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.

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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.

Ruins, Stairs, Peasants and Peasants Standing On Ruins and Stairs

 This week, I headed to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. Here is a picture of me, soaking up the ambiance and laughing madly at... something. I'm not usually this gormless.

It wasn't the sort of event where you'd go to buy an Ultramarines army (not that I want one), but it did have a lot of small stalls where you could find interesting things. I picked up some bits of terrain.

At one stand, I bought a cheap 3D printed ruined arch from a chap who seemed to be making them in his garage. It's layer-printed, so a little bit crude, but the design is decent. I added a platform to the top, where a model could stand, and stabilised it with one of the many, many barrels that I was bought a while ago (thanks Ruth). 

I also bought some stone and wooden steps made by Dungeons and Lasers. They came on a sprue in a boxed set: Dungeons and Lasers' stuff seems pretty good quality and quite cheap. They're not terribly exciting, but here they are:

Perfectly reasonable stuff, I think, although I slightly prefer the stone ones to the wooden ones. All in all, a pretty good haul. Nothing exceptional, but they're all nice bits of terrain.

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I've also been painting some more of the wretched citizens of Borovia (at least, this is what I imagine them to be). They're West Wind models and are quite simple and cartoony, and they have a vaguely Napoleonic, Eastern European feel. I painted them all fairly quickly, and while they're not my best work, they aren't really the sort of models that I can do anything fancy with (at least, not at my level of skill).

This bloke likes his pies. He has a small musket strapped to his back.

This guy is some kind of half-feral peasant trapper, who probably eats squirrels.

And this bloke is a slightly Cossack-looking swordsman. He's quite small, and I originally intended for him to be a young man. I now think that he's a seasoned duellist. I couldn't tell if that thing on his head was a hat or some kind of beehive hairdo, but I painted it as a hat.

And now, here's the terrain in action!