Howling Banshees

 I've had a bunch of stripped Howling Banshees in the vast heap of shame for a while now. To be honest, I've been avoiding painting them: not because they're bad models, but because they require a level of accuracy that I find difficult, even when it is rewarding. And I can't really convert them at all. 

They're Jess Goodwin models and, as ever, I could say a lot about how excellent the sculpts are, especially given that they were made in the 1990s. For detail, elegance and a sense of movement they're up with the old harlequins. I painted them in a very similar style to the ones in the old Codex Eldar, adding a bit of blue detailing to their belt equipment to tie them in to the rest of Craftworld Zandros.

I really like these guys. I'm particularly keen on the subtle fade on their power swords. Some colours blend better than others, and this shade of blue - Vallejo Medium Blue - blends very nicely. I've still got the Exarch to do, along with a few other squad members. I'm not sure how big I really want the unit to be. 

A Car for Dark Future/Gaslands

I've been painting and converting some toy cars, as used in the old GW game Dark Future and the recent Osprey game Gaslands. I used to play Dark Future - many years ago, given that it came out in 1989.

Dark Future is, to modern eyes, quite an odd game for GW to make. For one thing, it wasn't set in either the Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 settings (or whatever Blood Bowl is set in). For another, while you could buy a small range of models from GW, you were encouraged to convert Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars to make your own vehicles. As you can imagine, this didn't bring in a huge amount of money for GW, and it disappeared.

(Mainly, anyhow. A load of new Dark Future novels were published by Boxtree in 2005 or so, and the timeline and alternative history of the setting were revised and greatly extended. I started reading one of them, thought it was terrible, and gave up on that.)

Dark Future is rather more grown-up and down-to-earth than the big GW games. It's set in a near-future America, in a land racked by global warming, crippled by corporate greed and threatened by insane cultists. On the other hand, the US hasn't elected a dictator, so perhaps a modernised version would be called Somewhat Optimistic Future. On the highways, Sanctioned Operatives (the law) fight huge gangs (not the law) in armed and armoured cars, like a more gun-heavy version of Mad Max. It's got a fairly real-world look, with the Mafia, biker gangs, Bloods and redneck paramilitary types all being represented. 

Gaslands is one of those games from Osprey that fits into a gap that GW failed to fill. While Frostgrave is Substitute Mordheim, and Stargrave is to some extent a replacement Necromunda, Gaslands fills the "Mad Max with Matchbox cars" niche. 

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I was in Tesco recently with a friend, who suggested that I should buy some cheap toy cars and do them up. I thought I'd give it a go, so I purchased a pack of really naff, cheap toy cars. Each car seems to be based on a real-world vehicle, but they're not classy enough to actually say what they are.

One of them was a Chevolet-type truck that looked like this:

I split into its three main bits: the upper chassis, the silver plastic part that contained the interior detailing, and the metal base plate.

I put the upper chassis onto a base made of a bit of carboard, slightly roughed up to represent a crude road surface. I painted it all to look like a ruined, burned-out shell, somewhat overgrown.

That left the silver bit and the metal baseplate. While I couldn't think of anything to do with the baseplate (yet!) the silver bit looked like a crude, stripped-down buggy. 

I ordered the plastic "implements of carnage" sprue from North Star games, which comes with lots of bits of guns, armour and the like to Mad Max-ise your toy cars. I stuck exhausts, a ram and two guns that look like they came off a Flying Fortress onto the silvery shell. I added a driver from the sprue, which took quite a bit of cutting.

Then I painted it.

Oddly, these cheap plastic cars sometimes have some strangely detailed bits, often hidden away. This car had a bottle of extra fuel or nitrous oxide bolted behind the driver's seat, together with a tube that leads into... his bottom? Anyhow, it looked cool.

Well, I certainly got my money's worth out of this thing! It was fun to make and I'm pleased with the results. The other cars will be simpler conversions. 

Three More Yokels

 A quick post as - very gradually - I chip into the mountain of unpainted stuff (probably just prior to buying some more). Here are a few more citizens of Blognia.

The man on the left is an old man with a dog. He's from Black Scorpion's Wild West line, although I think he could be a farmer from pretty much any time at all. I really like the model, especially the dog (even if it does look a bit worried). He was very difficult to photograph, and looks much better in the flesh.

The lady in the middle is a hedge wizard, wearing traditional Blognian dress. Actually, she's an apprentice from Frostgrave. She is reading out a spell from her book - I managed to paint a small star in the book, but it's probably impossible to see.

The taller woman on the right is... well, she's a pirate, from Black Scorpion. I think she's meant not to be wearing any trousers, but that looked utterly ridiculous, so now she's got some britches. While I really like the sculpting of Black Scorpion models, they often seem to have a very slightly rough texture, that might be to do with the way that they're cast (this is pure speculation). 

That's it for this week. I'm very slowly chipping away at some cars for Dark Future/Gaslands, but more of that later. I'll save those up for one big post.

A Bunch of Chaos Weirdos

 Here are some chaos guys that I've been working on. Although they're ancient and short, I still really like the old chaos marine miniatures (well, most of them).

I had a load of damaged bits, and some legs made from a ruined old plastic Khorne berserker (no idea where this part came from!). I added loads of extra parts to make a full model, including a resin Necromunda arm, a fantasy helmet and the face of a Sigmarine. I'm not sure where the bag and chain parts came from, but they look suitably chaotic.

Here he is with some paint. Next to him is a marine from a boxed set featuring the chaos warlord Fabius Bile. Bile is a mad scientist type who can "enhance" his minions. This being the wonderful world of Warhammer, this turns them into hideous maniacs.

This particular hideous maniac is not a great model (none of this set are). His head is very big, and the sculpting is a bit crude. Well, I did my best, and tried to make him look suitable mad. He has a lot of wires and pipes, which I imagine pump some unwholesome solution into his body.

The next two were repaints of models I did a while ago. The chap on the left is one of my favourite conversions, which I did when I was about 18. I replaced most of his head with the mouth of a plastic space ork, which I believe is upside down. The other guy is the spotter for a heavy weapon squad. It seemed appropriate to give him a hazard-stripe shoulder pad.

Next up is a trio of disgusting monsters. I made these from all sorts of tyranid and chaos oddments. The big worm was made from a tyranid ravener's lower body and a part from some sort of ugly Khorne monster, probably called a blood-something. I really like them. They remind me of a Francis Bacon painting. Yuck.

All glory to Chaos!