Loads of Metal Space Ork Stuff

 Time for some orks! The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 was a time of great disaster. It's definitely the point where the great grimdarking of Warhammer began, and the orks were hit especially badly by this. With the possible exception of some gretchin, I don't think any of the old models survived into the 2000s, which is a great shame. Still, the blood of martyrs is the heresy of eternal war, or something.

So, without further ado, here are some more old orks! 

First up, we've got two metal minis: a freebooter bad doc (that's a pirate mad medic) and a mek with a burner/flamer. These are such nice models. The detail of the sculpting is terrific on both models, with loads of cool touches. I particularly like the way that the mek is sculpted like a welder, rather than a soldier with a flamethrower. The doc is one of the meanest-looking old orks, and even by greenskin standards he's an ugly customer. The only bum note for me is the small hand hanging from his ear. I painted it like an earring or perhaps a decoration on his shoulder armour. 

Then here are two randos. The guy on the left is a Space Crusade plastic ork. He's not the greatest model in history, but he's got a certain goofy charm, and there's lots of space on the model to embellish him. On the right, there's a metal madboy with a custom weapon.

Madboys were an odd feature of the very complex 2nd Ed ork rulebook. They seemed to be suffering from various forms of delusion and mental illness, which probably wouldn't be treated so comically today, and gave the sculptors the opportunity to make orks with great facial expressions. This chap, I think, is feeling down. He is wearing an apron, and has some little tools in his belt, so perhaps he's a mek who is nervous about firing the ridiculous gun that he's just built.

And here are two plastic boys from the original ork boys set. They're a bit step down from the metal models, of course, and come in two weird poses: squatting as if about to have a poo, and creeping away to the right. Anyhow, they've come out alright, and bulk up the numbers reasonably well.

But that's not all! For the first time on this blog, I present... the ork wartrak.

Back in the ancient past of 1989, there were very few plastic vehicles (four, I think). Instead, ork buggies and the like were made of metal parts that you had to stick together. I found one of these, a wartrak, on ebay minus its mounted lascannon, and so I bought it.

Ye gods, this thing was a swine to put together. We can (sometimes rightly) complain about the complexity of modern plastic kits, but this thing was terrible. I pinned it, used green stuff and superglue, and every other trick I could think of, but it was a terrible struggle to get it to stay together.

It didn't help that I had to improvise a gun out of an old plastic bit (I've no idea where that came from), some plasticard and a sight off an modern Skitarri gun. I put it on a base for some small level of stability: back in 1989, you just plonked it on the tabletop.

Anyhow, at last I painted it, and quickly realised how much easier it would have been if I'd not stuck it together first. I gave the orks lighter skin than usual, just to make them stand out from their machine. I think these guys are probably Evil Suns, given that they use a lot of red, but they could still fit with the other chaps.

So there we are! Old orks is da best orks. Nuff said.

Kroot Lone-Spear Bird Rider

 A couple of posts back, I mentioned projects that I'd acquired ages ago and not got around to finishing. This week, I turned to a model that I bought at a show in the golden age of 2015 or so. It's some kind of large bird, from (I think) Reaper. It's certainly made of some sort of rubbery white plastic, like their earlier (not very good) Bones miniatures. I think it might be something to do with the RPG Numenera.

Anyhow, I've been looking for a rider for this creature for ages. I thought it might work well as a Kroot riding beast. The original model had odd little wings and a very strange lower jaw, so I removed them.

 

I had a pair of Kroot legs - well, a pair missing one leg below the knee, so I'd have to make a bionic one. That was fine, but I had no body. So, I made a T-shape out of sprue as a basis for the upper body, and sculpted around it.

I recently saw some superb sculpting by a guy called "pax acrylica" on Instagram. It seemed that he was using a mix of green stuff and milliput, and I thought I'd give that a try. I found that this worked really well: the resulting mixture was softer than green stuff but lacked the slightly grainy, clay-like quality of milliput, and dried hard with a smooth texture like dry soap. I'd strongly recommend trying this.

This made a decent body, and I sculpted a cloak to cover the back of it, so I wouldn't have to do the shoulder musculature. I sculpted a saddle, some straps, and a weird beaky lower jaw for the bird creature. I added some reins, made out of string, which I slightly regret. String seems to always be a bit frayed when I use it on miniatures, as if it's coming to bits. Maybe if I soaked it in PVA first, it might work better. Anyhow, that was pretty much it. I trimmed his gun down a bit, and added a couple of pieces to the base to strengthen the bird's wobbly legs. 

And now for paint!

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To be honest, I nearly didn't post this at all. I simply couldn't take a half-decent picture of this model. Everything was either too dark or washed out - and trust me, whatever you might be thinking that I'm doing wrong, I have tried to rectify. Nothing works. There are quite a few models that I've painted now - the random space people seem to be particularly prone to this - which I just can't photograph. I have wondered whether to continue with this blog, as it's hard to be enthusiastic when I can't display my models - which is, after all, the point. I probably will continue, but I expect the updates will be less frequent.

Krootox Repair Shop

 

After last week's great big Tau robot, I thought that I'd have another look at their friends, the Kroot. The Kroot are ferocious scaly monsters who fight as allies/mercenaries for the Tau, and fill a close-combat role that the Tau can't. 

The Kroot seem to have evolved from birds, and have a slightly parrot-like look (they also come from a planet called Pech, which I'm sure is pronounced "peck"). Actually, given that birds evolved from dinosaurs, it seems safe to say that the Kroot are dinosaur-people, but this probably isn't the place to go down the genuinely fascinating rabbit holes of avian intelligence and what might have happened if the asteroid had missed. 

Anyhow, there are now loads of different Kroot units, and very nice they are too. Back in the old days, though, there were three: Kroot carnivores (ie warriors), Kroot hounds (attack dogs) and Krootox (a bloke on a gorilla-bird thing with a heavy weapon). They also had leaders, one of which is one of my favourite models ever, but more of that some other time.

This is the metal Krootox and rider. At least, it's most of the metal Krootox: it was missing the rider's upper body and gun. We may carp about the over-designing of modern models, but this thing was a complete pig to assemble, and a lot of milliput was required to fill the many gaps. I used plastic Kroot warrior parts for the upper body, although I had to improvise the left arm out of Green Stuff and paperclips. The gun barrel comes from an Empire outrider, and seems to be a primitive rocket launcher. I've always had a liking for people riding weird alien beasts, although I suspect that as soon as this guy fires his gun, the recoil will knock him over, and the Krootox (whose head is directly under the barrel) will run off towards the horizon, possibly returning to gore its former rider.

I also took the chance to tidy up my old Kroot carnivores, and to add a few details. They're not perfect, but they look a lot better than they did. They're slightly converted for some more dynamic poses.

So that's the Kroot for now. See you next time!

Big Tau Ghostkeel Robot Thing!

 Perhaps predictably, here's something completely different to the last post. I get a lot of ideas for conversions and small projects, and often this involves buying parts gradually and stashing them away until I get around to making them. I do usually get around to finishing these projects, eventually, but the projects build up quicker than I can get them done. It's almost as if I'm doing something wrong.

Anyhow, a while ago I found the legs and body of a big Tau robot called a Ghostkeel on ebay. The arms and weapons were missing. I bought the bits for quite a low price, and decided to make a big clunky space robot to fit my 1950s style Tau army.

I also found a wrecked WW2 jeep on ebay, which would make a good basing element for the battlesuit. It was resin, made by some random chap in his garden shed, from the sounds of it, and it looks just right to be squashed by the ghostkeel's foot.

All was going well, but then I sat on the model and broke it at its spindly ankles. This was not good. I ended up using an old terrain piece to strengthen the thing. As well as having weird feet, Tau have ankles that break if you stare at them.

The arms came from a cheap gundam kit. The pincers are actually the legs of two Gates of Antares Ghar models, which I brought in a sprue sale. The gun mounted on the robot's shoulder is a piece from a long-gone steampunk game called Wolsung, which I've been hoading for about a decade.

I added a little chap from a Bolt Action US airborne sprue. His head looks as if he's shouting, usually, but if lifted up gives him a gormless, astonished look. I doubt his unform is entirely accurate, but he looks right. In the fluff, the ghostkeel can somehow turn undetectable - which, given its size and jet rocket, is pretty absurd - and I like the idea of it materialising as it squashes this squaddie's jeep. "How will I explain this to the Sarge?"

There's not to say about the painting, except that I enhoyed it, and it fits in with the rest of the army. It's probably the biggest thing that I'll build for this army (the bigger battlesuits don't appeal all that much), and it makes a cool centrepiece. 

Join us or die, puny humans!

A Start on the Bretonnian Knights

 It feels as if it's been a very long while since I posted anything on this blog. I've been pretty busy with my day job and my writing, but I've been able to get some painting done too. Unfortunately, as usual, my camera is refusing to take any half-reasonable pictures.

Anyhow, I have finally started on my oldhammer Bretonnian knights. These are really old models, dating back to about 1991, and are metal bodies on plastic horses. They're very nicely-sculpted miniatures and, like all the Bretonnians from those days, look a lot like generic medieval people.

But before that, here's what my knights used to look like, when I painted them in my early teens. They were some of the first miniatures I ever made.

They're actually not all that bad, considering. The chap on the right in the bottom picture was originally named Varian the Black, but became known as Pancake Eyes because of my somewhat inept detailing. He looks like a cartoon of a startled anime character.

Anyhow, here are the first two knights. They're painted in livery used in the original WD army. The camera has messed it up, but they're much more shaded than appears below.

Painting the little hooked bits at the end of the green guy's crosses was really hard. They're nice models, though, and I really like the lack of details on the barding. Definitely a blank canvas.

Bertrand le Brigand, the Bowmen of Bergerac and a very old cannon

 More Bretonnians this week! As with a lot of these miniatures, I've been chipping away at the slowly over the last month or so, until I've got enough models to put together. 

First up, we've got the Bowmen of Bergerac. They were an elite unit you could take in the first Bretonnian codex: you got Bertrand and his friends Hugo le Petit and Gui le Gros (in no way similar to Robin Hood, Little John and Friar Tuck respectively), and the option to upgrade a unit of regular archers into marksmen.

First up, the characters, from left to right. Hugo le Petit is a conversion based on an Age of Sigmar blood-something-or-other, with a head from Mordheim and quite a lot of green stuff. Bertrand le Brigand, who looks a lot like Errol Flynn, is an old metal model from the 90s. He's a really nice sculpt and has a jolly enthusiasm that you wouldn't see now. Gui le Gros is made from plastic bits from the modern men at arms, with some conversion work. It's hard to see, but he's holding a tankard made from green stuff.

The bowmen are an interesting bunch. They're all metal miniatures, comprised of archers, models with names on their tabs rather than descriptions, and "brigands". I gather that the brigands are a bit obscure. We've got (L to R): archer, brigand, brigand, "Hobbs", archer and archer.

Here's the front rank, consisting of: brigand, 1990s musician, Hugo, Bertrand, Gui and "gamekeeper".

And her's the whole lot, about to go and rob the Sherrif of Nottingham:

And now for another unit lost to time - a cannon! Well, I gather that some Bretonnian armies can now take a primitive cannon in The Old World. Cannons were available in the original army list, and I've painted these guys in the style of the Ordonnance du Roi in White Dwarf 139. The crew consists of "gunner", "master gunner" (sensibly equipped with armour and shield) and "Otto". Search me.

I think I'm approaching the point where I'm going to have to start on the knights, which is rather daunting. Before then, I've got a couple of damsels to check out. It's a hard life.

More Loonies from the Future

 Just a few sinister loonies here, made largely with North Star models. We've got Frostgrave Cultist bodies and Stargrave Scavenger arms, except for the chap with the chainsaw. He's got a Scavenger body and Cultist arms, and the head of a Frostgrave demon. The guy with the green helmet, who looks like a feral John Wayne, has a Bolt Action US marine head. 

The paint scheme is quite like the Vox Populi faction in the old computer game Bioshock Infinite, who are some kind of crazed anarchist types from 1910 or so. These guys are suitably ragged and filthy, and the bits of red cloth suggest both violence and the French Revolution.

The last model is another repaint. She's a resin model with a Dark Eldar gun and a spear that I think is from a Warhammer skeleton. She's well-sculpted but really odd: she's got a vest, chaps, bare feet and several belts, and I've got no idea where I got her from. Anyhow, I added some more detail to her face and hair, and painted some brighter colours on her weird outfit.

More next time. It's been a busy week, and I've not had that much painting time. But I've got plans...

Scratch-built Ork Robots

 Hello again! 

This has been a good week to be an ork. Although I wasn't expecting to, I ended up getting a load of old ork models out and painting/repairing/improving them, including three dreadnoughts. Let's go!

About 20 years ago, my friend Owen gave me a broken AT-AT model kit. I sawed it up and used it to make the bodies of three ork dreadnoughts (or maybe robots, or something). One, which is yellow, I modified a couple of months ago. The other two were done over the last couple of weeks. This is the yellow model:

Now, onto the other flavours of robot tellytubby. The red one didn't need a huge amount of work. I added some more detailing and gave it a new, jollier paint job. I also replaced the gun I'd used with a big and suitably goofy laser from some toy that I dismantled years ago. His body is the AT-AT's head, up on end.

The blue robot took more work. I wasn't happy with either of his arms, so I made new ones. The gun comes from the same toy as the red robot's laser. The other arm is scratch-built. I was inspired in this by the work of Kishi Omori, a Japanese modelmaker who makes robots from junk. (His stuff is really impressive. Well worth a look.) I really like the jolly blue colour. I think his main body came from the AT-AT's butt. 

As you can see from this picture, all the robots have keys so that the orks can wind them up for action.

Orks are a lot of fun.

As a bonus, here are some old metal orks that I've been painting. Here's a painboy with a metal head and bionic arm. I gave him a mechanical gun-arm to suggest that he's entirely robotic.

And here is a goff ork boss. He's a slightly later model than the others, but he shares the old-school cartoony look, before the orks took a beating from the grimdark stick. He looks as if he's seen some sights.

And there we are. Oldhammer is great, orks are great. 

Dinosaur (and former dragon)!

I've always been a big fan of dinosaurs. The interest that a lot of kids have in them never really went away for me: it just broadened to include robots, aliens, dragons and other large monsters. Back in the day, when my friends and I were first getting into Warhammer, we visited a non-GW shop in Milton Keynes that sold a wide range of miniatures. (I remember that they had a Cyberpunk 2013 businessman painted grey, in the style of Spitting Image's puppet of John Major, which rather dates things.)

I bought a lead Grenadier Games model called "Blue Dragon", sculpted by Julie Guthrie. It's a weird miniature, as it's obviously a theropod-type dinosaur with wings. The wings kept falling off, and it was something of a figure of fun, even among my Bretonnians.

Recently, I've been looking at a lot of dinosaur models on Instagram. Some of them are terrific, and it's interesting to see a sort of modelmaking that's developed parallel to wargaming. Inspired by this, I got out the Blue Dragon, without wings, and had a go at painting it.

The sculpting is really good. The scales are terrific. I put green stuff over the feeble slots that were supposed hold the wings on, and tried to sculpt some sort of tecture. I actually pressed different grades of sandpaper into the putty. When it came to painting, I used stripes to break up and disguise my iffy work. 

I'm used to using quite bright colours, as fits the Oldhammer models and pulp settings that I tend to prefer. This time, I went for khaki, with brown and green washes. I'm actually really pleased with how this guy's skin came out. I did use a bit of red to make stripes around its eyes. It does make this guy look very hung over.

Anyhow, here it is!

The Archers: An Everyday Story of Bretonnian Country Folk

 Back again to the ongoing (and arguably unending) Bretonnian project. I've finished the unit of archers, at last. I made them a champion from a model called Farendil the elf ranger, who was from the game Dungeonquest. Apparently, this miniature was sold in several other ranges and under other names after that. He's a decent model, but a bit more "high fantasy" than the rest of my archers. Still, he's Oldhammer.

I also made a standard bearer. This guy was originally an archer making a V-sign with his hand to show that he's still got his shooting fingers, Agincourt-style (although apparently this is a myth). His rude hand was lost many years ago, and I gave him the arm and shaft of a more modern polearm, along with a plasticard banner. Again, being able to glue it to the back of his head helped greatly, which is why the banner is quite low. We've also got a musician, who is blowing a horn. He's a mid-90s model and, while simple, is very nice.

So here are some pictures of the bowmen, painted in the jolly (if rather grubby) uniform of the Archers du Brest from White Dwarf 237:

I also started a new unit. Back in the good old days of the first Bretonnian codex, you could upgrade a unit of archers to the Bowmen of Bergerac, led by Bertrand the Brigand. Bertrand and his Bowmen bear a strong resemblance to Robin Hood and his Merry Men (in particular, Errol Flynn's version). You can see why they were dropped from the more grimdark 2003 book: Bertrand the Blood-sodden and his Miserable Men doesn't sound anywhere near as good.

I was lucky enough to find a metal Bertrand on ebay for a not-too-outrageous price. He's a super miniature and looks just right for this project.

I also made Bertrand's two helpers, Little John and Friar Tuck - sorry, I meant Hugo le Petit and Gui le Gros. Gui, a tubby monk who carries a barrel of booze to raise morale, was converted from a plastic model, with a barrel from an ogre. His staff arm came from an Empire flagellant, and his other hand holds a flagon which I sculpted (not very well) from green stuff.

Hugo le Petit was a more complex conversion. I based him on a dumb-looking Age of Sigmar Khorne bodybuilder type, with a Mordheim head and a lot of green stuff.

And here they are as a group. I've got some really nice old "brigand" models, which I bought for almost no money a very long time ago, and I shall be adding them to the Bowmen of Bergerac. They've got a lot of character and will look good in a unit.

And that's it for now. By the way, if you got the reference in the title, you are almost certainly British and middle-aged. Which is probably a lot of Oldhammer fans...