Ork warbuggy, madboys and a beast of Nurgle

 Lots of stuff this week, most of it ork-related. But first, what is Games Workshop's most overcosted miniature?

I think a lot of people would nominate some big war machine, or a particularly fancy character, and that's fair enough. We seem to be moving to a point where no GW model costs less than £25, and no squad of models is less than £40. And of course, if you really want to burn through money, you can buy some ex-Forgeworld titans and spaceships that cost hundreds of pounds.

But my choice would be the humble Beast of Nurgle. This is a plastic kit, and it's notable that it is indeed humble. For £36, you get one plastic model with very limited customisation options, which isn't a character. If I remember rightly, you have to take them in units of two or more. That's a shame, because I really like the miniature. With the right options, it looks like a silly, happy blob-monster, and has that rare thing for a Warhammer kit: charm.

Anyhow, I saw two of them going for £30 on ebay and bought them. When they came through the post, I was surprised to find that they weren't legit: they were 3D printed models, presumably scanned from the original. Oh well: I can easily see why someone would make their own. Anyhow, I painted one of them and really enjoyed it. I think he would make a good friendly alien or enthusiastic sidekick.

"Hi guys!"

I tend to give most of my models a thin coat of spray-on matt varnish. I sprayed this model with a new can of Colour Forge matt varnish, having given the can a shake. To my shock, white stuff came out, presumably spray that hadn't settled properly. Luckily I'd only sprayed one side of the model before I realised the problem, but I still had to repaint it, which was a nuisance. Oh well, lesson learned. 

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Now then, on to the orks. I've been chipping away at a few models for a long time, and I've saved them up for this post (lucky you!). First up, we've got three more metal madboys: not the most sympathetic depiction of mental health, but excellent sculpts with loads of character. It feels quite weird to see GW models with such a range of expressions. I have no idea why one of them is missing a shoe, but they still look as if they're either thinking things over or having a super time. Which feels very orky.

And finally, here's another warbuggy. Like the one I made a few months ago, this is a plastic kit from the later 90s, with oddly-proportioned crew. This time around, however, I was missing a lot of bits and had to improvise. The driver is a completely different plastic miniature, a truck driver from the Gorkamorka range, and the gunner's arms are from a chaos space marine, with some of the armour cut down and some fabric-type ridges sculpted in with green stuff and milliput. 

I like these models. While the crew don't fit well with the main ork ranges, either old or new, the sculpting is fine and the vehicle itself has lots of nice detail - but not too much. You can do a lot of things with it and I suspect that they would have been a lot of fun to convert, back in the day. 

Bretonnian Organ Gun

 It's been a long, bad week, but I've managed to get a bit of painting done. I repainted an old Bretonnian organ gun. I had to repair it from the bits that I had, and gave it some 3D printed wheels. They're probably too big but I don't care. It looks alright as it is.

Two of the crew are original gunners, but the chap waving his sword is an old brigand miniature. I think his helmet and padded jacket fit the look of the gun crew. 

Here are both of the guns with their crews.

Giant Robot/Gundam/Warmachine conversion!

 And now for something completely different.

I've had a lot of robot bits lying around, for quite a while. I bought some cheap Gundam kits when I made my big Tau walker (see here) and I had some bits left over from a Warmachine conversion that just wouldn't hold together.

I know nothing about Gundam models. They all look rather too much like people for my tastes: I prefer walkers with dinosaur-style legs and boxy bodies. Still, the legs and arms could work well, if I replaced the body and head. I used what seems to be the most classic Gundam robot, which has a white body and red and blue sections. Maybe it's the hero of the franchise. Anyhow, it provided the limbs.

The upper body came from the Warmachine conversion, and the gun was a 40k piece. Having put the basic model together, I added details with all sorts of random bits, including tank parts, Lego, pipes left over from an Imperial Knight, and plasticard sections designed to make it less sleek and more industrial. I wanted to tie the different sections of the model together, and to hide the somewhat crude joints on the Gundam model.

The head is a 40k sensor, with a lower jaw made from plasticard. I like the way that it juts forward. I imagine that it can retreat into the main body. Here is the unpainted body (without head):

When it came to painting, I didn't want the robot to look too medieval or tied to any particular system. I went for a fairly industrial off-white, which could be chipped and shaded to look suitably used and grubby. I added a few bits of colour for interest, and just about resisted the urge to paint hazard stripes all over it. After all those Bretonnian knights, it was quite nice to paint dirty metal again.

The arm is jointed so that the gun can be raised and aimed. Otherwise, it's static.

There we go. I should make more robots. They're always fun projects. I'm quite tempted by some of the GW Horus Heresy robots, but I've got enough stuff to be getting on with right now. As ever!

Sorceress and Crossbowmen

 Here are some more Bretonnians. First up, here's a sorceress from the 1996 release. I like this model: it's quite simple and elegant. Unlike most female wizards, she's not sitting sidesaddle.

Second, this is a small unit of crossbowmen. Back in the day, Bretonnian infantry could take crossbows. These guys are painted in the colours of the "arblastiers de Lyons" in the Games Workshop studio army from White Dwarf 137. They're pretty decent models, for their time, and I enjoyed painting them. I worked on them in batches, and to be honest they're a bit on the rough side, but they'll do as a small unit. If I was to field them under the modern rules, which don't allow crossbows, I'd probably say that they were scouts. 

Odo D'Outremer and Suliman le Saracen (sort of)

Back to Bretonnia.

I recently saw what looked like a metal Warhammer lord for sale on ebay. He was sculpted to be riding a horse, was missing his weapon and head, and seemed to be wearing a big cloak. I bought it for a few pounds, thinking that he was either Bretonnian or a mercenary. 

I was surprised to find that he was an old model called Odo D'Outremer, a character from the first Bretonnian army book. The book contains loads of named characters, many of whom didn't have models, which cover most of the knightly stereotypes: a jouster, a merry troubadour, a huntsman, and so on. Odo is a crusader.

I gave Odo a new plastic head, made from a peasant soldier with its ugly face replaced with a beardy historical head, and used a bit from a Mantic skeleton to make his magical morning star. I added a feather to Odo's helmet, so that it would brush the morning star and give it a bit more solidity. He got a plasticard shield. Here he is in his repaired glory!

In the army book, Odo has a friend called Suliman le Saracen, a warrior from Araby who he befriended while fighting the evil sultan Jaffar. This is probably inspired by Sir Palomydes from the King Arthur stories, a former enemy from the Holy Land who joins the Round Table. Odo clearly needed a friend. The only problem was that I didn't have a Suliman model, and the original miniature goes for a lot of money online.

So I made one! I used a pair of plastic elf legs, a Perry Miniatures Afghan head, and two arms from an ancient Mordheim mercenary. The sword came from a skeleton. The upper body was just a T-shaped bit of sprue.

I sculpted around this with mixtures of green stuff and milliput. A lot of Suliman's body is hidden by robes and cloaks, which helped greatly, and the difficult hands and head were already there. This is the finished sculpt. It's actually quite similar to the original GW one - in posture, if not in quality. I'm not sure where his horse's metal head comes from.

Now for painting. I used similar colours for them both - red, white and purple - which are remeniscent of crusaders. They look linked, as suits the background. Painting the little crosses on Odo's barding and shield was a real pain.

Not the easiest project, but I got there. That's the first 5th edition plastic horse that I've painted. I'd better get used to it, as there will be a lot more!

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This week, Games Workshop announced that they would be effectively retiring their smaller, old-style space marines. Only "Primaris" marines (or Bigmarines as I think of them) will remain. End of an era.

I'm not sure what I think of this. On the one hand, I stopped caring about space marines a long time ago. The fluff does nothing for me, and the apparent fetish with making them bigger, Bigger, BIGGER!! just isn't interesting. It's been almost a decade since I played Warhammer 40,000, and it seems to be a wildly different game to what I recall. 

But it does mark another piece of my gaming history fading into the distance. Another chunk of the slightly goofy fun that I used to enjoy is replaced by larger, more boring models and tedious grimdark. But really, it hasn't been replaced. I can still make Oldhammer models and miniatures from other companies - in fact, that's pretty much all I do now, and I enjoy it. 

So goodbye, small marines. You weren't what 40k wanted you to be. Fair enough. I just hope the ebay prices don't go crazy.

The Very Big Plastic Talisman Dragon

 Last week I started quite a large repair project. Many, many years ago - well, in the 90s - Games Workshop made their first plastic dragon. It was sculpted by the great Trish Carden, and had the same - somewhat controvertial - S-shaped body as the older metal dragons of the 90s. It originally cropped up in the Talisman board game, and then featured as the mount for a renegade elf lord in the Dogs of War mercenary army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The basic plastic body was then used, with extra metal parts, as the dragon mount for several other characters.

And I own one! Well, I own most of one. I bought this thing ages ago to convert into a sort of Eldar Exodite riding beast: as I've observed before on this blog, not much is cooler than a bunch of space elves riding a dinosaur. But I thought it would be nice to repair this monster as part of the Bretonnian army project. After all, not only do knights traditionally fight dragons, but you could take dragons in the original Bretonnian army book. How cool is that?

I took the model apart and bathed it in dettol to lose most of the paint. Then, because it was missing some of its spikes, I made new spines out of a green stuff/milliput mixture sculpted around a piece of wire. Here is a work in progress shot, although it's hard to make much out.

The next problem was that I needed some wings. I found some old plastic wings on ebay. They were decent enough but the "shoulder" connection was a mess. That meant that I had to improvise with wire and various clays to pin the wings to the body. The mold lines were pretty awful, and cutting them away and smoothing over the joins with milliput took a while. I'm still far from sure that I got them all.

Then for the painting! I went with red because it's a classic dragon colour, and the colour used for the Talisman dragon. This thing is massive: it's probably a quarter bigger than the older metal S-shaped dragons. I used a mixture of blending, washes and contrast paint for the dragon, along with some careful highlighting. I'd forgotten how much of a pain wings are to paint.

The original base for this model is a large, ugly square thing - used, I believe, only for this model. It's not very nice, and I gave the dragon a bigger base instead. Various leftovers were used to make broken signs and trees to give the base some variety, including a plastic snail from the Bretonnians, which is probably invisible now.

Here he is.

He's big.

This thing actually wasn't too hard to paint: no fiddly details, and no faces. On the minus side, all that red did start to drive me a bit crazy. Still, he'll look good looming over my knights!

A Quick Knightly Update

 So, in a way it's been a quiet week for painting. Actually, I've spent a lot of time doing repair work on a very old plastic dragon, and I hope to post more about this next week. One of the good things about doing all this oldhammer stuff is that I can finally do justice to the old models that I've got, and the dragon is definitely one of them. Oh, and it's pretty cheap.

Anyhow, in lieu of anything else, here are the two units of knights that I've painted. The first unit comes from miniatures released in 1991 - plastic horses and metal riders.

The second is made of plastic knights from the Battlemasters game, which came out in 1992. They're almost all the same miniature.

Knights are cool. I see that North Star Miniatures have just released a set of "Bohemian knights", who would make brilliant oldhammer-style Bretonnian foot knights. It will be difficult not to buy some. We'll see - it's not as if I've not got things to get on with!