Painting progressing...Chaos and Vikings Together

 Attempting to make up some of that paint deficit.  I started up with my blue phase once more.  The Chaos Knight in the foreground is the goal with the Chaos chosen models.  As I was doing this phase I grabbed a few random Vikings to paint them in the same scheme.  Now the Chaos stuff is about half there on the blues.  In the next phase I will probably randomize a few more Vikings in the lighter blue highlights for more variety.

Better picture of more of the models.  Yes the Vikings are little buggers in comparison with the Chaos models.  GW is way over the top on scale.  As you see on my pallette, three shades of blue.  I generally paint with 3-5 shades of a color in my pallette while army painting.  And I typically use a glaze medium to help with the blending and extending the life of the paint.

So there's progress.....

Clash of Empire Roman Command Models

 At some point I will probably play some Clash of Empires and they do things a bit differently with their command models than WAB.  So I thought I would make 3 for my Romans.  The top one I like, the bottom one not so much.  I think it needs to be put on a base that is a bit bigger than 40mm.  That or I should just remove the Musician and put some Roman  like inanimate stuff on it. 

The third one is still setting on my work desk.  And yes I'm plugging away painting. 

Viking Hirdmen Unit #4 Modeled

 I finished up this 4th unit as I was painting a few from the first.  This unit I wanted to do some modeling that gave them more of a shieldwall appearance. 

The pic below shows the one model that I converted crouching down a bit, with a normal model, and then one with a shield over the face.  I also added one of my cast dead in the midst of the unit.

Good shot of the crouching model and the spear over the top of him.

Also a shot of the backs of the units.  I added quite a git of hair, similar to some of the metal GB models.  Relatively easy conversions.

All of the movement trays will have a bit of eye candy.  I'm happy with the second rank spearman that is moving to fill the gap.

Know No Fear....Horus Heresy

After reading Dan Abnett's Prospero Burns and being sorely unimpressed with the story, I grabbed the next book on my shelve which was Know No Fear, Dan's next installment in the Horus Heresy.  Its the story of the battle of Calth, Word Bearers turning on the Ultramrines.  Wow....much better story than Prospero Burns.  It hooked me pretty well while, sitting at the race track in Quincy in the evenings with not much going on.  I'm not much into the Ultramarines and Guillimen, but this kind of changed my opinion at least on the background material of the Ultramarines.   I've always liked the Word Bearers concept in the Chaos Space Marine realm, so it was an easy sell to read a story that was about them, but not focused on them.  I thoroughly enjoyed the story, its massive, in carnage, destruction, deciet, and scope.  Much, much, better.  Not sure what I will read next in the Heresy tales. 

Up next for reading is Angus Donald's take on Robin Hood.  I'm reading his book titled Outlaw.  I saw the cover and the little stamp on it "As good as Bernard Cornwell, or your money back".   Hmm....we'll see about that.  Having read a lot of Bernard Cornwell stories over the past few years, that may be very hard to live up to, as I love his Saxon stories regarding Uhtred and his Agincourt. 

Onto Brodhead, WI and the 12 turn road course on Sunday, racing the vintage kart.

Old Stuff Wednesday September.....GOR! GOR! GOR!

 Well way back in 2003 I created this Beastmen army.  I still own all of the Gors, they are very much special to me.  One thing I noticed as I was looking through these old photos, is that I really never took very good pictures of them.  So maybe next month I'll take some new pics of some more of these models. 

Every Gor in the army was converted in some sort of way.  Mostly it was the time that I was just learning how to sculpt armor plates and some other things. I seriously love the face of the model below.

 Below is one of the musicians.  The basing shared a theme that Mike Butcher and I used for a team up in Adepticon's Team Tourney in which he did some very evil wood elf Tree and Dryad army.  And the commonality between the two armies was that we used the same style on basing.  That is probably one of the few things that are alike in Mike and my paint styles, other than we used paint, brushes, and water; otherwise everything else is much different.

 And a horribly small group shot.  Next month I promise that we will revisit the beasts with the best of my Gors and new photos, not these from 2003.

Warlord Games Roman Conversions...WIP

 I showed pictures of the unit previously, and here are pictures of some of the conversions.  I wanted a couple of Romans holding the shields high.  The above body is the best one to do that with.  The shields I'm just temporarily tacking on to the models at the moment.

Below I removed one of the shields so you can see what I did with the arm.

A jewelers saw was used to remove the arm at the shoulder.  The armor is not totally correct in the reposition, but the shield will hide most of this.

Goin' get you.

And below a couple more conversions, using Praetorian heads and repositioning the arms, to get some different shield positions.  There is not a lot you can do with these models, but some of the small things will help give them a bit of character and bit more dyanmic.

New Roman Veteran Unit WIP and a slight rant

 I recently had sold my unit of Praetorians, so as I'm finishing up the my Vikings, I decided to build a replacement unit of veteran legionaries.  I will also be building new movement trays for my Roman army. I previously used the GW modular trays, while nice and easy to put together, they are rather uninspiring to look at.  I need something that has more appeal, eyecandy.

 So this is the replacement unit of veterans.  I still have a bit of work to do on them, adding some grieves, and also needing to GS some of the arms that I changed and converted.  I'll do a few single pics of the converted miniatures, later after doing that bit of work.  I will paint these without the shields, and then add the shields later.  The models with the shields on them are just tacked on to see how they look.  While Warlords Legions kit is nice, it does rather lack variety in pose so I did a few different things, stuff that I did not take time to do on the previous Legions.

One thing I did forget is that, I really don't care for how these models stand.  You will notice also that I have clipped many of the bases as they are obnoxiously huge for a 20 mm base.  The guard stance is the worst of the models with the left arm molded to the body and the legs spread so far apart that they practically do not fit on a 20 mm base.  Warlord Games in my opinion, while having nice looking products is a bit inconsistent and lack in their control over things.  The scales are wonky.  This kit is barely 25 mm from foot to head.  They are consistently the smallest miniatures that I see at the tourneys.  And they often use a very lame excuse for that mistake.

As you can see on the trays I used some of their barbarian and legion casualties.  These are probably the worst possible miniatures that I have seen come from Warlord.  They should be alright once I paint them up, but they are quite poor sculpts.

I also picked up some of their slinger Legion metals, for a bit more variety.  I once again reminded myself of why I do not like metal, its the fixing and filing of the flash.  Its much easier to remove flash from plastic.  I bought the slingers from mail order, they come with three different poses and a number of arms from actual slings to throwing pilums.  Most all of the pilum arms were junk.  The gladius arms have blades that are so thick, that they look like a slab of metal, poor quality.  The good news is that the plastic kit has enough extras to replace that crap.  The kneelers are nice, they should have done a plastic like that.  The pose throwing the Pilum is not quite right, I had to bend the arms as the normal pose has the poor Roman throwing the pilum into the ground probably an imaginary 5 feet in front of him, once again just poor.  So for the one I put some apoxie sculpt under the base to raise him up a bit, and not only that the pose barely fits on a 20 mm base. Once again their scale is messed up as the metal minis are taller than the plastics just ever so slightly, its very odd.

The overall kit is nice, but beware of the scale.  Also note my review of their plastic auxiliaries in comparison.  That kit truly sucks in comparison, and the models look like giants alongside the legion.

Space Wolves Conversion...Chaos Warrior to Wolf, part 3

Final post of these conversions of the fantasy Chaos Warriors to space wolves.  I thnk the beards worked pretty well.  I sculpted those with a dull Xacto #11 blade that has the tip broken off.  The dull blade gives you a finer look than my normal sculpting tool that looks like a metal toothpick.  That tool I used on the hair and fur.

Above I added a tooth necklace.  That's a fiddly bit, you are best to seal that with a very thin super glue afterwards. 

 Below are some sideviews, still need to add the backpacks.  The GS chain is actually easier to do than the necklace.  There are two ways to do the chain, one where you roll out a sausage of GS and tweezers.  The other way is to add a number of beads on the model, flatten those out, punch in the centers of the flatten beads, and allow that to cure.  Once cured, roll out a string of GS, lay that over top of the beads and then using a knife style sculpting tool you push the string into the center of the beads.

 Below are some shots of the drapings.  I use to just reserve the drapings for things like Templar or Wordbearer Spacemarines, but I think if painted in a leather like color with some rune styled writing on it, it will look very neat.

 One thing you see with chaos warrior models is that ugly seam in the fur.  It shows up on the majority of the models.  So I will fill that seam with some GS and mimic the fur, like on the one below and to the left.

So there you are.  Back to the Vikings.