GW Dark Elves....yeesshh

I been sort out of the loop with all of the kart racing that I have been doing, and with the local shop having suddenly closed its doors due to the death of the long time Owner.  As a result, the whole Dark Elves thing has sort of snuck up on me.  I had been hearing a number of rumors about this new monster and that new monster and such.  Now I'm someone that likes mythological creatures, so I was interested in seeing what GW would come up with.  Anyone that knows me, knows my hatred of elves, good and bad.  I do hate the pointy eared little bastards. Not a fan of anything elf like.  That said I was still looking forward to seeing the new hydra and the Medusa and the rumored Kraken.  So today I saw on the miniature review sites that they had them up on the advanced order.  I went to GW's site to look at them.  My first impressions I really kind of like the Medusa, can't say the new Cauldron of Blood does anything for me at all.  Holy smokes $75 for the kit.  Really??  Then I saw the Hydra and whatever the hell they are calling the other beast. Yea......NO.  That appears to be a miss in my book and big miss at that. 

And then there are all of those pointy eared little bastards.  Dreadspears / Darkshards / Bleakswords, can we stop already with the stupid spin on words, why not just call them evil pointy eared little bastards with sharp sticks.  Bleakspears/Dreadshards/Woeswords....whatever....I thought the previous models were ugly, but these, man could they make the hands any bigger?  I mean really those hands are so tiny....make them even bigger.   Can the Angstspear's spearhead be any larger, like telephone pole sized?  Then look at the trigger finger on that Murkyshard bowman, that sure is one long freakin' joint to the knuckle, at least curl the damn finger.  Maybe that is some sort of Doomelf trait that I do not know about.  Then I see the Drearyswords and their blades.  Man those blades look like something a Chaos Warrior could not even wield, let alone a spindly armed Gloomy Elf. Ah well, I hate elves, so next....

Onto....Which Elves....you know those dynamically posed elves with bras.  For some reason they kind of remind me of something Art Adams would draw.  All of these bombastic females.  Very dynamic, yet kind of goofy at the same time.  Now again I really don't follow the fluff of these pointy eared little Dismal Elves, but as I read the description of them it says "...and The Hag, who leads the regiment, can be denoted by using the version with 4 spikes (rather than the standard 3)."  Wow!  What a great way to distinguish the Hag, give her an extra spike, why not just a third nipple.  Now that is just special.

So anyway.....why all this talk about Dreary Elves, well I've been looking for mythological creatures for my project that is underway....I think the Medusa fits the bill.  The hydra is a big no, so I'll have to find a hydra elsewhere.  More on this project for multiple game systems to follow.

Old Stuff Wednesday - September: The old Ultra-boring-Marine

In smurf blue....

Circa May, 2004.  Not my first painted stuff but close to it.  This is actually one of the first pieces that I painted for a paint competition.  I really did not know back then what to do in painting.  For an early piece it holds up pretty well in my opinion as I copied I think some painting by Bobby Wong (whatever happened to him????)

Sheesh what an ugly base, looks like Goblin Green.

Above some of the details.  The sword was just the beginning of me painting power swords like that.

And below the backside of the model.  I believe I had used some Higgins blue drafting ink for the recessed blue areas in the armor.

I sold this model years ago to someone.  I apologize to that the person that bought it.  LOL.

WIP On the Desk: The Greek Project progress

So another weekend that I have no racing to do, next weekend.  That said I decided to work on the Greeks a bit more.  As I build, even though the kits from Victrix some good variety, is that I'm rather limited in pieces to use in building the models.  That means that there are potentially repeat poses in the force.  That has always bugged me, I like variety in appearance.  My solution so far is hair.

And lots of it.  Sort of mimicking some of the sculpting that Gorgon and Foundry have done on their Greeks.

I'll likely add a few beards also.

And below is my oracle model, which is actually named as Oracle from Megalith Games, Godslayer - Halodynes faction.   

The pictures of this model on-line are splendid, but don't be fooled.  I have my work cut out for me to get this model ready for tabletop use.  The metal looks to be white metal, but is a bit soft, not quite like lead, but awfully close.

The sweeping wraps are simply a pain in the ass to get on the model.  There is no good way to attach them to the point that they will be durable for game use, and with the model be so soft, they probably would not last any ways.  So the additional drapings that are suppose to come off the wrists I will probably delete and replace with green stuff.

The model also has a crap load of flash on it, and like two or three flash lines going across the face, which is extremely odd to me.  It must have been one super poorly designed mold to do that.  I think its salvageable, but really.  I've been scoping out some of their other Halodynes, but now I'm not sure I want to bother with anything else from Megalith Games.

And above is another comparison shot of a Gorgon Spartan to a Victrix Athenian.  Kind of a funny shot with the Russian Alternative barbarian behind them.  It shows just how large the fantasy chaos like figure is in comparison to the historical miniatures.

Warriors of Chaos Additions: The Russian Alternative: Marauding Command

I'm always looking for additions to my warhammer Warriors of Chaos project.  A rather never ending project.  When I see cool pieces that other manufacturer's have made, I have to get my hands on them and hope that they fit and somewhat work with the army.  Quite awhile back I saw these lovely miniatures painted by YellowOne on Coolminiornot.  I thought they would work very well my merry mayhem that I had going on.  So a brief review of the minis. 

Recently, I picked them off of Ebay.  The box set is called the Barbarians of the Wasteland Command Group.  Shipping from Russia had me skeptical, but they arrived somewhat quicker than expected and packaged well.  No problems there whatsoever.  The castings are very good, no significant flash, and appear to be a nice hard white metal casting.  Very solid detail, quite crisp.

The Command comes in two options, one being the metal and the other being in resin.  A total of three models.

Above a side view of the minis.  Lots of character in these.

The musician model is a single piece cast and very clean.  I simply love the pose and the ultra cool horn.

The axe wielder comes in five pieces.  The pieces fit together pretty well, no monster gaps with a little bit of filing.  I pinned all of the pieces together.

The bannerman is also a cool piece.  It comes in 3-pieces, with the banner separate from the pole.  That poses a small problem, with them being metal.  It is thick enough to actually pin the banner to the pole.  The other problem I see with the banner is the that the back side of the icon is a flat cast versus the front side that has a bunch of relief in the icon.  So, I took out the greenstuff, overlayed the backside, and put in the much needed relief.

Above is close up of the relief that I added.  It was very easy to mimic with a conical color shaper the front detail.

How do they compare to Games Workshop marauders and other chaos? Below are some comparison pictures:

From Left to Right:  Chosen, tRA, Chaos Marauder, tRA, Red Box Games, tRA

 From Left to Right:  GW Character, tRA, Gor, tRA, Bestigor, tRA

 

I definitely look forward to painting these.  Quality, detail, size, I will give them all a solid A to A+.  I'm also looking to go ahead and purchase some of the other minis from The Russian Alternative.

Last Arguement of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

While on the road at the Quincy track I finished the book the Last Argument of Kings book number 3 of the First Law trilogy during my overnight stay.  It took me quite awhile to get through this book as I put it down and got busy with a number of other things after starting it, but it was a fun story with quite a few things that I did not see coming.  Quite refreshing since I have been looking for an author that will keep me busy reading since I became some what disenchanted with George RR Martin's last Fire and Ice novel and have yet to even pick up Dance with Dragons because of that.  Although I will say I prefer the story of the barbarians of the north more so than the southerners in First Law.  I relate better to them than south characters.  So I look forward to reading some of his other stuff on these barbarian northern named men.  I will also say that I did not see that coming on Bayazz the first of the Magi.  Furthers my hate of magic and wizards.  Also the whole inquisition thing going on is flat out ruthless.  So Joe goes on my read list for the future.

Onto the next novel, this by Angus Donald the second novel in his series on his take on Robin Hood.

WIP On the Desk: The Start of a New Project

Well no racing this weekend so, time to start a new project.  I have several on going projects, but this one is going to get front billing for some time to come and the others will get mixed in gradually.  This is the beginning of my Greek project.  This is an army I'm planning to use for a couple of different games systems.  I'll be using the Victrix plastic Greeks, a few Foundry minis, and some Gorgon Spartan minis.  These, I assembled this morning from the Mercenary Hoplite and Athenian box sets.  These two box sets have very good head selections.  The base models are the same, but they have different heads and some different command options.

 Below is a close up of many of the crest-less head ones.  I still have a few bits to put on them.  These models are real good size for me.  They are very close in scale to the Foundry and Gorgon Miniatures metal Greeks.  Not tiny like the Immortal/Warlord Games Greeks.  That should make them a bit easier for me to paint and work with.

Below another shot of the models.  The one on the right has a head swap where I used a Gripping Beast Viking head.

These guys below have those funky Greek helmets, that I don't really care for, non-Corinthian style, so they will be mostly my back rankers.

I've yet to do much of any conversion work on these models, but will sit down and add some hair and convert up some models.  The one game system that I plan to play using this army will require lots of conversion work.

burn notice....I'll miss it.

I began watching the series from the very first episode a long time ago, as I liked the previous quirky acting of Jeffery Donovan from his previous stuff.  And then there was Bruce Campbell and of course I like cars and this had that slick black Challenger.  I enjoyed the series and I'm somewhat satisfied with ending.  I'll definitely miss it, as its the one of favorites. 

Work In Progress; Not on the Table: Battle Damaged

 So, something a little different for Work In Progress.  I got back from the Grand Prix in the vintage kart, which was a heck of a lot of fun to do.  So I thought I would begin fixing my oval kart.  This is the remains of my oval racing kart from this past season.  The oval got a bit rough on it.

Below is the busted up right side, from my last race of the season on the asphalt oval.  I took a really hard hit in the rear when someone decided to dump me in a heat race and then got clobbered in the side while sitting backwards in the turn.

So WIP has become fiberglass repair and metal straightening.

The rear bumper and number plate are bent up pretty good also.

Left side wheel well is badly busted.

 The hit on the right side was so hard it bent my nerf bar and the steel tubes that they are set in.  Frame rails appear to be somewhat okay.  That blue tube below used to be perpendicular, front tube is just as bad.

 The hit also broke my seat.

 Side panel was broke in couple of places.

This aluminum plate use to be flat under the nose of my kart.

Top of the side panel.

Close up of the left side of the nose.

I spent a few hours removing all of the body work and began the dusty process of grinding away some of the damage to prep the body work for some fiberglass.  I then began the sticky itchy process of fiberglass and resin application.   

 

We also did some redneck bending and straightened out the supports and nerf bar to a reusable state.

 

So that was it for the day.  Thankfully my next couple of races are in the old vintage kart and this one won't likely see a track until February next year.  In a couple weeks, I'll sand it down, fill the imperfections and repaint and decal the body work.