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

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

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. 

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

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

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.

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

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.

CONAN...how many names do you need?

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

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.....

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

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

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?