuse me if this is not really well thought out because again this is a massive run-on sentence, composed of part rambling to clear my head and unwind and part incohesive or maybe better known as incoherant rant. Why Ungor??? I mean the gor are certainly more fun to do in my book, than the ungor, as well as more interesting to look at. And being "ungor", could there ever be a less inspiring term invented by GW, than oh they're smaller than the Gor and not as tough, and they look slightly different, more ugly, they don't have full on cool looking rams horns. I'm sure the writer of this fiction, probably sat around one night having a pint of some crap and was like I have to come up with a damn name for these ugly little bastards and probably went something like....oh I can't think of anything really neat to call them, so.....they definitely are not gors........oh eureka, that's it.....[picks up his pint and drains it]....that's brilliant....they are not gor......don't you get the brilliance of my thinking....just call them not-gor, brilliant idea...except I can't write them up as notgor....no stupid editor....will go along with that....but it is a brilliant idea......notgor.....how do I get this stupidly brilliant idea by that drunk editor......what is not.....yea that's it ......use that prefix "un"....it will be ungor. Yes. BRILLIANT. So very inspiring. The beastmen fanboys will absolutely love it. Wonderful.

And with the gem, I think I have finally unwound. Sarcasm has worked for me once again. Thank you. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. I wonder how damn many spelling errors I had in this incoherent rambling.....I will click the spell check out of curiosity.....on second thought this is not working....need try something else.....probably the bowflex and some dumb-bells......why do they call them dumb...bells......ahhhhaahhhh never mind..........

Chaos Undivided...attention to Conversion

2012-01-07T18:58:00.000-06:00

This boyo is a different sort. An imperial space marine backbanner with a chaos icon. I do like this icon. The head is an OOP head, I believe from a raptor, but its one of the coolest chaos heads out there.

The arm is from an OOP terminator. Again a simplistic conversion, but one that looks and feels like a cool character.

After looking at last months Old Stuff Wednesday and my wargame against Butcher's Nurgle Legion, I knew I had to model something with a back banner. I'm definitely going to carry that over on my loyalist when I get a chance.

Another Chaos Spacemarine Character Conversion

2012-01-06T17:55:00.001-06:00

More or less an excercise in use of special left over bits. As with a couple of this batch not really using a lot of GS. These are relatively straight forward conversions.

This one will also go up on Ebay with the rest of the group in week or so. No paint, just the converted model. I'll make that announcement when the group is all ready to go. I'm currently running some auctions on some of my left over chaos spacemarine bits, more of that will follow. If you are interested....checkout my listings... http://myworld.ebay.com/madhouse_workshop

Next Chaos Space Marine Conversion...Iron Within...Iron Without

2012-01-03T18:47:00.001-06:00

I had an Iron Warrior in mind while doing this one. Bionics and mail. An old OOP metal horned head. Possessed legs. The axe is a leftover Chaos Warrior Champion bit from Warhammer Fantasy. Some metal piping from Dragon Forge. Not much of anything in GS. Don't always need GS.

Won't be painting this guy. And again there will be auctions of the individual figures once I get this group all done. I'll announce that when they are ready to go.

Chaos Space Marine - Slaanesh Conversion...Come Get Some

2012-01-01T17:53:00.000-06:00

I've had these Slaanesh bits for years and never really had a use for them until now. I love doing poses like this one. It screams chaos and come challenge me.

Again you don't always have to go completely over the top with green stuff sculpting to make interesting characters. Lots of times using the right bits in combination make for a very unique miniature.

Only a few chaos spacemarines left. Matter of fact I've begun putting up what's left of my chaos space marine bits on Ebay in my Madhouse Workshop Account.

Year Ending...Standing and what is on the horizon

2011-12-29T23:27:00.000-06:00

And so 2011 is soon coming to an end. This will be my last post of this year. The year seems to have flown by. So, I have decided to do a sort of summary.

I’m a numbers kind of guy, its my business to crunch numbers, not money but numbers in designing things. So numbers always fascinate me. Early in the year I decided to add the Hobby Activity log you see on the right. The final tally:

Models Built/Converted: 225
Models Painted: 74
Models Purchased: 191
Tournaments Played: 4
Go-Kart Races Entered: 11

Now this was not intended to stroke my ego, but was more intended as a motivator and budget type of thing for myself. I learned a lot by intentionally doing this, and quite honestly it capped some of my spending as I saw the gap between what was bought, converted/modeled/ and what was painted. I did not play as many games this year. And it feels like I converted less minis, mainly because I stopped taking on commissions. My painting is certainly lagging behind. It also felt like I raced more than 11 races in the go-kart, my highest finish was second in a heat race, no wins, that does hurt my ego. Some of that I believe was equipment related, but we intend to work on solving that over the winter off season. One thing is certain, I enjoyed the racing more than the tournaments played. Four tournaments played, 2 of which were at Adepticon last spring in Warhammer Ancient Battles. I played the singles with my Romans and played fairly well, rather unusual for me, and came away best sports, even more unusual. Then teamed Mike Butcher, my crusaders with his Saxons, and we played well and the Team that we named Grumpy Old Coots came away with Best Sports, again highly unusual.

As for the blog, today we are at 181 followers, that has increased gradually as I suspected it would. My blog list is growing, and my forum activity is decreasing a bit.

This I find interesting, here are the top ten in posts as they stand all time on my blog along with the number of hits currently:
Review of Conquest Games Mounted Normans: 2,105 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/conquest-games-mounted-norman-knights.html

My first Skaven War Litter conversion: 1,586 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html

My first Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 1,478 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html

Converting Chaos Warrior to Chaos Space Marine post: 848 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html

Boba Fett Chaos Space Marine conversion: 737 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html

Pics of My WAB Imperial Roman Army: 657 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/pics-of-my-wab-roman-army-in-full-force.html

My Chaos Warrior Unit and its conversions: 640 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html

My Preheresy Iron Warrior - Old Stuff Wednesday: 512 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html

One of my Exalted Champions: 469 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-exalted-champion-done.html

My First Orc Fight Scene for a unit: 447 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/09/orc-boyzfight-scene-1.html

It appears people really liked looking at my take on Conquest Games Norman Cavalry. I’ve been quite surprised by that. When I wrote that piece I never thought it would receive more hits than my conversion work and paint work. The other thing I noticed was the popularity of Warhammer 40k, it is really quite unquestionably the most popular of the gaming system that I’m working in as it owns the majority of the top spots. My Old Stuff Wednesdays are certainly popular as they have held 3-4 of the top ten spots throughout the year, but only one stands at the end of the year.

So there you have it my blog. I really need to figure out a better looking banner across the top. I also need to find a cooler looking background. And I am very much open to suggestions that you the readers may have, I don’t always ignore them.

In the coming year I certainly intend to do Vikings, Spacemarines, more crusaders, more Chaos Warriors, more Fantasy orcs, and eventually some British Napoleonics.

What is Wrong with 8th Edition Fantasy??

2011-12-27T18:20:00.000-06:00

That's the question asked by BoLS.

Just my opinion and the reasons why I dislike this 8th Edition:

I hate the measure anything anytime.
I hate the randomness of charging and the obnoxiously long charges that can be pulled off by randomly rolling dice.
I don't like that they attempted to fix combat which I did not think needed fixing in the first place. Now its massed casaulties for a cool looking visual.
I still think magic ruins the game and is still broken. Not even close to being fixed and in my opinion is worse in many ways.
Mass casualties for less strategy in my opinion. You no longer need that eye for getting your distances correct.
Killed skirmishers.
True line of sight annoys me.
Cannons.

No, I don't like this edition. I really like the core Warhammer rules, but I think they just made the game a lot less fun with tweaks that were not needed. And the tweaks that were needed, were not made. I don't like randomness. Warhammer Ancient Battles 2.0 was what Warhammer Fantasy should have become in my opinion. And WAB 2 is a heck of a lot more fun and more strategic. And unfortunately I don't see them ever going back to the core. I still play the game on occassion because I enjoy playing with the group of local players, but that is about it.

Racing Closer to Reality

2011-12-26T19:59:00.000-06:00

Well the build of my new racing kart is under way, not a lot different than building a difficult warhammer model in some ways. Lots of assembling of parts. And like in Warhammer where there is always another army, there is always another racing go kart.

Frames came back from powder coating and mine is in this nice Kandy Blue. Got to the shop and my old man had already started assembling both mine and his. We stole the rear axle out of last seasons kart. Below is as far as we got.

The old man is staying young doing this. Santa Claus did deliver the new speedway seats so we mocked up his seat in the kart and mocked up the body. We have a few mounting bracket changes to make for the bodies. Ground clearance is 1/2-inch, last season we were like an 1 1/4-inches in the nose. A bit too high. With the speedway seats we will be practically laying down in the kart. Looks fast already. I did notice and consequently ribbed the old man about getting in and out of the kart, age is playing a role with him. More crunches are needed.

Here are some more views of my frame. Assuming that they run the same tire package this season, I should be set for wheels and tires. And I plan to run the body from last season after some fiberglass repairs.

Pic of the rear axle and new brake rotor. Yes, only one brake rotor. You change the gearing of the kart by changing sprocket sizes.

The two upright silver posts and the two slide pipes with plates will be used for adjusting the seat. I will definitely have more left side weight for the oval.

And yes I'm missing an engine. I think I will retire the box stock clone and replace that with the Briggs & Stratton Lo 206 Animal.

And just when you thought we were done, the answer is no. We have this frame for another, also fresh from the powder coaters, as well as another in bare metal. Busy beavers in the winter.

Merrily waiting for the new racing season to begin.

Strange Requests and Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T09:31:00.000-06:00

No happy Holidays or I'll start on another long rant....just Merry Christmas.

I do get some strange requests often here at the Madhouse Workshop. Most of the time those requests come from relatives. For instance, my brother-in-law more than likely prompted by my sister requested some stuff for T-shirt emblems for his start up extermination company, something simple for single color printing. Quite a few years ago I did this on my sisters motorcycle gas tank, all in pen and ink directly on a couple coats of color sanded clear. Then my father finished it off by shooting more urethane clear coat over the top of it. This was more to what I like to draw. The flames and pearl paint was my Dad's handwork.

So, at first my brother-in-law wanted a Jiminy Cricket drawn up holding a spray can and then he wanted some darker. Well I can do darker, but cartoon characters I'm not sure. I'm about a month and half behind on the artwork so he's going to get it this weekend.

Yea, I know that looks really goofy. I could not even remember what Jiminy Cricket even looked like. I think I'm going to break my pens after doing this. I have a bit of clean up to do and such. Both of these are Pen/Brush and India Inks.

My scanner is very much a weenie, can figure it out sometimes and its only a 8 1/2 x 11 flatbed, so chopped some stuff off. The slightly darker one has his "All Gone Pest Control" in a nice curved pattern with some spider webbing. Its about the size of the back of T-shirt for a Large. Still have a bit of touch up to do. Will probably just use a sharpie to lettering, this was close to being all pen work with the exception of the lettering fill in which I did with a brush. Yea the old fashioned way of doing things.

What's next...I suppose my niece will want me draw Harry Potter....aaarrrrgggghhhh.....

Follow Me! Next Chaos Spacemarine conversion

2011-12-23T18:27:00.000-06:00

I said follow my long fingers. The possessed bits are very awesome looking pieces. I don't follow Bolter & Chainsword as much as I used to so I don't know if a lot of chaos players use them for normal marines or not.

I thought this made for an interesting pose. And I do like this head. A lot times your conversions do not need to be completely over the top. Very subtle ones often work, and give you that dynamic that you are looking for.

Next...Slaanesh Chaos Spacemarine

2011-12-22T17:57:00.000-06:00

I don't know how long that I've had the Slaanesh champion backpack and sword arm. Its sat in the box for an extremely long time.

I have a slaanesh spacemarine head that is a bit different, it will get used on another conversion. So I decided to make a head that looks similar. You also notice if you closely that this model actually has a set of abs inside of the GS girdle.

Plasma pistol from the berzerker sprue.

The GS girdle / belt uses techniques shown in my GS Tutorial for making armored plates. Found at the following links:
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/09/next-step-plate-making.html
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/09/continuing-armor-plate-tutorial.html

And again a draping on the leg. The next Slaanesh mini will be in a much cooler pose.

Chaos Space Marine Conversion...The Basher

2011-12-21T19:55:00.000-06:00

As with the previous marine, I'm digging deep in the bitz box and found this power maul. Very appropriate for bashing thos Imperial Loyalists.

I also love this head, it screams chaos to me. The drapings like the previous one are using similar techniques to my tutorial on sculpting cloth with GS. http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/green-stuff-cloth-tutorial-space.html

The rivets/pins that look to be holding the cloth are done with a mechanical pencil. The spikes are favorite thing of mine for adding to the backpacks, they come from the chaos vehicle spike sprue.

Holidays....

2011-12-21T17:51:00.000-06:00

A semi-rant...I'm not a big fan of what has become the mall Holidays. I like Christmas, but the real meaning has been so corrupted I have a hard time getting into a good mood. My commute goes right by the Mall and traffic sucks and the people are even more obnoxious. They can't figure out how to drive, they run the lights, they're idiot driving. I'm also not a social person, I don't like gatherings, many things get on my bad side and certain types of people really irritate me. I've worked years at developing a scowl on my face that says "Don't bother me...Don't speak to me...and Get the Hell out of my way". Yet people do bug me and get in my way. I don't like it. I also don't like these sales people that think they are being helpful and ask can I help you sir?...to which I unpleasantly answer "No. You cannot help me." If I wanted to be helped I wouldn't have the million mile stare looking right through your face look. Bah Humbug.

Whew...I feel better now.

Surprise Warhammer Ancients Fans...NEW SUPPLEMENT

2011-12-20T18:12:00.000-06:00

Armies of Antiquity has been released as a supplement to the WAB 2.0 Rulebook. This was like BAAAMMM!!! right up the side of my head. I never saw it coming.

Warhammer Armies of Antiquity is a supplement for Warhammer Ancient Battles second edition. The 208 page hardback book contains no fewer than 100 fully revised and updated army lists for the following forces from the ancient and medieval world.

Awesome. So how does that affect Adepticon? In my correspondence with Rich over at the Chicago Terrain Factory Blog, it appears that it will be used in conjunction with the existing supplements. Official word will have to come from him and Adepticon. Until then I need to get my grubby paws on this book.

Khorne - Chaos Space Marine Billy Bob

2011-12-19T22:29:00.000-06:00

We are entering the home stretch on my Chaos Space Marines. My bitz box is getting very small, less and less pieces all of time. Once gone I have no future plans to do chaos space marines.

As I was building the Crusaders and doing the tutorial on tabards and other cloth things in green stuff, I did up a bunch of little conversions. This is just first of that group. I used the techniques demonstrated in my tutorial for both the tabard and the draping on the leg.

More of these one shot chaos space marines to come. What will I do with them? Every last one will go up on Ebay in the Madhouse Workshop account after the first of the coming year.

Addendum to my Gripping Beast Viking Review

2011-12-18T09:34:00.000-06:00

Remember how I was discussing not having enough unhelmeted heads for GB's viking hirdmen. Well a little checking of some various manufacturer's heads with the unhelmeted GB head and I found the scale was comparable with Warlord Games' plastic barbarians and surprisingly enough heads from Games Workshop's Empire flagellant range. The heads are as follows from left to right: Empire, Barbarian, Empire, Barbarian, Empire, and Barbarian. Now I have some additional character. I do need to practice sculpting beards though.

New Go-Kart Frames clashing with Adepticon preparations

2011-12-16T12:33:00.000-06:00

Well last season we had a few things wrong with our chasis set-ups, so since the racing off season collides with my Adepticon preparation season, I now have an additional project. Some of our geometrty and set-ups were not quite right. The good part is when you make your own stuff, you can always do it again and the cost is still cheaper than buying it from a kart manufacturer.

So, my next project, make the blue frame below into a legal racing go-kart. Thankfully on this one, I'm more or less the assistant. And I still have my kart from last season sitting aside. The blue is a candy powder coat, should be much more durable than the blue paint the other kart has.

It will get floor pans, spindles, axle, and other components soon, and eventually a fiberglass body to make it legal to race on the oval track that we race at, which covers up all the cool looking mechanical pieces. The orange kart frame is my old man's kart, he just turned 65 and is still racing. 65 must be the new 40, but you do need a very strong heart or the g-forces will take you out and do a number on your blood pressure.

Green Stuff Cloth Tutorial - Space Marines and Norman Horses

2011-12-11T09:37:00.000-06:00

Redmanphill over at the Subject to Stupidity blog requested that I do a tutorial of how I do cloth out of greenstuff or brownstuff. So if you don't like this tutorial, blame him. Anyways I'll do this with two items that I'm converting that don't have anything in common, other than being miniatures: Norman Horses and Space Marines. So I have you 40k and Ancients guys both covered. This is a relatively simple method to use, yields relatively simple looking cloth, and will not give you a cloth look with a lot of bubbles or fingerprints, unless your name is Tom Schadle.

First thing I need is a relatively good piece of plastic that the green stuff or brown stuff does not stick very well to. That is generally a higher quality zip lock bag, not your typical thin plastic sandwich bag but something more industrial, or the film that they use to ship the two part GS in. So here I have placed some water on the plastic, get it a bit wet. Take some GS and flatten it out in between your fingers and get the basic shape. Place that over the wet spot on the plastic. Now we will smooth that out and get its thickness to a relatively consistent thickness. To smooth out the GS, I will use tool number 1, that we so back in my Armor Plate tutorial.

Matter of fact we'll use tools #1, 2, 3, and 6. In reality you only need a tool like #1 or 'c' and something that looks like a toothpick (a wet toothpick will work).

Next I cut it to the desired shape. Use the color shaper or spatula end of a metal sculpting tool to further flatten the GS. This one will be for the Norman Horse, a bit bigger piece than would be used for the space marine tabbard.

Let it set up and stiffen 5 minutes or so.

Now if you use a small piece of plastic film, you could pick it up by the film and apply it to the miniature or peel the film off gently and apply it to the miniature. If you peel be aware of finger prints and its important to let the GS set up for a bit and stiffen. Once on the miniature you will need to manipulate it.

For this, I'm using a very good sized zip lock bag, so I will peel it off very gently with the xacto.

Now I place it on the horse.

Here on the horse caparison I blended the upper edge into the horse body simply with my fingers. To do the blending moisten your finger and drag it across the GS until it blends smoothly into the plastic.

The further smooth out spots where my fingers don't fit, I use the tools and press and move the GS into those areas.

I also need a crease in the center for the seem holding the caparison together. I do that with the knife edge of the spatula tool.

Next I use the metal toothpick like tool, the conical color shaper, metal toothpick 90 degree bend, color shaper chisel point, or a bent wire tool to add creases or folds. You can also add folds by gently bending the GS into a shape.

The Space Marine tabard is very much done the same way. Get the general shape.

Smooth out.

Cut to shape.

Peel it off and I apply the piece of GS to the spot where the torso is glued to.

On the above I used the tooth pick tool to make the 'V' coming off the pelvic area. Below I added a few more creases with the tools, and then added a torso to make sure everything blends in.

Wow. Long post. Next time I'll show how I do drapings off shoulder pads and legs of the spacemarine, when I begin my space marine project.

Old Ford Pick-up Progress

2011-12-08T18:37:00.000-06:00

Like all my projects, a little bit here, a little bit there....

New stainless headlight bezels and sealed beams, sure changes the look of the front end.

Old Stuff Wednesday - December ... Cerulean Templars vs. Nurgle

2011-12-07T07:28:00.000-06:00

A long long time ago (circa 2004) Mike Butcher and I played this epic game of 40k in a local store, with tons of miniatures on the board, nearly every last one of them converted in some manner. I don't really remember the outcome other than I lost, but I took a number of photos. Most all of the pics are after the unpacking. Dig the craziness of the conversion work. Nothing like throwing down with really cool miniatures.

He's phat.

Help me!

Piecing Together My Return to 40k

2011-12-06T14:07:00.000-06:00

The pieces are forming in my head. I have lots of leftover Templar bits and some Dark and Blood Angels bits. In order to build this army, I’m going to be using as much of the left over stuff as I can. So how best to combine all of this? I’ll do a winged cross as the icon, sort of Affliction T-shirt inspired in design, I remember some cool Icons that they had on some of the shirt designs that I had seen a long time ago watching some MMA fights. So the icon is settled, as is the color scheme in red and white. Now I need to do some icon sketches to get it right. I’ve found two Forge World Dreads, a Vindicator, couple of Rhinos, and a partial Land Raider kit when I was packing and unpacking. I ordered some bases from our little buddy over at Dragonforge, which should arrive later this week. And I have two 1/32 scale Tanks that have actual rolling chassis that I plan to convert into Predators.

Now I need a name for my DIY Chapter of winged crosses. Suggestions?

Gripping Beast Plastic Viking Hirdmen Review

2011-12-04T17:37:00.000-06:00

I’ll preface this with that I have not been a very big fan of Gripping Beast’s miniatures in the past, especially their medieval line of metals, but that opinion has been fixed with an introduction to their plastics. Gripping Beast’s plastic Viking Hirdmen have been out for quite some time, but this is the first opportunity that I have had to work with them. I first saw them when one of our locals Ancients players modeled a few up for a Viking army, and I thought they looked like a fairly nice kit, so my newest WAB project centers around them as a future army. Since they are fairly new to me, I thought I would give a brief review of them to give people an idea of what they may be getting into.

Review of the Sprues

Here we see the basic infantry sprue, lots of options for heads and weapons. The sprue is another Renedra sprue from GB’s creation, much like I have seen recently with the Perry’s, Warlord Games, and Conquest Games. The details are crisp and the quality is as good as anything that I have seen from Games Workshop or Warlord Games or the Perry’s, etc. The parts are arranged well and are quite easy to remove, with the exception of the tabs under the stand, but those are in a location where you can get a bit brutal removing them. So far I have not had any issues with flash. The flash is very minimal, even on the mail armor covering the bodies.

They also come with this command sprue, shown below. The bodies on the command sprue are the same as the infantry, but the heads are different and of course it has some special items for your command and DIY characters.

Value

Talk about bang for your buck, this kit is one of the best for that. I picked mine up at Avatar’s of War (good to deal with people out east, check out their blog in my blog-list) for $32 and you get 44 miniatures. That’s an awesome deal for this high of quality.

Models
# of Heads = 60
# of Head Variations = 11

As always with me, I am a converter and hobbyist, and this is normally one of the things I complain about is head variations. I have not mastered sculpting heads yet so I need to rely on the companies giving me enough variations to work with. GB has certainly done that and then some on this kit. There really is only a couple of the heads that I don’t care for and even then those are not that bad. This is a supreme effort on their part and one I’ll definitely commend them for. The detail like on everything is very sharp. For me the one thing I will want, is some more un-helmeted heads as they give some nice character to the army. I’ll need to experiment with a few things and see about doing some head swaps.

# of Bodies = 44 (Outstanding)
# of Body Variations = 5
Good variations and large number of bodies is excellent. One of my criticisms for the kit though is that most of these appear to be squatting slightly. I’m okay with it. Kind of reminds of 40k Space Marines. I’ll get over that though. The detail like on everything is very sharp. And they have a large amount of weapons to select from which is really good. They are fairly easy to assemble in a variety of poses, below are some of the variations that I came up with, without even trying, just getting use to the kit and seeing what can be done.

Scale
Now comes the really fun part, how do they look compared to other miniatures. The following are comparison shots with other miniatures, and I have also included some Fantasy GW range models for those of you thinking about Warhammer Fantasy. The models from left to right are as follows:
Warlord Games Barbarian, Perry Norman, Gripping Beast Plastic Viking, Conquest Games Mounted Norman, Gripping Beast Metal Viking, Warlord Games Roman Auxilary. All fairly comparable in size.

And for our Fantasy Buffs out there a comparison with Games Workshop models: Red Box Games Aenglish warrior, Empire Flaggelant with Ungor head, Gripping Beast Viking, Ungor with Flaggelant Head, Chaos Marauder, and another Gripping Beast Viking.

Overall I really love this kit. I use to think that Games Workshop (even though they have had their fair share of flops) was the absolute, no questions asked, best in the business when it came to plastic kits. That is no longer, Gripping Beast, Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures, Victrix, and upstart Conquest Games are all stepping up to the plate and hitting homeruns in my book. The future looks bright for historicals.

Movement Tray, Part 4 and Forest Litter Basing Tutorial

2011-12-03T10:20:00.000-06:00

Finishing up my movement tray tutorial, onto the flocking of the trays and showing of my techniques for also obtaining a forest litter. So in reality this is a two for one tutorial.

Items needed:

· Bases and Movement Trays, ;)

· Sand or Model Railroad ballast

· Italian Seasoning, the type without any powders

· Glue: White Glue, Elmers Glue, Super Glue

· Thin or Fast Super Glue (Consistency of Water)

Pictured below is one of my new Red Box Games marauders, another gorgeous Tre Manor sculpt, with a blank base. For these examples I’m going to use Gorilla Superglue simply because it will cure quicker than White Glue or Elmer’s Glue.

I applied the glue to the base and spread it using a toothpick, added a fake rock, and then applied an HO Scale Model Railroad Ballast as the flock. Then I simply tipped the base and cleaned off the excess.

Next I take the Italian Seasoning. Apply a pinch of it randomly here and there on the base. Then you use the Thin or Fast Super Glue and apply some drops of it over the Italian Seasoning.

< I RECOMMEND YOU WEAR EYE PROTECTION!!>> Definitely be aware of my warning, this glue has a lot of accelerant in it and if gets on exposed skin it will be warm to hot. It will almost instantly stick your eye lid to your eye ball if you get it in your eyes. I know someone this has happened to, wear glasses or goggles. Also make sure as always with superglues that you have adequate ventilation. READ ALL OF THE WARNING LABELS. Now that is out of the way, a drop here and there over the seasoning will do two things, stick it to the base and reinforce the seasonings herbs to where they can hold up to a drybrushing of paint later.

After that is done, tip the base and remove the excess, and you get what is shown below.

And with the movement tray it is just a bigger version of the base. So the final look is what is shown below.

After that is up to you to do the painting. Most of the time with the seasoning I will stipple and drybrush 3-5 colors on it for the Warriors of Chaos, to get the end product as shown in the pic below.

There you have it, how I do my movement trays and how I do a forest litter basing.

Horus Heresy All is Dust....

2011-12-02T07:39:00.000-06:00

Finally picked this book by Graham McNeil back-up. A story about the 1000 Sons and the witch hunt by the Emperor of Mankind. The central character is Ahriman and his back is against the wall pretty much the whole time.

I won't go into a lot of detail so as not to ruin the book for people. I'm not a book reviewer, and I did sit this book down for a month or two as I was just too busy to sit and read a bit. It was a good story like most of the Horus Heresy books that are written by Graham and Dan Abnett. It definitely furthers the depth of the realm of Warhammer 40k.

It also gives me a very different impression of the 1000 Sons, not the traiterous type impression that I previously as them being a legion of chaos, but of a persecuted legion. And the story also gives me a much more dislike of Leman Russ and the savagery of Space Wolves, they are definitely the Emperor's dogs and enforcers. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of the wolves, but a story like this does give a different perspective. And I still love the visual side of them, they are the Vikings of 40k. And like that sort of thing.

This book, also, does the blur the lines, everything is not completely black and white in the 40k Mythology.

New Crusaders... Conversions underway...

2011-11-27T19:47:00.000-06:00

Adepticon is coming, so I need more crusaders for WAB. Decided to add some Conquest Games's knights and few Perry's.

Below is a WIP of one of the riders. The Conquest mini's are cool, but like the Perry's too much chainmail. Looking forward to the Fireforge minis that are coming out soon.

Below is some of the horse caparison work. A ways to go yet along with some smoothing and fold work.

Another shot. The fronts are coming out pretty well. Not sure if I will actually do the stitching yet. It's a real pain and kind of fragile for gaming purposes.

So many projects, no time to get bored.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 3.1 Addendum

2011-11-25T19:21:00.000-06:00

Our friend Mr. Bugman, NAVARRO (whose blog is in my blog list #2, check it out), reminded me of using a tooth brush to texture putty. Something I do not do to often, and since my move I'm still looking for all my tools, but I still have the old soft bristled brush I use for removing paint. So onto the second movement tray, similar method as the previous, but with adding an additional texture with the brush this time around the rock areas.

One thing that is always difficult with spreading glue and sticking down the flock is control, often you get a small amount of glue somewhere you do not want it or when applying the flock and you press it in slightly it spreads in the wrong locations.

So I added the fake rocks and then commenced adding texture around the rocks in two ways. One with the brush and the other with pressing a rock into the regular putty surface. With the brush you can poke and sweep with it.

This is how it comes out, will add a bit more variety with the surface when I start adding the flock. The flock I will be using is a HO Scale railroad ballast. That will be in Part 4.

So there we are, another method that one can use. Part 4 will be flocking and forest litter basing.

My new 40k Space Marine Army begins....

2011-11-24T18:28:00.000-06:00

.....Slowly. I'm so disenchanted with Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition, that I'm planning a return to 40k. A game, I essentially, with the exception of playing a short team-up with Greg in Green Bay, last played just about 10 years ago.

So after my move I found all my loyalist space marine parts and began thinking about the army a bit. It will certainly be a DIY Chapter, much in the vein of my Cerulean Templar army, except this time they will be red and not blue. In my past experience, I never really had the firepower with that army as it was geared to close combat, overly so. So this time there will be lots of marines with bolters. So how do you make your army a bit different, dig through your bitz box.

In the digging I found an older boltgun like the one in the upper left, and I think a kill team bolter to the right of that (I have a bunch of those).

Then I found some extra long bolters that I built long ago, and the metal one towards the bottom. Still not enough diversity, so I will do some with drum magazines. And then I found a bunch of flamers, so with a little bit of time today, I created the four boltgun you see in the center, using flamers, a bolt gun, and left over 40k ork bits from building my fantasy orc army.

It's a start. Its amazing how you forget what you have, as I found I had two Forgeworld Dreadnoughts in addition to a bunch of vehicles. Much more to come on this army build.

And no I'm not quiting fantasy as I still plan to build and paint the Chaos army and Orc army.

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 3 Apoxie Sculpt

2011-11-21T21:28:00.000-06:00

The next installment of my movement tray tutorial. In part 2 we constructed the basic tray and general shape. Now we are going to bulk it out using Aves Apoxie sculpt. Apoxie Sculpt is a two part modeling putty that takes many hours to cure, but cures very solid and hard. Here I have mixed the two parts together and formed a long rope like piece.

As we also saw in the previous posts, I'm using a slate rock look on my Warriors of Chaos miniatures and movement trayes. In the right hand corner of the picture below you see the fake slate rocks. The rocks are, you guessed it, hardened Apoxie Sculpt that has been bust apart with a hammer.

The next picture I apply the rope to the tray.

Then I simply flatten out the rope, to get to the look below. Nice and irregular, just the way I want it to look.

Next up, I add the fake rocks. These I simply push into the apoxie and I will allow it to cure overnight.

A close up of the one corner and the fake rocks. I also pressed a rock into the corner and then placed layers in to that by using the blade end of my sculpting tool.

So now that is done, it will cure, and then you add the sand/flock/gravel whatever you are using. In another post I'll detail how I add that and my trick at creating forest litter. Until next time....

Beginnings of a Chaos Warshrine

2011-11-20T09:37:00.000-06:00

I started this model a couple months ago before I moved, and have not made much progress with it since.

The more it sits on my desk, the more I dislike it. It started out as a sketch on napkin and has progressed to this point, but needs a lot more work. I am a huge fan of spawns, but this one is not quite working out.

Below is the business end of the spawn. Thinking about the model, wondering if I should not make it more like the two with the tyranid heads.

And yes the carriage portion of the model is not going to be empty. There will be a champion riding that, using the nurgle champ model. I'll dress him up a bit more. I'm also thinking I need banners, those will need to go behind the pillar. Can never have enough banners.

Second Reaper Knight ... Paint Work In Progress

2011-11-19T08:00:00.000-06:00

This is the second of my Reaper Knights, another work in progress. This one is not really a test in paint color like the other, but more of a test in using some of GW washes on the metals. They work nice and flow well.

I think combining them with paint washes like I normally do will make for some good looks.

The red and whites are about my standard colors. The photos are a bit dark, still don't have everything set up to take decent pictures. Have not been home enough to get many things situated here.

I'm happy with the reds and whites.

So another of Werner Klocke's sculpts, crazy head crest and all, semi-painted. When I'm all done with these two I'll probably ebay them. Reaper's stuff is fun and cheap for experimenting on and painting test pieces.

Sometime this weekend I should be able to get some work on the next step of the movement tray tutorial done.

Old Stuff Wednesday - November...40k Templar Dreadnought

2011-11-16T19:24:00.000-06:00

Back quite a long time ago I painted up a dreadnought for my 40k Cerulean Templar army. This is one of the miniatures where you start painting and things really start clicking as far as the paint work goes. It was also back in my period of painting in this ultra-stylized method (Heavy Bart Sears X-O Manowar armor influence) for highlighting. And it was the first miniature that I did not use any metallic paint on, yes the “so-called NMM”. I do have a rant that I often use regarding miniature painters and the ridiculous terminology that they use for describing their painting, but I won’t get in to that right now.

This is the only dreadnought that I built and painted for this army, so I did want it to be sort of special, and if I remember correctly it was during my Bolter & Chainsword forum posting days and they were running a contest on painted Dreadnoughts and it placed fifth in the voting which did win me a prize.

The painting work for me was special. When I think of dreads, and the mythology that Games Workshop has created around what dreadnoughts are, I think of special characters. They should be treated that way in the army, a sort of center show piece for the army. So as I was painting, I explored doing some heraldry on the model and sculpted a tabard and a bunch of purity seals, very minor conversion work.

This is one of the very few models that I have kept from the Cerulean Templars army. It’s a nostalgia thing with me. Even if I sell off one of my armies, I normally keep a few pieces of it. Looking at cool models is always far better than looking at pictures. It is also a nice visual when I do paint seminars locally, as once and awhile, fresh people at my seminars will say they recognize a particular model. And it does show a progression in skill and style.

One day I do plan to rebase the model. Back then I really did not have a good grasp on basing and have never been happy with how that turned out. The theme of the basing was this sort of urban fight thing, but I don’t think I really pulled that off very well.

That’s it for now, enough nostalgia, it makes me feel old, back to more modern stuff in the next post. I think for Old Stuff Wednesday in December, I will dig up some photos of a massive battle that Mike Butcher and I had way back, my Templars versus his zombie / Nurgle horde.

Reaper Knight...paint WIP

2011-11-14T18:52:00.000-06:00

I wanted to do an experiment with green tones as I prepare to paint Orcs next year. So I've had this Reaper Miniatures knight lying around for a long time. I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice.

As I was painting all of the green, I decided that the cloth needed a bit of a design to break it up a bit.

The yellow trim definitely sets off the green. Not a big fan of the brick work.

This is a Werner Klonke sculpt, one of his earlier works. The cloth is nice and smooth and has the right kind of flow to it.

Not sure how I will base the miniature just yet, but I think it will be a fall, burnt grass, type look.

Orc Palanquin WIP

2011-11-13T21:14:00.000-06:00

Did not feel very well this past weekend and was a bit busy on top of that, but I did get started on a project for my orc army. I got this miniature last year at Adepticon. Ever since I saw it, I thought it would make for a good orc palanquin with some changes.

The first being the head, did not fit with the GW miniatures. I've started to fix that by removing the top part of the head and replacing it with a GW head top. I also removed the ugly looking skull at the top of the tusks. Will replace that probalby with an Orc glyph or one of the Beastmen large animal skulls.

The second was the big disc that the throne sat on. That needs to be made into an appropriate palanquin.

So, that's it so far. Long ways to go on it.

New Spawn….Influenced by the Disc 2

2011-11-07T19:39:00.000-06:00

As things come together, you always get new ideas and the Tzeentch disc and my previous spawn gave me some more ideas on new chaos spawn. The ideas like the others were mainly to help tie more of this stuff together in the army.

This one also uses a rat ogre body left over from the Warhammer Fantasy boxed set. I really like these overly muscled rat ogre bodies. For this one I decide to merge it with a number of tyranid pieces to make it more menacing and this also ties together better with my disc.

Not sure what I will do with the paint schemes just yet, but they should all tie together with the other spawn. I do really like the use of the armor on these rat ogres, they do kind of resemble the armor on some of my marauders. I’ll probably incorporate some of the armor elements into my Chaos Ogres down the road.

The back banner is from some other chaos model. I really wanted the extra small arm claw to look like it had some musculature and could actually work.

The recessed areas will soon be rivet heads, but I still have not unpacked that material from my move.

I can't wait to paint the eyeball buried in the shoulder, as strange as that sounds.

Penn State Cover-up...Disgusting Display

2011-11-07T19:05:00.000-06:00

I've not done a sports rant in awhile, but tonight I have two and the first pales in comparison to the second. I've been reading some articles about the goings on at Penn State university allegedly involving a former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and allegations of sexually assaulting young boys. Sandusky is charged with multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as single counts of aggravated indecent assault and attempted indecent assault. If these allegations are true and that they covered this up, everyone ever involved with that program should be charged and fired. To say that I'm disgusted is understatement. This stuff has absolutely sickened me to no end and raised my temper to a boiling point.

What gets me are a couple of things that I read in the articles:

"Another child, known only as a boy about 11 to 13, was seen by a janitor pinned against a wall while Sandusky performed oral sex on him in fall 2000, the grand jury said."

"...in 2002, a graduate assistant saw Sandusky sexually assault a naked boy, estimated to be about 10 years old, in a team locker room shower. The grad student and his father reported what he saw to Paterno, who immediately told Curley, prosecutors said."

Really??? I'm sorry I don't care how big the guy is that is doing this, if I saw something like this I would absolutely attempt to stop the pervert and then call the Police, not report it to a boss. What the hell is wrong with people that witness this kind of stuff. Its a freaking kid that this monster is assaulting and you supposedly see it and let it happen. How does a person live with themselves after seeing such a thing and not doing anything about it, and then find out that this MONSTER (allegedly) has done it to even more kids. Maybe its just that I'm wired differently and don't like backing down from things and really don't fear for my own well being.

And Joe Paterno ought to be completely ashamed. The prosecutor stated "Paterno responded as legally obligated when informed, in 2002, by a graduate assistant coach [identified in news reports as current Penn State staffer Mike McQueary] that he witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a child in the showers at the Penn State football facility. She said his timely reporting of the incident to his titular superior, athletic director Tim Curley, fulfilled the coach’s legal responsibility." WTF! Are kidding me!!! You guys ever hear of calling the authorities, first you are telling me that grown men are watching this monster do what he is doing to kids and you don't have at least the balls to go to the cops. Then you have Paterno and other higher ups just ignoring the allegations by eye witnesses all of these years, grown men who do not feel a moral obligation to protect kids. I don't know what is worse.

Well...no I do know what is worse, Sandusky founded an organization for troubled kids.

McQueary, according to the attorney general’s presentment, was "distraught" at the sight of Sandusky raping a child in the shower five years earlier. Well I'll be, I would sure as hell hope so.

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan scoffed Monday at the ban of Sandusky [from practice facilities] as a proper course of action, and at Curley’s assertion to the grand jury that the ban was "unenforceable." Sandusky was reportedly at training facilities last week even, what great ban that was.

"Call the police immediately," Noonan said, voice rising. "How difficult is that? It’s not a high standard. This case has troubled me for two years. Not talking about it for two years was difficult." I'm glad I'm not Noonan. Apparently Penn State officials haven't been troubled by this at all based on their decisions. Make this right Penn State Alummni and demand that they fire everyone that had any knowledge of this immediately.

Next post will be a much better, more cheerful topic, back to miniatures....

Kyle Buschwacked Himself at Texas

2011-11-07T18:42:00.000-06:00

It’s been awhile since I really had a good sports rant, but there were a couple of things that really caught my eye this past weekend. Things that I don’t get, and really rub me wrong. The first thing very much pales in comparison to the second.

The first was the whole Kyle Busch wrecking Ron Hornaday in the Nascar Truck Series at Texas Motor Speedway, a very fast high banked oval. Kyle deserved getting parked for his actions on the track, he obviously lost his head momentarily and over-reacted to the whole racing incident leading up to this, and they do have a past history. It is one thing to rub someone and spin them out under green when only the race cars are present on the track. It’s an entirely different matter to run at the speed he was running and purposely wreck someone under a caution when it’s entirely possible safety workers maybe on or coming onto the track. That is reckless and uncalled for. The punishment given by NASCAR, in my eyes was appropriate in not allowing to compete further in all three races that were held at Texas. That punishment was deserved and I’m sure that a $50,000 fine will help him realize it. Now if Hornaday was physically harmed by the incident and unable to compete further due to injury I would expect the punishment to be far more severe.

The one thing that I really dislike however is the whole aftermath. Joe Gibbs, a very religious and good man, I think is handled this poorly. First there was an apology letter, supposedly from Kyle Busch, something that to me is like a slap in the face. If you are really apologetic, you have tons of cameras in ESPN on-site, who is always pro-player, anti-owner that would throw you a microphone and a bunch of softballs that you could have used to express yourself. Then there is how the four-letter network, ESPN, handled it and made it seem like a damn funeral. I watched the interview of Gibbs by Jerry Punch and thought both of these guys were almost at the point of shedding a tear for the situation. Then there are Joe's comments about this is a tough and we have to work through it, whatever Joe. The guy did what he did, he did not die, he did not kill someone, he’s lucky he did not injure Ron, but all of this political correctness crap and apology stuff is enough to make me ill. Deal with it take your punishment, but don’t insult my intelligence with all of the insincere apology garbage and don’t make it out as being something that has to be done, and also don’t act like you are so shocked and dismayed by his actions. If the sponsers of his cars don't like it that's there deal, some sponsers probably won't mind this, but one with cartoony M&Ms characters probably won't like it. So be it.

Warriors and more warriors...

2011-11-06T10:20:00.000-06:00

I'm still getting settled in to my new work space and unpacking all of the maruaders and other chaos warriors, along with a number of other projects that I have yet to finish. Now I have a desk full of miniatures.

It's quite the mixture of miniature barbarians. Going yto get back to painting very soon. The one thing I forgot to do prior to the move and during the modelling of this was to make some banner men for the units. So I will have to rectify that.

I also recently picked up some Avatars of War plastic dwarves, and plan to convert those into some chaos models.

Next up some paint WIPs and we will get back to finishing the movement tray tutorial.

Old Ford Pick-up Progress

2011-11-03T18:10:00.000-05:00

My move has significantly slowed my progress on miniatures as I get settled, but my old truck really hasn't moved much and at least I know where all the pieces are for it. Progress is always slow on it, but it now it has rear fenders that actually have paint on them (look better Butch?).

Course when you do things like this you always find mistakes, and one of those is the black rectangular like gap between fender, box, and running board. Getting some new sheet metal bent to fix that.

Yep the aluminum box is the gas tank, minus all of the plumbing. Decided the yellow was not bright enough, so I needed a box with some diamond plate. The yellow color is a little off in these pics.

Another angle of the box.

And yes, I got wheels, nice looking 5 spoke rally type wheels. Now I need a tailgate and rear bumper, tail lights, and more work. New goal is to be on the road next spring after the snow melts.

Much more to follow on this project.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 2

2011-10-29T08:58:00.000-05:00

The following is my new way of constructing the trays, but keeping a similar look to what was done previously. Below you see that I laid out the tray dimensions using a marker and my steel carpenter's square. I'm building two at once here for my 6-wide Chaos Knights units.

Nowadays, I just use strips on the front and sides, leaving the back open for the expansion of the unit or addition of a character model. I also build the trays slightly wider than the bases usually one or three tenths of an inch wider to help fit in that odd conversion, a bit of slop if you will. If you have messed around a bit with GW's modular trays, you'll note a bit of play in them also. Using the thick plasticard and strips you can also add magnets to them. On the pictured VC Bashin' Orcs tray in the previous post, the commissioner instructed me to use GF9 bases, so that tray has magnetic sheet in the tray to work with the GF9 bases, as does my Knights Hospitaller unit.

So now we have the below, the general layout of what the trays will look like. The 0.2" lines are the general guidelines for the strips that will come later. The 0.3" is the outside of the tray. I normally make that a bit larger nowadays (out to about 0.4-0.5"), but with these I'm trying to somewhat match what I had done previously.

If you have not worked with plasticard before, all that needs be done with it to cut it to shape, is to score the cut line with your razor knife. Here I use the steel edge of my carpenter's square as the guide for my xacto blade.

Then take the plasticard and bend it all that scored line.

The card will snap along that scored line.

Do this a couple times, now I have the two tray bottoms.

Next up, is the strips. Similar procedure as the above. Score the strip, bend and snap it along the scored cut line.

Here you see a bunch of the pieces. One thing to do that make things go much quicker is to glue the sides on the tray. Then lay the front strip on the tray, mark it to the right size and cut it, no need to even measure it out.

Then glue the front strip into place, and you get what we have below. Wow...very square, uninspiring, and just plain boring when placed next the end goal. We have to fix that.

First thing is get rid of that square shape, there is enough square corners in Warhammer, we don't need to add more to that. What I'm looking for is a softer shape. So below I took my clippers and clipped the corners.

Next up I will round off the corners, which you can do that with a file or sander. Here I have cheated and used my power tool, a dremel.

The above is still kind of boring, but you may have noted some of the pictures had the Aves Apoxie Sculp pictured, we'll soon fix all of that boredom.

But first...I'm still attempting to mimic what I have done in the past, so I have to do a bit more work. Nice irregular, and semi-random edges.

So there you have it...the basic tray construction. Next up...I will breakout the Apoxie Sculp.

Introduction to My Method of Making Movement Trays for Warhammer

2011-10-22T11:57:00.002-05:00

Well here we have it, a long awaited and promised tutorial on how I make my movement trays. The materials that I use have not really changed that much over the years since I began playing Warhammer, but the way I build them has evolved over the years. This is just one way to make these. There are many other methods, and it is not the cheapest method. If you are looking for cheap, then you probably want to look elsewhere at say GW's modular tray kit or Rendra. This method is my favored method for building trays that can display a very high end detailed army.

I like using making my own because it allows me to do a number of things in addition to personalizing my army.

I like my movement trays to serve two purposes:

1. Accentuate the basing scheme and/or theme of the army. For example, my Chicago GT, Khorne Demon army was about blood and an over the top demonic like pits of hell thing. The basing needed to emphasize that for the bloodletters and other models. So I even extended that further to the movement trays. Painting internals of the tray to match the bloody pattern.

Another example, the VC Bashin' Orcs, the theme is beating up skeletons and zombies. I try to add to the detail of the army by doing this.

2. Have width to protect the miniatures (It seems there is always a game in a tourney, whether intentionally or unintentionally where your opponent slams his all metal unit into yours. When you spend lots of time on conversion and paint work, you do not want this to happen, especially to your crazy front rank conversions.)

In this particular tutorial, I'm building the movement trays for my Warriors of Chaos army. This is an army that I started several years ago. So now that I'm expanding this army, I am going to build the trays very similar to what I did in the past, ie. the one pictured below.

The main materials:

1.5 mm or 2 mm plasti-card or sheet styrene (Evergreen and Plastruct are just two popular hobby suppliers of this material)

3.2 x 4.8 mm plastic styrene strips.

your favorite glue for plastic

Aves Apoxiesculp

The tools:

Ruler/triangles, steel ruler / Straight-edge, carpenter's square

Marker

Cutting tools

Here you see a picture of one of my existing Warriors of Chaos movement trays. This was built for my Chaos Hounds or a 5-wide Cavalry unit.

The next picture is the underside of the tray. Here you can see the randomness with the Apoxie sculp exposed in areas adjacent to the plastic. When I built this tray, I actually first built the tray and then drilled some wire into the plastic styrene strips on the edges of the tray. The wires are what hold the apoxie sculp in place, similar to the reinforcing steel in concrete. That's a very time consuming and somewhat tedious way to construct the tray.

In the next post, I will begin walking through my new way of constructing the trays, but keeping a similar look as we build movement trays for my two Chaos Knights units.

Dirt Tracking with the Karts

2011-10-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

Wisconsin weather is quite unpredictable in October, but a couple of weeks ago, it was quite nice so a bunch of us got together and tore it up on the dirt track. I think I turned as many laps in one day on the dirt as I did all summer racing on the asphalt.

A few pics, above is the old man showing how its done, I'm in the 0.

Yea that is my sister pushing me hard through the corner.

Still tracking down the oldman, just about got him...but

Some set that tire a bit to close, almost had him, until he crowded me.

We had a good time, inducted another family member into running some laps, and she had a good time.

Old Stuff Wednesday - October...The Warboss

2011-10-19T22:52:00.000-05:00

Hey...I'm finally back from my self-inflicted hiatus. Soon I'll be back up to speed, settling in to the new place.

Still Wednesday here in the midwest, so for Old Stuff we have an Ork Warboss that I painted several years ago. This miniature painted the same year as the Crimson Fist vs Grot from last month. I remember being quite pleased with the results, I thought the conversion worked well.

This was my first real click with painting red. When I finished the red with the helmet, I felt like I finally captured that color the way I wanted.

The grot in the little crow's nest was something that I had always thought really fit for this grot. The flesh came out well, the crow's nest I think turned out pretty decent. Lot of little scrapped bits went in to that.

I also think this the first miniature where I started understanding corrosion and use of really thinned paint washes. Not a single ink was used in this miniature, its all acrylic.

The base certainly could have been better, but that's how it goes sometimes.

So up next the start of the long awaited and promised "How I Make My Movement Trays" for fantasy and WAB. Need to work on a better title...

Just about back...

2011-10-19T09:22:00.001-05:00

New ISP has hooked me up, be back later tonight with an Old Stuff Wednesday.

Move is done...be back soon

2011-10-12T13:09:00.000-05:00

My move is basically done, except for some minor construction, and then alo of unpacking and furniature placing. I'm without an ISP for my home at the moment, which is fine. It would just get in the way right now. But very soon I should be back in the full swing of things with new minis and at least one new tutorial. This will all be over in around another week or so.

See you all soon.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

New Blogs to Follow and We Start'em Young

2011-09-28T12:46:00.000-05:00

As I'm in the process of moving, I have no really new stuff to show, as everything is boxed up. In the past people like Sons of Tauraus have nice enough to plug my blog, so thought I would plug a few that I discovered. So with that in mind some of the newer blogs that I'm following:

Mr. Bugman: This is Navarro's blog, an old grizzled forum vet. Does some of the best Nid and bug like conversions and scratch sculpts I've seen, and lot of other cool stuff. He's also sculpting things for a number of people and miniature companies.
http://mr-bugman.blogspot.com/

Legion of Plastic: This is another of the grizzled forum vets, from DakkaDakka fame, Migsula. One of the best converters on that forum, does a lot of detail crazy conversions in 40k. He is also in the process of moving, but a lot further than me.
http://legionofplastic.blogspot.com/

Scar's Miniature Blog: This is Dark Ritual from Warseer Forums. A very good converter and painter of things Fantasy. In his blog right now he is doing up a bunch of good Ogres.
http://scarminimadness.blogspot.com/

Small-scale Ramblings: This is the Hoff from Warseer Forums. Another of the very good historical and fantasy modelers and painters from down under. His blog is just underway, and his most impressive work is buried in his posts on Warseer, but great work all the same.
http://smallscaleramblings.blogspot.com/

The Magnificent Bastards: This is an odd group of gamers, most of them are hard to put up with in person. But don't let the name of the blog fool you or offend you, they are good gamers and do offer so many tips for all of you fantasy people out there.
http://www.youmagnificentbastards.com/

And yes below is my 9-year old neice, in her go-kart. Raising another speed demon.

Another batch of Space Wolf Scout Conversions

2011-09-25T20:54:00.000-05:00

This is the second batch. Again I'm using chaos marauder legs with the space marine torsos.

As with the previous batch I went with a bunch of gear on them. There is also a variety of heads used in this batch. Throw in a Catachan arm and some marauder arms.

Makes for some buff scouts.

Here catch my grenade. Both of these heads are from the Empire sprues.

Thats it for now on the Chaos Marauder / Space Wolf scout conversions.

I will also probably be going black towards the end of the week, as I am moving once again and changing internet service providers with the move. As well I will be living between two places until I get a bit of work done in the new place. Not sure how long all of this is going to take, but I will be back and updating a little bit here 'n' there probably for the next 2-3 weeks until I get settled packing and then unpacking.

Space Wolf Scout Conversions....Using Chaos Marauder Parts

2011-09-24T07:32:00.000-05:00

First five of these conversions. When you have lot of left over bitz as I do from the chaos marauders you'll find that they can make some interesting things.

I have yet to work with the plastic space marine scout kit, when I was playing 40k all we had were the metal scouts. Anyways, I don't think scouts look rugged enough, or carry enough equipment. So I wanted to kit these guys out a bit with lots of gear.

The above model uses chaos marauder legs and muscled arms. The rope is from the plastic mordheim kit.

For these to I converted the one head and the head on the left is a chaos marauder head. Both shoulder pads the one on the right are from the chaos marauder kit.

Got to have a trusty shotgun. Shield is from the beastmen ungors, and the bag from the kroot.

This one uses an Empire head from the mordheim sprue, one shoulder pad from the chaos marauders and the small one from the kroot.

This one sort of has the Wolverine sideburns going on. The axe is all maruader. And yep a crossbow strapped to his back for that quiet mission where the bolt pistol is way too loud.

A Mutant Marauder...An OOP Marauder...A Reaper Marauder

2011-09-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

Next up for my Chaos Marauders is converted mutant. The new gor torsos really have alot more detail to them. I do like the gore that they have. It helps impress the evilness of chaos.

This mini has a bunch of parts used to make it. Definitely will fit in with the others.

The next miniature is a old OOP GW metal marauder that I converted to a great weapon armed marauder. I still like these old chaps. This one will be one of my middle rank and file models.

And there is this old boy, another of the Tre Manor Reaper Miniature sculpts. Not his best work, but a cool miniature in my book. I'll probably put it in the middle ranks.

Getting closer to assembling the jigsaw puzzle of units, meshing old work with all of this new work. I will also be doing a long awaited tutorial on how I build movement trays very soon for all of the Fantasy and Historical readers.

Next Mutant Marauder....A Lion Conversion??

2011-09-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

This is not one of my favorites, but I made this model to antigonize a certain individual in Wisconsin, who always seems to think I steal his ideas. So I literally stole this idea to further aggravate him.

If by chance you are wondering who this individual may be, there is a link to a blog to the right called the Magnificant B's, and this particular individual is on that blog, and has his own very awesome looking Beastmen Army. Beware if you go there, they may very well offend you. At the very least, you will be able to see what I have to put up with on a semi-regular basis in the Fantasy Tournament scene in the Midwest.

But anyways, for those interested, this is obviously a beastmen gor, with a Lion's head from the High Elf Lion chariot kit, and feet from an old skaven.

Old Stuff Wednesday - September...Grot V. Crimson Fist

2011-09-14T17:43:00.000-05:00

I’ve forgotten how long ago I did this sort of diorama piece, but I do remember I had this idea and used it as entry in GW’s Gamesday Golden Demons – Duel Category. Now this was several years ago, and my paint skills were not as good as they are now, but it is still one of my favorites. I thought it was a comical piece, something a typical Grot would do, taking shots at a downed enemy combatant, and maybe not doing do well with his accuracy. They are after all a BS 2 right?

The Crimson Fist, was at the time the first one that I painted, but the blue paint scheme was right up my alley, since it was essentially the same paint scheme that I used with my Cerulean ( or Blue) Templars. I wanted to have a spacemarine that was all battered and pinned beneath some rubble, struggling to fight off this little twerp.

The grot, is one of the old metal ones. These models always have a lot of personality. I remember I was very happy with the way the greens turned out.

The basing was a combination of cork and sand. If there is one thing I look back on and I am not happy with, it’s the basing and rubble.

One of these days I plan to revisit this idea, but I want to make it more dynamic and attractive, with even more detail.

Khorne's Latest Devotees....New additions to the Marauders

2011-09-12T20:41:00.001-05:00

Not exactly sure why I chose this weapon, but I did. Pose-wise I like the miniature, the armored shoulder probably needed a bit of work in hindsight, but that's probably more time than a miniature worth so few points really deserves..

I do like this gor torso, it is mean. And this head is killer to me.

If his mouth was open screaming, the model might even be better.

Note on the back side the tabard, with the Khorne symbol in my blue flame colors. I've elected not to go the standard Games Workshop Circus Candy Chaos look. No mismatched units with primary colors. All my models for this army will be in the color scheme, whether Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Khorne, or Nurgle. If the sacred numbers of Chaos are meaningless, as are the themed mono-god armies or the hatreds amongst the chaos gods to GW's very own fluff, then so too are their color schemes.

And this one, also part of the Khorne unit really did not turn out great, modeling wise, but it will work out as a rank and filer.

As always many more to follow.

9-11....Never Forget

2011-09-11T06:50:00.000-05:00

I know, I won't.

Bring on more of the Mutant Marauders - finished pics

2011-09-09T20:34:00.000-05:00

No go-karting tonight as the asphalt season has ended. So back to miniatures. Below are more of the mutated marauders. Churning out a few more just as I begin to pack to move to a different living space.

This one is a bit odd, using bloodletter legs and a marauder torso.

Makes for a strange looking miniature. I did shave off all of the little bumps on the legs.

The next one is a kit bash. Although, the gor body was again a left over from beastmen army back in 2003. Back then I was doing a lot of the overlapping armor plates as shown on the leg. This one will go in the great weapons unit.

I like this dude. It uses the marauder cav head coupled with a new beastmen gor torso. I see I forgot to give him eye brows. Ooops.

I think the shield turned out kind of cool looking.

Another great weapon rank and filer. I will bury this little guy in the midst of bigger guys.

Last one of my old metal oop beastmen. I do like this dude.

That's it for now, but as always more to follow.

Another Marauder...Old Beast Lord

2011-09-07T23:30:00.000-05:00

The nice thing about barbarians and mutants are you get to use a variety of miniatures. This is the second time I've used this miniature. Once with my beastmen, and now with my marauders. I did a very small conversion on the hood over the face.

This miniature will be included in my great weapon marauder unit. I do like this old beastlord.

Another small conversion was extending the handle of the axe. The decapitated head is also very fitting.

More Marauders...Tre Manor types...

2011-09-02T18:20:00.000-05:00

The last batch of the Red Box Games Helsvakt for now. These like the other Tre Manor sculpts, practically paint themselves.

I've enjoyed just painting every one of the models, did not even bother converting them. Very unusual for me.

The blue effect on the shield turned out pretty cool looking. This one I did flames on the tabard.

One of the few with a different weapon. Not really into the style of the hammer. I did drop it and knocked the hammer up a bit, need to fix the chipped paint on the handle.

This shield is pretty cool. The skulls and bones off the fur and belt are so cool looking.

And I do like the head on this one.

A bit better on the shield on this one. I need to remember to reverse the Hot Rod flames on the blue tabards sometime.

Old Stuff Wednesday - August...Painted Chaos Word Bearer

2011-08-31T07:30:00.000-05:00

Back in 2003 or 2004, I was expermenting with color schemes. I had just basically came out of my blue painting phase and wanted to try some new color schemes and this was my test piece for painting red, and entering my red phase. A chaos Word Bearer.

I do like Word-Bearers, just for all of the stuff that is draping off of them, which can make for a very dyanmic look.

The base was the first time I used cork back then. Not really something I would recommend for army builders, as its not very durable.

Back then I did struggle painting skulls with GW white paints.

The writing on the parchments are a combination of paint wash and defined by a very small Micron pen.

I was very happhy with the way the power sword turned and the overall depth of the red.

So there is my only painted Word-bearer. The mini placed in Adepticon's paint contest back then and won me alot of Green-Stuff.

Putting the Mutant back in my Marauders... More finished Marauders

2011-08-27T17:20:00.000-05:00

The Marauders are coming along, a mix of hand weapon / shield and great weapon types. I need to get back to the mutant portion of the theme also, so these are the mutated ones.

The mini above is another left over from my beastmen army back in 2003.

Awhile back I converted a whole lot of flaggelants into mutated chaos models. I thought it worked well and decided to use up some left over stuff.

While doing that years ago, I determined that Ungor and Flaggelants are roughly the same size. and the parts are virtually interchangeable.

The old metal bestigors are also very different from the current line of minis, so they also make nice additions without any real work other than paint.

One of my two armed flaggelants.

Big weapons are always good for chaos.

I'm still using the flame motif.

We're getting there.

Some karting pics...

2011-08-27T07:48:00.000-05:00

No race last night, we'll race on Sunday afternoon, but a guy I work with shot some pics of some of my races. This is from one of the heat races, I'm in the 05, second row on the left.

Taking the green flag

Lap one closing in on the leader.

Lap 2, I took over the lead.

Led most of the race, until the white kart behind us caught me and passed me on the last lap. He runs a different engine, the Briggs, I'm running the Clone which is down on power in comparison.

Here we are staging for the feature.

First lap of the feature. I finished 4th in the feature that night, second in my engine class to the silver kart.

Archers!!...Fire at poor Will .... More Romans

2011-08-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

I did not expect to return to doing any Romans, but the local WAB tournament changed mind, as I thought I needed a few more archers for the army.

I decided to do these in two stands of four each. Also something different for me, I'm typically used to doing my miniatures as singles on single bases. Lately though I have been rethinking that for most of my army stuff, working in bigger bases.

I do hate how most sculpters do arrows. You can never get the white metal arrow shafts straight. I saw recently the Musketeer sculptor just doing the fletching and allowing for a steel or brass pin to be inserted into the fletching for the shaft. I think that is really cool idea.

Next post back to marauding. Until next time.

Malifaux...challenges

2011-08-25T18:17:00.000-05:00

A rather large group of guys locally have been playing Malifaux lately and keep telling me that I ought to play the game with them. I really don't know anything about the game, other than it does not use dice, it mixes elements of fantasy and steampunk and some other stuff, and I know of some of the miniatures. To be very honest most of the miniatures do not really appeal to me, they seem to have a strange style. So with knowing that, I decided to challenge myself and use some Reaper Miniatures instead. Mostly some Werner Klocke sculpts, that I know for a fact can be painted well, and I'm interested to see if I can paint them well or not. I'll probably have to add a few guns, but I have an idea on my crew after looking at some of the Malifaux groupings of miniatures.

So with that all said here is my planned crew.

Finari

Alaine

Shaedra

Lola

Kaesandra (I think that is the name)

And the Duke (the lone Bobby Jackson sculpt)

Above photos are all from Reaper's Web pages.

Now many of you have been following me for awhile on my blog and forums, I bet you never saw that line-up coming. lol It is a huge departure for me in style and well most of them being females, not something that I paint often.

I'm looking at trying to push my paint work a bit. I don't know that I'll ever even play the game, but I've accepted the challenge of converting and painting some miniatures and look forward to seeing if I can pull off this project. If not there will be some cheap miniatures on Ebay. lol

Marauding Mayhem...A couple more Chaos Marauders done.

2011-08-23T21:34:00.000-05:00

Well I continue the use of models that are not Games Workshop models for my marauders. Its not that I don't like their models, its that there are other models out there that I really like and so I want to incorporate them into the army.

This model is a Reaper Miniatures, again sculpted by Tre Manor. An awesome model and another that will be part of my Maruaders with great weapons.

I did do an axe head swap with a GW, great weapon. The axe needed a bit more flare.

This is a huge miniature, a 30-32 mm tall miniature. It will definitely anchor the flank.

And, speaking of great weapons. This model has quickly become one of my favorites. I love the faces from the GW Maruader horsemen. They have very good detail.

This is also the first time I have do the shaven head look. Having a lot of 5 o'clock shadow moments maybe helps, but understanding the paint washes helps more.

The shield strapped to the back sort of gives that Norse flavor, and I do like this shield with all of its gore.

We're picking them up and knocking them down. Many more to come.

More Chaos...Marauders with great weapons

2011-08-21T20:24:00.001-05:00

I've worked with Matt Gubser quite a few years ago, helping him out of a jam. It was good experinece. Matt's been sculpting miniatures for years and has done work for Reaper Miniatures.

The mini to the left is one of his sculpts. I thought about converting the miniature and giving it some hair, but in the end left it alone.

This model wll be part of my marauder great weapon unit. Its a large model somewhere around 30-32 mm tall, bigger than a GW Marauder, but that is okay in my book.

This a cool miniature. I like the armor even though its basic and not ornate. I also think it works well with Tre Manor's miniatures.

It also has very good musculature. Matt did a very nice job with that.

As you can see, I've kept the Hot Rod Flames scheme. And continuing the burnt orange and blue paint colors. This unit will be marked with Khorne.

And to the left is another of the Tre Manor Helsvakt miniatures. This one will also be in the great weapons unit.

Like the others, this one screams at you.

I do like everyone of these. The sword is a sort of wicked piece of steel. Not overly flashy but I do like it.

There is that power looking back and the great detail of the bones and skulls hanging with the fur.

That's it for now. More marauders are still coming.

Vintage Karting....like fine wine

2011-08-21T09:50:00.004-05:00

I attended my first vintage karting event yesterday. My old man was reliving his past. And racing the kart below in the over 60 years old class, at Brodhead Wisconsin's Sugar River Raceway. http://www.sugarriverraceway.com/

This is his kart. A 1962 (I believe) Dart A-Bone, that was a complete pile of junk back in February. He did a complete restoration of it, finished it about month ago and first put it on the track last Friday.

My grandfather, the original Spud-nut (yes we all have nicknames) bought him one of these years ago. So its sort of come full circle. Back then they really did on run much if anything for bumpers. Thankfully we are bit smarter now, so he has extended the front out and added the bumper to protect his feet. Dig that engine. That is a McCulloch MC91, a racing version of their old chainsaw engine. I just love the blimp like exhaust pipe that the old two stroke needs.

And yes that is the gas tank strapped to the back seat. Unfortunately the engine did not survive Friday's on track, as he siezed up the piston, so he went the the partial back up, did a complete rebuild Friday night and was racing on Saturday.

Stopping power back then was not good, another safety issue. So above you more modern brake system.

Yes that tire has a tube in it, not like the modern tubless tires. Below is another pic of the back-end. You can see the modern disc brake and caliper.

So it was neat to see him out on this. And believe me it is fast, much faster than any kart I have driven ever. Imagine people running two of those engines in the back, and they did, that is the definition of "stupid fast". If you are more interested in vintage stuff, he bought the A-Bone frame, from a couple that calls themselves Black Dog Vintage Racing. I met them yesterday a link to their web page of pix.... http://blackdogvintageracing.com/Pix.aspx

And a week ago, there was a Mike "Old Coot" Butcher siting, and not just at our local Warhammer Ancients Tournament. Below are a couple pics of Mike trying to figure out go-karting the way it was meant to be. I took him down to the Welte 40, 1/9th mile dirt oval, put him in one of our dirt racing karts.

He took things a bit slow at first and gradually got faster with every lap. I think the speed was a surprise to him as well as the strategy on how to get around the track. And it can be hell on the back if you are not prepared for it.

We did have a few mechanical issues, mostly all related to fuel. This Ethanol E-15 mixed gasoline is really terrible stuff, not only does it contain lots of water, it gums things up, it eats up normal plastics and gaskets, and usually starts going bad in a couple of weeks.

CONAN...how many names do you need?

2011-08-19T07:25:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for a new Conan movie since the last Conan movie. And finally for better or worse, its arrived. I'm looking forward to it. Back when I was a very young kid, I aspired to be a comic book artist. That dream has long since past, I can draw better than most people, I just have a hard time telling a story with sequential art and I am just not good enough to be a professional artist. But one can dream. Back in the 70's, I remember seeing the images of Conan by Frazetta, I was in awe of those images. They shaped what I liked. Then I found Big John Buscema and his awesome Thor and Conan and Avengers images that further shaped my love of artwork and Conan. I always read the name as a kid, R.E. Howard, and I wondered who this man was that created Conan. It was a long time after all that, that I finally sat down and read his novels and short stories. The writing did not really hook me. It was always the images by Frazetta, Ken Kelley, John Buscema.

In the 1980s, I discovered Bart Sears and Tim Truman. Both of them in much different ways further shaped me. Bart's art style especially. If anything my line work is a poor imitation of couple of his styles.

Those artists led me to Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, Brom, Luis Royo. Later came Simon Bisley and Zook.

Frazetta and Buscema have both past away, so has Keith Parkinson who I met at GenCon a couple of times, but I horde books about them that displays their work.

Now both Bart and Tim are doing some Conan, along with a great artist in Tomas Giorello, love that guys work also. It is the only comic that I occassionally read nowadays.

Over the years, I have managed to collect some of Bart's and Tim's artwork. I actually own a few pieces of Tim's Conan art.

The piece to the left is a page of Tim Truman artwork for an issue of Conan that I own.

Tim has a cool style and flair about this work and is a great storyteller. There is usually nothing overly flashy or explosive in his style. Its sort of old school.

The next piece is also by Tim. When I bought this on-line and received it from a reputable dealer, I just sat for a long time staring and studying every line and every little nuance of it.

I love the old school ink washes in it. It is a very cool page in person and shows just how technically talented he is in the medium when it comes to comic style artwork.

And below is something that I did many years ago. Not really a Conan, but a barbarian nonetheless. And its in my best imitation of Bart's style.

Now...if you are paying attention to the details in the above pic, you will probably understand why I so love Tre Manor's sculpting on his barbarians.

Next Chaos Marauder....Tre Manor's Helvaskt

2011-08-17T21:44:00.000-05:00

This is another of Tre Manor's Red Box Games Miniatures. And its quickly become another favorite of mine. I think it has a rather cool pose, I can see the awesome downward swing of that cleever like sword.

I'm continuing my paint scheme throughout everything, so the panels on the shield just had to be that glowing like blue.

The musculature of the back practically paints itself. There it is again giving me that Bart Sears comic book art feeling. Bart recently did two issues of Conan, absolutely stunning artwork in those books.

Decided the backs of these shields need a fake painted wood grain.

So another of the barbarians in my growing collection of Tre Manor miniatures.

The Blade Itself.....

2011-08-16T21:09:00.001-05:00

Just finished up Joe Abercrombie's book The Blade Itself ater getting delayed and setting it down for a bit. So no this is not about a miniature. I set it down not because I found it boring, but because I got busy doing other things and finally found some time to actually for a little bit. I normally read lots of books, but lately my time just has been short. I have been looking for something to fill that awful void left between Bernard Cornwall's Saxon stories and George RR Martin's Ice and Fire. And I think I have found that author. I thoroughly enjoyed the book from Logen Ninefingers to Glokta to the Dogman and the crew that he travels with. Very fun and very well done for his first major novel in print.

Redmanphill over at Subject to Stupidity, linked here on my blog, did a much better review than I could do on this book, I recommend you give that a look if you are looking for a good novel to read... http://subjecttostupidity.blogspot.com/2011/03/blade-itself.html

For me I plan to pick up George RR Martin's Dance With Dragons next...I've been waiting a long time for that.

WAB Tournament Results - La Crosse's River City Hobbies

2011-08-16T13:27:00.002-05:00

With a relatively short amount of preparation and notification to people interested, we managed to pull off a tournament in Warhammer Ancients Battles with help from our local Fantasy Guru who is well experienced with doing Warhammer styled tournaments on the Fantasy side of things.

We managed to generate a good amount of interest, having at one point 16 individuals signed up to participate in the event in the worst time of the year for a tournament being summer, which is good considering that the Warhammer Fantasy tournaments sometimes struggles to fill 28 spots for a much more popular game. We did not want to collect entry fees and such and have to go about doing refunds to people on such short notice, so we just allowed verbal commitments, which allowed for people to back out at anytime. In the end we had 10 people show up. With the short notice and poor timing of the event we considered this to be a success, as we anticipated having 10-12 players.

The tournament was a 3 round event, using victory points to convert to battle points. Round 1 was Take and Hold the center, Round 2 was a Flanking attack, and Round 3 a pitched battle.

As you can see we had some good talent show up. Bennett and Mike Butcher are very well known for being extremely good converters, army builders and painters. Kevin and the Matts play a considerable amount and are very good tabletop generals. In the end, Bennett won the overall, Kevin was as usual the most jovial, Mike Butcher took home the top spot in Paint since Bennett was the Overall winner.

Name	Army	Battle	Sports	Paint	Total
Bennett Blalock-Doane	Early Imperial Romans	10	11	16	37
Kevin Bruins	Carthage 2nd Punic War Italy	10	15	12	37
Matt Herrbold	Crusaders 1.5	9	11	14	34
Mike Butcher	Saxons	6	12	15	32
Shawn welte	Imp. Romans	3	13	15	31
Jerrod Horstman	Shieldwall Normans	4	12	13	29
Mike Bates	SW Flanders	7	10	11	28
Rich Nelson	El Cid - African Invaders	2	12	10	24
Matt Jayjack	Vikings	7	11	5	23
Abe Warpinski	Ancient Greeks	2	13	5	20

And as you can see with my 3 in Battle points my Romans definitely struggled, I drew Kevin in the first round and played to a draw, Viking Matt in the second round and minor loss, and Flanders Mike in the Third round to a crushing defeat.

A special thanks to everyone that was interested and attended. We plan to do this again.

Edit: Its been brought to my attention by our Tournament Organizer that there are possibly a few errors in the paint scoring, due to a glitch in Xcel sorting. The winners do have correct scores, battle and sports are correct, Bennett's score is correct, and my Romans did tie with Mike Butcher, but the others may be off. We apologize for the errors.

More Marauding....the Horde grows with more painted minis

2011-08-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

This model was a really old conversion sitting in my box, dates back to my beastmen army in '03. Finally decided to paint it.

Even though its essentially a gor it'll work for my mutant marauders.

Pluse I kind of like the action of the pose.

The one below will be part of my great weapons marauder unit, another somewhat odd mutant.

And this pair. Again a converted Gor from 2003 that I never used, so I popped off the head and fixed him up. I have also used a few flagellants in the previous group of marauders so this will just be another addition. The weapon head is actually from skaven left over bits.

What's chaos without some grisly trophy?

Conradt the Crazed...the newest Marauder

2011-08-12T10:08:00.001-05:00

There are some miniatures that are aptly named, and "the Crazed" is very fitting for this Red Box Games, Tre Manor miniature. Just look at that face.

This along with the previous two are perhaps my favorites of Tre's sculpts. You cannot help but have an evil smile on your face while painting this miniatures melon.

Like the rest of the Helsvakt line and some of his Reaper sculpts, I really love this armor and its what I would envision Chaos Marauders wearing to battle, spiky and gladiatorial like.

The basing is typical of my Chaos Warriors army. HO Scale RR ballast, the rocks are fake, and just broken pieces of cured Apoxie Sculp. The base painting is five different dry brushed/stippled colors.

A fall like burned out static grass from Woodland Scenics and a likewise burned out arid Grass tufts from Joefix.

There your are Conradt the Crazed!

A pair of New Chaos Marauders Painted...Tre Manor miniatures

2011-08-10T18:52:00.000-05:00

Since I've decided to expand my Warriors of Chaos army with lots of new and different models and away slightly from just Games Workshop models, I have had absolutely no regrets. I rarely...let me repeat that...I RARELY just paint models out of the package that that I have not converted in some shape or form. The models below are two that I have not done any converting too, and I absolute love the looks and the detail to them.

This model is one of Tre Manor's Red Box Games, Helsvakt, miniatures and it is absolutely stunning in detail and a blast to paint. There is so much detail on it. The skulls on the cape in the back is really cool looking. I'm really loving all of the stuff Tre is doing for his own company and for Reaper Miniatures.

The shield below had a bunch of scars in the surface sculpted into it. So, I thought I would accentuate that in my color scheme and make the shield sort of glow a little.

The musculature is awesome, I'm a huge Bart Sears fan and his drawing style and this sort of reminds me of this style but in 3 dimensions.

Next up is another of Tre Manor's sculpts, this time from Reaper Miniatures. This model is huge. The Helsvakt is about 25 mm, this model is probably around 32 mm. Which is fine by me, humans are not all the same size, and I'm already mixing GW Gors, Ungors, both new and old with both new and old GW Marauders.

I believe the name of this miniature is Kord the Destroyer. The face detail just screams at me, I love it. The model itself is very reminiscent of his Helsvakt models.

I'll be using both of these models on the extreme flanks of the units. I'm very much looking forward to assembling the units in whole.

The Blue and Burnt Orange paint schemes are getting carried all the way through the army.

Both of these models are really going to influence me in my conversion and sculpting work in the future. Tre's technique for doing fur is definitely making me rethink how I have been doing it. The detail is top notch in my book. I'm putting final touches on a whole slew more of the marauders, so much more to follow on my Warriors of Chaos.

Khorne Chaos Space Marine Conversion...Chicago GD News & Go-Kart Racing Report

2011-07-31T09:03:00.000-05:00

Another Khornate Space Marine conversion. I do like this look. One of things I did on this model was to not use the cone head or have a tongue sticking out. I'm not a big fan of the tongues anyway.

The possessed legs dow mix well with other bits and the arms are cool also. Added a tattered tabard to the model also.

You can tell I'm beginning to run out of chaos bits in my bitz box, as I dipped into the loyalist box.

A very straight forward conversion. As is the Slaanesh one below. Which basically just got a tabard of leftover greenstuff.

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Friday Racing Report.

Not much to report on the Go-Karting front. I managed to get to the track, made a bunch of adjustments to the kart, got it down to a pound over minimum weight. They split us into two groups. Went out in the first heat with 4 of the fastest karts in the class. Started second to last and finished last, my set lasted good for about 2 laps, after that I was so loose that I thought I was going to hit the wall and porta-pot outside the fence every lap. The flagstand could see my side panel number for most of the laps as I tried to save it and still run as fast as possible. Terrible heat.

Heat 2, major adjustments in air pressure and moved in the left rear tire about a half inch. They inverted the field, I and another clone engine were on the front row. It's disgusting how much more torque the Animal 206 and Flathead Briggs makes, as they were lined up behind the clone on the pole and pushed him past me before we got to the green flag. So a restart this time the clone on the pole did not even get on the gas and they still pushed him past me to the point that the kart in third was equal with me at the green flag. They threw the green anyways, ridiculous. I drove it super deep into turn 1 and 2 and came out side by side with the polesitter. Ran this way for a couple laps, got around him after pinching down in the corner to scrub his momentum. Ran in first for a couple of laps, one of the faster flatheads caught me, ran side by side with him for 4 laps. Lost the lead and then lost another spot with a lap to go as I was getting super loose again. Better but not good. Made more adjustmenst in tire pressure, and went up a gear to see if I could get more straightaway speed. Wouldn't matter as the screw job was on and they called me for a 3-wide penalty that was B.S. in the corner and sent me to back about 6 laps in, the B.S. part about it was I was not the person that made it three wide and was under someone else, the guy that made it three wide stuck his nose under me and hit me in the left rear in the corner. They also sent my old man to the back a couple laps before me. Complained about the call after the race, and the track official I can tell does like me for whatever reason. And I did it nicely, basically asking for the reason, all he did was yell at me, so I got pissed and pushed him for an explanation and kept pushing for one until he just walked away shaking with anger. It was actually kind of funny, because I never even raised my voice, and I never got an explanation, other than it was a judgement call. Maybe its because the guy that hit me sponsered an event for them a few weeks ago. Doesn't matter, now I know the politics. lol.

My sister jumped in my dad's kart for the pit crew race, had 12 karts on the track. She took second in that after leading every lap except for the last one. Really good job for her first time out on the track, beating all of the guys. Take that guys, most of you got beat by a 38 year old girl.

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Chicago Gamesday Golden Demon News

I was unable to attend, recieved some emails from a couple of guys through our Yahoo group, but its cryptic in nature, I'm thinking something along the lines of the return of Vincent Hudon to competition, not sure though.
I don't have anything to report, other than Gamesday-U.S. will be in Chicago again next year as they had to sign a multi-year deal with the convention center to get a better rate from the Chicago Mob. Yay mob!, maybe I'll actually be able to attend next year because of this. Its within driving distance, must clear my calender.

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Next up.....Pictures of some freshly painted Chaos Warrior marauders.......hopefully.

Old Stuff Wednesday - July...Pre-Heresy Iron Warrior

2011-07-27T18:57:00.001-05:00

Gamesday Chicago is coming up this weekend. There should be lots of cool miniatures there, and I have already plugged the talent and the tutorials that they have planned. Back a few years ago, a group of talented people all got together to do a Pre-Heresy theme Chicago GD. I was contacted a bit later to help fill out the entries. There were a whole lot of others that committed to the project and which Primarch or Pre-heresy model they wanted to do. When I got involved Perturabo of the Iron Warriors was pretty much the only one left.

The above pic shows everyone that managed to complete their models. Top left was Angela Imerie's model, going clockwise from there was Chris Borer, James Craig, Tom Schadle, Nathan Commanse, Mike Butcher, Joe Orteza, mine, John Schaeffer. I can't remember the number golds, I know all made first cut, and honorable mention at least. Chris Borer's won him the slayer sword again.

Below are pics of my entry. I've never been happy with this model. The converting just was not my best. The paint was a sort of a turning point in becoming a much better painter. When I was contacted about doing this, I was the only one in the group that had never won a Golden Demon. I'm an army builder not a one off display piece maker.

Some more close-ups. Rather than do a complete sculpt of bigger-ized space marine, I elected to do a conversion. In hindsight that was the wrong thing to do. I do really like how the face turned out, as well as the sculpted crew cut.

I did custom build the shoulder pads, the mail tabard, and the Iron warrior skull on the greave.

I also built the large power hammer. For the backpack I wanted something that added that Iron Warrior feel, so the chainsword and bolter were just obvious choices to make.

The Iron Warrior skull icon on the shoulder was another piece that I sculpted, and also on the helmet. The blood effect on the sword bionic was a splatter and stipple effect with a tooth brush splatter and a paint brush stippling.

The base seemed semi-uninspired. By the time I was done with this miniature, I quite honestly hated it. So there you go. Old stuff infamy...not my best work, at the time it was pretty good for me, and most certainly not Golden Demon worthy. The best thing about it though was the respect I was shown by all of the higher level competitors, I was quite shocked by it. Many thanks to those guys for inviting me to participate.

A new Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine...WIP

2011-07-23T09:23:00.000-05:00

As with the Word Bearer, I'm getting better at doing Nurgle. The Beasts of Nurgle demons that I did on commission a while back using the Forgeworld Nurgle Ogryn, really opened my eyes as I mimic'd the FW sculpting style to blend in the parts.

This is a work in progress (WIP). I still need to finish up the head, adding the gas mask look.

So this is another of the Nurgle infested ones. Used a possessed bit for the conversion. The tabbard I think adds quite a bit to the model conversion.

The picture below shows the little puss blisters on the shoulder, that was done with the Mechanical pencil.

And if you want what looks like an popped blister, as shown on the leg below, use your tooth pick tool to prick it. You really need to have nasty thoughts when doing nurgle.

Normally when I do Nurgle I like to do some tentacle like things coming out of the back pack, but this time I elected not do so.

------
Another Friday night has past, but no Kart Racing report as I was unable to get to the track in time to race last night. So I just helped out with some of the other racers and my dad's kart. And the old man may have sold one of our home-made frames last night. What some of the karting companies sell their karts for is pretty outrageous when you sit down and think about it. And those karts are not any better than what we made in a garage. The old man finished second in our engine class last night in the Feature. But the Animal engines continue to dominate the racing. The mixed engine classes are not working, but I think the goal of the track is too get rid of the Clone and Briggs engines and get us all into Animals. Its kind of like watching a Grand Am or American Le Mans race with the different classes all running at the same time. Well there is always next week.

A new Word Bearer...In gray and green

2011-07-20T23:17:00.000-05:00

As I build various things, I will often assemble a Chaos Space Marine leftover from 40k never played nor built in my bitz box, and use up left over bits of GS or other types of putty. I'm still a fan of 40k models and the fluff. So this is my latest creation, meant to be another in an endless line of Word Bearers. I do like the possessed bits, lot of fun those are.

This is sort of a primer of sorts. I'm planning a return to 40k, building a new "Insert Color Here" Templar army. I've been working on the vehicles this past week, and they should be interesting, as I'm attempting to recapture the sort of ramshackle look that my Cerulean Templar motor pool had. My new breed of 40k Templars will certainly not be Black and White and will not even be Blue and White.

The drapings on this marine are something that I will use with the Templars. All the new Templar bitz, will definitely make me sharpen up my game a bit, so that my sculpting won't look completely out of place.

40k Chaos though does beckon me, but having done Fantasy Chaos since 2003, I think I need a bit of break from chaos. Once my Fantasy Chaos Warrior army is mostly done then I will completely move onto Orcs and 40k Templars and Vikings and back to my WAB Crusaders now that Conquest Games has announced that they are going to do Plastic Infantry. That should give me the break that I need from Chaos, and take care of the next few years of Hobby time.

Skaven War Litter III Conversion...done

2011-07-17T21:51:00.000-05:00

I've done two other conversions of Skaven Warlitters. While I thought they were good conversions, I was not as happy with how the litter looked. The model below is stuck to the base with some poster putty.

The primary reason for not really caring for the way the litter turned out, was the poles were upright that the Storm Vermin carrying the litter were holding on to.

So for this one I decided to fix that. And that fix works very nicely. This is what I envisisioned in the first place.

For the Lord model I used the one out of the basic boxed set. Its a very cool looking model, for a simplistic two piece miniature.

The Lord model does lean way forward so I knew I need to compensate for that by leaning the entire platform forward. Did this by building up the base with Apoxie Sculp.

Below is another angle of the litter. The Lord model is also on this big rock, I removed that with my dremel and then sculpted in the wood grain of the platform.

This one I'm happy with. The base and big rat are one piece. The front bearer platform and Lord are another piece. The storm vermin in the back is separate. And the banner is brass tube and removable, pinned to the platform. Doing it in pieces like this will make it much easier to paint. Assemble after painting.

All the lessons learned are being applied to an orc palanquin that I'm building from my new fantasy army. It should look pretty cool when I'm done.

Chicago Gamesday....Hobby Instructionals and Q&A

2011-07-16T09:56:00.000-05:00

Games Workshop's Chicago Gamesday is July 30, 2011. Generally a decent event. I've had the pleasure over a number years of taking part in the Golden Demon Lounge at Chicago Gamesday, even though I have never won a Golden Demon, that's what knowing people and internet imfamy gets you sometimes. But anyways, this is good stuff, no matter what your level is in the hobby. We all gather together, mostly as friends to talk shop, and boy we love the hobby and to talk about the hobby. Its a great place to learn and see the various techniques being applied.

Below is the schedule, if you can make it to this event, this is my recommended must see if you love converting and painting miniatures like I do. I know many of the people sitting at these tables, none of them are arrogant, no question is a stupid question, and these guys have unquestionable ability in the hobby and are willing to share it with you. I, unfortunately, will be unable to attend this year, otherwise you would see me scheduled below. I love doing this kind of thing.

9:00AM - 10:00AM
Open Lounge: Here is your chance to show off your 2011 Golden Demon entries before they go in the display cases. Stop by the Demon Lounge before you enter to discuss your entries and get feedback from fellow painters. Several previous Golden Demon and Slayer sword winners will be on hand if you would like an expert's critique.

10:00AM - 11:00AM
Kent Plumb - General Q & A
Chris Borer - Putty Conversion, Sculpting & General Q & A
Dave Pauwels - General Q & A
Brice Cocanour - Blending, Freehand Demos & General Q & A
James Craig - Weathering techniques for armor and vehicles & General Q & A

11:00AM-Noon
Todd Swanson - Painting Demos, Miniature Conversion & General Q & A
Kirill Zhilkov - General Q & A
Dave Taylor - Telling a Story with your Painting and Modeling & General Q & A
Chris Borer - Putty Conversion, Sculpting & General Q & A
Dave Pauwels - General Q & A
James Craig - Weathering techniques for armor and vehicles & General Q & A

Noon-1:00PM
Brian Sobb - General Q & A
Kent Plumb - General Q & A
Jeffery Bowden - Non Metallic Metal (NMM) & General Q & A
Chad Patrick - True Metallics & General Q & A
Yuri Chinenov - General Q & A
Drew Dresher - General Q & A

1:00PM-2:00PM
Todd Swanson - Painting Demos, Miniature Conversion & General Q & A
Brian Sobb - General Q & A
Brice Cocanour - Blending, Freehand Demos & General Q & A
Bennett Blalock-Doane - Building a Solid Basecoat for Highlighting & General Q & A

2:00PM-3:00PM
Brian Sobb - General Q & A
Kirill Zhilkov - General Q & A
Dave Taylor - Consistency in your Army Painting & General Q & A
James Craig - General Q & A

3:00PM-4:00PM
Kent Plumb - General Q & A
Bennett Blalock-Doane - Building a Solid Basecoat for Highlighting & General Q & A
Chad Patrick - True Metallics & General Q & A

There are a few people on the list I don't know that are newer additions to our group.

Kent is a huge space wolves fan, when I first started in this hobby his space wolves army was something I loved and inspired to.

Chris Borer is someone that to me was almost legendary in the hobby, I have always loved his models, they are stunning in sculpting/converting detail and the paint is awesome. I think he has won like 5 slayer swords or something amazing like that. When I first met him quite a few years ago at Adepticon, he was the one giving my armies praise.

Dave Taylor, yes that Dave Taylor. He needs no introduction.

Dave Pauwels, for those of you that don't know, he is part of Gorgon Miniatures, and avid historical gamer and modeler also. And a very realistic like painter, exceptional detail.

James Craig, he's Canadian. lol. A great guy, very good converter, painter, sculpter, teacher. Has a beastman army that is simply amazing. And always a smile.

Brice, I don't know well, but I know his work and know his love of the hobby. He will teach what he knows.

Bennett Blalock-Doane, this kid is absolutely amazing. You can learn awful lot from him. I've been contemplating asking him to give me some tutoring for a couple years now. His armies are the most unbelieveable things I have ever seen in person. Always look forward to what he does next.

Brian is another awesome painter, and loves to talk shop with people. Always enjoy visiting with him.

Todd Swanson, I've yet to meet him in person, but I know his work and its simply awesome. Thank him for organizing our little group of disorganized troopers, I think James has normally done this in the past.

Kirill, I do not know him personally, but his work is stunning.

Jeffrey, Chad, Yuri, and Drew, are new to me, I have never met them.

So there you go guys, if you are going, sit down with these guys, you will learn something in our wonderful hobby. It does not matter what level you are at in the hobby. Seeing things done and being personally instructed is not something to be avoided.

Some racing pics

2011-07-15T21:30:00.000-05:00

I have been racing pretty much every Friday night this summer. This week it was the county's annual fair week so the racing schedule was actually changed to Wednesday and Sunday nights. Which can't make either one. So here are some photos from a couple of weeks ago that a spectator had shot for me old man and I.

Below is picture taken of karts back in the pit area. Along with my crazy niece. It was her first time at the track and we have had her in a kart on our dirt track. For a 9 year old girl she runs the kart fairly well, but this was whole different amount of speed, and she really did not know what to make of it.

Here's a shot from a spectator. The old man, Deathwish is in the orange 04, and I'm outside of him in the blue and black kart. Our seats are all wrong for banked oval speedway racing, the seats are actually meant for road racing. So we are probably losing a couple of tenths of a second in lap time or more because of that. Here we are just getting started about third row back in a Heat Race.

This one was from lap 2 in the second heat race. We got all bottled up in the corner. The blue kart in the wall ran over my rear bumper and tire, that is why I'm so high up on the track behind Deathwish in the orange kart. When he ran over my tire, it lifted his nose about even with my head, I felt him hit me and looked over my shoulder and saw nothing but the bottom of the nose of his kart. I kept my foot in the gas so he would not land on me. The 96 in the hay bale wall also hit him and so did the zebra striped kart in the above photo. The 96 went straight through the wall, we are going around 55 mph when we hit this corner.

And the aftermath. The zebra stiped kart I was told cleared the hay bales when she ran up over the 96, and she flipped over as she hit the catch fence. When they got to her the kart was laying on top of her. Thankfully she was alright, just a 6 inch long surface cut on her one leg and ruined pair of jeans. She is the only female racing in our Adult class, and young at that.

And she is a trooper, she got back on the track the very next week to race. We are all just a little crazy.

Upcoming Projects...

2011-07-10T22:59:00.000-05:00

Nothing really to post today picture wise, but I thought I would update on a few things. One, I'm not currently accepting any new commissions. I'm in the process of looking for a new place to live and have begun packing things. I will however be continuing the work on the VC Bashin' Orks. I have a dedicated tub for this commission.
The Go-Karting is sucking away some of my war games hobby time, but that is okay, its refreshing to me to be competing again on some level. Over the fourth I along with my father participated in a local go-karting charity race. We did not race, even though a contestant begged me to drive her kart, but we demonstrated what can really be done with actually racing karts. I think the charity racers were rather shocked when they realized they were not going all that fast. Last Friday night I finished second in my engine class in the end of the night feature race, but that was 7th overall. We had 14 entries in our Adult Sportsman Class and did a semi-feature. I was unable to qualify directly into the feature, and had to race my way in through the semi-feature which was not very hard to do, with exception of one of the competitors many attempts to wreck me lap after lap. Paid him back in the feature. Most of the faster engines finished well ahead of me, just don't have the straight-away speed to keep up at the moment and I finished about 20 feet behind the fastest Honda Clone engined kart in the field.

Current projects:
Finish my Chaos Warriors: I'm working on it, just not making much progress.
Paint a few more Roman Auxilliary Archers. I thought I was done with Romans, but decided I need some more.
Starting to assemble the first elements of my orc fantasy army. This should be my best army yet. Its going to be over the top crazy and brutal. Matter of fact, "Brutality" is my theme for the army.

I'm also returning to 40k. 8th edition Fantasy has not been something that I have enjoyed to play. And I miss 40k modeling, and I have a huge Space Marine bitz box. So loyalist Space Marine DIY chapter here I come. I'm planning to reinvent my "Insert Color Here" Templar army, this time with probably a red and white paint scheme. I started some conversions this weekend on the Devastator squad.

This fall I plan to begin making my Dark Ages army for Warhammer Ancients and Clash of Empires. I'll be doing Danes, using the Gripping Beast plastic viking shield wall. Looking forward to this. I really do not know that much about Viking history, looking forward to doing a little bit of research on it as I have really enjoyed reading Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series of novels.

My WAB Knight Unit...Painted

2011-07-01T22:30:00.001-05:00

These are my WAB knights. Some of them are my converted Perry Miniatures knights mixed with the Perry’s Holy Order/Hospitaller Knights.

The ones without hoods and sleeve-less surcoats are my conversions. I think this unit of knights turned out pretty good. I was attempting to get them out of the First Crusade in the 1090s, into more of the late Second and Third Crusades.

I also played around a bit with color schemes, make some of them Knights of Jeruselem, some Ibelin color schemes, Franks, English, and Spaniard themes. Note some of the kite shields are actually GW High Elves shields from their foot infantry, that made conversion of the shields much easier.

The basing is HO scale railroad ballast, some tiny stones, with Joefix grass tufts, static grass, and GW Staw.

I'm extremely happy with the way the horses turned out. I really wish that the Perry's someday convert some of their horses to give them caparisons, because its a lot of work to do.

The above is very good picture of a couple of the horses.

Another angle. As you can see in the front knight I also updated one of the helms. The musician horse is kind of a miscast, but it does have a very dynamic look to it.

I do want to be able to play these guys across alot of periods from the Iberian Pennisula all the way to the Holy Land. So there you have it for now. That is it for my WAB knights for awhile. I will come back to them later this year. Next up I return to painting the Chaos Warriors and few Roman Auxilliaries with them.

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Well spent another night also at the race track tonight. It started out with an air temperature of 101 F, not exactly the kind of night that you want to put on a jacket, gloves, and a helmet on. The heat did effect me early. I'm also battling some sinus issues that have caused a build up of fluid in one of ears, not really helping my equilibrium. Did not drive well and did not drive clean, kept getting caught up in little things on the track and either getting spun out or just flat spinning out. But that said, I definitely made huge gains in speed. So much so that my Old Man had nothing for me. The feature was kind of comical, as I and my old man got into each other. Tomorrow we will tear apart his engine and see why he was down on power. With how things went tonight I look forward to next week, hopefully it will be a bit cooler. My go-kart's handling keeps getting better.

New Spawn….Influenced by the Disc and a Buddy

2011-06-27T21:52:00.001-05:00

As things come together, you always get new ideas and the Tzeentch disc that was previously shown gave me some ideas on a new chaos spawn. The ideas were mainly to help tie more of this stuff together in the army. My previous chaos spawn for this army, affectionately known as Blue Spawn and Brown Spawn, were based on the metal chaos troll bodies and current plastic spawn kit, respectively. I do very much like both of them and I am always toying with the ideas of how to include more spawn in my army lists. They are very quirky in games and cause havoc in both sides, and I enjoy running them as a pair.

So, how to do that? Well, my buddy Mike Butcher created these wonderful looking models back a few years ago for his Nurgle Demon army.

And my Blue Spawn uses an ogre head on the chaos troll body, so combining that I came up with this…

It uses a rat ogre body left over from the Warhammer Fantasy boxed set. I particularly liked how Mike tied together the ogre head and the lower jaw of the tyranid heads on his models, so I attempted to do something very similar in hopes that this ties together better with my disc.

Not sure what I will do with the paint schemes just yet, but they should all tie together with the other spawn. I do really like the use of the armor on these rat ogres, they do kind of resemble the armor on some of my marauders. I’ll probably incorporate some of the armor elements into my Chaos Ogres down the road.

This will be one of those freaky models. I'm very much looking forward to the completion of it.

For the second spawn, I will go back to the rat ogre body from the box set and combined in some more tyranid pieces in the conversion.

Until next time...

My Chaos Warrior Unit Beginning to Take Shape

2011-06-25T12:30:00.000-05:00

This style of chaos warrior conversion has been done a lot and it’s a fairly easy and straight forward conversion to do. Simply use chaos knight lance bits and attach them to the your normal chaos warrior and wah-lah, you have a chaos warrior with a halberd. Locally, Jerrod and Jake here my town have done this with their chaos warriors and they make for very nice looking models.

So I’ve taken that idea and expanded on it a bit, changing some of the things up using some different posing and adding a number of detail bits and doing a bit of conversion to them, afterall mutations are my theme. The guy next to the musician has a shield inspired by the Wulfrik character model. The musician is from the GW Chosen line of miniatures, and I did give him a cape.

To carry through on that mutant theme, some of the models got beastmen legs and some got bloodletter legs, all left over bits from other conversions. Like the VC Bashin’ Orcs, I did not want to repeat a single head in the unit, so you see I did do some converting on the helmets also.

And yes you may notice that I am a model short to make a rank in the back, I will be adding a few more models and plan to build a unit filler model to help out with that.

A shot of the back rank. I like how GW added the skulls hanging down the back of the capes, but as you see there is not a lot of variety there. So I added some heads. I saw Redmanphill, over at Subject to Stupidity, doing a bit of press-molding in a couple posts recently. Press molding is has it places in converting and usually it is easier to do than carving up a piece of plastic. That is the method I used here for the heads that are hanging down on the capes.

The models above sport some more press mold heads. I went back to the head technique that I used for my Khorne Knights also using the halberd blades from GW's Storm Vermin and clipping the horns. I think this gives the helms a very menacing look. Below is another look at one of those heads, along with a bit of a different look on holding the halberd.

And below is a look at my left flank, you don't want to mess with those guys.

And yes, I do have a complete unit of metal chosen models sitting in primer waiting for paint work, I do like those models as they are, but with them I gave each one a different head.

Friday Speed at the Track....

2011-06-24T23:04:00.000-05:00

Another Friday night, another race and even more fun. My old man and I are beginning to really hit on things on the handling and that is really making the difference on speed and drive ability. This track we are racing on is really a momentum track and if you get to racing someone, you are going to lose that momentum.

Tonight we had so many entry in our class that they split the field in two for the heats. The old man was in one group, I was in the other.

Heat 1, I started outside the pole. The guy inside row 2 push me up the track in turn 1, got to high in the groove, got passed by him and another kart. By the end of the race I got one spot back and finished third.

Heat 2, I started outside row two. Before we finished lap 1 the polesitter was getting freight trained into turn 3 and he lost it on the inside, hooked me and took us to the wall. I was on the brakes and I remember looking over at him and he was still on the gas pedal, so I was like "No, No, No, get off the gas." I was along for the ride. He finally broke free from me went into the wall hard, I nosed it in to the wall. He hit me hard enough to break my side panel, but not doing anything else. Since we did not finish the lap, reverted to the double file start, go my spot back. We restarted, with me pushing the outside pole sitter down through the corner and down the front straight away. He stuck into turn 1 got through, by turn 3, I was in second. Lap 2 I also got him, tucked back up behind him, knew I had him this lap, and by lap 3 I was first. Held first until 3 to go and got passed by a 2 time national karting champ that was racing with us tonight. Finished 2nd.

20 lap Feature, based on finishes by the two heats, we have 12 karts on a 1/8 th mile track. I'm starting outside of row 2 right behind the 2 time national champ. He was running a flathead Briggs, the pole sitter was running a clone, and the kart starting 3rd was an Animal 206. My old man was right behind me. Took a couple trys to get a good start, I was running 4th, about lap 6 or 7 we had a caution for someone that spun out. So single file restart, well the front 3 got away from me by about 20 feet, but I had a good gap between me and those behind me. Another 4-5 laps we started catching lap traffic, the guy that ran me into the wall in Heat 2. The flag man gave him the move over flag for the first three, but when I got to him the flag man didn't do it and the guy held me up a little. Got by and basically lost the leaders so ran the rest of the race in 4th, but 2nd in the clone engine class. I almost lost it with 3 to go and slammed the wall, but did a dirt track save. Thank you dirt track racing, the nice thing about racing on dirt and then going to asphalt is that you have learned how to drive a loose kart.

The kart set up is right, but I need a bit more speed.

More Chaos Marauders

2011-06-23T18:26:00.000-05:00

I was going through my bitz boxes recently and noted that I only had a few pieces left over for marauder bodies and beastmen bodies, so I thought I may as well use them up. I’m always running short on marauders anyways.

So here are some of the models that I came up with and converted, they ought to fit in well with my current mutated marauders.

The above, I had a torso leftover from an old metal centigor. Time to use it up.

I still have a ton of torsos leftover from converting Knightgors, so I may need to bitz order some more chaos warrior pieces down the road and use those up.

These guys below wll be placed in the middle ranks, so I'm not concerned that much with the shoulder joint issues. I did cut the gauntlets on a couple to rotate the hands.