Space Villain with a Glowing Sword (an attempt at Object Source Lighting)

 Here's a model that I made out of various plastic bits that I found lying around. His body and arms come from a Frostgrave plastic demon. I used green stuff to give him boots, instead of the bare feet that the model originally had. 

His sword-blade came from an old skaven, I think, and his head is off some old plastic space Nazi. I really can't remember how I got either of those parts. I can only assume that they were part of a sale of random bits.

I painted him black and painted his blade to look like glowing metal, getting colder towards the end. I doubt that a melting sword would make a very effective weapon - at least not for long, but this is space and anything goes. 

Then I attempted to paint a glowing effect on his body, as thrown out by his sword. It was not easy, and I found it very hard to work out whether I'd got it right. I think it's broadly correct, but it's very hard to tell if I got it entirely right. Object Source Lighting isn't a technique that I use often, and I'm not planning to do it again in the near future. Still, it was an interesting challenge.

Veskit Executioner Mark 2 - a skaven hero for Mordheim

Time for  another mangy skaven! A while ago I made a conversion of a Mordheim character called Veskit the Executioner, who is a hero that the skaven can hire. Veskit is a bionic skaven, with a lot of mechanical adaptations, who is as close to the Terminator as a giant medieval rat can get.

I thought it would be cool to make a(nother) miniature of this horrid creature. I decided to base him on one of the Vyrkos Blood-Born models from the Warhammer Quest game, who is crouching ominously on a ruined pillar (which sounds like the sort of thing people do in Mordheim). The basic model looks like this:

I removed the whole right arm and the head. I replaced the head with a skaven one (unsurprisingly!) and his left arm with one from a Necron warrior. I had an arm from a plastic arco-flagellant, and replaced a chunk of Veskit's left leg with an ornate mechanical bit from the arm. I expect it's a piece that Veskit's bosses just wanted to improve.

His tail was a resin bit that I've had for ages, with a Chaos Warrior's spike on the tip. It balances the model out and reminds me of the Alien. Then I added a lot of extra bits and bobs, to represent his many bionic "improvements". He got a bionic eye, a tube on his back that contains fuel, a wire running from his head to his back, and a plasticard brace on his lower left leg. Any messes were covered with fur sculpted from green stuff.

Suitably manky, I think. I painted him in a similar way to last week's rat ogre, using a red basecoat for the flesh and thinned crimson and purple washes. The metal was painted to look rusty and old. I painted the container on his back to look as if it's a glass tube containing some kind of nasty liquid, which presumably fuels him.

That's enough raw flesh for now. I think something different is called for!

Mordheim Rat Ogre

 Here's an old skaven rat ogre model that was released for Mordheim, sometime in the early 2000s. It's technically a Clan Eshin rat ogre, Eshin being the wing of the ratmen who produce scouts and assassins and dress like ninjas. Clan Eshin, in the background, sent its minions into Mordheim - hence this chap.

While I like the idea of rat ogres, I find many of the models to be too weird and too beefy. My mental image of a vicious rat is something thin and scrawny, and most of the rat ogres look too hefty for that. Also, they have that tendency of recent skaven models to look like fleshy mutant things, rather than actual rats, with extra arms, bionic weapons and all sorts of odd additions.

This guy, on the other hand, looks like a gigantic rat-person who rips people apart with his hands. He's lean and nasty, with a superb face and some nice subtle details, like the scars on his back and the skulls around his neck (actually, those aren't very subtle). Anyhow, after some hassle with pinning and gluing, I painted him to look old and mean, with greying fur. I like models of this size - not too big, but full of interesting bits.

The skin was basecoated red for an unwholesome feel. I painted it normally after that, although I used strong tone and thin brown washes, as well as a glaze of Sigvald Burgundy, whatever that is. I'm really pleased with the end result (and the unusually good photos!).

Eldar War Walker

 Right then, back to "schedule"! I've been slowly building and painting an old metal Eldar war walker. These rather odd machines are basically walking artillery for the Eldar, like a souped-up version of the Imperial Guard's sentinel. They are strange, gangly and really quite hard to assemble.

This one came with a slightly broken right leg: the hoof had been cut off and the rear "claw" (it's quite hard to know how to describe these things) was missing entirely. I made a new one out of green stuff and plasticard.

A small nerdy point: this model is a mixture of parts from the first two incarnations of the war walker. The pilot is from the first release, as seen in the blue Citadel catalogue, but the guns are scatter lasers from the second version, as seen in the earliest Eldar codex. They are also some of the coolest weapons in the whole of Warhammer. Space elf rotary cannons. Yeah.

Anyhow, it got the standard Craftworld Zandros paint scheme (as made up by me), to match the other mechs and Guardians. 

Definitely a strange model, but one that I quite like at the end of the day - even if it was a pain to assemble!

Against Painting Contests

 A short and irritable post, this. 

I'm a member of several Facebook groups (remember when we had actual forums for things, without Mark Zuckerberg owning them all?) about various games and settings. I also follow a few different painting hashtags on Instagram. 

Every so often, someone decides that we're going to "celebrate the hobby", or mark some anniversary or some particular style of model or painting. And we always do it in the same way: a painting contest. 

I never enter these. I'm not an especially gifted painter - I'm ok, after a lot of practice, and there are a lot of techniques that I don't use. I know that any such contest will be won by people who are very talented and quite possibly professionals. I don't have anything against them, but it would be pointless for me to enter a 100m race against Usain Bolt, too.

Today I see that the Mordheim Facebook group, of which I'm a member, is holding a painting contest, and I don't feel any real enthusiasm. I prefer the vaguer, non-judged "orktober" type events, where everyone has a go as something similar, although it's not quite a perfect substitute.

Anyhow, not my cup of tea.

Big Hats For Mordheim

 Here are a few more explorers for the Mordheim Marienburg warband. 

This guy is the leader of the group. He's made of Empire militia and pistolier bits. His left leg was converted to make him run.

"Follow my feather!"

This chap is a sergeant. He's made of militia parts, with a pistolier head and a cannon loader's arm. 

"Rally around my hat!"

These are two youngbloods, scummy youths who fill up the ranks and get in the way of bullets meant for more important people.

The bloke has the lower legs of the running man in the Warhammer giant kit, and an upper body from a plastic flagellant. His arms are from the militia kit and a Stargrave head.

The girl has a lower body from the same flagellant, a breastplate from the pistoliers, arms from Frostgrave and a head left over from a Wrath of Kings kit. Quite a lot of green stuff was used to make her skirt and boots.