Crossbows...Fire at will

Small update on my WAB Knight army, 7 of my 16 crossbow men. No real conversion work here. Went with the Perry 's HYW line of crossbow men, as I really like the poses on these compared to their Norman line.

A bit of variety in colors, I'm not going to paint an army that is entirely black and white. Besides I plan to use this army across a lot of periods.

Fun in the Dirt.

Well just because it rained last Friday and canceled my go-kart racing on the asphalt oval, doesn't mean that you cannot get in some laps and not have any fun. Since it rained lightly that just meant that our homemade dirt oval track did not need as much preparation time. And yes, it is as much fun as it looks on my face inside the helmet.

And the Old Man known as Deathwish is absolutely having a ball also as I'm chasing him down.

The dirt track was in good shape and the scary part is that our lap times are almost as fast on the 1/8 mile dirt as they are on the 1/8 mile asphalt. The kart frames are the same as our asphalt karts minus the bodywork, engines are the same, as are the tire sizes.

And the wildlife does not seem to mind it as the deer came out later to investigate what we were doing and the turkey flew in and then flew off as we were taking a short break adjusting the karts.

Rained out and Tutorials and Chicago Gamesday

No go-kart racing report to make tonight, track never dried out from the rain we got today and last night. And we run racing slick tires, no tread. So slicks, asphalt, and water, don't work. I will get in some dirt tracking with my niece tomorrow.

I've had a whole lot of people PM and Email me on various forums asking for tutorials on basing and making movement trays. Well you all are in luck as I do plan to do tutorials on both and will post them here first. If there is something that I do that you would like to learn please let me know.

Chicago Gamesday, I normally would be all over this, but I have a conflict with the date. But that said, there will be plenty of other talent there and you will have the opportunity to chat with them and ask them lots of questions. There will be a Golden Demon Lounge at the event and talents such as Kent Plumb, Chris Borer, Dave Pauwels,Brice Cocanour, James Craig, Todd Swanson, Kirill Zhilkov, Dave Taylor, and Brian Sobb, and more to be announced later will all be there in the lounge, all day long. This is not to stroke egos or show off, heck I've been apart of this in the past and have never even won a golden demon. Its about the hobby and people who love to talk and show what they know. These are friends and acquiatances of mine, and good fun people. And if you see Chris Borer there, please make a donation to him so that he can afford to buy a new pair of shorts.

If I happen to remember, I'll post a schedule for the Demon Lounge when we get closer to the event.

Old Stuff Wednesday - June...Painted Khorne Knightgors

Well last month I showed you an old Khorne Knightgor. That was my first and my test model for the Khorne Knights that used with Khorne Beastmen army back then. That got me to thinking that I should show the rest of the unit. So below you will see the rest of the models I came up with.

What would a unit champion be without a huge sword. Back then I was basically using space marine arms with these models. All of the armor you see on the torsos and heads were sculpted by me.

The belt buckles, I remember it taking forever to sculpt one good one, which I would later just press mold.

Another shot of one of my favorite models on the end.

Dead bodies, skulls, heads, blood, and skin is the theme of Khorne, I had lots of fun doing these.

The banner was to be obnoxiously huge and in your face. The skull was painted on in freehand.

At first I was not going to put the eyeball in it, but the more I thought about the more it just made sense to do it.

Ah more spikes and dead body spike to the centaur. Note where the saddles use to be on the old armored horses. I filled that space in to continue a smooth looking armor.

I do love this unit. And I do want to match it some day soon with my new warriors khorne knights.

Until next time.

My Painted WAB Hospitallers...Let the Crusade Begin

These are my Hospitallers. I’ve never been crazy about painting black and white, but I knew I wanted to do a Holy Order and this one of my favorite choices. Some of them are my converted Perry Miniatures knights mixed with the Perry’s Holy Order/Hospitaller Knights.

The ones without hoods and sleeve-less surcoats are my conversions, like the knight with the couched lance and standard bearer. The two horses with the caparisons are my conversions with GS and BS.

I think this unit of knights turned out pretty good, the black and white works, even though it’s a pain to do. I used somewhere around 6-7 shades of black/gray for the blacks and then toned it all back down with a GW Black Wash.

With the conversions, I was attempting to get Norman early Perry Crusader models out of the First Crusade in the 1090s, into more of the late Second and Third Crusades.

Note some of the kite shields are actually GW High Elves shields from their foot infantry, that made conversion of the shields much easier. And some of the shields were actually converted with green stuff putty.

The movement tray I think turned out well. The basing is HO scale railroad ballast, with some gravel, Joefix grass tufts, and GW Staw. I'm happy with the basing, its a bit different from what I normally do.

The banner did not turn out great, but I will fix that at a later date. Its a painted paper banner with some foil in between the layers to keep the bend.

The horses, scared me at first to do them. I'm not someone that has a lot of knowledge about horses, so I used a number of reference photos and attempted to get 3-4 different paint schemes that would work well. Out of everything I think the horses turned out the best, with the exception of the white one in the back.

Converted Khorne Knights

Definitely like the Khorne Knights. I have done a bit of subtle conversion work on them to distinguish them. This is all until I get the Centaurs ready for the mutant horde

As can be seen in the unit pics, I've staggered their placements on the bases. In this case by elevating the one on a 50 mm base. This helps with the ranking up. The model on the left is just pinned to the base and is removable, so that I can paint him separately from the base.

What's Khorne without skulls and hook and other nasty implements.

Below is good shot of one of the converted heads using the Storm Vermin halberd blades. I do love the shield that this one carries. Also converted one of the lances to hold up the bloodletter banner.

The GS khorne symbols are real paint to make.

Below you can see one of the other converted heads.

At first I had not thought about doing the fur capes, but as I was assembling the Khorne Exalted metal model I had noted the fur cape and like the look of it. So, that was essentially an after thought.

Below a better shot of the cape and a shot of the back of the converted head. A very simple conversion, but one that I seriously like.

Next up the Crusades, my Perry Miniatures knights.

Khorne Knight Unit nearly complete modeling…

Here are my pics of the Khorne Knight unit. Still need to finish up the basing and build a movement tray. The tray again is from a junked project and will get used for something down the road, so ignore it for the time being.

Added symbols, both sculpted and brass etch by Forgeworld. Also added skulls, heads, and capes. The fur capes were inspired by the GW Khorne Lord on foot.

I remembered long ago see this artwork by Adrian Smith in the Chaos book shown in the below clip. Note the helmet.

I decided I want some helmets that look similar to that. At first I thought about sculpting my own, but that would be a very time consuming process. Then back when I was building the first Skaven War Litter, I was using the new plastic Storm Vermin and had to cut off some of the halberds. I thought they were very cool blades and I needed to use them for something. One day I had the chaos warrior book and happened to see the Smith’s artwork and the storm vermin blades were sitting on my desk and I was like “yea that’ll do nicely”. It’s much easier to convert them. Now, I have cool looking horns that need to be used on something else.

Again like the tzeentch unit, I have staggered the placement of the models on the bases. Eventually, I will be adding Chaos Knight Centaurs, but I need to figure out the best way of molding my torsos that I have sculpted, so that I can vary up the torsos for different looks. The torso will be very much like a 40k Space Marine torso.

Above you can see the fur cap on one of the minis.

Note that I also turned the knights on the flank to the outside, just to give them a slightly more dynamic feel.

Next up many more marauders, new spawn, progress on the Tzeentch hero on the disc, and a unit of Chaos Warriors all converted up to be armed with halberds and shields. Also will have much WAB Crusaders in paint, the models of which are Perry Miniatures with some them being converted.