Goblin Sky-Ship 3

 Just a quick update on the goblin flying machine. The more I do on this, the more there seems to be more to do. Oh well - at least I'm enjoying it!

I added a railing to the upper deck on the bows, by cutting two ladders from Mantic terraincrate sets and rearranging the pieces around the front of the ship. I also made a pair of runners to go on the bottom of the ship. These were made from some thin pieces of wood that I had lying around, with metal parts from blister pack plastic.

(I also moved one of the crew from a rather precarious perch on the stern to sitting on the stairs in the middle, which made more sense.)

At the weekend, I visited Warfare, a miniatures fair held at Ascot racecourse. I stopped by the Black Scorpion stall and got myself a model goblin captain for their pirate game, Cutlass. The only conversion I made to him was to trim down his bare feet and give him some hefty shoes. I always think that you can tell the seniority of a pirate by the largeness of his footwear: the most senior ones have the biggest boots. Anyhow, this chap got Georgian-type shoes and I painted his legs as if he was wearing big socks.

 Yo ho ho!

Tau In Black

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Tau Empire?"

Inquisitor Yosef M'Karthus.

A while ago, I made a government operative for my force of 1950s-style Tau. I decided to make him a couple of friends. One was based on a plastic Russian Bolt Action soldier in a greatcoat, with Tau arms and head, and a hat sculpted from Green Stuff. I also did a bit of cutting of his foot, to make it more hoof-like.

The other was more fiddly, and involved the lower body of a Tau vehicle pilot, the upper half of a random plastic zombie (I've no idea who makes these) and Tau arms. The body was quite spindly, so a bit of Green Stuff was required to bulk it out. I used a head with a particularly tired, miserable expression, as suits his rather battered appearance. 

Here they are with their boss, doing something entirely legal and above-board. As ever, my camera is refusing to take a decent photo, so you'll just have to imagine that they look much better than they do.

I could see a little squad of these guys infiltrating human society in order to promote the Greater Good. Nobody would ever notice.

Missile Launcher Marines

 This week, I've made a few more marines. The guy on the left below is a marine who I'd use as a squad leader. He's entirely plastic: his legs are from the sternguard set, with a head from a Bretonnian knight. Painting the little squares on his kneecap was difficult.

The guy on the right is the first of five resin missile launcher troopers I found on Ebay. I don't normally mess with Forge World stuff, as I'm not into most of the things they make and I'm not keen on working with resin, but the price was good and the Mark III marine armour has a nice medieval feel. His very retro missile launcher got a red barrel shielding.

The next two missile launcher troopers were also resin. I gave them different decorations on their weapons: I figure that they're allowed to add personal heraldry (after you've got a missile launcher, I doubt anyone's going to argue). 

I like the red stripes. They remind me of 70s science fiction art.

I've also been doing some work on the goblin flying ship, but I'll deal with that in a separate post.

More Knightly Marines

 Here are a few more space marines. These two are standard plastics, using legs from the sternguard set. I did a bit of cutting on the hands of the chap on the left, to get the right angle on his gun and grenade. His head came from a Blood Angel.

These two were slightly converted. The guy on the left has a biker's upper body. I cut off a skull on his breastplate and replaced it with a shield sculpted from Green Stuff. The guy on the right is holding a weapon that I found in the bottom of a cardboard box. I think it might be a flamer from a dreadnought. I added a chaos barrel decoration at the end for extra heraldic "charm". 

I'm wondering about making these guys a dreadnought, or perhaps a librarian. Both would probably look very silly...

A Break From The Goblins

 Being a bit sick of coffee stirrers and painting things brown, I thought I'd paint something else for a break. First, I painted a conversion, which uses the body of the old metal Mouth of Sauron model from the Lord of the Rings. It came without a head and a sword, which were provided by a dark eldar and an Empire bit respectively. I chose a smaller base to emphasise the model's height - which saved time, as I sculpted a base of cobblestones out of green stuff.

I decided on a red and gold colour scheme, partly because I wanted it to look different to the base model and partly because I thought it would look strange and cool. I used purple and green as shading colours on the red robes, and both green and chestnut inks on the armour, which was a new technique for me. Here he (or she, or it) is:

Some time ago, I got in touch with the nice people at Warlord Games, and asked if it was possible to buy some of the gun crew from the Gates of Antares Freeborn range without the expensive guns. It generally isn't, but very kindly they fished some out and I was able to pay for them separately. I got those models because they looked a lot like the Fremen from Dune. I thought I'd paint a couple.