Van Saar Necromunda Gang 1

Ages and ages ago (at least a decade) my friend James got me some strange alien heads. I'm not sure who made them: it was a big company like Kromlech or Puppetswar, although neither of them seems to carry this product anymore. (If you do recognise them, let me know!) They remind me a bit of Giger's Alien, and the Borg queen from Star Trek. I like the design, especially the creepy blankness of their faces. They look like some kind of mixture of human and alien DNA, or maybe something very evil making a bad attempt at fitting in with the normals.

Anyhow, I've had these for ages and have never really found bodies to go with them. I happened to see a box of plastic House Van Saar Necromunda gangers going cheaply on ebay, recently. I've always liked the design of the Van Saars, as they have a sleek, techy feel unusual in Warhammer 40,000. I bought the plastics and stuck the weird alien heads on them.

After making loads of North Star plastic models, the Necromunda kit was a bit of a surprise. For one thing, there's very little option for converting or even adapting the models: you're meant to assemble them in one of two poses, and doing much else would be fiddly and difficult. For another, the legs and bodies go together and there's no real way of changing that. What this means is that the models are very "fixed", but they're also in very dynamic positions, especially compared to the North Star ones. You trade variety for dynamism. I've mixed feelings about this.

The heads worked fairly well on the new bodies. I decided to paint them in a vaguely "cyber" way, but without bright or healthy colours. The armour was worked up from dark grey, mixing in purple and crimson. This is a new style for me, but I really like the way it's come out. The faces were worked up from a sandy brown, adding bone and white, and not using any flesh tones so they would look pallid and unwholesome. I wasn't sure about the blue pads and the green details, which felt too bright, but I think they work overall.

And after all that... here they are.

More Mordheim Mercenaries

 Hello again! Here are a few more foppish-but-violent mercenaries to venture into Mordheim, like carrion-crows dressed up as peacocks. That was unusually poetic of me! For similar high-quality prose, please buy my books. All of them.

Anyhow, all of these are old models that I've spruced up. I tidied the painting generally, tried to make the leather look a bit more battered, and repainted the yellow fabric, now using a pink undercoat. I think it helps a lot. Also, I used a new technique on the faces, glazing them with heavily thinned Sigvald Burgundy to make them look ruddy and a bit unhealthy.

First up is a swordsman and a crossbowman. These guys are a mixture of Empire and Mordheim mercenary bits. The crossbowman has a head from a Bretonnian man at arms.

And here are two more crossbowmen. Again, they use Mordheim mercenary and Empire bits, particularly Empire cannon crew, who have the right sort of "casual" attire and rough clothing.

Here's a picture of some of the repainted guys. This isn't the whole warband - there are loads more, but these chaps are particularly fancy.

Next time, a bit of a change, as we take a trip to the neon streets of Necromunda...

Mordheim - Mercenaries and Monsters

 It's been a long time since I've done any fantasy models. In fact, the last fantasy model that I posted on this blog was in January. I certainly default to science fiction in modelling: the colours are more interesting (there's less brown to paint!) and there's more options for weird creatures and people. 

Anyway, this month I went back to Mordheim, and to finish off some models that I started a while ago and just abandoned.

First up, we've got two archers, painted in the black-and-yellow livery that I seem to have chosen for this warband. They use old Mordheim mercenary bodies and legs, with arms from the North Star Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago Crewmen sprue (catchy title). The first Frostgrave plastic soldiers were a little crude, to my mind, but these later models are really decent. The chap on the right has a Crewman head, too. 

Then we've got two oddballs. The little hobbit chap was an unconverted plastic miniature that came in a job lot of random models. He had a slotta tab, but it was blank. It seems that he was from either Talisman or Warhammer Quest (or possibly both). He actually looks like the man from the covers of Mad Magazine, so I painted him to resemble that guy. I'm generally not much of a hobbit fan, and it seems out of place that one of these tubby, barefoot yokel-children should be in the city of the damned, but what the heck.

The other fighter is a more complex conversion, designed to look like a tattered, weary veteran. He has a Mordheim left arm, the right arm of a Bretonnian knight, a Chaos marauder shield, a body and head from the Empire Pistoliers set (very good for bits), and legs from a 40k Chaos cultist. The bag attached to his belt is from Bolt Action. The weird fishy crest on his helmet came from an Empire cannon kit.

I really like the end result, although making him took ages. I like the idea of these guys wearing uniforms that were once flashy and ornate, and now are grubby and battered.

And that's not all! Here's a conversion that I did ages ago and never painted. It's a Chaos minion (unsurprisingly), based on an old metal sorcerer body. I gave him a genestealer head and a metal tentacle for a tail, as well as a right arm from a Necromunda Goliath bit. As I painted him, I was surprised by how detailed the basic metal body was. He's pretty manky.

I also found some counters for traps, that came in a Mantic terrain set many years ago. They were nice models, and easy to paint. 

Last and most definitely least, all the models in this post are standing on a base plate painted to resemble paving stones. This was a piece of MDF with lines scored into it. I've no idea who sold it. I painted it grey, with a few stones painted in brighter shades for variety. I painted the upper edge of each stone slightly lighter, to give the impression of light coming from one source and catching on the edge of the stones. I think this is called trompe d'oeil. A little bits of brown dirt and green moss was added on with thinned paint. It's not perfect, but it will work as an interesting base for photography.

I've got a few Mordheim warbands painted, but I did them a few years ago, and they'd be much better if I painted them now. I might try to tidy up my older painting and make a few improvements. We shall see!

For A Few Eldar More

 Here are a few more of the excellent old Eldar guardian models. On the right is a really old guardian from the Rogue Trader days. He was missing his head, so I gave him one from a dark eldar that's quite similar to the original.

Beside him is an Eldar knight from the old Epic game. The knights are rather weird, gawky models, but this particular one is about the right size and shape to help out. If it became necessary, I'd count it as an additional guardian.

And here is the whole bunch. I do like their blue armour!

Next time, we're back in Mordheim...

Scratch-Built Moon Truck

 

Once again, I've been trying to use up some of the many bits that I've accumulated for excellent projects that never quite came to fruition. 

A little while ago I made an ork battlewagon, which looks like this:

In doing so, I bought a resin battlewagon from Ebay, which I'd intended to use as the basis for the battlewagon itself. I ended up only using the wheels for my version, which left me with a load of resin bits including a body that looked like a massive lump of white chocolate.

Also in the bits box were two, er, side pieces from a Ramshackle Games APC-type vehicle. I have no idea why I own these, especially since I had three of them. Maybe I over-ordered many years ago? I also had no wheels to go with them. Genius. However, I discovered that the side bits fitted the white-chocolate resin bit really well. 

I boxed in the rear of the vehicle with plasticard and then got to work covering it in greebles - that is, bits of interesting, superfluous detail. Many GW human vehicles have plates on them, which sometimes have little gaps between them. I tried to simulate this with different shapes and thicknesses of plasticard. 

The underside shows how the large random lumps of resin went together.

Further greebling occurred.

The bits came from all sorts of places: some Warlord Games turrets from an armoured car; two ventilation units made by TT Combat; a Mantic gun - anything that looked interesting and vaguely industrial, really. My favourite bit is a toolbox from a Gaslands sprue. I considered buying some resin wheels, but I'm cheap, so I got some Lego ones off ebay. And they worked surprisingly well!

The thing I ended up with looked like a cross between a military truck and a moon rover. It clearly needed an industrial paint job. I went with a light grey, because you can do a lot of weathering on that. For the first time, I used an oil wash to simulate dirt and grime: I used burnt umber from Windsor and Newton, watered down with white spirit. To be honest, while this was a bit better than just painting the dirt on, I didn't think that it was amazing.

Headlights, an abandoned toolbox and some kind of tube added a bit of colour to the model. Overall, I think it might be a bit over-weathered, and you can see that the tyres say "Lego" if you look closely, but I think it's come out pretty well given how it started. A weekend well spent!

Hideous Chaos Terminator Snake Eel Spawn Thing

 I've been dipping into the huge pile of unpainted miniatures this week, and I've started all sorts of random things. I've got another couple of armoured eldar guardians on the go, a couple of fancy space marines of the Shining Knights chapter, and a thug with a shotgun that I can barely identify.

But none of these are finished, so instead let's turn to PLEASURES OF THE FLESH. By which I mean chaos marines, influenced by the sinister god Slaanesh. This week, Games Workshop released new models for the Emperor's Children, the debauched minions of the pleasure god. This reminded me to get on with a miniature that I've had lying about for ages: I had the concept in my mind, found the relevant pieces, and then did nothing. Until now.

I thought it would be cool to make a terminator marine with the lower body of a snake, a sort of hideous fleshy worm-man. It's probably quicker if I do a list of the bits:

Head - chaos spawn

Left arm - fantasy ghoul

Right arm - Space Wolves heavy flamer with a chaos knight shoulder pad

Front body - chaos terminator

Rear body - multi-melta left over from a plastic dreanought

Lower body/tail - tyranid ravener, with a chaos tank part on the end of the tail.

That's most of it. The great advantage with all this is that I didn't need to buy any terminators. Here's the work in progress.

I think "busy" is a fair descruption. Here he is with paint. I cut the spines off his back, to make him look sleeker and less like a tyranid, and added a sort of sock thing to his tail.

I've just realised that I didn't finish off his shoulder pad, so apologies for that. I'm quite tired of painting pink flesh now. He looks as if he could join Gwar.

Here is the delightful snake-creature with his other terminator friends, most of whom include an absolute minimum of terminator parts. I painted them a few years ago, so they're not quite up to my current standards, but together they make a suitably weird and spiky unit. 

When Eldar Guardians Were Good

 For many years - pretty much from the 3rd edition of Warhammer 40,000 to the 9th - eldar guardians were the unit you didn't take. They were basically a citizen levy of comparatively-basic eldar troops, who could be called up to defend their homes. They had poor stats, weak armour and short-ranged weapons (for some insane reason, the shuriken catapults they carried could shoot a pathetic 12 inches). Their only use was to form a human shield around a heavy weapon - which, given that eldar are meant to be rare and their lives valuable, doesn't make a lot of sense.

However, guardians have some nice miniatures. The old metal models are pretty decent, and have been since the days of Rogue Trader, when they had individual names like Smellibreth Strongwind (I made that one up). Some of my favourite guardians came slightly later, and wore bulkier armour and large helmets. They tend to be referred to as "proto-dire avengers" and were sculpted by the great Jes Goodwin.

I really like these guys: they get the balance between sleekness and bulk just right, and look like tough customers who might have a bit more experience than regular guardians. They're well-equipped, and their armour reminds me of the armour that the Sisters of Battle now have (without the corsets). I had some of these guys lying around and painted them up.

There aren't many proto-dire avenger sculpts. I happened to have one model who was missing an arm and a head, and so I gave him a dark eldar head and an arm (and staff) from a high elf mage. This was quite fiddly, but I like the way it came out. He looks as if he's signalling with it.

I painted these guys in the standard colours that I've used for Craftworld Zandros, using spot colours to tie them into the other "regular army" units. 

And here are three more, sporting amazing hats and hairstyles. I wonder how the guy with the mohican gets his helmet on?

Here they are as a unit. That's almost all the models ever released in this style, but I really like them, and they look cool together.

It's not Ripley, honestly

 Once again, I've gone back to finishing off some of the huge pile of random models that I've accumulated over the years.

First up, here's an entirely original space explorer, made with Frostgrave female crew bits and a barbarian's head. 

Second, I found a broken knight from a Privateer Press game, which I'd bought in a bunch of stuff ages ago. It was missing arms and a horse's head. I added a medieval head and used green stuff to make armour for the horse's neck, to fit the style of the body. The armour reminds me of bomb diffusal suits as much as medieval barding. The rider's arms came from an Atlantic Games "Grognard" soldier.

The paint job is somewhat menacing, in vaguely fascist-looking colours. I added a number to the horse's rear to suggest that this isn't a knight: it's Faceless Trooper 04, out to do evil.

And finally, a couple of female models that I've had for ages. The lady on the left was done in a cyberpunk style, and the woman on the right was painted in a dark blue business suit. They're not amazing castings, but they'd probably make decent random space people. They might be the quickest paint jobs I've ever done, including the plastic monopose termagants from last week.

More weirdness next time!

Zoat!

There are many strange things in Rogue Trader, the ancient tome from which Warhammer 40,000 comes. Some have been elaborated in ever-more-excessive detail (space marines), others haven't changed much (imperial guard) and some have more or less disappeared. 

So, very briefly: zoats were great big tortoise/rhino/ogre centaur things that worked for the tyranids as elite troops and, weirdly, ambassadors. The tyranids produced hormones that made the zoats loyal, but every so often some zoats would break loose and usually ended up working as mercenaries. Famously, according to Rogue Trader, the zoats lived on "Zoatibix". 

There were four 40k zoat models: they all used the same lower body, which makes me wonder if they weren't very popular.

The zoats appeared in the first tyranid army list, which was published in White Dwarf. However, by the time the first codex appeared, they had disappeared. They got a sort of mention in a later codex, as "Colossi" who fought in the "Zoastra-Attila War" against mankind. A zoat appears in Blackstone Fortress, so they're clearly out there somewhere.

Anyhow, I like zoats. Perhaps it's that they're a bit like dinosaurs, or just that they're rather odd. I was very lucky and won an ebay auction for two zoats for a pretty reasonable price on ebay (they normally go for silly money). I painted the first one in a scheme reflecting the model shown in Rogue Trader.

There's loads of good detail on this model: just the two pistols are great sculpting. I was surprised and impressed by how crisp and neat this thing is. It's listed as being sculpted by the Citadel Design Team in the old blue catalogue, but I'd be interested to know who was involved. 

I also took the chance to paint up a few old plastic termagants. These models don't actually overlap with the zoats, but they've got a certain goofy charm.

Dire Avenger and Dark Reaper Exarchs

 Last year, I "finished" a squad of Eldar dire avengers. I wasn't terribly happy with them, as I felt that they could do with a bit of tidying and weren't quite "enough". I went back and neatened the painting a little. I also painted the "fins" on the sides of their guns bright red, to make them a bit more interesting to look at. I added three more basic soldiers to the unit. 

And this gave me the opportunity to paint the exarch for the unit. In true Warhammer style, you can tell that he's in charge because he's pointing at something and has a bigger hat than anyone else. Just in case there was any doubt, I put him on a larger base. I originally thought this was a slightly boring model, but I really came to like the miniature in the course of painting it. It's very stylish, like the rest of the old metal Eldar, and the balance between sleekness and detail is just right.

Here's the exarch.

And here's the whole squad, ready to do battle in rooms with high ceilings.

I also finished off a 2nd edition dark reaper exarch that I had lying around. This guy is a space elf who dresses like the grim reaper and hits people with a bolas made of crystal skulls. Strange to thing that there are people who take 40k seriously. Anyhow, I used the old 2nd edition trick of reversing the colour scheme: his unit are black with bone details, but he's bone with black details. Another really nice miniature. I used a very thin chestnut ink glaze to make his armour a bit more interesting.

That means that I've finished a squad of all the aspect warriors in the 2nd edition codex, with the exception of the Shining Spears. (I'm not counting them, because there are no pictures of them in the codex, and the models were a later conversion kit for the jetbikes.) Result! 

I'm not sure what I'll paint next. There are certainly more Eldar to do, but I recently won an ebay auction for two really obscure models that I've wanted for years. I've just got to figure out how to get all the paint off - it sticks between their scales...

Bionic Ogryn

 Time for another space weirdo, except this one is a bit bigger. I had an old fantasy battle ogre bull lying around, painted thickly by someone else a long time ago. I'm not a big fan of the plastic ogres: I think they're fairly ugly models (and not in the right way), and they're quite boring, static miniatures. Not terribly inspiring.

So I chopped this guy up and turned him into a bionic 40k monster. He got a new leg, made out of an ork piston, plasticard, sprue and the dome from a Tau helmet. His left shoulder was a spare dreadnought claw, and the thing on his back is a faceplate left over from the knight armiger I made a little while ago. The pistol is a meltagun from the armiger, too. A bit of tank track functions as stomach armour. Lots of other little leftover bits add detail (ie I can't remember what they are).

The left arm came from an old sentinel. I think he's some kind of bodyguard or hired gun. I quite like models of this size: they can be modified quite easily, and will take a lot of extra detail. I painted him in the new way I've been painting metal, working up from dark brown, and used purple and red glazes on his skin to make him look unhealthy.

I reckon he explodes if you shoot the red button on his back. Perhaps I've been playing too many computer games. Next time, something a bit prettier.