Hogs of war - painted Razorgor

Happy new year everybody! My new year resolution is to paint more so I'm going to try and keep up with it all!

Well, I start as I mean to go on - I painted a razorgor! Pretty pleased with it. However - none of you noticed my deliberate mistake that I put my previous razorgors on 40x40mm instead of 50x50mm. He needs a few bits of touching up here and there - his little skull needs painting and I'm thinking about giving his fur another drybrush of skull white, but other than that he just needs basing.

I used tallarn flesh neat to give him some darker pigmentation on his mouth and snout, but without it being too dark. He looks pretty good I think!

I still think the 50x50m base is a bit excessive in size for the model, but thats what the stock models come on so that's what he's mounted on. Rules = rules.

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.

There will be blood(letters) - more count as shenanigans and A unit filling WIP.

I took the plunge and got some old school Daemonettes to add to my army as count as bloodletters. There's actually quite a bit of variety, and I've got about 20 or so with a unit filler to be going on with. I'll be keeping an eye out on ebay for any more going cheap in the near future.

I actually quite like these models! I know some people hate the S&M crab look, but I think they're a nice homage to the older chaos that I grew up with.

Well, here are my first two testers to give me a good feel for how the unit is going to come out. I've tried some new photography techniques as well, but you get te idea.

I used the foundation paint Adeptus battlegrey for the skin. It's not as dark as my charcoal grey mix I've used for bloodletters in the past, but darker than the lighter shadow grey I use for the rest of my daemonettes. The black wash darkens it further, making the skin tones different to help aid my opponent differentiate the units.

I've also put red about the model to again help single them out as bloodletters. Huge hulking claws, and gold and red liberally chucked around on the model should hopefully remind people they're not daemonettes but something else.

They more muscular and squat than the modern daemonettes, so  I'm happy a unit of these will stand out sufficiently without looking out of place.

I've also included a picture of my unit filler that I discussed in my previous post. Enjoy!

Azazel, Prince of Damnation...

...or should I say, patron saint of cursing "damnation!" at a particular chunk of metal.

Cheesus Cripes, this was a labour of love, without the love. So, a labour. A long, hard damn labour.

Everyone's favourite special character daemon prince of slaanesh (by purely being the "only" one) has been unlovingly created by myself. There's a story behind this so-and-so, so please allow me to vent before I press on with my out of focus photos of my kitchen, that sometimes include war toys in the foreground.

This model seems to go for silly money on eBay. Which is weird. I like him, I've seriously got a hard on for quirky old minis that games workshop made aeons ago. This cheeky chappy generally goes for about £40, and a new plastic daemon prince goes for £20.

I picked him up from a trader for just over a tenner. Bargain. He needed stripping and was missing a tail, but so what?

So he came with two right wings. The photo was made so it looked like he had two wings either side, but one was just back to front. So I got a bit of a refund (I decided I'd rather keep the majority of a good model who just needed stripping) and search for a spare wing on ebay.

Well, a month or so passed, with no luck, so I bit the bullet and bought great eagle wings from GW themselves - they were pretty much the same ones and just needed some work to make fit on Azazel's back. Alot of damn work. Alot of greenstuffing, cutting, filing and drilling and 3 pins worth (two on both wings and one between the two wing holding them together) and they were fixed in. Phew.

The sword was a bit piddly, so I decided to give him one of the swords from the plastic daemon prince. I also put the top of a slaanesh  icon on the hilt, to extend it and also make it a weapon befitting Slaanesh's right hand.

Finally, with the legs I was happy to angle the left foot so the back leg was in contact with the base. It gives the model more support, and makes him look like he's moving more naturally than the prancy version if hes stood upright. I also put a spare loincloth from the daemon prince kit to cover up his missing tail (and Azazel's particularly pert man-bottom.

So, without further ado, here's some piccielicks.

He still needs a bit of greenstuffing on his back to make the joint betwixt the wings less noticeable, but other than that he's a done deal.

And if I never hear the name "Azazel" again it'll be too soon.

In game...I dunno what to do with him! I'll perhaps use him a generic daemon prince, with no mark of slaanesh (shocking!) and wings (obv), unnatural swiftness (I7 WS8 always strike first with rerolls? Yummy) and Immortal Fury (St5 rerolling to wounds). All this for 375 points. He then gets a tad expensive when you start adding wizard levels to him...so I'd probably just use him as a monstrous battering ram.

Other possible alternative were using him as a bloodthirster, and adapting his old rules for campaign games (which can be found here: http://www.angelfire.com/co4/thedarkgods/characters.pdf).

So let me know what you all think! I've also editted the settings so anyone can comment, so post away!

Fiendish tinkerings - More (improved) converted Fiends

Salutations my fellow hobby rodents, I'm back peddling on the war-hamster wheel, enclosed within my small metal cage of nerdiness.

So, my sweetlings, todays update is my fiends. I know from the stats that one of the more popular posts of mine is the converted fiends. Recently I've been playing with them unpainted and unfinished, and most people are just calling them my spawn, not my fiends. I'm a little grumpy about this, because they do just look like spawn.

I was tempted to purchase the stock fiends from GW and use the three I had as unit fillers for my daemonettes. This would mean I'd have to change the spawns bases to a larger monster base to rank up with the daemonettes properly, and to get the GW metals it would cost over £35 (more, when they inevitably hit finecast).

So, instead, I decided to plough on with my plan. I am going to make a small change, and try and acquire older fiend/seeker heads from ebay. These will help distinguish the conversions from spawn, and add a "wow old school cool!" to the way they look.

So, I greenstuffed fur on one of their backs and painted one of the buggers. It's not quite finished, but it gives you the general idea. Once I complete the unit, I'll take proper pictures. In proper light. In the meantime...

So, yeah, I'm pretty pleased how he came out. I couldn't be bothered greenstuffing a tit on it's chest. Each to their own when they make their own slaanesh models, but I don't like everything having one or two boobies. I'm not that great at sculpting, it wouldn't come out great, and it's just tacky and juvenile. I'll just scult it a giant dong instead (willies are easy to sculpt that titties).

Ahem, all the NSFW discussion aside, here's a WIP of another fiend. This cheeky chappy had a half beastman head with a wiggly worm for a tongue. Well, instead of that, I swapped it for a old seekers head with a horn and snout. It didn't have a lower jaw when I bought it from ebay, so I gave it the jaw I'd made for the other fiend. It comprised of two claws and a greenstuff tongue.

So, let me know what you think!

Storm of Magic - We could be (magically bound) giants

Hallo, and here's a BIG announcement of GIANT proportions! Arf!

I've just finished this cheeky chappy. He's mostly finished - I'm going to base the whole army at once - He's still missing a prisoner in his cage on his right waist. I decided I'd do the cage seperately, for ease of painting, then put it all together at the end.

This guy was an utter blast to paint. I sat down and painted him in 2 hours. It all just came together so well. My usual source of light (the kitchen worktop) was a bit grim, so I quickly stole in while my missus left the ironing board unattended to nab my pictures - ninja skillz!

I wanted to get across that firstly, this giant is mortal, and not a daemon. He's warped and monstrous, but he's not daemonic, so he's still looked down at and sneered, a beast to be used. I decided to give him fleshy skin, a 50:50 mix of tallarn flesh and astronomonomnomnomicon grey. I used this on my dark eldar which can be found at simonfisherlol.blogspot.com.

However, they've convinced him to fight for the glory of Slaanesh by crafting him some nifty kreuger-style claws. Slash! These were just the champion talons from the daemonette box. One of the fingers from these was used as a finger gauntlet for his thumb. His tongue is also from the instrument in the daemonette boxset, which most people have a dozen of. He's up for that pain for pleasure malarky too, so I modelled some dangly chains from his body. I did the blood running down his back, running into his ripples of fat. I was going to put a banner on his groin, dangling through his legs, but I decided against it. He's a Slaanesh giant - he probably wants quick access to the interior contents of his breeches.

So, basically GW are trying to shift as many giants as possible at the moment by alowing them to be used without scrolls of binding and giving them the giantkin helm. Luckily, I'm a whopping big sap and fell for it, but that's ok. This kit is utterly brilliant, and I cannot recommend it enough. Go get yourself a damn giant.

Here's the damn pics.

I'll be having fun with this guy I can tell you that!

Storm of Magic - Fimir Balefiend (and a history lesson)

So, storm of magic has well and truely swept over me. I'm going to be running a storm of magic campaign at the club, revolving around returning to Albion. Albion is home to those pesky swamp loving Fimir, who have rules in the new storm of chaos book. So, I decided to have a go at making a fimir balefiend.

Now, here's a bit of background about the minis and the fimir in general, since this really makes the model special. The fimir were a warhammer race from the 80s, who made it into the boardgame "heroquest". There were three, single pose fimir made for this game. Games Workshop made more, in metal, for warhammer. But there was a foul up, and although they had infantry stats, they produced monstrous models (a good bit larger). They were quite unpopular and hardly used (why buy models who have crap stats?). And between this, and the background revolving around raping to reproduce (the only female fimir were the wizards, and they were infertile, so to reproduce they had to raid human villages and make away with their "maidens"), led to them being dropped from the game.

So, I acquired 3 of the old heroquest figures for about £5 (better than some of the current gw prices and they've been out of production 20 years...).  However, as a numpty, I didn't read through the rules thoroughly before my purchase. Fimir balefiends are monstrous infantry...these models are quite definately just bog standard (pun intended) infantry.

So, as well as converting this warrior into a mage, I needed to make him a suitable monster base. I decided to have him elevated on a arcane ruin, making him look like he's hovering above a bit of marshland (that's where the cheeky branch comes in!)

I attempted to make a swamp using a few layers of pva just left to dry. It came out ok, but unfortunatley it seemed to dry in the shape of top of  the base (lightly bobbled using a standard GW Base). After a few layers it formed ok though. I've not quite finished, I'm going to try and give it a gloss finish to look liquidy, as I read swamps looks quite wet somewhere on wikipedia.

The staff was made from a spawn eye and, weirdly, the end of a tyranid tentacle as the curvy top. I greenstuffed the rest of it, to make the look of a gnarled branch.

Apart from adding a scroll to his waist, there wasn't much else conversion to do. The paint job is gnarloc green foundation  (brilliant shade of green, I use it just on its own with a black wash), with dark angel green speckles. I did a dark wash around his back and tail of a 50/50 mix, just to try and break up the monotonous colour (no one creature is just one colour). The metal areas I painted silver and tin bitz - Albion is a place stuck in the stone age, I thought his armour would be quite old and made of cheap metals like bronze. It would put im at odds with my daemonettes and their golds, which isn't a bad thing.

Here's a few pictures of my newest creation.

Soulcrushers WHIPs

In keeping with my newly found energy to keep updating this blog, I bring you some more count as rediculousity (check me out, making up words).

So...before you go all nuts...

Soulcrushers of Slaanesh

Chaos is capricious by nature, and never falls into predictable patterns. Each of the four powers have their own daemons who are recognisable and "common", but each also have their daemonic followers who are less recognisable. These usually are followers who have been warped beyond their original form, either sporadically gifted by their dark master on a whim, or to serve a specific purpose. Some are bred, again through either wicked desire to create something new or to serve a greater purpose. Others are just rare beast who rarely venture from deep in the Chaos Wastes, or have started mortal and been granted daemonhood.

Although Tzeentch is the greatest practitioner of creating new denizens and playthings, the other gods have trifled too. Slaanesh is no exception.

Seekers of Slaanesh are a graceful beast that are often tamed by daemonettes and ridden as a steed. Seekers ave, however, a much larger cousin. They oft go by other names; pleasureseekers, serpentines or soulcrushers, to name a few. These destriers are much hardier and larger, standing twice the size of a daemonette just on it's belly. Having the head of a seeker, and the body of a serpent, a favoured beast of Slaanesh, and the features of a human, they are truly children of chaos. No one knows their origin, but thankfully they are a rare sight indeed.

Daemonettes much first master their seeker steeds before they may attempt the pilgrimage to tame a serpentine. The serpentine has a foul temper, and to seduce it to ones will is truly a feat slaanesh would value in it's follower. Once tamed, the master will affix perfectly fashioned armour on their steeds head and shoulders, and adorn themselves in armour, almost in mocking of the knightly orders of the empire. The riders will also take great weapons, forged with fine blades and hooks.

In battle, the soulcrushers ride as a unit, their massive steeds slithering at incomprehensible speeds into the lines of their enemies. Between the lashing tail of their beast, and the finely honed weapons and artful approach to dispatching an enemy, the unit can provide a hammer blow rarely seen in an army who prides themselves on finesse.

So, there, I explained it. Stop accusing me of being cheesy!

The real story behind this is that I got the steed of slaanesh that the old chaos champion came with for a herald. Making it, I thought "Yunno, a unit of these would look cool!" So I bought another. I decided, since they needed monster bases, I'd use them as Bloodcrushers. Absolutely no cheesy malice was intended!

So here are the painting in progress pictures. Please, excuse the paint jobs, they're still in process of being made look right. The riders are just seeker riders given a bit of knife-and-glue love.

Here's the two I have so far ranked together.

Ah, Kiki, my rank and file. She used to be a japanese school girl, until a Kipper of secrets came to her with an oversized tentacle and...I'll leave the rest of that story for another time. She has pigtails. Yeah, I know, pretty cute! It's an army of hair fashion faux pas. She's got a hellion blade from 40k, I chopped her shoulders off and plopped some hellion shoulder pads on. I've given her steed a club tail, because their tails are a bit wimpy and I wanted some variation (and justify their huge strength).

My "bloodreaper", but I'll probably just use her as a normal grunt too. It's a standard arm with a corsair sword on the tip. This steed has a claw tail, for added clawpla finishing moves.

I've bought another steed, who will be a banner bearer taking the Banner of Endless Lust (war). It helps negate the pain us mono lists have trying to take multiples of our magic banners (laaame).

Comments encouraged!

Fiendish conversions- Fiends of slaanesh WIP

So, today I went and collected my ebay hoard from the post office. Firstly, I got 30 daemonettes (well...28, 2 have been glued and converted beyond recognition).

Secondly, I got my 6 chaos spawn. I remember a few years ago, in the height of Apocalypse, the silly 40K expansion, GW released a "tide of spawn", which was 10 spawn in a bundle box for negligable money off. My friend Adam bought this said box. Firstly, I mocked him, and questioned him why. Secondly, I tried to acquire some of the said spawn, which he guarded jealously. Now, finally, I relent and admit it was a shrewd move.

I acquired my spawn for £5 each. brand new in box. What a deal, it's £20 for two from the local GW.

I'm going to admit, this afternoon I "winged it". I had no idea how to go about making my fiends, so I just had a bit of a play. I really wanted to them look fiendish, not just spawns pretending to be fiends. A bit hard with spawn, but I tried my best!

And here's what I came up with:

They rank up nicely, I've still quite alot to do. I intened to greenstuff fur on their backs and a few details on their skin. I really wanted fiend heads for all of them, but I didn't want to watse perfectly good seekers just for their heads.

Instead, I modified a couple of other heads, hopefully to some degree of success.

This guy is genius. I wanted to give them all the large claws from the spawn set but just couldn't acquire them. I also wanted to save these arms for some dark eldar grotesque conversions. So, I ended up biting the bullet and using them. With the dark eldar chain snares, I saw a really good oportunity. Originally I planned to have him dragging the icon of slaanesh behind him. But I couldn't find it...but could find a pretty hefty looking eight-pointed star. Bet that's hurt being whipped in your face. So I decided to use it as a weapon! I've tried to pose him in a realistic pose to show he's swinging his arm round, I think it's fairly decent pose. I'm going to model the skin over the hook to look like they're pierced through the skin.

The main man with the £5 head! I like this guy.

I really like this guy. I put daemonette claws on him from the seeker kit. His heads the flayed head the standard from the beastmen kit, I've green stuffed a tongue and since he has no jaw, it's just dangling there. Very creepy.

There's some rear shots - I've used the tails from my gargoyles.

So, let me know what you think - and if anything can improve them, be sure to let me know!