A shotgun and a bottle of beer

About 25 years ago, I bought a few gangers for a game called Confrontation, which was the forerunner to Necromunda. I never played it (it looked incredibly complex) but I did paint the models - badly. I stripped one of them down, and started again.

He reminded me slightly of the bartender Ratz in William Gibson's hard-to-follow cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer, who is described as having a mechanical arm and keeps a riot gun behind the bar. I gave my guy a bionic arm made out of plasticard, sprues and bits of spear, and a shotgun from the excellent genestealer cultists set. His beer bottle came from a set of bottles made by a company called Meng, who I think do bits for historical dioramas. I stuck him on a base from the Sedition Wars game.

And then time for painting. He got a fairly standard jeans-and-apron look. Neuromancer mentions Ratz's bionic arm as being made of "grubby pink plastic" and I tried to reflect that in the paint job, which I'm not sure comes across very well here. I also added some warning stripes to his shotgun. It's a popular look on Necromunda and reminds potential enemies that shotguns can be dangerous.

I'm pleased with the painting, and I like the variety of fairly bright colours. In particular, the shading on the apron and the jeans has come out well. I can imagine him being a suitably disreputable addition to the post-apocalyptic drinking scene.

Lady with a banner

At the moment, I am ill. I have some sort of virus and, to quote Kris Kristofferson in one of the Blade films, I feel like hammered shit. Concentrating on much more than shooting aliens on a screen is proving tricky. Anyway, I've got one model done this time, and I think it's come out quite well.

It's the Sisters of Battle imagifer that I built last time. The paint scheme was pretty obvious, really. Amusingly, this model is about a head taller than the rest of the Sisters. Perhaps the main qualification for carrying the relic is that you can hold it up really high. After all, prowess is generally measured in the 40k universe by (1) hat size, (2) proliferation of skulls and (3) sheer physical bulk. Not wearing a helmet also seems to help.

Have I ever explained my theory that skulls grow in the ground in 40k, a bit like turnips on Earth?

The Dogs of Squark

It's not been a very productive week, for no particular reason, but I've been able to get a bit of model-making done.

First, I've started work on an Imagifer (basically, a relic-bearer) for my Sisters of Battle. The standard model is slightly dated and a bit of a lump. The model below was converted from a Seraphim (flying sister) that was missing its jetpack when I bought it second hand. I cut the arms, lowered the left hand and replaced the right with a gauntlet from the Tempestus Scions box.

I thought it would be cooler to give her a banner rather than the sheet of parchment that the GW version is holding up. This banner came from a Gamezone model. It had already broken off, and looked really appropriate. The head had been removed by the previous owner, so I gave her a Statuesque Miniatures head.

Secondly, I finally got around to finishing off two kroot hounds that I bought ages ago. The models were each missing a leg, so I sculpted new ones out of green stuff. The one on the left has a new front leg, and the one on the right was missing his back left leg.

Squarkoids are strange hybrids of vulture and dog that hunt in the badlands surrounding Tin City. They can be domesticated, and are used in a number of roles. However they are less valued for hunting, where their mixture of dog and bird DNA often causes them to try to retrieve one another. They are not to be confused with Flyenas.

I've realised that I really enjoy painting aliens and random space monsters, as opposed to armies of humans and very human-like things. Science fiction games need more monsters.

UPDATE!

I added a parchment/banner to the sister of battle, to help cover up the joins and stabilise the model.

Also, a while ago I made a shanty-town type house. I was slightly dissatisfied with it, and so I added a rough metal roof to it, made from off-cuts of plasticard. I think it's greatly improved the model.

A Visit to the Doctor

The medics of Tin City play a vital role in patching up the desperate fighters of the wasteland. Whether it's reattaching a limb or sticking on an entirely new one, you can count on your local doctor to fix you up and not to charge an arm and a leg (at least, not unless you wanted them removed). Most medical practitioners also can dispose of unwanted problems, like grunting fever, squatcrotch or the bodies of slain enemies. That said, many doctors have side businesses too, for when trade is slow, such as Honest Bob's combined surgery, undertaker's and kebab stand.

The clinic was looking rather dull at the start of the week, so I started adding details to the exterior to make it more interesting. The sign was a pain, and I ended up redoing the lettering. I broke up the white exterior with some graffiti and some unspecified tech bits, whilst trying to keep the Japanese shop front style.

I'd like to do some more detailing at the back: perhaps I'll add a little awning over the doorway, or a bike propped up against the wall.

Also, I made a bin out of plasticard and painted it a jolly, if filthy, yellow, to make the shape more interesting and provide a bit more colour. I've not stuck this in place, so it can be put against a range of buildings for instant waste-disposal excitement. I'm waiting for some bits to make the interior.

I also got the chance at last to paint a model I picked up for £1 at last year's Colours event. It's a Privateer Press model called Grim Angus, and has quite a steampunk feel. He came holding a rifle in his right hand, which didn't look quite right, so I replaced it with a knife from a GW ogre. This was surprisingly tricky, and I had to partially rebuild his hand with green stuff. I think he's come out well.

Nothing to see

Here are a few more inhabitants of the wastes, going about their daily business.

These two gentlemen have gone for a stroll in the desert in their hazmat suits, as you do, in a set of events completely unrelated to recovering crashed UFOs or producing methamphetamine. They are made by Full Borer Games (I think) and while they're not extremely detailed the folds in the cloth were good to paint. Sometimes you can have too much detail (says the man with a heap of unpainted Carnivale models on his desk).

Here is Hasslefree's version of Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road. Her gun is incredibly delicate so I thought I'd take a picture before the barrel inevitably snaps off. It's a really great model. I didn't try to paint the eyes because the risk of me slipping and covering the side of her face in white paint is too high. Of course that's the sort of thing people do in Mad Max, but still.

A Ninja and a Shed

While I'm never going to have the vast towers and murky streets of Blade Runner, the setting I've been gradually putting together does have a vaguely cyberpunk feel, like a border town in the future, where high technology sits alongside waste and junk.

There's always been a strong Japanese element to cyberpunk, probably because the genre was invented around 1980, when Tokyo looked to be the city of the future: Blade Runner has blimps advertising sushi, and Neuromancer has a replicant ninja. In keeping with this, I converted a ninja-type assassin from various bits I had lying around.

The head and torso come from a 40k Vindicare assassin, which I got cheaply with a load of broken parts (someone else had already hacked the legs off). The right arm and gun originally were part of an Infinity model, and the left arm is from a genestealer hybrid. The legs were based on the legs of a plastic Eldar guardian, although I had to cut them down because they were incredibly long. I sculpted some appropriate shoes instead of the pointy boot things that Eldar seem to wear.

Here he is with a bit of paint. As ever, he's slightly washed out, so the colour looks more extreme than it actually is. Strangely, the contrast on the base has hardly come out at all.

The other current project is a clinic for the Necromunda town, based on a TT Combat model. At present, it looks like a big white shed.

It will look better once I've stuck some more bits on. I'm thinking of getting hold of the recent objectives set to make some medical gear for the interior, and perhaps building a more technological extension on the side. It's got plenty of potential - which means that it's a long way from being finished.

Nurgle Champion

So great was the corruption of the governor that folk did not argue about whether he would fall to Chaos, but which of the ruinous powers would claim his soul. The governor's crazed ranting had inspired many a Khornate militia to go on the rampage. His subterfuge and treason were worthy of a devotee of Tzeentch. And his depraved, insatiable lusts would have made a priest of Slaanesh wince.

But ultimately he belonged to Nurgle, the god of corruption and decay. Now his name is lost, and he is known only as Threebellies, a monster as bloated as he is stupid, whose ruins everything he touches.


I've never really been very into Chaos in Warhammer, either in fantasy or 40k, although some of the really old stuff has an entertaining Hieronymous Bosch feeling. It's pretty take-it-or-leave-it for me, and most of it I'd leave. In particular, I've never really got Nurgle, whose models always looked a bit jolly and suffered from an excess of tentacles.

Anyway, a friend of mind gave me part of a really old metal Great Unclean One. I had no real use for it, until I discovered that the upper body of one of the riders from the Maggoth kit fitted really well on top of it. By which I mean that it was grossly misproportioned.

I found a tutorial for painting suitably rancid skin and followed it. He does look a bit like a mouldy strawberry up on end, but in the circumstances, that might not be an entirely bad thing.

 Lovely.