Serelia of Zimmendell (and some wells)

This week I repainted an old model that I've had since I was 15, when my friend Tim gave it to me (thanks Tim). It's another of the Heroes For Dungeonquest miniatures (I'd really like to get all of these one day) called Serelia of Zimmendell. I really like this model. It's sculpted in a pretty old-fashioned style, but I really like the dragon curled around her legs and the way that she's looking into a crystal ball. I've painted her twice before, and I'll probably end up doing it again one day!

Also, I made three wells that came free with the Carnivale kickstarter. They're made of MDF with greyboard details. I don't usually like greyboard, as it feels a bit flimsy and is slightly nasty to the touch (not sure why, though, as it's basically card). However, these went together easily and have good details.

The only problem was that I lost a couple of side pieces from one of them, so I improvised and made it into a ruined well. I used bits of cork for the rubble.

A Fantasy Novel For Free

Being the kind of idiot that I am, I completely forgot to mention that my novel Up To The Throne is currently free on Kindle. It'll be free today and tomorrow, and funnily enough I highly recommend it. So, if any of you fancy reading a Mordheim-meets-Assassin's-Creed type story of murder, magic and revenge, please click the link below.


Up To The Throne on Amazon

Giulia Degarno returns to the city-state of Pagalia with one intention: to kill the man who scarred her and left her for dead. But Publius Severra is no longer a mere criminal, and has risen to become a powerful politician - and perhaps the only man who can save Pagalia from anarchy. Now, as Severra stands poised to seize the throne, Giulia must choose between taking her revenge, and saving her home.

I can't see how you would regret it.

Penitent Engine Conversion

And so it was ordered that the great Relics, Statues and Reliquaries of the Order of Saint Triniana should be borne into battle, so as to lift up the hearts of the faithful. Then Cannoness Gwendoline the Irascible did decree that the statue of our Most Wrathful Lady should be carried upon the legs of a Sentinel. And there was much rejoicing.

Then she said unto the tech-priests, "Let it have a very large chainsaw, for to give a righteous beating to the unbelievers. And let it also have a flamethrower, for to get medieval upon the asses of the blasphemous. And so it may lift up the hearts of the faithful, and remove the hearts of the faithless."

And there was much rejoicing and/or wailing and gnashing of teeth, as appropriate.

While I'm a big fan of the tanks and power-armoured Sisters of Battle, I'm less keen on the half-naked flagellant element of the army. The Penitent Engines, especially the new ones, always felt like a missed opportunity, and look more like crude and rusty torture implements than the ornate bits of sacred war-machinery than I imagine them to be. I see them more as bits of gothic masonry come to life.

I made the main part of this model ages ago. It uses a Hasslefree miniature as the statue in the centre, with parts from 40k and the Warhammer Garden of Morr (mainly gateposts) to bulk it out. The power unit at the back came from a plastic toy, as did the arms. The legs are from a Sentinel.

I think it looks suitably deranged, and will fit nicely alongside the other Relic Engine:

And the tanks:

Another Chaos Chaingunner

A very long time ago, I bought some random Chaos bits off ebay. One of the bits was half of a Chosen space marine from the old Dark Vengeance boxed set. These models came in two bits, presumably for ease of manufacture. Unfortunately, I was missing the bit that contained the marine's forearms, head and most of his shoulder pads.

I decided to rectify this by giving him new arms and a whopping great rotary cannon. I cut and repositioned the legs so that he would be posing dramatically with one boot up on a rock. He got new arms from an ancient plastic space marine, a new head from an old chaos champion, and a lot of green stuff and plasticard to bulk out the missing pauldrons.

(This, I should add, was really hard. Green stuff is fine for filling gaps, but I find sculpting with it very difficult. I ended up using some tips from this excellent and under-followed Borgnine's Painting blog. In particular, I was careful to let one load of green stuff cure before trying to do another. I'm still not 100% happy with my efforts.)

His gun was built out of half of an ork autocannon that I had lying around (as you do) with an ork nob's magazine and a barrel made out of an Empire outrider's gun (thanks James F). I think it looks suitably excessive, as if he nicked it off a helicopter gunship.

And now with paint. I went with my usual not-quite-Black-Legion colour scheme, with slightly more gold in this example to reflect his higher status (purely on the basis that he's got the big gun).

Here he is next to the model from which he was converted.

I've never really seen chaos marines as evil: everyone in the 40k world is a knob (except ork nobs, who spell it differently). It's more that the chaos marines rock hard and do what they like, like pirates, while the normal marines are more boringly obnoxious and follow orders. Anyhow, this guy will be rocking very hard.

Captain Morkgan the Orc Pirate

Things are hard for everybody at the moment and, like a lot of people, I'm basically in hiding now. I've spent the last week writing like crazy, and doing a bit of painting. As it's no longer feasible to go out to get new models, I've turned to the huge heap of unpainted miniatures that I've built up over the years: largely things that I got at conventions because they looked cool.

One of these is an orc sea-captain from Black Scorpion, designed for their skirmish game Cutlass. He was resin and, like almost everything they do, a really nice sculpt. I made him a base out of coffee stirrers and painted him as he came out of the box.

Captain Morkgan is a coarse, violent, foul-smelling kleptomaniac with a broad Sumorkset accent who long ago pickled whatever small brain he had with a combination of seawater and naval rum. Consequently, he is greatly respected by other pirates, who secretly think that being an orc would be rather good fun.

More next time: stay safe everyone, stay inside, and paint your old miniatures. Best wishes to everyone!

Warband of the Seasons

The Warband of the Seasons is finished! I completed the last warrior of the band a couple of days ago. She's based on a Stormcast Eternal, with a head from Hasslefree and the shield I made a couple of posts ago. The axe was made from a savage orc weapon: I think it fits the rusty concept.

So, here is the completed warband. I think they represent some kind of yokel cult, who celebrate the arrival of spring and summer with wild dancing and the like, and the things they summon. The two knights are probably semi-magical figures who wax and wane with the seasons. The dryad is a being of the deep forest, that ventures out to celebrate (and wreak havoc).

What shall I do with these guys? Well, I've got vague plans to try to "medievalise" the rules for Hardwired, in order to do a fantasy variant. That might be good fun, and this warband would make a good squad of champions for it. I'll have a think about it, but Hardewyred is definitely in the project list.

The Technomancer: Chaos Marine Warpsmith

It's been a fairly quiet week. A while ago, I got a couple an old metal Privateer Press model for £2, and I thought that I'd have a go at painting it. It's the "Iron Lich Asphyxious" from the Cryx faction, who are basically steampunk undead.

I thought he'd made a good techmarine - sorry, warpsmith - for the 40k Chaos army. The model has a mechanical look, and the background in the Chaos book says that some warpsmiths are almost entirely robotic, so that seems to fit. I tend to find that techmarine-type models are very busy, with arms and tentacles going everywhere, but a bit of a mess, so I kept this guy simple.

The only conversions I've done are to put a metal clamp on the end of his staff, and to replace his head with a ridiculous chaos helmet that I had lying around. The huge horns look pretty silly on any model, but given that he's already very big and spindly, they don't look too out of place and hopefully emphasise his height. I added a couple of bits of rusted machinery to the base to further link him with his role, and painted his robes red to suggest a link with the tech-priests of Mars.

The Technomancer: fighting the Long War in rooms with high ceilings

Not bad for £2 really!