Birdbox House

Every so often, I go down to the local art shop. It's the nearest place that stocks plasticard, and there are usually some odds and ends that I can pick up and use to make terrain. In the past, I've bought papier mache treasure chests from them and used them as the basis for Mordheim/Frostgrave houses.

Last time I was there, I found a small wooden bird-box. I don't think it was meant to really house birds, just to be decorated. It only cost a few pounds, and I thought that it would make a good basis for a Warhammer-type building.

I gave it a dormer window made of plasticard, and used coffee stirrers and dowel to make the timbered bits on the outside. The door came from the Mantic doors set, and the window was made from a lipped Warmachine base. The roofing slates are just card.

Finally, the house got a chimney left over from an old GW kit. The tall chimney exaggerates the narrow, spindly quality of the rest of the house.

On balance, it might be slightly too twee and pretty for the style that I'm going for. But I like it a lot, and it will fit in nicely with the other houses that I've made.

Deep Ones for Carnevale

I've not really been in the mood for painting anything complex for a while, and doing the old chaos marines and the tank have been a nice break from having to colour inside the lines. However, I did want to have a go at something that required a bit more subtlety, just something without too much detail.

Two Deep Ones from the Carnevale starter set seemed like a good idea. They come with the basic game, and are rather nice sculpts. The Rashaar faction (the Deep Ones and other sea creatures) is rather odd: instead of cultists, you get some slaves, who are good sculpts but don't really look right with the big monsters. However, the monsters themselves are good, and you can make a team out of them.

These models, like all the newer Carnevale releases, are resin, and a real sod to undercoat. However, the detail is good, and I like the poses.

I'm particularly pleased with the eyes, which were a pale blue highlighted with white, and washed with a lurid purple. They were then given a going-over with varnish, to give them an unwholesome, fishy wetness.

Overall, quite quick to paint, and the results are pretty good. Maybe I'll paint some of the others now!

I Wrote Another Book!

Yes indeed! I have written another fantasy novel and it comes out today! It's a story of murder and revenge set in a magical city a bit like Venice. If you liked Mordheim, you'll probably like this.

Giulia Degarno thought that coming to Averrio would be the start of a new life. But when a renegade priest turns up dead in a canal, the City Watch needs somebody to take the blame. And who better than a woman with a dark past and an even darker future? Now Giulia has seven days to clear her name and find the killer. But as the violence mounts and the danger rises, she comes up against a conspiracy founded on gold, murder and evil magic. Giulia must deal with a cunning, ruthless enemy - and friends she may no longer be able to trust.

Go to Amazon, buy many copies, and enjoy*!


AMAZON

(*I actually hate it when people say "enjoy". Consider it a suggestion rather than an order)

A Tank For The Chaos Marines

I had wanted to go up to Bring Out Your Lead this year, but for real-world reasons (the real world is being tediously intrusive into my magical fantasy land right now) I couldn't make it. So I did some more work on the old Chaos marines instead. Here is the next batch of five.

With the exception of the chap with the big blue sword, they've all been converted in some way, or have had non-regulation parts added (actually, he's got an old ork bolter, but I don't think that really "counts"). As before, the painting is "experimental" (ie ropey), but I think the touches of colour on the various models help a lot. So they're not my favourite unit, but they're interesting and they're a lot better than they were before. I've now got a squad of 10 of these unfortunates.

*

I've also had a go at making a tank for the Chaos people. Given that I'll have at least 20 models on foot, I thought I ought to give them a transport. The obvious choice is a chaos rhino, but they really are boring looking things. The rhino is an old kit, at least 15 years old, and it's never been an exciting design. It lacks either the sleek menace of the Aliens APC or the crude, WW1 brutality of the Leman Russ.

Added to that, it's difficult to "chaosify" a vehicle. Just sticking a load of spikes on top looks a bit naff, to my mind, and some of the conversions I've seen, while impressively wacky, are very specific in terms of which Chaos power they represent, and feel a bit too bonkers to me.

So I went with something entirely different. It's a Mantic Sturnhammer battle tank (are there non-battle tanks?) for their not-squats faction. It would usually be £30, which seems a bit steep for what you get, but I found it for £20 on ebay.

As I've found with Mantic vehicles, the detail isn't great, but it goes together very easily and wasn't a pain to assemble. Three separate turrets were included with the model - so you could assemble all three and swap them depending on what gun you wanted, unlike a GW tank. Oddly, you can't swap between the APC and the tank version, which require different rear compartments. I assembled the tank version, because it looks cooler and you never know when you'll need some big guns.

Virtually no conversion work was required. I didn't like the end of the gun barrels on the quad autocannon or whatever it is, so I cut them down a bit and drilled some holes for the barrels. Otherwise, it's as designed. I think it has a suitably aggressive profile, and looks mean enough to be transporting chaos marines, but not too over-the-top.

I'll just have to paint the marines who'll be using it now.

The Cheapest Model On Ebay

For a variety of tedious real-world reasons, I've not got all that much to post about here. I'm working on a second batch of old chaos marines, but even by my dubious standards they're a mess right now. I've also been thinking about building a Chaos tank, but again that's in a pretty rough state at the moment.

So here are two cultists for Frostgrave. They're pretty low down the chaotic hierarchy, and probably had to make their own bags to put over their heads. It's a hard life in the fallen city.

The first guy is a 40k chaos cultist, adapted to carry a Warhammer musket. That largely meant cutting off the cybernetic bits and bobs, trimming down his musket and filling in some gaps with Green Stuff. Here he is without paint.

And here's the finished version. I've gone for fairly muted colours, with a bit of bright red. I think the main colours of his warband will be red and green.

The second model was one I found on ebay. I literally typed in "random Warhammer" and this came up. It was the cheapest miniature in the whole search. I've no idea what game he's from - there was nothing written on the slotta-base tab - but he looks like a crazy, hunched plague doctor. (He also resembles Noseybonk, a terrifying character from a 1980s childrens' programme called Jigsaw.) Anyhow, he's a perfectly decent model, and will do fine as a seedy chaos thug.


Exciting update: The model on the left is actually a "cultist leader" from Black Cat Miniatures. Thanks to Willem-Jan Bertram from the 40k Converters Facebook group for this.

Chaos Marines Rocking Out

Chaos Space Marines are like normal Space Marines except much more metal. Paradoxically, they are now available in plastic. Ten thousand years ago, the Chaos Marines were loyal to the Imperium and Bolt Thrower were GW’s house band. However, the Chaos Legions were banished to the Eye of Terror for liking heavy metal by the Emperor of Man, who is more into Wagner. Now they lurk in the warp, occasionally bursting out to wreck things on behalf of the chaos gods and generally make the Imperium less tedious.

The stance of one about to rock

I had some old chaos marine miniatures lying around and thought I'd give them a new lease of life. Some of these models were absolutely ancient: I can remember buying a set of them about 22 years ago in a toy shop in Berkhamsted, in South-East England. The others came from the next update, in 2004 or so.

They might be really old, but they're not classic. The older models don't have the ball joints of later marine legs, and have squashed, neckless heads built into their torsos. And of course they're small. On the other hand, I feel less bad about chopping them up...

This chap got the fly head off one of the very weird Killteam Rogue Trader villains.

I've never been much interested in the whole "making big marines" thing, but I did need to compensate for the general dinkiness of a few of them. So I cut the models across the thighs, inserted plasticard discs to lengthen the legs, and sanded them down and applied Green Stuff to hide the changes. A couple of models had discs added to their waists to make them taller, too.

Because I am an avant-garde artiste (and not because I'm lazy at all) I opted for a quick, slightly surreal paint job for most of the bodies: white armour washed with Strongtone, with rusted metal details. I decided to paint one area on each model a bold, different colour: partly because I'm an avant-garde artiste, and mainly to distract from the god-awful - sorry, impressionistic - painting on the rest of them.

This guy is the unit leader. Having a face that's basically just a huge mouth makes it easier to bellow orders. It does make it harder to see where you're going, of course, but what the heck.

This is Flyhead and his friend Leggy, who has the legs of an old plastic genestealer.

And here's a delightful fellow with the head of a Nurgle plaguebearer - painted red, for no real reason - and a bloke with a stomach made from a fantasy breastplate and an unwholesome tube made out of wire. They were based on some resin bases that I found on Ebay.

I'm mot sure what to make of them, really. I think the white armour sort-of works, in that it's not realistic but it covers the models and draws attention to the interesting bits. I'll do a few more and see how it goes from there.

Glottkin Titan: Jam for the Jam Gods

I've always been interested by Warhammer's Glottkin model. It's a fantasy miniature, made for the End Times campaign, and features a massive Nurgle chap being ridden by two Nurgle champions, a wizard and a fighter. As with a lot of Nurgle models, I'm not that sold on it. However, it's always seemed to have a lot of conversion potential.

In particular, the left arm seems too big and the right arm feels too small, even for a gun. And it's always been much too expensive for me. However, when I saw a rather battered Glottkin on Ebay for a reasonable amount, I bought it and got to work.

I hacked off the weird mouth-lamprey-thing from his right arm, which I intended to use as the mount for a thermal cannon left over from my knight titan. Then, having made a good start, I chopped off his left arm and shoved it up his bum. The join was covered with DAS clay and green stuff, and the big tentacle made a nice tail. And by nice, I mean revolting.

Then it was time for a bit of an experiment. I'd seen the new GW contrast paints as a good way of covering large areas. The Glottkin is big and very warty, which would hopefully be good for the paint to take hold. So I sprayed him white and got to work with a pot of Blood Angel Red.

Hmm, not bad, if a bit like strawberry jam. Obviously, it'll need some extra work, but the basic effect is quite "nice", by which I mean that he looks like the rotting love-child of an Imperial Knight and a randy squig.

He then got a gun emplacement on his back, again courtesy of the knight kit. This bit is an icarus autocannon.

Here's a rather washed-out picture of current progress, together with a delightful pink stomach. This is what happens when the chaos gods make jelly!