Brakka Braytooth, Bearer of the Herdstone Standard (The Gelded)

So, here's my newest character, Brakka Braytooth. He's a mean Son of a Sow. I painted him really quickly, I just really enjoyed this model. Such a great character. The axe was a bit hair raising to paint around as I was worried about snapping it off.

The banner had a few false starts. I decided to paint it in a similar vein to my Wargor BSB, just to help tie them together. This banner was inspired by the artwork in the beastmen army book, with the shamen infront of the towering herdstone. Liber Chaotica tells us minotaurs are sacred protectors of herdstones, so I thought that a standard of a long distant herdstone would be a standard worth fighting over.

I painted his axe in a similar fashion to my Doombull's to again tie them together.

Banebeast Minotaur standard bearer review

With a little friend

So this weekend, after proxying the majority of my horde, I decided to splash out on the banebeast minotaur standard bearer whilst there was still the 16% off. I was toying with the idea of converting a plastic BSB for my mino army, but in the end I decided I would rarely use it in a competative list, so took the easy option and went with the £17 banebeast. The Skullbearer of the Taarviks Khaargstrukk (or however you spell it).

Well, I can honestly say I was not dissapointed! What a cracking model. He came in several parts - the body consisted of right arm with weapon (all one piece), body with left arm, and left hand and banner all in one piece. His head and tail came on another sprue, the head being all one piece.

The torso came with...erm..."anatomically correct" lower body. In his gooch was a huge pair of fruits. I thought long and hard (giggedy) about whether to keep it or not. I decided to get rid.

I'm all for realistic sculpting, but he would look out of place being the only model with a scrote. There was not loincloth to hide his modesty and, with no effort to sculpt one or a suitable size bit in my bit box, I just lopped them off.

Our bull, post gelding

So, after I gave him the snip, I put him together. The parts went together smoothly, with just a tiny bit of filling on the right arm. The right arms weapon looks a bit bent and flimsy, but thats the risk of having a long shaft made from resin. The resin is really nice to use and work with, and is perhaps a little nicer than games workshops finecast, just because there was no faults in the casting and the details were immaculate.

So, once I finished putting the model together, I got to putting my own personal stamp on this cheeky chappy.

In comparison to a standard minotaur and my doombull

I took a spare skull dingle dangle (tm) bit from my bits box and attatched it to his gutplate, just to help connect him to his fellow beastmen who have loincloths. I added a minotaur shield to his left arm as BSB he'll be most likely taking as much armour as possible. I finally added a small club from the ogre bulls box to his waist to show his armed to the teeth - a gorebull can never have too many weapons!

Overall, this model is absolutely fantastic. The banner I would have liked to replace as it's a bit bland, but when the models finished it doesn't look too bad.  The axe also rests close to the ground, leading to potential ranking up issues should he be in the second rank of a regiment. The base he came with was also slightly warped, so I just put him on a standard GW 40x40 base.

All in all, a solid 8 out of 10 from me. If the rumours of upcoming minotaur regiment from banebaeasts is true, I will definately to purchasing a box!

Gorash Sowbane - Wargor BSB

So, here in the UK I've had most of the day off with the strikes. So I've been doing uni work for most of the day, but managed to get a little bit of painting done. The Ungors I spectacularly didn't finish within an hour - An hour later I've got the majority of four colours on them! Go me. Soon I'll begin taking time over each one to make them presentable - I'm just rubbish at painting more than one model!

But I did go back and touch up (hurhurur) my BSB. Here he is - my wargor Gorash Sowbane, Bearer of the Vision.

Nothing much to say about this model - I gave a few extra drybrushes ontop of the fur to make him stand out. I've still got the other side of the standard to paint the same design on (I'll do it one day, seriously). Gorash is an inside joke from when I tried D&D once - Gorash was a lesbian half-orc female barbarian who I crafted (Gor and gash put together, hilarity!). Although the regular players hated her - she also carried the entire gang through about 4 sessions by running straight in and hitting stuff in the face with a heavy axe. Infact he put down a (aparently alluring) female boss in one gory critical hit. I ended up being unable to commit every week due to work commitments, but they carried Gorash on as a NPC and though they tried to kill her - she wouldn't go down. I renamed a mordheim bestigor Gorash Sowbane, and now I've renamed this character - Gorash the third. I've got a bit of fiction wrtten up too wich I'll add one day in the future.

Oh, and a cheeky chappy on Warseer asked for a comparison shot of my dark wizard next to other gors - well, here you go!

He doesn't shape up too bad does he?

Oh, and one of my elite front rankers, lookign rather vexed and suprised he took a quiver to the chest. And rightly so.

Great Bray Shamen of Shadow magic (and a sneak peek)

Well it was a...interesting model to paint, but here's my great shamen, he who does not yet have a name!

I The model is a limited edition games day sculpt for a chaos sorceror which recieved...mixed feelings in the chaos camps. I think he's a brilliant model, and fills the niche I needed him to - a Great Shamen who stood out from his fellow shamen as a Lord choice. He's not entirely beastman, but shares enough beastman characteristics to get by.

His background is that he was a prominant wizard in the empire, who suddenly FOR WHATEVER REASON started warping into a beastman. He's still between the two, but has managed to gather followers (due to his shamenistic skills, and beastman followers who were outcast albinos already). I know, it's rare for beastmen to respect turnskins (humans who turn to beastmen) but I think my backgrounds fairly watertight.

I'll work out some more serious background later, but now just enjoy the pics!

I've also got a sneak peak of my battle standard, if you care to whet your apetites. I honestly think this BSB is the best painted model I'll have ever done.

More soon!

The Banner of the Beast - A Beastman BSB WIP

For those of you who follow my blog, you'll know that I've a tiny yearning for all things beastly. My girlfriend even says my obsession with small woodland creatures is unnatural and a little bit creepy.

If you are a regular reader (I know you exist I've got over 100 views this week!) then you'll know I like battle standard bearers. Well I've put a bit of thought into a beastman one, wracked my mind really, and I've come up with something I find quite satisfactory.

 When I'm making models like this, I want a model which is not "stock". I want a figure who is individual to me, and my armies. Games Workshop don't produce a specific BSB for beastmen (they don't actually produce that many for all races really). They did however produce a limited edition, battleforce only figure (why do they do that? So annoying!) which goes for about £50 on ebay. Maelstrom Banebeasts make a few gorgeous BSB suitable figures, but I wanted to try and make a GW bit based one for when I inevitably play at warhammer world (they have a "GW model only" policy which applies to all games, not just tournaments). Most people I've seen use a bestigor or metal hero with the minotaur standard. The minotaur standard is ideal for a wargor BSB, its huge and an excellent focal point. However, a trick I've used before is turning a banner sideways to totally alter its appearance. Where you once had a free hanging banner, you now have a windswept flag attached to the length of the pole. A visually striking model who appears to be marching through the elements hefting a massive big pole with a flag. Patriotic!

The base of the model was a chaos warrior who I had cut down and stuck gor bits to. Originally I wanted to represent a bestigor in mordheim before the new plastics (so we're talking 2008ish here), but he never saw use with a sword and board. It was also a time consuming conversion and an entire unit would have been an utter nightmare to make. I instead pulled his arms off to make way for a gor banner arm and a left gor arm which I originally converted to hold a beefier weapon, but decided with so much going on on the model he could just have a regular unmodified cleaver.

The banner and model needed some green stuff love, with fur sculpted here and there to cover gaps and joints. Also, because of the weight distribution and the banners weight I needed to put some metal ballast in the base. It still had a slight list and prone to fall forward so I took it off the base and glues it a bit further back. The left should still needs some work doing to it to fur it up.

Painting wise I'm stumped what to scrawl on it. My daemon BSB was a blank canvas I could go nuts on, being able to pay a little bit of homage to the eye of terror. What do beastmen draw on their flags? Stickbeastmen throwing spears at razorgor? Beastly visages? A chaos star in dung? If you have any suggestions, please - fire away! The army book has very little inspiration for me, bad times.

Now...the serious bit. If you want to analyse my model deeply, you can point out several things which are not factually correct. The main one (apart from a goat/human hybrid walking on hind legs with a giant flag) is that there are horns/teeth in the flag, which would probably weigh the end of the flag and prevent it flapping in the breeze.

I've prepared several responses to this criticism:

1) The horns/teeth are hollow.

2) It's a magic flag.

3) It's a magical wind.

4) The tiger paws are sewn to the flag itself.

5) A bray shamen did it.

So, normal service will resume soon. For those of you who are interested, my daemons yet again got utterly hammered by Rob's mortar-up-the-wazoo empire this weekend. Steadfast and stubborn are becoming increasingly annoying, so I think I might crack out some dirty leadership modifying Masque fun!

High standards - a collection of standard bearers, icon holders and BSBs from around the net

Recently GW released a finecast standard pack for both Khorne and Tzeentch. These were utterly brilliant...bt unfortunately there were none for Slaanesh or nurgle or even undecided! Boo!

Well, I got thinking and, well, it didn't matter since I've got almost all the standard bearers I need! But I love to see a well done standard or banner bearer. I sometimes wish I could take more than one BSB in my army!

I like to browse the web for really good standards. As you may no, I'm not a great painter, so artstic masterpieces are all well and good, but what I like to see are genius conversion and clever use of bits to turn a hero into a banner waving fanatic. 

So, I've collected a few of my favourite to show you. If you ave yet to see mine, please follow the "standards" tag at the end of this post to see them.

A golden daemon  entry

Love this conversion, I may steal it!

Love everything to do with Chaos Dwarfs

Very simply and elegant conversion, especially the axe

More of this guys army is at http://ulvensandbox.blogspot.com/

If you know who made these, or you are they, please get in touch so I can give you a shout out!

Unit - complete!

So, I finished a unit this weekend. An epic, long haul of painting and modelling and fixing broken off arms, touching up poses and painting bases. I got a unit of 24 pretty much finished. They need a good wash with black ink and snow putting on their bases.

I'm hoping to complete two units of 30. I was tempted to paint them slightly differently by giving them different coloured tabbards, but I gave up on that idea. I decided to paint them all the same, since there's a good possibility of combining them together to make a single larger unit.

So here are my Daughters of the Slaughter. The name gets 9/10 for originality.

In there is my Battle Standard Bearer and full command. The unit champion/Alluress is the one in the helmet. I've got a bit of touching up to do, but they're definitely table top quality for me and I'm quite pleased I had the discipline to sit down and blast out a unit! It'll be nice to field a full proper unit, without unpainted or manky ebay cast offs.

Comments, as always, are welcome!

Showing your (garish) colours - Daemonette standard bearers WIP

Today's update is some WIP pictures of my standard bearers.

The paint jobs are a bit messy, and need alot of touching up (quite a bit more than I thought now I've seen the photos!).

What I wanted to do was to make the icons stand out. I didn't want to use the straight out of the box icons on my troops (how dull!), so I jazzed them up.

Here's the first. The flayed skin banner was the undivided/glory icon taken from the chaos space marine box, which was a spare bit since I'd cut off the spikes for some previous conversion which I cannot remember. I put some spare claws in their place to finish the eight pointed star. The main icon was just a slaanesh icon from the chaos space marine vehicle sprue - it just finished the whole icon and made it fully slaanesh rather than undivided.

Here's the second. Inspired by seeing a Skaven BSB with a long billowing banner behind it. I decided to try the same with one of my banners. I took the two standards from the seeker boxset, and added the long banner onto the other banner pole sideways. I had to greenstuff the bottom corner to the pole to make it look like it was wrapped around it. I also had to fill in a hole on the back on the banner with greenstuff. I decided to give the girl a dark eldar dagger arm, just for added uniqueness. I had to cut it above the rope tied on the bicep to make it fit with the daemonettes shoulder.

The Skaven banner had chicken scratch (or should I say rat scratch?) runes and iconography on it, which I liked. So I did the same with my daemon banner. I used the old chaos rune translation from the looooooong out of print Slaves to Darkness book. So, here's a quiz, what does my banner say?

It says: Claw, Keeper of Secrets, Mark of Slaanesh, Daemonette, Under the eye of the Chaos Gods. Utter gibberish, I know, but they look slaaneshi and I'm quite happy with the job I did.

Cool, huh?