Next in the Madhouse Viking Saga...

Well this is the third unit of my Vikings.  Everything complete except for the bannerman, which at the moment the spearman is just a place holder.  Like the other units there is a varitey of conversions and more than just Gripping Beast pieces involved. 

 Like the previous units spears in the second rank, a variety of handweapons in the front and back.  One berserker located next to the character.

A lot of  missing shields, but again I will be painting and transfering a bunch of those and attaching them later.

With extra frontage on the movement trays there will be more eye candy.  Basing will probably be a spring / summer blend with rock out croppings. Most of my armies the last couple of years have had a real dead grass / fall look, so this will get something different.

I have another unit chock full of converting and then a bunch of left overs.  I'll also be building a unit of Saxon Thegns for allies.   I still have all of the banner men to build yet, have not decided on how I will do those just yet.

The Madhouse Saga Continues...

Well with the rainout, I had time to assemble Viking Unit #2. Still have tons more models built and ready for assembling.  Like the other unit this will have lots of single minis on 20mm bases in the front, and the longer 20mm deep bases in the second rank with the spears. 

There is a variety of bits being used on these.  In the front rank I've mixed Warlord Games minis with the Gripping Beast minis also.  Barbarian Warlord heads work with the GB plastics.  As you can see my two berserkers for this unit are Warlord barbarians.  The one guy on the right end is also from the barbarians.  The third guy from the right with the two handed axe actually uses the two handed axe arms from War Factory Games, which mate up quite well with the GB plastic torso.

About half of the second rank of spear have not been glued to the bases, to make it easier to paint them, especially with multiple figures being placed on the same base.  After painting I will adhere them to the base in the proper location.  I actually mark the base and the model so I know where to put them.   

I also have left many of the shields off of the models purposely, as I plan to paint a number of them separately then attach them later.  As I stated with the previous movement tray, I'll be adding eye candy to the front.  I still need to model that stuff and cast it up.

So there is the second unit.  The third unit is coming....my Viking Saga continues....

The Vikings....The Madhouse Saga begins

Well after seeing the deflating news about Warhammer Ancients today, my enthusiasm for finishing my Vikings was definitely hurt, not killed, but hurt.

Those that know me, know my general disdain for metal castings, and my love for plastics.  I do like these GB Plastic Vikings, great looking minis.  The metals I have are character models that I picked up that included a number of henchmen also in metal.  The quality of the GB metals is as good as Reaper and Foundry and Red Box Games and Avatars of War, and a little better than the Perry stuff that I have worked with.  That said they are still a pain the arse to clean-up, lots of dremel work, filing, and sanding to get rid of rough spots and pits and miscasts and ugly flash lines.  And don't get me started on the crap for weapons.   Thankfully GB Plastics are loaded with extra weapons, so I got rid of the metal crap and moved to plastic, an easy and cool transition.

 So anyways, the above is the mock up of the first unit.  I'll do some more pics of some of the conversion work.  I've done a lot of head swaps and added some extras here and there.

No banner yet, but the one uninspired metal guy in the middle will be perfect for holding that banner.  My character will be the third guy from the left, next to the Berserker and the Musician. The front rank is all mounted on single 20 mm bases.

The entire second rank will be armed with throwing spears in all of the units and are on 20x 40, 20 x 60, or 20 x 80 mm bases.  Back ranks are 20 mm square or 20x40 bases.  On the movement trays, I have switched up my method.  I've decided to go with the narrow sides, as I can see these units being massed closely together, much different than my crusaders.  The front will eventually get some eye-candy.  What's a good viking unit without some carnage and pillaging.

Alot more to come on my Danes / Vikings.

Some Weird News, Warhammer Historical...Gone

"Warhammer Historical Has Now Closed.  We can no longer accept any further orders for our products

We would like to thank our customers who have purchased our publications over the years and hope you will continue to get many more years of gaming enjoyment from them

If you have any queries regarding orders that have been placed with Warhammer Historical please
contact the Forge World Customer Service team"

A direct excerpt taken from what used to be the historical site.  Just another long line of what appears to be stupid things done by Gamesworkshop and it's affiliates.  Although I'm not surprised by the actions, they don't do any historical miniatures, so why build a game. 

I love the core Warhammer rules, they work well and WAB 2.0 is a very good system, the AoA book is an awesome source of lists.  So it saddens me to see this, for I dislike Hail Caesar and I don't know what this will mean for the future of the tournament scene. Locally, I think people will continue to play, but what drives many people to play games here in the midwest is the tournament scene, its a way for people with like minds get together to have fun and play hard.  Hail Caesar is not equipped to deal with tourneys in my opinion, I'm definitely not a convert.  I think Black Powder is fine for Napoleonics and such, but not as a Ancients Games Set of Rules. 

Maybe someone purchased it, but I doubt that very much.  I may have to consider Clash of Empires, as I forsee a mass exodus of players from Warhammer Ancient Battles.  I could be wrong, but its possible.   

I do plan to order SAGA as I get more in to the Dark Ages and look forward to some smaller skirmish styled games. 

Gripping Beast Plastic Saxons....

I picked up a box of Gripping Beast Plastic Saxon Thegns. They are very much like the GBP Vikings, accept the bodies do have little crucifixes on them and slightly different poses. They also of course have different heads that have Saxon type helmets for the most part and more swords than what comes with the vikings. The shield bosses are also slightly different than the Vikings. Like the Viking box they come with two command sprues, each have dracos for banners. One of the things I have yet to figure out with the Vikings is what I will do for banners. It’s a very nice looking set, good quality for $0.72 a model. I just wish they made plastic Fyrd also. As I look around at alot forums for historical miniatures, I see this immense dislike of plastics by historical army builders. I really do not understand. I don't notice that as much with Fantasy and Sci-fi miniatures.  They apparently hate plastic and multi-poses, and the ability that plastic gives one for variety. And complain that they have too much flash and the undercut and detail is not as good as metal, and they don’t paint as well, and they are expensive, and blah blah blah. I’ve yet find that flash thing to be a problem. I have also worked with enough historical miniatures in metal to find that miscasts are very much prevalent and annoying, and the metal castings that I have worked with have tremendous amounts of flash on them requiring a great deal of effort and a variety of tools to remove that flash. This I have found to be the case even with what I consider the best of the manufacturers, Perry Miniatures. As to detail, some of the manufacturers struggle with that in plastic such as Wargames Factory and to a much lesser degree Conquest Games on the their Norman riders. It certainly has not been the case with the Warlord Games, Victrix, Gripping Beast, and Perry Miniatures plastics that I have worked with. I guess the way I sum these people’s displeasure is that they are for the most part people who are old fogeys, gamers who do like the hobby aspect, and people who generally like paint chipping off their metals and watching the occasional miniature shatter and or bend when dropped on the floor. My experience is that my paint work lasts and bonds much better to the plastic. In using plastic, I do not really worry about basing my models with expensive magnetic bases. When you tip over the plastic model on a hard and abrasive gaming table you generally don’t worry about bending or chipping of the paint than you would if that model was metal. I find that if the plastics have flash they are much easier to clean up than metal, a dull #11 xacto blade works just fine. I find that changing poses and converting to be much less work than when working with metal. Most of the plastic kits are generally easy to assemble and give you many choices on how to rank them up. The metals on the other hand are typically stale and boring with very few poses. If you mix the two then you can often get the best of both worlds.  For me the hobby is as important as the game.  Besides why complain about plastic, if you don't like them, don't buy them, because there are plenty of other manufacturers out there that make periods in all metal, support them and stop your bitching, leave my plastics alone.

I'm not slacking & a Crossover with Lost In the Warp

Just so you know, I'm not slacking, just in the middle of building a ton of stuff at the moment as I expand my WAB horizons into a Shield Wall or four.  Below is what is currently on my drawing table, not my Warhammer table which has overflowed. 

And those are just the miniatures that I'm green stuffing, I have whole bin full of assembled Vikings, and getting some movement trays ready...more to follow.

And while on the subject of green stuffing, my friend James aka tkkultist from Lost In the Warp, and myself have agreed to do a blog crossover of sorts.  For those that don't know, James was part of the infamous Team North America:  Primarchs Project and is a multi-time GW Demon award winner. 

James and I share a mutual like of Beastmen, and I can say that I have been a fan of his work for many years.  The crossover will be that I will build a Khorne inspired beastman Gor for James's Beastmen Army, and he will build an anything goes Mutant Marauder for my Warriors of Chaos Army.  Then we will ship them off, and get to paint some cool stuff.  I look forward to doing this, I enjoy building beastmen, and I also look forward to seeing what James creates for me to paint.  So please checkout and keep an eye on James' blog at the following link:  Lost In the Warp  More on this to follow....

And then on Friday, its back to the race track with the kart for some more racing.

Old Stuff Wednesday - May : Khorne Minotaurs

Ah the Minotaurs, lover them or hate them, mine I modeled just plain mean.  I want them big and nasty.  What says big and nasty more than an overly huge axe.  The axe was modeled out of plasti-card and used the normal spiked club weapon as the shaft.

Since I was playing Khorne back then, you need to have trophies on your models. 

So I put trophies all over them.  Made them look lkike they have actually collected all of this stuff on the kills that they made on the battle field.

I used parts from all over the place, Ogres, gors, dryads, zombies, goblins. 

I added the long flowing hair. The big tusks on the belly plate.

I even gave a couple of the models hooves.  They are not the nicest looking models, but I think I pulled off the mean theme.

The Fwamin' 'Eadz Nob

Well this is another figure I started a long time ago and finally got around to finishing.  A 40k Ork Nob.

The Nob is converted.  I created the back pole icon out of plasti-card, sculpted the skull and flames on the shoulder and the flames above the eye.  The axe is also a conversion.

Stitched wound was carved into the plastic and then sculpted the stitches.   Added a Tau head, dislike those little bastards.  I really like how the skin tone turned out and how the browns turned out.

The base is one of Dragon Forge's resin castings.  They are very good looking basings and the castings are good.  Love the buried trench works.  Painting 40k models is always fun.

There you have it, my first Nob in a long long time.  It was good fun, enjoyed painting it.