Evilstu’s Fantasy Progress 2020

So was doing pretty well at grinding down my inventory of unpainted minis. And then the gorgeous resin dwarves I had ordered from MOM miniatures arrived. Great, looking forward to doing Dwarves. Everybody likes Dwarves.

This was followed by Raging Heroes running some Black Friday deals which meant I picked up a couple of dark/lust elves to bulk out the GW Dark Elves I had on hand, plus what I had from the Raging Heroes kickstarter, to a point where I could filed a small Cult of Slaanesh army from the Storm of Chaos book. Ok no problems.

And then Wargames Atlantic released plastic Halflings at a rate of 40 short guys to a box…

And then I scored a second-hand Dark Elves army on ebay really cheap, hopefully with enough spare bits to have a go at restoring some of the older second hand models I had accumulated over the years…

And then I went to Cancon and found people selling bags of classic metal minis for $20-$30 a bag. Or current era plastics for half retail price or less in the auction area…

Plus the very reasonably priced Kings of War 3rd ed starter box came bundled with two nicely sized starter forces, and the Nightstalkers look to be crying out for some washes or mixed contrast paints over a zenithal preshade…

As you can see, none of this is my fault, I’m just a victim of circumstance ;-P Also, I’m choosing to ignore the inbound Kickstarter stuff that I may have backed way back in time before I knew about any of the above stuff, and am similarly choosing to ignore how good the impending Mantic Naughty Dwarves look…

So have spent the last couple of days soaking and stripping back metal minis, washing resin and wondering what happened to my workbench and well organised storage space. Broadly speaking, these are the projects I have going on at the moment:

Halflings: Have a box assembled and primed (which gave me 3 whole units 🙂 ) plus a couple of characters. Have more infantry on hand and will look at sourcing some cavalry later on to round out the force (most likely TT Combat’s recent offerings).

Naughty Elves/Dark Elves: Stripped where relevant and awaiting restoration work and re-priming.

The Other Kind of Naughty Elves/Cult of Slaanesh: Not really organised here – the stuff I have procured specifically for this project is still on the sprue. The rest will be pulled in from my Chaos or Dark Elves armies so as long as I am reasonably consistent with the bases should all be good.

Dwarves: Resin has been washed down, no assembly to date. I will need to sort what other dwarves I have on hand. Want to go with a stone textured base effect so plan will be to GSW roller all the bases I need at once prior to assembling the minis.

Beastmen: Have a bunch of really old metals I scored years ago, plus what I consider to be new metals but which are actually now older than the old metals were when I got them… I have some plastic Beasts stuff painted up (to what we will politely call ‘speed tabletop’ by my younger self many years ago) so will play with some lists and see if I can conjure some smaller forces for the investment of adding a few units here and there. Still have more plastic on hand form back in 2003 or so. I’m presently mostly playing small games of WHFB so will just need some solid core options without all the whistles and bells. This one should be my top priority but I’m not particularly energised about this one currently. Will see how we go…

Northern Alliance/Norse: Have a bunch of Norse assembled and primed form a variety of ranges (Fireforge, Reaper, Shieldwolf plus possibly some others?…) so will need to see how the Mantic go scale-wise. The rest aren’t really remotely to scale so if it land’s anywhere reasonably within the 28-32mm range I’ll call it good enough 🙂 KOW stuff is all still in the box on sprues. Not sure about the snow trolls in the starter box, posing seems a little static and homothetic so I may need to look at some conversion options.

Nightstalkers: See above, still in the box. they do look fun though 🙂

And left over from 2019:

• Kings of War Undead: Partly assembled and partly painted. In blacks, whites and NMM. Yep, it was a great idea to learn all three challenging colours/techniques simultaneously on a horde army. Would definitely recommend this approach, no drawbacks whatsoever. Pure coincidence that this project has been ‘parked’ for going on 3 years…
• Albion. May run the core units of these guys out as Britons/Gauls in SPQR (although I’m hoping that Wargames Atlantic’s Persians are released in time for me to smash out a box and run with them instead…). presently assembled, primed and zenithal skin tones done. I have some Confrontation Kelts stashed for the sexier Special/Rare options but this approach would involve taking them out of their packaging…
• Skaven. Mostly 2nd hand 8th ed starter box stuff so not much by way of support options, just a lot of fur to drybrush. Will see if I can get a combination of zenithal pre shading and dip or contrast going to get this one kicking along.
• Chaos: need to touch up the paint jobs on my old Slaanesh force, restore many broken minis and round out the beasts and daemons options.
• Kings of war Abyssals: Nabbed a small starter army box cheap a while back with the intention of using the cavalry in mortal chaos armies and the daemons as WHFB Khorne daemons but I am thinking it might do better as it’s own force. Still need to get to grips with 3rd ed…

In positive news though, I did get through nearly all of my orcs and goblins 🙂

Things I know will be getting released soon which might call me in:

• Oathmark generally…
• Frostgrave 2.0
• North Star Wargames Atlantic Wood Elves
• North Star Goblin Wolf Riders
• Mantic Naughty Dwarves
• Wargames Atlantic, I don’t know what you are presently up to once you have rolled out the Dark Age Irish but I’m suspecting it will probably end up belonging on this list too… (Edit: Never mind, have just worked out the wood elves were from Wargames Atlantic – WA, maybe we could just come to some form of retainer arrangement?…)

And ‘stuff i’d like to get done one day just for fun to get old minis on to the tabletop’:

• A Talabheim or Marienberg Empire army. By using one of the ‘rich’ provinces I can add in all the expensive units that don’t fit the fluff of my current (poorer province) Empire armies.
• Mordheim generally. Because Mordheim. You know that I’m right…
• Getting enough minis together to be able to run most low and some mid-CR level encounters in D&D. Sure, I can filed goblins, orcs and skeletons but I don’t have your standard-issue spiders, rats, oozes etc. And yes, even I should be able to sculpt an ooze from greenstuff 😉 And no, the real-life spiders in my man-cave are generally too big to work at 28mm scale, plus they never wait for their initiative to come up before making a move action…
• Alternate elf factions (Averlorn, Saphery etc). I have a couple of units that fit the fluff – not enough for a full army but would be nice to paint them up and roll them out as a themed add-on to my main pointy elf force.

And the punchline here is I’m supposed to be focusing on Historicals this year 🙂

Spent Thursday pulling out any boxes marked ‘Dwarf’ and totalling up the contents. Turns out I have in my travels collected three of the Dwarf half of the 7th ed starter set. While I’ll get around to painting it all up, a lot of the stuff is not going to be ‘optimal’ from a points perspective. ie, I’m pretty sure I’m never going to need three small groups of miners in a points match. Having said that, I am looking at reworking the siege rules from 6th edition and the miner units would obviously be a nice narrative touch to any sort of siege game.

The handgunners should work nicely and the warriors will probably get rolled up in to a large unit or 2, with any spares acting as ‘rank fillers’ for other units. The little ‘stumpy cannon’ is quite cute, but I might have a go at scratch building or printing something a little more imposing and swapping the crew over. Similarly I might also attempt scratch building/kit bashing an organ gun too. Failing that, there’s always Mantic…

On the GW front I also turned up 5 longbeards and an unopened flame cannon, so some stuff of a bit more interest. Numerous character models from an array of manufacturers too.

So the total count was 228 minis, at which point I lost motivation to do the bases with a textured rolling pin. having had a day to think about it though I am leaning back towards that approach, I’ll just have a look at doing a small list then adding a unit or 2 at a time so that it all stays manageable.

Spent today looking at Beastmen. My original plan had been to do a small force of beastmen for each chaos god and run mixed forces, but that plan stalled after 7th edition when combining mortal daemon and beasts in the one army wasn’t a rulebook/tourney friendly option from memory. I only ever got as far as one unit of Slaanesh beastmen. Additionally, from 7th edition gors and ungors ran in individual herds, rather than mixed ones, so the minis I had weren’t going to be enough to field separate units. The plan I came up with today was to pull everything back into one Beastmen army, paint in a homogenous/neutral colour scheme (except for the Khornegor unit who can keep their red…) and just swap magnetised unit banners if I needed to change the flavour of chaos from vanilla to something else. So that’s where I’m headed. Also means I can do more of a deep wood/forest path base style instead of more snow…

So had stripped the metal bestigors and khornegors I picked up 2nd hand at Cancon, and spent today repairing, re-priming and trying to scrounge together enough older minis to form up complete units. I ended up pulling some old 5th ed Gor blisters and promoting them to Bestigor status. Also opened one of the old beast herd boxes I had and put them together, with the extra sprue contents getting used to convert weapons for the bestigors, of which about 15 appeared to be standard bearers for some reason…. So trimmed down the standard and glued weapons on to make them look more like bills or polearms. The unit looks very ‘rough and ready’ but I guess that’s Ok for a beastmen army. After a few hours of messing about I had 2 blocks of 20 Bestigors with command, a block of 20 Khornegors with command, 2 beast herds both with 12 gors, 8 ungors and command and 5 Centigors.

I got the above primed with the airbrush for the underside (nadir?… Is that a painting thingy yet?…) black coat. Was aiming to get a grey and zenithal white done but it was well over 40 degrees outside and no idea how hot it was in my garage. My airbrush didn’t overheat, but I certainly did, so decided to wait until tomorrow maybe before pushing on.

A couple of hours this morning with the spray gun. Have just started using the Stynylrez brand airbrush primes and they are absolutely great.  Worked fine pumped through a cheap airbrush for an extended session on a low humidity 40 degree day, so should handle ‘regular’ use no worries I’d suggest 🙂

I retouched the black from yesterday as I had missed a couple of spots here and there. Then switched to grey for a zenithal highlight and then finally white for the final zenith hit.

Did some quick mental arithmetic and the 100 infantry and 5 cavalry models I have for the army in total cost less than the local retail price of a ‘start collecting’ box set. Admittedly I did need to invest a few days in stripping, repairing and converting. But if you don’t mind those elements of the hobby and are happy playing with older minis then restoring second hand minis may be an economical way to approach things.

Used GW’s contrasts to get base colours on to the minis quickly while watching TV. Gulliman Flesh on the flesh areas, Gore Grunta Fur on the fur areas (this pain allocation is sort of writing itself really…) and Nazdreg Yellow on all the wood areas. then AP Gun Metal on all steel areas, AP Skeleton Bone on horns and hoofs, VMC 70.801 Brass on all the Khorne iconography on the Khornegor unit, and VMC 70.982 Cavalry brown used as the red colour on the Khornegors.

From here a black wash on the areas covered with regular paint, then hitting the remaining cloth using the white half of the Vallejo ‘Black and White’ paint set as it should provide a good contrast with the fur and base colours (going for dark brown and dark green on the bases for a shadowy ‘forest path’ look, maybe with a few fallen leaves for a hint of colour. A mushroom if I’m feeling fancy…).

So once these are finished just need a Khorne beastman hero with a great weapon (can proxy a Slaanesh one in a pinch) and a chariot and I’ll have a 500 point list tabletop ready.

Not much experience with resin minis, but had picked up a bit here and there of late, including some dwarves from MOM Miniatures. I’d been keen to use the Green Stuff World rollers on bases for an army sized project for a while and this seemed appropriate. So I mixed together a bunch of Milliput and ended up having enough to cover 45 of the 48 bases I had on hand (3 more were added later…). Using the GSW ‘pavement’ rolling pin, pushed texture in and then gave them a day to set and trimmed the excess off the base edges with a hobby knife.

I’d previously soaked and washed all the resin that had arrived, so ended up pulling a block of 20 warriors out of the pile, along with a command frame of 3. Adding a character would make use of 24 bases, and would leave 24 so I could do this a second time once the mood takes me (I have to be in the right frame of mind for prep work as I tend to drop/lose small fiddly parts reasonably often…). I think I got them to mostly rank up even on 20mm bases? Minis went together really well and I think has gotten me over my fear of working on resin.

Also picked up a resin steam tank, this time from Norba. I think they have now discontinued resin in favour of plastic, so not sure if they will be revisiting this particular kit in the future. Regardless, have gotten it mostly assembled, but still a few gaps to address. I’ll paint the tank commander separately and attach him later.

I’ve had some Mage Knight chariots kicking about for close to 20 years from when the game died out locally. Think I ended up picking them up for about $7 knowing they’d be useful later on. I had started converting them slightly to work with a beastman army years ago, so fished one out and decided to progress it to tabletop.

First thing I noted was that it was slightly too long to fit on to a 100mm base. So given it was a cheap plastic kit, I just heated the beasties front leg at the knee with a cigarette lighter and bent it back. Problem solved.

For the base I started off adding some texture with some old premixed Polyfilla which has seen better days (might be about 6 or 7 years old at the time of posting…). Couldn’t get it to stick down to the MDF base so ended up laying it there and coating from the top with PVA. then sprinkled on some reptile sand I’d picked up from a local pet store. This stuff is super-fine as far as granule size is concerned and would probably be ideal for basing at smaller scales, perhaps even down to 2mm.

I then gave a day to dry and then painted over with an umbral brown poster paint. Once that dries I’ll start with painting on a top coat and add static grass  and tufts etc.

Also did a bit of work last night to upgrade the paintjob a little. Still needs more work, including the driver obviously, plus I’ll need to add a warrior to the back.

Have additionally given up looking for a suitable beastmen leader model with a great weapon and instead press-ganged an old Reaper mini in to service as a warleader in the short term. Will probably demote him later on once I find some more suitable character mins…

So with the addition of the chariot and character, I’ll have the core of a 500 point beastmen army ready to go once they are painted to tabletop.

Having knocked out the bases form a sheet of MDF I noticed the remaining frame could be easily chopped up and made into movement trays (or left as is for a 50 strong horde of course…). the slight couple of mm offset between minis does help them rank up better, and every gamer I’ve ever played against has worked out combat on the base size the minis should be rather than how big the movement tray is so that shouldn’t be an issue. Anyhow, I split one down the middle, will just need to glue a backer on to the second half and then affix both to some cardboard, spraypaint and flock and all sorted.

Also got some of the MOM Miniatures Dwarf Warriors assembled, another 18 to go. Plus an engineer character to accompany.

Was looking at my ‘placeholder’ beastman hero (I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the need to do an order to Avatars of War for some of their character models in the coming months so will get a beastmen leader then…) and lamenting his lack of a great weapon. The ‘sword and board’ armaments made him look more sylvan than bestial. So I got the idea of getting a great weapon and slinging it along his shoulder to make him look a little more primal. Couldn’t find anything appropriate in the bits box (this mini is probably 40mm tall…) so thought of using a barbecue skewer chopped down to size and gluing some axe blades on either side of one end to make a double handed axe. naturally I was struggling to find axe blades big enough until I remembered what was always a reliable source of oversized blade weapons and clipped some form some space orks sprues. Trimmed the back of one of the axe heads down so it was flat and then glued the second blade along the flat edge with plastic glue. Then went to glue on a handle. Sized the weapon along the characters back and realised it would just get caught in his antlers (curse my stupid lack of a suspension of disbelief in fantasy gaming…).

…And then I changed my mind.

Thought I would put the great weapon in his left hand instead and have his shield strapped over. Regrettably on investigation the shield was held in the hand and too far down the arm to look believable. Just wasn’t going to happen.

…And then I changed my mind.

If the mini couldn’t have a great weapon, then  ‘Maybe I could just glue skulls to the base to make it look grimdark…’ i smirked to myself. Am quite sure I have a bunch of sprue skulls scattered about the place but wasn’t going to go rummaging (am going to start setting them aside in a jar or ziplock bag from now on though…) so had a look on  my workbench at the big pile of ‘parts that fell on the floor under my workbench when I was assembling a miniature and couldn’t find and then found three weeks later when I was looking for a part I dropped just now for an unrelated miniature’. Plenty of spare heads but no skulls. There were however three of the large monstrous skulls from the 6th ed beastmen kit to use as banner toppers, so I decided to get a couple of those, glue them on barbecue skewers and affix then to the back of the model crossed over one another, as though the character was standing in front of, or defending, some sacred ritual grove. Sorted.

…And then I changed my mind.

Saw I also had a metal Khorne Bestigor banner which was likely not going to get used (at least for the foreseeable future) so determined to glue this one on to a cocktail stick as well and add between the other two markers, which were now no longer going to be crossed over. So mixed up a big block of brownstuff (the excess of which went on filling gaps in the resin steam tank), filled in the base and glued on the parts. The hero could now act as a warband leader until such time as I had obtained a more appropriate mini, at which time he would be moved sideways to become a battle standard bearer.

So a bit of an iterative process but reasonably happy with where I landed.