Let there be bloody war...The next Khorne Herald

The next of my Khorne Heralds on foot. Like the previous I wanted to armor him up a bit more than my regular blood letters.

Also thought about changing up the weapons to make him stand out a bit more. This one I gave an axe. A sort of brutal looking axe. Something I have had for awhile. Its from Reaper Miniatures.


The basing is done up like the rest of my minis in this army, blood pools with heads and sometimes demonic hands reaching up from the depths of hell.

Another view of the head in the blood pool and the oposite side of the axe.

The other reason to paint your weapons like this is to play up the whole Hellstorm Blade demonic weapon bit.

So there you have it the second herald on foot.

New Khorne Demonic Herald...Finished Pics

My Khorne Demon army is in need of reinforcements and a bit of restructuring to be playable in 8th edition. Definitely need more infantry, and I also decided to build some heralds on foot.


If you are going to give them Armor of Khorne, then give them armor. Basically with this guy I decided to armor him up a bit more than my regular bloodletters.

I also chose to make him a bit more distinguishable by giving him the bold orangish sword.

So there you have the first of a couple of new heralds.

More Knights and a Centaur WIP

Well, to sort of continue that khorne knight theme, next up is the banner man WIP.

I've chosen to use a lance and combine that with the bloodletter banner. The backside of the banner shows the transition piece.

Something I forgot to mention in the previous post and in my response in the comments was that I also build a support for the cape to help get the flowing aspect. In the next pic you can see what I typically do for a support, just a basic wedge of putty applied to the model and then I stretch it a bit.

Now for the centaur. I had an older model that I did more my marauders, a couple of years ago, but I got rid of it because ite was based on the old chaos knight horse and really would not fit with the new knights.

This a project I've been thinking about for quite a while and needed to take a bit of action on. Here I'm just building the basic torso for the big chaos knight horse. I plan to just make the basic shape and then cast the blanks to add details. The torso itself will be sort of like a spacemarine. I probably be 3 or 4 of these and use the best ones for the casts, and also do that because the horses are bit different too.

And when I say space marine like, what I mean by that is that I will have a socket for a head and then flat areas to pin the arms to at the shoulders. The bottom of the torso will have a piece that goes down into the horse. And the shoulder guards will be added afterwards.

So there is the start to another model for my mutant marauder horde.

A new Chaos Knight

This is one of my new Khorne knights. There are some many details on these models. So, a lot of my detailing is going to lie in the paint work when I do that.

The one thing I think is missing with the GW knights is that they do not have capes, so I plan to add capes to a lot of mine. When doing capes, I like to use brown stuff, as BS is easier to get smooth, cures much stiffer than GS, and takes better to getting nice sharp edges. I wanted this cape to have a nice central area for me to do some hand painted details on.

The conversion work was pretty simple on this model. A sword from the bloodletters to emphazize the Khorne marking. I'm quite happy with the helmets, you are going to see a lot of that on my stuff to come. I'm a fan of Adrian Smith's art work and was looking for an easy way to mimic some of that, and I think I hit on it.

I have all of these left over skull pieces from the flagellants kits so, its high time I start using them.

Work in progress knight

Once and awhile I like to pick up a model that I don't feel I have to convert and just paint. Its a rare occasion for me. I like changing things. I've had this knight for a few years now.

Its a Werner Klonke sculpt for Reaper Miniatures. He is one of my favorite sculptors.


The reds are my normal blend of 6-7 different reds, the whites are blends of Reaper Master Series Bone triad over Vallejo English Uniform some nice soft, warm bone colors, absolutely love that triad. If you are having trouble painting bone, give their bone triads a try, they have a warm triad and a cool gray tone like triad.


The metals are also a Reaper Master Series Triad. I must admit I attempted to use them on a few of my Romans, and I quickly gave up on using them, I was not getting what I wanted out of them quick enough to paint that army in a short amount of time. But they work well when you have time to dwell on a single model. I need a bit more time with them before using them in army painting. In the mean time I've stuck with my my Vallejo metals on the army stuff.

Still have a ways to go, I'll finish sometime, in between some project.

You'll note that the model is stuck on top of a lid. I do quite a few help seminars and tutorials locally, and I always get these odd looks when I pull out GW paint pots with a bit of poster putty on them, and then commence to gathering based miniatures and sticking them on the pots and putty, to hold and paint. My whole point in doing this is that I simply despise GW's paint pot, and this, I think is all its good for.

Orc Shaman Conversion #1 Finished

Quite awhile back I had shown some work in progress pics of this orc shaman. This is part of the commissioned orc army to go along with Orc Boyz Unit #1. The model is simply based off of a normal orc boy model.

I had an older bare foot orc model that I mutilated awhile ago, so the feet I thought were suitable for this model. I also wanted to give him a hood and several pouches.

The troll skull is from skull pass. Added a cauldron.

I think the added details on the cloak helped out.

Wasn't sure if I could pull off the hands or not, the one holding the skull came out okay, but in hindsight I should have spread the fingers apart. Will have to do that next time.

A new Wizard of Chaos

Once and awhile you find a miniature, that you just do not want to change, because it screams something. Well this Tre Manor Red Box Games' mini is one of those.

I just picked this up. It is a tad bit on the small side being only 25 mm, but I think putting it up on a rock of apoxie sculp will with that. This will definitely be one of my chaos sorcerers for my Warriors of Chaos army.

Orc Boyz...Unit #1 Wrap Up

Well here is the wrap up of the first commissioned orc boy unit. I and the client are happy with how they turned out.

I based the models on Gale Force 9 magnetic bases at the request of the client. Its not the first time I’ve used them, but I have noticed sometimes you get a batch that just are not real clean on the cut edges, so I needed to get an Xacto out and shave them a bit.

You will also notice that I used Aves Apoxie sculp on the bases, that’s the white stuff that you see on the GF9 bases. I did this for areas where the models needed a slight repositioning in height to offset model conflicts or needed some special way of supporting the model itself. When you do modeling with a lot of crazy conversions, you will sometimes need to do this just to eliminate conflicts in the rank and file. In 40k, I was always able to get away with crazy poses, in Fantasy not quite as much, but sometimes a couple to a few millimeters of height change on just how you mount that crazy pose will let you get away with it.

As part of the commission, I built the custom movement tray out of plasti-card. I used the apoxie sculp to around the outsides to get that nice flowing transition up to the bases. Typically I make the edges wider than say what GW does with their trays for a couple of reasons:
1. Eye-candy: It makes it very easy to add subtle little details off on the edges of the tray to add to the overall appearance of the models.
2. Protection: I have crazy poses or sometimes the models hang way out over the edges of small trays like the GW or GF9 trays. When you spend hours detailing your miniatures, the last thing you want is a player that has old metal models being slammed into your models on the gaming table chipping off paint, or worse yet potentially damaging some fragile detail. It is not that people mean to do it, it just happens, so this is just another step that I do help protect things.

I also lined the interior of the movement tray with the GF9 magnetic sheet that is backed with an adhesive.

You will note on the back side of the movement tray I left it open. I’ve been doing that recently for most of my stuff, so that if I add characters displacing regular models, or want to add a few models to the unit they can basically ride along on the back of the tray. Another thing I do is make the interior of the tray, just a bit larger allowing for a slightly looser packing of the bases, normally not much more that 2-3 mm.

Again the client wanted these boyz to appear as if they are beating on Vampire Counts, so I carried the theme throughout with this unit against zombies. The next unit will be beating on the poor old skeletons. The biggest and hardest boyz get put in the front, because dey’s da best. With all of the craziness going on with the poses it’s a good idea to mark down in some form of code, how and where they are to be placed within the unit, so that the jigsaw puzzle is easier to put together. To do this I simply use a Paint Marker on the bottom of the base to write down the code.





So there you have it, commissioned Orc Boyz unit #1. Next up Unit #2. One thing about this is that with building these units on commission, it has given me ideas on what to do with my boyz in the near future. I do plan to do a Fantasy Orc army, the one difference will be that my army will be beating the hell out of humans, Empire and Bretonians, lots of planned carnage, that hopefully I can pull off. For my army I’m starting with the modeling of the Black Orcs and building them as I go with this commission, so as to not burn myself out.

Orc Boyz...Unit #1 Misc Pics

Well to kind of wrap up the first unit of the commissioned orc boyz are some of the miscellaneous pieces and some additional pics. I did like the looks of that wounded orc in the Empire box, so I thought I would build one of my own for this unit.

Again just slight changes to the heads and weapons. Also had decided early on to use some different shields.

Different angles of a pair of models that are in the front rank. One of the nobs...kind of doubling as a big 'un or possible boss/champ.

As always much more to come. After yesterday's tournament, I'm not sure that I will play another until I have new army, one that is suitable to 8th edition.

8th edition Tourney Result.....

1 win and two loses. Ouch, learning new rules on the fly is rough. Made some mistakes, forgot some things. My overall impression of the 8th edition rule changes is not a positive one, and its not just because of losing some games. I don't like the randomness of charges, I don't like the magic phase at all, and not really crazy about the combat phase which use to be my favorite phase of the game. Oh well.

It was still fun to play three oponents that I have seen at tourneys for a number of years and two of which I have never played.

In the end, I took home Player's Choice for my Khorne Demon army, which featured a bunch of new blood letters and khorne heralds. You will see pics of them soon, as my work room is getting put back together.

First Tournament in 8th Edition WHFB

Well....this weekend is my first tourney in 8th. Should be interesting considering I've played just two games and just recently read the new rulebook. And I'm playing it with a slighlty retooled Khorne Demon army using a few new old models that I'll have pictures of shortly as a small expansion of my 2008 Khorne army. This is not the army I want to use in 8th, not sure it'll do very well in this edition. My WoC army is not done, so the KDoC will have do. I'll be interested to see if I get out done in the combat, as this was a combat monster in the previous edition. Magic and shooting has always been its bane, that certainly won't change.