Even more Scavvies, and an alligator with a blunderbuss

 When I was younger, I used to hate preparing miniatures - which is why a lot of my earlier models have huge mold lines, odd little spikes where I snipped them off the frame and very dodgy basing. These days, I'm the opposite. I find something quite satisfying in doing the boring preparatory work, making the models look ready and smoothing the bases down with clay so that you can't see the slots.

Anyhow, this week I've been doing some more on the Eschers - they are turning into a horde, rather than a gang - but that's for later. I also did some more filthy maniacs for the scavvies.

The guy on the far left is an old official scavvy leader. Like the beastmaster on the far right, his left arm feels a bit wrong and overlong, although in fairness it's easy for arms to look too short or too long when they're clothed and flailing about. I wasn't sure that I liked the model until I got going on it, and now it's come out alright. There's lots of interesting detail, but it's not too excessive.

The two in the middle are based on Civil War models. The standing guy is an English Civil War soldier, with a medieval musket and Frost/Stargrave bits and bobs. The kneeling guy is an American Civil War model with a Frostgrave head and arms. Really, the historical bodies are just there to provide a basis on which to hang the crazy scavvy stuff. 

The next chap is an old Necromunda wyrd beastmaster, a psychic dude who can control the various horrible animals that dwell in the city. He's technically a hireling rather than a gang member, but he looks like the sort of villainous nutjob who would at home in the scavvy ranks. I didn't actually like this model all this much, but once I got going it worked out okay.

And I also made another Scaly. This one has the much-feared scatter cannon, a sort of huge blunderbuss that functioned much like a grenade launcher.

This model was made from the body of a Privateer Press trollblood soldier (the head went missing many years ago) with the head of a GW lizardman. I rather like him.

To an extent, the scaly is a bit of a test model. I've got a few really old trollblood models, and it occurs to me that they might make a nice unit. I think they could be quite good. But that's for another time...

The Scavvy Horde Grows, and Acquires an Alligator

 Hello again! I've been making some more scavvies for the horde. Here are four more scumbags, made out of all sorts of stuff.

By and large, they're Frostgrave Cultists 2 and Stargrave Scavenger bits. The two on the left have WW2 bodies - I've forgotten where they come from. I've also added a few Games Workshop odds and ends. 

Back in the day, scavvy gangs could use some of the underhive's other nasty inhabitants - which was lucky, as scavvies are pretty weak on their own. They had the option of taking one or two "scalies", which were lizard-like mutants who were very tough and strong, and carried heavy weapons. 

I'm not sure if this was GW riffing on the old urban myths about alligators living in sewers, but I decided that my chaps would have a literal alligator to help them out. I used the "Bloody Barnabas" model from Privateer Press' Hordes game (which currently seems to be somewhat defunct). Here he is.

I'm quite pleased with his coat.

And here is the whole gang together. They'll be getting some more reinforcements soon - they need it!

More Fun With Zombies and Scavvies

 Now that normal service has been restored, I have more pictures for both of you who read this blog. This week, I've been working on some of Necromunda's less flamboyant inhabitants: the rancid, low-living scavvies and their plague zombie friends.

The second batch of plague zombies included some damaged models. It seems that, many years ago, I converted them to introduce some variety, with mixed results. I took the opportunity to do some repairs before painting them.

I ordered a sprue of Frostgrave female cultists (sold under the name Frostgrave Cultists 2). These are really good models, with a ragged, crazy look. The cultists wear masks and bandages, and carry nasty-looking weapons. Some of the arms have a groping pose that works well for zombies.

And here is the second bunch, painted up. As with the first lot, I used a limited range of colours for the clothing, all of them drab and grubby. I kept with three shades of skin: bloodless blue, rotting green and recently-dead yellow. They work as individuals but there's enough overlap to make them seem like a unified mob.

Not too shabby! Actually, very shabby. But still.

I also started work on a batch of scavvies. Scavvies are filthy and inbred, but they are still live humans, so these guys would be looking more lively. There are official GW scavvy models from the 90s, but I'm not too keen on them: they've got that unexciting, slightly cartoony quality that was common in GW at the time, and they're nowhere near as well-sculpted as the Escher ganger. 

I wanted them to look crazed and feral, and the Frostgrave cultists worked perfectly for this. Some of them were given left-over Stargrave arms, using the most basic-looking rifles. It's easy to make nice, dynamic poses with the plastics.

In painting them, I used fairly drab, earthy colours to suggest dirt, rust and worn-out gear. I also gave them bits of red clothing, to suggest danger. They're at least partly inspired by the Reavers from the film Serenity.

They look charming. I do enjoy making these weird models out of bits and bobs: there will be more scavvy soldiers to follow. After the neatness and bright colours of the Eschers, it's interesting to paint these filthy maniacs.

A Strange Thing That Happened On This Blog

In the past, most of the posts on this blog have got between 50-100 views. I don't write this blog as anything other than a record of what I've been doing and, while I appreciate the comments that I get, I've never really planned or wanted for it to "get big" at all.

On 19 August, I posted a post about painting an old ork weirdboy miniature. That post suddenly got a (for me) huge amount of views: about 500. The next five posts got between 600 and 1300 views. 

On 1 October, I posted a post about painting plastic dinosaurs. This post got 16 views. 

So what happened? Why did this blog suddenly get so many views, and why did they suddenly stop?

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My suspicion is that they weren't from real people. I think that, for some reason, the post on the 19th triggered something that attracted a load of bots. (It didn't trigger a lot of extra comments, which feels suspicious.)

I might repost the 19 August post, to see if it triggers more views again. If I do, I haven't gone crazy: I'm just trying to work out what occurred. After that, I'll probably delete the test post (and maybe this one).

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Strange. If you've any idea what happened, do let me know!

Escher Leader and the Start of a Necromunda Skavvy Horde

 While not painting inexpensive dinosaurs with egg yolk, I've also continued to work on the old Necromunda Escher gangers. These two are a leader, who has a boltgun and a laspistol, and another ganger with a lasgun. I've already got one copy of this model, so I tried to paint this version as differently as possible. One of the things I liked about Necromunda was that the weapons weren't just better or worse than one another, and it was often easier to equip your men with low-powered lasguns than fancy stuff. Anyway, here they are.

Whilst rooting about for more Necromunda bits and pieces, I remembered that I had bought a few scavvy plague zombies many years ago. The scavvies were a gang introduced in the Outlanders book, which was an add-on for the basic game. Outlanders included a few gangs, some monsters and some new (complex) rules about being outlawed and subsisting in the wasteland.

The scavvies were the lowest of the low: filthy and often mutated dregs of society, who lived in the rubbish of the undercity and were equipped with battered weapons that often broke down. They included mutants of various sorts, and even had special rules allowing them to eat each other to avoid having to pay for food.

One option the scavvies had was to attract plague zombies to the battlefield: unfortunates who had shuffled off this mortal coil and then shuffled back again, looking for brains to eat. For 10 credits, d.6 zombies would show up. While they weren't good fighters, they were a handy nuisance and could perhaps turn the enemy into other zombies, which was certain to make you popular with your friends. 

Anyhow, I was surprised to find that I'd bought 12 of these guys at some point. Some of the zombies would need repairs, but I was able to paint up one of each of the standard metal miniatures. They are very small models (maybe the plague shrinks you?) and are clearly sculpted on three basic bodies. Not brilliant miniatures, but likeable enough.

Braaaiiins...

I painted the zombies in a range of nasty flesh tones. They look a bit cartoony - I think it would be more realistic to paint them in the usual way and give them a blue or purple wash. But I like the variety and the rather drab "outfits". They certainly make a change from the jolly colours of House Escher. Perhaps I should do a gang from both of them.

£6 Plastic Dinosaur Paint Set Challenge!

 A few weeks ago, I went to Tring Museum of Natural History with my friend Ruth. This inevitably involved a look around the gift shop. Later, Ruth presented me with this item:

Yes, it's a paint set, complete with brushes and two plastic model dinosaurs! And all that for £6! 

I thought it would be a fun challenge to try to paint the dinosaurs, using only the paints provided (and a white undercoat). The brushes were so awful that they were hardly worthy of the name, so I threw them out and used my own. I stuck the dinosaurs to two bits of plastic and got to work.

The models were surprisingly detailed (and reasonably accurate, as far as I can tell). Given the undercoat and the quality of the paints, I used washes for the main body of the models. Some of the paints were better than others: the blue and green were pretty decent, all things considered, although the yellow was terrible and I might as well have tried to paint the miniatures with an egg yolk.

I had to mix brown for the horns and claws, which was a new experience. I found it easy to make some sort of brown (a mixture of yellow, red and blue) but making it more leathery was really hard. 

Anyhow, here are the results:

Tyrannosaurus:

Triceratops:

And of course here they are locked in mortal combat and ready to be banged against each other! To quote Firefly, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

Not too shabby, all things considered! This was a fun break from the usual models and just goes to show that anything is a canvas if you're brave enough and get away before the police arrive.

Necromunda Beetle Knight

 Hello again! This post was supposed to be about more House Escher gangers, but I didn't paint them in time. Then I thought that it could be a tongue-in-cheek post about painting some iffy plastic dinosaurs from a museum, but those aren't quite ready either. So, this is about a space knight riding a giant beetle with a bionic arm across a wasteland.

There are a few conversions that I've had planned for ages and never got around to doing. One of these is to turn a Nurgle plague drone fly into a riding beast. For some reason, the idea of weird people riding strange monsters really appeals to me. 

I assembled the drone much as normal, although I swapped the front and middle legs around to make it more of a quadruped. I used DAS clay and green stuff to fill in the rotting bits and the wing-holes, and gave it a head from a tyranid bit turned upside down. The head makes for nice faceted eyes.

The rider was more complex. He's got legs from an Eldar guardian, an upper body from a very battered Bretonnian knight that I've had for years, and a lance arm from a dark elf. The front of the head comes from a chaos cultist and the helmet is a bit left over from some weird Age of Sigmar bone monster. I think his backpack, with carries water, is originally a dwarf bit. Quite a lot of green stuff was involved. The bits and bobs stuck to the beetle come from all sorts of  places. 

Halfway through construction, I dropped the model on the floor. I decided to replace the beetle's left small arm with a mechanical arm that I'd built out of junk a while back and never really found a purpose for. 

There's nothing especially complex about the painting, It was difficult to make the rider look interesting, in that he felt a little drab compared to his beetle. I decided to give his armour a verdigris look: perhaps, in the wasteland, that sort of discolouration is seen as impressive. I'm not entirely sure about the stripes on the beetle - I like the concept, but I don't think they work all that well in practice. I'm not sure how I could improve them without an airbrush, though.

Overall, I really like him. I think he's got a weird charm: as much inspired by Moebius as anything in Warhammer. I could see him riding about on the dunes, prodding enemies with his lance.