The Cheapest Model On Ebay

For a variety of tedious real-world reasons, I've not got all that much to post about here. I'm working on a second batch of old chaos marines, but even by my dubious standards they're a mess right now. I've also been thinking about building a Chaos tank, but again that's in a pretty rough state at the moment.

So here are two cultists for Frostgrave. They're pretty low down the chaotic hierarchy, and probably had to make their own bags to put over their heads. It's a hard life in the fallen city.

The first guy is a 40k chaos cultist, adapted to carry a Warhammer musket. That largely meant cutting off the cybernetic bits and bobs, trimming down his musket and filling in some gaps with Green Stuff. Here he is without paint.

And here's the finished version. I've gone for fairly muted colours, with a bit of bright red. I think the main colours of his warband will be red and green.

The second model was one I found on ebay. I literally typed in "random Warhammer" and this came up. It was the cheapest miniature in the whole search. I've no idea what game he's from - there was nothing written on the slotta-base tab - but he looks like a crazy, hunched plague doctor. (He also resembles Noseybonk, a terrifying character from a 1980s childrens' programme called Jigsaw.) Anyhow, he's a perfectly decent model, and will do fine as a seedy chaos thug.


Exciting update: The model on the left is actually a "cultist leader" from Black Cat Miniatures. Thanks to Willem-Jan Bertram from the 40k Converters Facebook group for this.

Chaos Marines Rocking Out

Chaos Space Marines are like normal Space Marines except much more metal. Paradoxically, they are now available in plastic. Ten thousand years ago, the Chaos Marines were loyal to the Imperium and Bolt Thrower were GW’s house band. However, the Chaos Legions were banished to the Eye of Terror for liking heavy metal by the Emperor of Man, who is more into Wagner. Now they lurk in the warp, occasionally bursting out to wreck things on behalf of the chaos gods and generally make the Imperium less tedious.

The stance of one about to rock

I had some old chaos marine miniatures lying around and thought I'd give them a new lease of life. Some of these models were absolutely ancient: I can remember buying a set of them about 22 years ago in a toy shop in Berkhamsted, in South-East England. The others came from the next update, in 2004 or so.

They might be really old, but they're not classic. The older models don't have the ball joints of later marine legs, and have squashed, neckless heads built into their torsos. And of course they're small. On the other hand, I feel less bad about chopping them up...

This chap got the fly head off one of the very weird Killteam Rogue Trader villains.

I've never been much interested in the whole "making big marines" thing, but I did need to compensate for the general dinkiness of a few of them. So I cut the models across the thighs, inserted plasticard discs to lengthen the legs, and sanded them down and applied Green Stuff to hide the changes. A couple of models had discs added to their waists to make them taller, too.

Because I am an avant-garde artiste (and not because I'm lazy at all) I opted for a quick, slightly surreal paint job for most of the bodies: white armour washed with Strongtone, with rusted metal details. I decided to paint one area on each model a bold, different colour: partly because I'm an avant-garde artiste, and mainly to distract from the god-awful - sorry, impressionistic - painting on the rest of them.

This guy is the unit leader. Having a face that's basically just a huge mouth makes it easier to bellow orders. It does make it harder to see where you're going, of course, but what the heck.

This is Flyhead and his friend Leggy, who has the legs of an old plastic genestealer.

And here's a delightful fellow with the head of a Nurgle plaguebearer - painted red, for no real reason - and a bloke with a stomach made from a fantasy breastplate and an unwholesome tube made out of wire. They were based on some resin bases that I found on Ebay.

I'm mot sure what to make of them, really. I think the white armour sort-of works, in that it's not realistic but it covers the models and draws attention to the interesting bits. I'll do a few more and see how it goes from there.

Glottkin Titan: Jam for the Jam Gods

I've always been interested by Warhammer's Glottkin model. It's a fantasy miniature, made for the End Times campaign, and features a massive Nurgle chap being ridden by two Nurgle champions, a wizard and a fighter. As with a lot of Nurgle models, I'm not that sold on it. However, it's always seemed to have a lot of conversion potential.

In particular, the left arm seems too big and the right arm feels too small, even for a gun. And it's always been much too expensive for me. However, when I saw a rather battered Glottkin on Ebay for a reasonable amount, I bought it and got to work.

I hacked off the weird mouth-lamprey-thing from his right arm, which I intended to use as the mount for a thermal cannon left over from my knight titan. Then, having made a good start, I chopped off his left arm and shoved it up his bum. The join was covered with DAS clay and green stuff, and the big tentacle made a nice tail. And by nice, I mean revolting.

Then it was time for a bit of an experiment. I'd seen the new GW contrast paints as a good way of covering large areas. The Glottkin is big and very warty, which would hopefully be good for the paint to take hold. So I sprayed him white and got to work with a pot of Blood Angel Red.

Hmm, not bad, if a bit like strawberry jam. Obviously, it'll need some extra work, but the basic effect is quite "nice", by which I mean that he looks like the rotting love-child of an Imperial Knight and a randy squig.

He then got a gun emplacement on his back, again courtesy of the knight kit. This bit is an icarus autocannon.

Here's a rather washed-out picture of current progress, together with a delightful pink stomach. This is what happens when the chaos gods make jelly!

Avast Behind, it's the Ogre Pirates!

Everyone likes pirates. Pirates are great - unless they're Johnny Depp, in which case they're just irritating. Ogres are good too, even when they're spelled Ogors, because each one is basically a character and you only need a dozen or so for a Warhammer army.

About a year before I started this blog, I made an ogre army. They were themed as pirates, which enabled me to cut off a lot of legs and make a lot of hook hands, and included a force of aquatic trolls and a blue giant who looked like Neptune. Recently, I saw the back part of an ogre mercenary going for a few quid on ebay. I bought it, added some bits I had left over, and came up with this:

Here's the finished version, with paint.

Captain Bloodbeard was one a slave in the Dark Elf city of Port Misery. He sank the ship on which he laboured by jumping up and down a lot, and then, returning to the port, proceeded to kill and eat the entire garrison. This won him an entirely undeserved reputation as a freedom fighter, and since then, he has acquired a fierce following of rogues, sea-dogs and scurvy lubbers, most of whom he hasn't tried to devour. His name is a byword for mayhem and robbery, and he is often to be seen standing at the bows of his ship - largely because he is too big to fit inside.


I also had an old metal Privateer Press model that I'd picked up cheap ages ago. It's a Mercenary Mariner warjack, and has a nice nautical look reminiscent of the Big Daddy from the computer game Bioshock. The one I had was missing a funnel, and seemed to have been slightly miscast on the side of the head. I painted it up in what I hoped were seafaring colours. It will serve with the ogre pirates, perhaps as a champion. Yo ho ho!

Old Barnacle is a pirate golem that fights alongside Captain Bloodbeard and his salty crew. Fashioned from old diving suits and the terrible magic of the Great Whirlpool, it frequently leads boarding actions, where its sheer weight can threaten to capsize enemy vessels. Old Barnacle carries an ancient cannon and an anchor, with which to send scurvy dogs down to sleep in Davy Jones' locker. And also to kill them.

Castle of the Vampire

The last time I posted, I put up a work-in-progress picture of a building I was making. It's here:

I've managed to finish off the building and get it painted. I added a spire made from the Adeptus Titanicus spires kit, which I think scales off quite nicely. Because the top of the building seemed a bit wide and empty around the spire, I added some little domes or blunt spikes that I bought at the local art shop. I'm not sure what they're for (they might be the tops of fences in a bigger scale) but they make good gothic adornments. Also, I used them on the roof of this house, so they'll tie the scenery together.

The painting was fairly simple, and I used colours that reflected the other buildings for consistency. Probably the most interesting bit is that I used a light grey-blue for the highlighting colour on most of the stone, instead of my usual bone colour. I think it works really well and I like the overall effect.

Diabolical Works In Progress

Normally, I tend to post finished things to this blog. If their construction is of particular interest (to me, at any rate) I'll put up a work in progress photo. This week, however, I've been really busy with various bits of real-world stuff, and so I've started some things but not completed them.

First up is this little chap. He's a chaos cultist, and a marksman. He's going to be either an archer or a crossbowman in the Chaos warband that I'm planning to make for Frostgrave. His body is from a 40k Chaos Cultist, and his musket is from an Empire Soldier. I had to use wire and green stuff to make him a new left arm and fill in some of the gaps. So far, so good. Or bad.

Next up, something more grand. Ages ago, I made a steampunk observatory from pieces of the Empire Fortified Manor kit. I recently decided to give it a re-fitting, and took off the existing tower, to be replaced with a spire from the Adeptus Titanicus spires kit.

I've given the building a new pair of double doors, which are from Mantic's dungeon set, and a grand front piece above the door, which was previously the back part of the Magewrath Throne. While the throne is a decent enough kit for a tenner (if you like skulls on your skulls), it's out of scale with pretty much everything that isn't the size of a giant. This front ornamentation will look over the top and rather skull-heavy, but for once I'm prepared to forgo that. Perhaps it'll be the house of a vampire.

A Knight And A Spire

After last time's archer, I decided to paint a knight in similar colours, presumably as the head of the household. I found an old Gamezone model, which had a really good horse but a very boring rider. I removed the rider and made one of my own, with the body, legs and right arm of a Warhammer pistolier, and the left arm of a Warhammer knight. I added a head from Statuesque Miniatures and then, as Lou Reed once put it, he was a she. Hey babe, take a ride on the wild side.

The basing was tricky, as I wanted it to tie into the cobblestones of the infantry, but needed a cavalry base with slots to give the horse some support. I flattened out some green stuff on scraps of paper and "drew" cobbles into it with a biro. I painted these and glued them onto the base, then put ash-style flock around to cover up the gaps.

My second project is a bit of an experiment. A few weeks back, GW brought out a set of spires for their Adeptus Titanicus game. The spires looked really nicely-sculpted, and very much in the gothic-without-excessive-skulls look that I like. I bought a set to see if they could be incorporated into the architecture of the various 28mm buildings that I've been making.

Of course, they're wildly out of scale, but would it matter? The answer, I suspect, is "No, unless you think about it". I took the base plate of a Magewrath Throne, and put one of the spires on top of it.

Here in the UK, there are about a dozen monuments called Eleanor Crosses, which King Edward I put up in memory of his wife, Eleanor, in various towns. The one below is at Waltham. Apparently, there was one in Dunstable, but it seems to have gone missing, probably round about the time when the pubs close.

So, here's my take on the concept.

I've added a little 40k detail halfway down to give it a bit of visual focus, and painted the teardrop blue to get away from the fact that it's a Blood Angels part. I think it works.

Here's it next to Sir Vaylance the Vigilant.

I think that's ok, overall.