Medieval Dreadnought Conversion

 This week, I found some very old 40k vehicles that I made about 15 years ago. They weren't great to begin with, and they'd got battered after a trip to the attic, so I thought I'd have a go at rebuilding one of them. I wanted it to fit in with the rest of my marines, who have a jolly, knightly look.

This is a conversion of an old plastic dreadnought, using (mainly) the upper body of a dreadnought and the legs of a plastic sentinel. The sentinel legs were bulked out with two wheels and some plasticard. The kneepads came from an old plastic chaos knight, and the loincloth was an old plastic cloak. The exhausts were given some plastic chaos tank bits for bonus medievalism.

The right arm of the dreadnought is a standard twin lascannon. The right arm has a metal cannon part that I got in a job lot of bits years ago. I think it's from an ancient steam tank. The dreadnought got plates on his thighs, which came from a dreadnought shin guard which I sliced in half (I couldn't find two).

The shields on the front were bits of plasticard, sanded to shape and painted with heraldry. The head comes from an Imperial Knight, although I cut the lower half off. To begin with, I thought the head was too big and looked silly, but I've got used to it and frankly the whole thing is a bit silly. The little emblem on the top was once on a Bretonian knight's helmet. 

Let's call him Mordread. 

Vampire Ship

 Here's another project that I've been working on gradually. Since I've made some docks for my fantasy town, I thought it would be cool to have a ship docked at them. It would look nice, and would provide a bit more space for characters to fight. I bought a "Strigoi Schooner" from TT Combat: a kit made from laser-cut MDF.

I always think that the TT Combat terrain kits are good for basic shapes, but aren't very detailed. The pieces of detailing that are provided in the kits tend not to be all that good. As a result, I decided to leave off or replace some of the fancy bits. I also decided not to use the coffins that the ship is meant to be pulling, which looked a bit crude.

Once I'd assembled the basic model, I felt that the hull wasn't very smooth. It was made out of progressively narrower pieces of MDF, and looked too basic. Therefore, I got out the DAS clay and smoothed it over the hull. I filed the hull down with a piece of sandpaper, then gave it a coat of watered-down PVA glue. I find that this helps seal the clay and provides a smooth surface to paint. At this point, it looked like this:

Because the meeting of the clay and the MDF was a bit rough, I added a strip of thin plasticard to mark them apart.

Then it was time to add some details. The rear of the raised deck of the ship was a flat bit of wood, so I added some plasticard details.

The lower deck got some details from the bits box. I replaced the basic MDF door with a resin one that I got at an event and stuck a head from a Frostgrave demon over it, to look sinister. An old lamp was mounted it on a bit of plasticard and stuck onto the wall. I found an old resin ladder and trimmed it down to make some stairs up.

I thought it would be cool to make a sinister figurehead for this ship. This came from a plastic ghost model that I'd had for ages. I think it's from the Coven Throne Warhammer kit. It reminds me of the spirit/angel type creatures from Raiders of the Lost Ark. A bit of sprue stuck to her back helped to attach her to the prow of the boat. I added some "wings" that I think were originally bits of tattered cloth. I'm not sure where they came from.

I thought it would be cool to have a lookout on top of the mast. I found a "Vykros blood-born" model from the Warhammer Quest game, which would work perfectly. It was clinging to a ruined pillar. With a bit of trimming, the pillar looked like the top of a mast. 

Time to paint the rest of it. I went for a gothic purple, red and black colour scheme. It looks like the sort of ship that might carry a vampire, or at least somewhere you might buy an Alchemy T-shirt. I named the ship "Demeter" in homage to the ship that carries Dracula to England in the old novel.

And here it is, sliding into port on a sinister mission!

Three More Eldar

 Just a few random Eldar this week. It was quite nice to paint paint light blue armour once again.

First up, here's a Guardian with a missile launcher. He's a very old model, from the Rogue Trader era before the aspect warriors were invented and before Guardian armour was worked out exactly. He looks quite bulky and mean - you'd never suspect that Guardians were absolute rubbish in the game. I'm not sure why I painted part of his gun bright yellow, but I really like the model.

The second model is a slightly later Guardian model, from around the time of the first Eldar codex. Unusually for the Eldar, he's wearing some sort of coat or cloak. He didn't come with any arms - you're supposed to stick plastic arms onto his metal body - but I thought that he needed proper sleeves. So, I gave him a pair of arms from the Stargrave Scavengers set. I think the sleeves and the pistol make him look a bit like a private eye. Maybe he's the bodyguard of an ambassador.

The third model is a conversion. Her legs are from a plastic High Elf and her upper body is from an Eldar Guardian. Her head was from Statuesque Miniatures, and the arm with the falcon comes from a Privateer Press Scyrah model. 

I made a little display case for her out of a plastic box. I used DAS clay to sculpt the ground and added rocks and flowers. I think it looks quite cool. 

I've got lots of projects on the go at the moment! 

Welcome To Blognia!

 Somewhere in Europe lies the Grand Dutchy of Blognia. Enclosed by the Drabslide mountains and the mighty river Plob, Blognia has always been somewhat cut off. It is not a welcoming place: Pearson's Gazetteer lists the national pastimes as "feuding and banditry". This isolation has resulted in some unusual species developing in the countryside, most of them lethal. The casual traveller, once he has been robbed blind, risks being devoured by giant wolves, gored by giant boars, carried off by colossal hawks, and/or torn to shreds by mustelids of unusual size.

And even after that, there are the vampires. Almost all of the great houses of the Blognian countryside are ruled by the undead, one way or another. Virtually every peasant owes feudal loyalty to a revenant.

Things are changing, though. Inspired by a tour of the Italian and Cornish rivieras, Duchess Louisa the Ninth has recently begun a programme of modernisation. Blognia now has two railways and a gramophone. New laws outlaw incest and blood feuds, and require the wearing of trousers within city limits. Last month, Blognia's first functional water closet was unveiled, blessed and tested in front of a cheering crowd.

The duchess has sent word to the rest of Europe and beyond, seeking expert monster-hunters to clear the countryside of the undead. A wide range of mercenaries, zealots, scholars and eccentrics have flocked to Blognia to break the power of the vampires once and for all. Vampire hunting is both righteous and lucrative - especially if you happen to be a rival vampire.

*

Here are a few Blognians. 

This chap - he's a bandit - is made from an old English Civil War musketeer with arms from a Perry Afghan tribesman. I painted him in what I imagine is Blognian peasant dress: stripey trousers and a leather waistcoat.

This lady is also a bandit. She has a body and head from Frostgrave barbarians, and accessorises with Perry Afghan arms (I really like the sabres).

This maniac has a body from plastic French soldier and a head and arms from the Frostgrave female barbarian sprue. I really like the dynamic pose. Some of the Napoleonic plastic soldiers are rather slight, so it makes sense to give them female heads and say that the Blognian army includes a lot of poorly-disguised ladies.

And that's it for now. I'm working on a couple of slightly unusual projects - more details next post!

Oldhammer Tyranid Screamer Killer

 Nope, I've still not painted any orks. 

Most of the posts on here boil down to "What I've made this week". However, there are a few things that go on for longer than that: usually projects that I pick away at, put to one side and return to gradually.

One of these is an Oldhammer Tyranid screamer-killer. The screamer-killer was the first ever Tyranid dreadnought, released around the time of the first Tyranid codex in the 1990s. It was, like a lot of the early dreadnoughts, a great big lump of lead that fitted onto a square monster base from Fantasy Battle. Back then, it was an awesome centrepiece model, a hefty monster with huge claws that killed its enemies by literally roaring at them. It looked like this:

Now, of course, it's dated and pretty dinky by comparison with the larger Tyranid beasties, and it's hard to avoid the fact that it looks like an enraged kidney bean. But it's still pretty cool. I happened to have the body and legs of one of these things. Unfortunately, I had no arms for it. Challenge accepted.

The arms are fairly simple scythe-claws mounted at the end of stubby arms (I've no idea how they would function in real life, but still, this is 40k...). In a fit of hubris, I decided to sculpt my own.

I cut out a piece of plasticard for each arm, which formed a template for the claw and the arm itself. I then built a central rod out of trimmed-down sprues for each arm, which gave me something to work around and provided solidity. Each arm ended in a plastic disc left over from an old tank kit, which was the point where it would attach to the miniature. You can see the basic model on the left of the photo below.

Then it was a matter of fleshing out the arm with DAS clay (for the basic shape) and green stuff (for the details). Easier said than done. Even simple shapes like these claws were tricky. The original model has serrated "teeth" on the inside of the claws, but I decided to leave these off, as they looked too difficult. The pair on the right above show how this looked.

Eventually, I had four sets of replacement arms. Sculpting the little "flexible bits" on the arms was pretty difficult.

Then it was just a matter of painting them, painting the body and legs, and sticking the whole thing together. I added a skeletal creature to its base, which I think was once part of an ogre kingdoms model. Here is the screamer-killer with its new arms.

Looking at the finished product, there are some bumps and imperfections in the claws, which I could have done better. But overall I really like this guy. Here it is with some little friends that I also painted recently. Much redness!

A Vampire and some Vampire Hunters

 So, after last week's grand announcement that I was starting an ork warband, I decided to make some more gothic horror guys for my small force of Borovians. That's not to say that I've given up on the orks: they're continuing, just as the tyranids and random Mordheim people and Eldar are continuing. I really must get around to painting those howling banshees...

Anyhow, here are some more desperate fighters for the wretched land of Borovia. On the left is a model I bought from the Bad Squiddo stall at UK Games Expo. It's called Vampire Hunter Margaret - if that's a reference, I don't recognise it. For no good reason, this model took a long time to paint and was strangely awkward. Still, it's a decent sculpt.

This is a model called The River Widow from Reaper. She's got a pirate/gypsy sort of look that suggests some kind of adventurer in the wilds of Borovia, perhaps a wizard. I really like this miniature: all the layers of cloth are very cool and fun to paint. That said, I found it really hard to work out what some of the items on her belt were. There's an object near her hand that I decided to paint as a telescope or metal container. Her face is really well-sculpted and has a devious smile.

And this bloke is a West Wind priest from their Vampire Wars line. He's got a vaguely Orthodox feel, so would be good for some real-world Transylvanian vampire hunting. His face has a look of wild fury, as he's banishing some evil. A useful man to know.

This jolly chap is also from West Wind. He looks as if he should be running an inn and eating a lot of sausages, or perhaps the head of a crime syndicate. There's a blunderbuss strapped to his back. He's pretty grotesque, but I quite like the cartoony feel of the model.

Then we've got a vampire from North Star Games. He's very Georgian, and reminds me very much of the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair, the villain from the BBC's adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I decided to paint him in the same colours as the TV version. His pose is slightly weird, but he does look quite creepy.

I started this bunch of weirdos because I'd been playing The Curse of Strahd, a Dungeons and Dragons adventure, and also because I liked the look of The Silver Bayonet. I really like the models and their gloomy feel. I might do a few more.

Space Orks!

 It's time for a new project! Not that I've finished the oldhammer Eldar, oldhammer Tyranids, Borovians, Mordheim terrain or anything else, but what the heck. I'm going to paint some orks.

I've got a few very old space ork models. Unlike the Eldar, I think these are a pretty varied bunch. The metal models have loads of detail and charm, but the old plastics are pretty crude. Games Workshop's orks went through several phases: first was the cartoony, cheerful models of the Rogue Trader and 2nd edition era, where they were smaller than humans and looked pretty goofy. Then came a brief interlude, around the time of Gorkamorka, when some orks were very small (Gorkamorka plastic "yoofs" in particular) and others were huge. And finally, GW settled on the hulking, inhuman creatures that we have today.

Most of my models are from the first period. They have a nice, silly charm, and look cool in bright colours and slightly piratey outfits. The first model I painted was a test miniature, made from an ancient Space Crusade ork boy. His mouth and one of his hands were damaged, so I replaced them with spare hands from a new-style ork and sculpted some new teeth. 

And here he is with paint.

I find ork skin quite difficult: I'm never sure how to highlight it, and for some reason it always comes out looking very flat when I try to photograph it. I also tried to add yellow to their outfits. For the first time, I painted yellow over a pink undercoat, and found that the technique works well. You still have to mix the yellow to shade it: to get darker shades, I use a very small amount of orange contrast paint mixed into Tau Sept Ochre.

Here's the second ork, a mek from the old days of the Citadel blue catalogue. I love all the details sculpted onto this guy. He's such a cool miniature. The paint scheme is a mix of Evil Suns and freebooter (ie space pirate) styles.

And here's a back view. He's got a little kettle or oil can sculpted onto his belt. 

The third ork comes from the slightly later Gorkamorka period, but I think he fits the style of the other two. I really like the pose, especially the way he's braced for recoil from his clunky gun.

I'm enjoying painting these guys so far. I think I'll do some more.