The Ironshod - a WIP besticentigor

Hoihoihoi, how are we all doing? This is a little something I put together earlier today. He's not finished yet, but he's nearly complete.

Anyway, some of you may have noticed, I like to go abit nuts when it comes to modelling. This idea was floating around when I first started thinking about my plastic centigors and I began looking at chaos horses.

I really like the chaos knight steeds, their barding looks so feral and chaotic. However, centigors only get a 4+ save and the huge hulking knight mounts are a bit too powerful. But I still wanted to give him a go, so I decided to make him as a unit filler for my bestigors.

My original idea was a complicated one. Originally the centigor was going to have a bestigor rider, and a chain to his mouth. I was going to say the bestigor had bested the centigor and had him under his control. I had several permutations on this idea (the centigor was protecting a magic weapon that the bestigor had, so followed him around; He was possessed by a bloodletter who was etherically on his back tormenting him, riding him around etc) but, in the end, I just left him as a centigor in huge armour. Why? Well, he's a unit filler - the whole point is to represent 4 figures in one base - adding a rider means the unit filler's efficiency is reduced by one! Plus, centigors don't like being ridden much, and cutting the legs on a second bestigor would just be an addition ball ache.

So, I cut a bestigor diagonally between the thigh and stomach armour. This left a triangle in the groin which fit in the neck hole of the steed. I put an ork shoulder pad on the saddle to protect the upper torso's back. I put the spare marauder shields on the horse's flanks to add more bulk. I used the Gor command arm and head, to add a bit of individuality to the centigor from the rank and file bestigors.

Here he is, I'm quite please with him. I wanted to use as little greenstuff as possible - I'm good at fur, but crap at armour and chainmail!

I put him diagonally on his base, to maximise his footprint. I imagine the other bestigors would give him some person space. He's got a gap on the left that needs covering, but other than that he's pretty complete. His body looks quite far back, but the armour of the horse sticks out quite a way and the upper body is actually in line with the front of the horse and his legs.

So, let me know what you think! Have a happy new year!!

Editorial - New vamps and Your ad here!

Hi, I'd like to wish you all a very happy holiday season, hopefully your christmas was merry and your new year will be drunken and debauch.

So I've not had much chance to game or paint recently, although I'm extremely excited for the new year. Firstly, I will be playing against my old rival max's vampire counts in the first week of january. I'll probably be taking my daemons for a long awaited run out.

I'm extremely worried about the new vampires. They look utterly amazing, and  their arrival before other more needy books (w'elves, dwarfs and the bretonians) is obviously GW sitting up and making a real retaliation at other companies (like Mantic) and their more affordable plastics taking a chunk out of their sales.

There's going to be alot of ethereal models floating around being untoucheable, which will cause alot of armies (especially built for all comers like mine) struggling because they just can't dish out enough magical attacks.

This leave me with a problem - my daemons army all have magic attacks - everything they do is magical, even the bloodletters! They'll be quite happy fighting vamps.

Beastmen...not so much! Beastmen already have an ache in the balls facing armies with armour, regen and high initiatives. Armies with alot of ethereal troops may be even worse! Nothing worse than being tied up with a unit you can't hurt.

I'll be taking my daemons with me to game Max because I won't have chance to make my beastman army in time. Max will also be using the old book, since we are gaming literally the week before the Vamps get their new goodies. Oh well, at least he has an excuse as I run through his lines rampantly! (it's about time I made up the gap between his superior win ratio)

Secondly - Sponsor me! I'm currently on £4 earned in over 9 months using AdSence, which isn't great as the content is not very specific to wargaming. My blog has become extremely popular, with over 100 hits a day and growing. So I'm looking for sponsors for my blog. All offers considered! I'm willing to accept very decent offersfrom all sources as long as your ads are relevant to wargaming and the advert itself looks good.

So, if you are, or know anyone who may be interested, then drop me a line, or click on the mspaint banner on the side of the blog!

To finish with, I've painted a little bit today, finishing a razorgor and a big chunk out of my doombull, so hopefully I'll be back in the new year with some more painted posts and a few battle reports!

So fellow beastmen, take care, click my links, earn me money and enjoy yourself over the holiday period!

Maste-rebater. WIP centigor prototype

Hi guys, I'm in a proper good mood tonight because the taxman has sent me a rebate for over £1000! Go Tory government!

Here's a little something I've been itching to make for a good few weeks. I ordered a gor kit, and a chaos marauder horsemen kit, to make myself some centigors. I wanted to update the current models by just using plastics, as this would be cheaper and more individual - a proper project!

I ordered these kits an they finally came (no thanks to the interventions of the royal mail, who went the extra mile to try and stop me by not actually telling me they had my packages). The chaos marauder horses had the right "power" look about them, strong bodies and heavy hooves. A few people use the wood elf steeds, whose hooves and legs are very lithe, not very beastman like.

The marauder horsemen also came with throwing spears which solved my next problem of making suitable spears. The gor box has a load of shields which I won't be using, so they replace the tiny buckler type shields the metals have.

I cut an old last edition beastmen at the thighs, and sawed the head off the plastic horse. I put the beast torso one the horses neck, slightly back abit, and greenstuffed the gaps, including a bit of a hairy part where the beast ass joins the bigger ass. I greenstuffed a rough tabbard as well, which I'll paint in a skin texture.

The saddle I decided to keep - and put a barrle from the ogre kit on there - I know centigors probably hate the idea of a saddle as oppressive by the hoo-mons, but I'm sure a couple of clever ones realise they can stack their belongings (and, more importantly, their booze!) on a saddle!

The saddle needs some extra work to make it look less sparse, and I still need to do some more fur on the shoulders and waist, but I'm fairly happy with the results. Should be fairly easy to do on 4+ horses.

Dirty animal - Pestigor Champion WIP

Here's something different. There's a tournament/campaign weekend in about 6months time run by the Tempus Fugitives called The Vampire Coast. The rulespack includes additional units you may pick to expand on your armies which are not included in the rulebooks themselves. These are often flavour units, or rules for units which no longer "exist".

One of the beastmen units is the old favourite, pestigors. Pestiogrs are basically a variation on Bestigors, and have the Fear special rule and a 5+ scaly skin save to got with their heavy armour, for 16points each. Well, I thought I'd have a bash at making a champion and see how he looked.

Basically, it was a excuse for me to get my hands on the nurgle plastic champion, which I've been dying to get an excuse for since it came out. I'm not afraid to say I love the plastic characters.

I pinched the carnifex toe technique (tm) and instead used tyranid warrior feet (again, spare from a couple of shrike conversions from a couple of years back. Massive bitzbox ftw). The head is from a normal gor, I went for the bug eyed helmet again. I greenstuffed fur in appropriate places and kapow, done.

I went out of my way to give him fur to make him beast like, but also wanted it to look shaggy and tufty, like big chunks are dropping out. This also gave me an excuse to keep as much scabby, 'orrible detail as possible on the model.

Anyway, this guy is utterly huge. A simple, striking conversion! I've also won an ebay auction for 15 pestigors in a bundle for £25 posted. I would've paid upto £35 so added bonus!

Paintwise...I'm not sure where to go with him next. I'm debating whether to keep him albino or just go for generic pale diseased with dark hair. Suggestions welcome!

Warpigs! - Razorgor WIPs

Well I've rested on my laurels abit this week after my huge influx of views for my WIP doombull. It was included on the blog round up on A Tale of Painters, which was a huge honour for me to be included on such a great blog. You can see the link here, I suggest you all go and look:

http://taleofpainters.blogspot.com/2011/12/tales-from-network-5.html

So anyway, today I've got back on the centigor and made a few more conversions.
I took a huge load of dark eldar boxes back to my local games workshop (who were reluctant to swap them, but did anyway). I swapped them for some more useful chaff, stuff that I need to bulk up my army, like ungor.

Anyway, one of the boxes I got was the savage orc boar boys. A cracking deal - unfortunately they had no orc chariots (grumble) or beastmen chariots (they don't carry metal plastic hybrid's in store anymore...grumble number 2).

One finecast razorgor (or Pumbagor, as they're unaffectionately known as across the intrablags) costs £15. Five boars costs the same.  I have a dozen spare spawn bits to use on them, so I could make 5 in total. I was going to keep two for standard gors pulling a chariot, and 3 for razorgors.

Here's the first two I made. All I've done is add chaos spawn tails and spikes to them, and greenstuff fure to blend them in more. The horns are spares from the minotaur plastic kit, replacing the ears from the orc boars. The one with no eye is ready for basing and painting, the other needs a bit more green stuff before he's ready.

Next to a gor...

...and then next to a mino.

Very simple, and the results are very nice. And, also, very cheap.

Enjoy.

Oh, and one last teaser before I go...lets see if you can guess what it is...

Blogs I like - Dec 2011 edition

Allo, I had this idea about making a list of blogs which I liked which are related to mine. I've had this waiting on my files for a week, ready to add more on. But I didn't find any others to add so it's only the one blog. - but boy its good.

It's called The bovine overlord - and narcissistically it's written by the bovine overlord.

I'm unsure whether there was any sort of Democratic vote to achieve his rank, but his stuff is rather good. Unfortuantely his blogs on wordpress, and wordpress and blogger shall never intertwine. He also has minotaurs with hooves. I could tell you how he made them...but then why would you go to his blog and read all his lovely battle reports?

Exactly. Here's the link. Enjoy.

http://thebovineoverlord.wordpress.com/

Karniforex - Doombull WIP

Ok, well I've been teasing you all with this for a few days, so I'll just throw this out for you all now.

My Doombull Karniforex the Butcher (I may rework that name...) is a mad afternoon's work. The name's wordplay of carnifex (latin for butcher), which is both fitting for a 12foot slab of pure meat with a huge chopping blade but also because of the source of his hooven feet - originally from the tyranid carnifex kit. I wanted to make him stand out to normal minotaurs so I thought adding some large hooves would increase is height. After a bit of a play I realised I could get a quite fluid movement by putting both hooves on slightly differently on each foot. I greenstuffed fur to mimic the appearance of the rank and file gors, and also to help mask the ankles to make the hooves look more natural and less tyranidy.

The blade is from the daemon prince kit, as is the huge shoulder plate. I'm usually not a fan of space marine shoulder pads on fantasy models, but this one is just chaosy enough to pull it off. I've added an empire shield from the giant kit on his thigh, and gone for an entirely armoured left flank like a gladiator - his left side takes all the firepower whilst the right side is free to do all kinds of chopping! The shoulder armour also has a nice groove for his horn to go into - very ergonomic!

I didn't want to go made with this model's extra bits. I did add a spawn tail to make him looked extra blessed and represent gifts of chaos - and also to mask the huge gap between the two torso pieces, which was unfortunately leaving a huge chasm in his butt crack.

The base is from lelith hesperax - it helped elevate the model slightly and show off more of him front, otherwise on a flat surface he'd have looked like he was sprinting with his head down, charging for a gore. Although really cool, the model would stand out better with a visible face

A few ideas didn't make the grade - plastic chain on his nose ring, a huge tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, spikes sticking out of it's back with a fur coat of greenstuff fur. I decided to just leave him as it - simple is best! The more I add to him the sillier he may look - and I'm quite pleased with how he looks.

The story of the self made doombull colon The joys of bits

So I sat down on sunday after to do some modelling. My marauder horsemen who I ordered hadn't arrived yet (bloody christmas post) and I still had a bit of work to do on my gors and ungor when I decided - Im fed up of Gors! I like 'em, don't get me wrong, its just beastmen have a whole ocean of modelling possibilities I've yet to explore and I don't want to burn out on basic troops.

I decided that since I was going to do something different I'd make a couple of minotaurs. Now, minos currently have a bad rep in the gaming community. "ugly" "muscles within muscles" "gaps in muscles you could fly an x-wing through" "stupid feet" - all made about the plastic set. Well, I kinda like them.

I used these bad boys when they were released as my bloodcrushers in 40k and they were vastly superior to the huge metal bastards daemons had at the time. The minos really blended in with the bloodletters too. When GW released their plastic bloodcrushers just over a year ago I just ignored them because I was so happy with my minos conversions.

Anywho, in 40k I run a unit of 4 bloodcrushers, which meant I had 2 spare. One I made for mordheim and is quite useable in fantasy now. The other I've had in spare bits. I went rummaging through my VAST bits box of half- to full- forgotten projects and found the two halves of the main body no where near each other. So I went about making him and just let my creativity fly.

Now, I don't know how conversions come to all you guys. Do you just sit st your desk and it comes to you? Do you spend hours designing and sketching? Do you ever just go with the flow and it makes itself?

I sat and just made this beast. Looking at the body I though about sculpting hooves. Then I remembered I had some giant's hooves. Nah too big, oh that 2nd ed nid warrior has hooves - too small and fiddly to convert - wait, don't I have some carnifex feet from an old tervigon conversion somewhere...

So for most of my afternoon I beavered away making this model. I was going to have him with a BSB but I have a guy for that right now, and his running posture was more suited to a single character (a bsb would.be bunkered up in a unit) so generic doombull/gorebull was made. I can honestly say this model made itself - I was just a vessel the plastic used! What does he look like? Oh well...you'll have to wait until tonight to find out!

The moral of this story? Its always handy to have a huge bits box! (or ten!) I can honestly say I never intended to run a list with a doombull, now I've made a cool model (with spare bits I had laying around no less!) and saved myself £30 in the process (as cool as the GW doombull looks I'm not dropping that much on him).

I've even been thinking about making a minotaur list based on the ogre kingdom book - now that would be scary!

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