Grendel’s Warband for Conquest Last Argument of Kings #PathOfConquest

So they are done.

I think between the golden weapons and the tats they look different to raiders. Of course the stalker heads help a lot.

Enjoy.

Day two. I’ve got most of the work done on these.

Whats outstanding? I need to highlight the bases, sort out the hair, add some highlights to the tats.

I’m pleased that the tattoos worked, i chose not to blacken the top of the faces for now as i think it may be a bit too much. I may try it on a couple of them to see if it works.

Now i wont be able to do anymore till next weekend as marking and grown up work stuff, but here is where im at.

A lot further down this blog i have the plan for my Ulfhednar. The TLDR is i’m using black tattoo’s across the face and shoulders to make them stand out from raiders along with Stalker heads.

One of the choices i have made is to avoid using green on them. All the other units will. This will make them distinct. Also i’m using light colours to make the tattoos stand out more.

So far i’ve got the base coats and a wash down. I think it shows well where this will be going. very light organic colours that will make it look like there is more skin than is actually there so the tats stand out.

Rightiho. Phase 2 proper start. I picked up some other raiders while i wait for a restock.
As always really nice sculpts.

So i saved a lot of Stalker heads. As there is unlikely to be Ulfhednar in the near future i’m making my own as i said at the start of the project.

So choices. I’ve chosen to leave the shoulder pads off to give more skin to paint markings on. This also means their silhouette will be different to the raiders.

The Stalker heads work, and for any of you who are interested they fit the raider bodies pretty snuggly with a bit of pressure.

I have also chosen to not add the plate to the banner, it makes it look more ramshackle, more feral.

So come Friday, rain willing, i’ll get them under coated and try and get them done over the weekend.

So got the painting done. Just waiting for my replacement base and then it will be basing and snow.

One of the things i have added is runic tattoos. This is to show the oaths the Nord have made with the Jotnar when they defeated them.

Anyway here are the pictures.

Unless i’m on Holiday or its the weekend i don’t really get to paint at the moment. The joys of being a teacher in the current world. So today i’m pretty much full on with this project.

Choices i have made.
The skin tone is a Vallejo pastel green. I think it gives a odd organic plant feel without it going full cucumber. Amusingly its my base colour for my 30k Death Guard.
I went with autumnal leaves. Sure the army is winter themed, but its a magical being and it contrasts well with the green.

The shields that make up his armour i think is a very cool idea. Rather than giving them heraldry, i kept them blank. Using colours repeated from the mini. adding grain to the wood to make them pop a little better. I’m still working on the NMM gold on them. That is not finished.
Also one of the shield rims, due to the way the pieces need to be moulded, makes the shield look about 2ft thick. So i will be adding snow to hide that later.

I’m about half way through the cloth. Now i haven’t painted a large mini that isnt a tank since the first release of the GW manticore. So this was ‘fun’.

Ive tried to make the highlights look ragged and used cross hatches in places to make the texture of cloth stand out, rather than make it look like plastic sheeting.

I think it works.

So still have to do the red cloth and the rope. Then i need to go in and sort out details such as wood poking out of arms rather than hair, tidying up highlights and the like. Oh and tattoos. Needs tats.

More tommorrow.

So my raiders haven’t turned up yet, however my Jotnar has. So while my Shaman waits for its phase 2 reinforcements i will start work on my phase 3 Jotnar.

As always the kits are gorgeous, although as always it did need a lot of clean up with a lot of mould lines. More disappointing, the main round base was also missing. I’ve emailed OTT so hopefully that will be fixed soon.

So thoughts? I went with the tree head, its the more strange and fits with the Grendel base. I think I may actually go with a green skin tone and orange leaves. I think this will lean into the strangeness of an army of monsters; also it will tie to the Ugr quite well. I think using a green and highlighting up with a flesh will look pretty good, this means the green skin will look different to any of the other greens I might use to tie the mini into the stalkers.

Also i’m going to have a look at the Conflict first argument of kings FB group and the OTT blogs to find some heraldry I like for the shield on his hip.

I have to have a big think about the dominant colour as with a greenish skin, blue will make the whole mini look to heavy and dark. That said if I highlight light it will work.

So that’s my weekend sorted out.

Drekki stalked among the stones, his flame red hair slowing behind him in the wind like the lazy floating embers of a smouldering fire. He approached the throng of dispossessed that sat around the bonfire waiting for him. Shadows flickered across the rune marked rocks he was picking his way through.

As each shadow caressed a rune or pictogram another truth was opened and revealed to Drekki, moving darkness pointing out truth and prophecy.

All around him the mad and dispossessed from ice in the far north watched him with the eyes that gleamed a passion that was only felt by the truly fervent or those touched with visions.

And they had been touched. Where Drekki walked visions and dreams haunted those that had lost, those that mourned, those that the cold had stolen from them. Like those shadows he now watched, visions and dreams flickered from him like shadow from flame. 

Dreams of a void beyond the ice, a wyrm that devoured all it gazed upon, of a terrible darkness that swam beneath the ice. A darkness that was making its way south like cracks spreading from shattering ice.

They knew that they had to follow, that Drekki somehow was guiding them south for a reason, and for that they were loyal. They would throw themselves into combat with wild abandon. Tearing at their enemies with blade or blooded fingers, like frenzied animals knowing their only way out was forward. They knew they had a purpose guided by this fire that walked.

Drekki, smiled as he looked at his devotees. He knew the truth of what laid beneath the ice. The horror that was coming. He knew that on the ice only the strong would survive and that the Einharjer and their blooded descendants could stand against it. Like the times before when they fought the Jotnar, they would be the ice storm that would cut down the enemies of the Nord.

Yet Drekki had a plan. To take his followers and the Blooded Grendel and forge a weapon of them. A spear to drive into the heart of this darkness, a spear forged from the mad and the monstrous.

Was that not what the Einharjar were now he thought to himself, was this warhost not the perfect legacy of these fallen legends? Not flawless divine beings that was the fad in the city, but warriors and killers that were red in tooth and claw.

‘My children,’ he began as he stared at the madmen in their blackened tattoos that surrounded him, he made eye contact with each as he stalked around the assembled warriors, the flickering flame casting shadows across his aging face.

‘I have seen a truth in the shadow of the fire, a darkness is coming and we must act…..’

The killers howled in response.

So boring Sunday ended with me finishing off my Shaman base.

I’m pleased with it, the stones also get to act like wound markers on the base, saving sticking a dice next to it.

Of course now i need to think of things to add to Grendels base as tokens….bum.

Obviously i could get loads done with lockdown looming….unfortunately i’m a teacher so that’s not a thing.

I will however get a better photo.

As an aside with lockdown looming, take care of yourselves.

So i decided i need a command base for my shaman. Because i haven’t got anything else to paint…..

To that end standing stones. Tescos car park provided the slate and then a basic drybrush, you all know how, to get it looking right.

Glued to spare bases so they can easily slot into a standard Conquest base.

Add some snow pva mix to make it look pretty like.

Next up was adding some runes and decoration. As much as i could have gone full nordic rune on it, but that’s the realms of historical wargaming (which i do, no snide comments here).

So i watched over the sea the other day. That’s where the face came from, a painting of one of the ‘gods’. Its painted sideways as the stone has fallen over.

The second one is a set of runes, with some of the symbols from the Blooded mini added along with some of the triangles that are on the Stalkers. It ended up looking a bit like a dragon. I imagine the Shaman drew it after seeing it in the void beyond the ice in the north.

I really like how stories come out of projects 🙂

Next images are a demo of what it will look like once i get a base to work on. Obviously i still have a slot to fill and i have to decide what that will be.

Again, this is only a proof of concept, rather than the final piece.

So i’ve run out of mini’s to paint, well i have a Morax and Hero someone 3d printed for me, but im out of Conquest figures and its pay day tommorrow….so this may be the last blog entry for a bit unless i start making the standing stones for the shaman’s command base.

So colours wise i used the same scheme as Grendel. This was to tie the two together, however i used a lot more white in the colours to give him a worn and old feel.

the skin tone was flat flesh and electric blue, pulled up with white and flat flesh to give the appearance of old cold flesh.

The beard was specifically done in flames, to give an odd appearance. i wanted to give a feel of unnatural. With the flesh and the beard i think that has worked out that way.

So as he is the leader of the raiders and Ulfhednar i think that the colour schemes for them will be greens and reds.

Right phase 1 done, i’m proud of that.

So to get the stalkers done i went with quick and dirty in the end.

The base coast were done in 50:50 flow improver and paint. Basically its contrast paint.

After that there were some basic highlights and tattoos added and the snazzy snow bases.

Lessons learned:

*less colours if you want to get them done at a decent speed. As they are Grendel’s buds, they have all the same colours as him. Going forwards i think, other than on characters, i’m going to limit the pallet and stick to two main colours. I’m yet to decide what the through colour will be, but it wont be blue as that will just disappear into the bases. For the Ulf and the raiders attached to the Shaman i think red will be the primary colour for them with green. Reasoning being that they will stand out as different, but maintain a cohesion with the rest of the army.

*less ambition if i want to keep up with the Path of Conquest. fundamentally this is miniatures inktober and i need to readjust my expectations for that. Spend time on units and characters that are special or need to stand out, rather than trying to kill myself with rank and file.

What next?

Next is:

1 Shaman
3 stands of raiders
3 Stands of Ulfhednar with leader, banner and savage.

So i’m looking forward to this. I think other than the tattoos im not going to put the shoulder pads on the Ulfhednar, i also have a lot of stalker heads to go on them.
I’m really looking forward to this one.

Also the Shaman is getting a scenic command base, i think he will have at least one standing stone and either an apprentice or a bodyguard. Rule of cool and all that jazz as it were.
Payday friday and i’ll put the order in then so that i can start work first weekend of November.

So i finished the command base. What did i do?

Added a 50:50 green ink and flow improver wash over all the white and blue to theme with the greens and blues on the mini.

Gloss varnish to the ice.

50:50 mix of army painter snow and pva glue applied more liberally than a Waitrose Christmas advert.

One finished command base, ta da!

Obviously i will be adding this to all my other bases going forward.

A small update. The stand for Grendel is coming along. I need some gloss varnish and some snow, but you can see vaugley how it will turn out in the picture.

So been a bit silent for a while. This is mainly because its the end of term and as a teacher i have a lot of paper work, also my Rabbits has been sick, and then my exhaust fell off…..and then the car blew up after it was fixed…….So as you can imagine i have been a little behind and anytime i have come to get some painting done i have mainly not.

So where am I? Well i’m getting Grendels base done. I need to blend the texture in and then colour match the colours.

Which reminds me, my other half is sat next to me scraping mould lines off her super dungeon explore minis and she immediately asked why there are no snow clumps of gloss varnish involved in this project. She is of course right, i need to put gloss varnish down on the ice and then stick snow clumps on…..apparently we are going paint shopping on Monday \o/ so that’s sorted.

Next up i finally got the whole of the stalkers washed and basecoated. I’m still not leaving them like that, cause pride and stuff. However they do look natty with the basecoat and you could get away with that for ‘battle ready’.

I’m going to go at them the same way i did the other figures. non metallic metal, high contrasts and an old hammer vibe paint scheme. What i will have to do is sort out some short cuts so i don’t end up screaming into the void and finishing them somewhere around 2367. At the moment i think the short cut will be when highlighting it will be 3 tonal shifts from the initial colour and brutally ignoring stuff that wont be seen or is very obviously in shade…..i mean i wont, i’ll do the whole thing like a masochist, but at least the intent is there!

And the last thing was I picked up a Shaman which is the start of my second wave of units to cheer myself up. The sculpt is gorgeous, and like the rest of their resin, almost no clean up to do. I’m really pleased with him. Although i have had a sudden thought about Para-Bellum and a lack of female miniatures that i will share when i get to my next stage.

So couple of photos. First of all the first lick of paint on the tree for Grendel’s base. looks okay, once its on the base i can blend the snow in to the miniatures base and add texture.

The second one is a Stalker with ink wash over the acrylic base coats. I could leave it, its table top fine. But obviously i wont because i want a fancy looking army.

So 20 Stalkers, i’ve spent the weekend painting them during the day to work with natural light. Its taking time just to get the base coats on so i have to make a choice.

Do i want to get them done quickly or do i want to do them well. Technically i could just get the straps and string done, chuck a brown was on and have done with them. The problem is they are nice sculpts so would be a bit of a waste and i’m loathed to do that.

However if i want to keep up with the path of conquest i need to do the quick and dirty if i want to get 2k done by the end of the path of conquest thing. Especially with conversions, scenic bases for characters and waiting for trolls from para bellum this feels a little on the naff side.

So i think the decision will be to do them well and when POC finishes throw a picture up of what i have done rather than rush to get 2k done.

Now i could just make my own contrast paints as i’m using acrylic flow improver to water down my paints to retain pigment, but again it feels like the end result will look scrappy.

So i’m kind of locked into a smaller force for the end of the project unless i want to change the list to add converted monsters, which then takes me outside the only use para bellum miniatures for this project to add higher points units to make the amount of figures to paint smaller.

That said the figures are so nice that even the rank and file deserve good quality paint jobs. My other option is to make unit spacers like menhirs  and the like that would be quick to slot in, but this feels a bit rubbish with para bellum being a newish company and it feels a bit off to not buy the figures to support them. If it was GW i’d probably have one stand of trees with a single figure to every full two bases, but in this case i wont.

So yeah just some thoughts on painting to a schedule.

So i have decided to make a tree to go on Grendel’s base.

Like this one.

How’s it done? Well easy. You are going to need:

Tissue paper
Wire
PVA Glue
And some card for the base

To add more branches, just add more wire.

Now for the PVA. Make a 50 50 mix of pva. All you are going to do is tear strips of tissue off and soak it in the PVA mix. Then wrap it round the metal.

You might want to wear gloves. The paper can be very frustrating and sticks to everything.

Also as you are wrapping it you wants lots of texture and leave some of the wire poking through. it gives a more spooky appearance.

Then let it dry.

You should have something like this, then its just a wet on wet dry brush.

They are here! On a serious note i ordered a second box from OTT, they arrived today and i’m still waiting on my order from amazon…..

They are the same awesome quality as the Ugr’s and have the same casting lines.

Three sprues with 4 on each, plus a command upgrade sprue.

Slightly scuppering plans there is only a helmeted head on the command sprue, so there will have to be some serious thinking around my planned conversions, however there are enough heads that i can werewolf up some raiders this the left overs, especially with a second box.

They are gorgeous figures, the thing that stands out the most is the size of them.

These will be Grendel’s body guard, wild hunters in the dark so there will be a lot of blues with them. I think going forward the green for armour works, however i’m tempted to make the helms gold and the metal armour plates a darker metal. This marks Grendel’s green armour as a bit special.

I’m really looking forward to put some paint down on them, however basing wise they are all going on rocks, not only cause rocks are cool, but the extra height makes them a bit more intimidating. I think that going forwards other regiments will have a couple of rocks, but not all of them, that way the bodyguard for Grendel stands above everyone else.

I was chatting to a friend of mine and the conversation went to the Nord. ‘What are they?’

‘The degenerate offspring of genetic weapons designed to fight ragnarok.’

He’s sold.

So they are done. I have thoughts.

First of all they are painted to look good on a table top, not up close on a camera. That’s a thing. When you paint a painting you don’t paint it from the perspective of how will it look up close. Its how will it look at a distance on a wall.

I’m pleased with the skin, even if it drifted a bit to close to Ork goes wahhh colour.

Also i went with black eyes, i didn’t want to give them human looking eyes. Even if i’m writing them up as sweet kids that adopt a war personality through mask work, they still are not human,

Next on my hit list is tattoos. Now i tried to avoid to many Nordic style tats. This is because the Nord might be ‘Viking’ inspired, but its a fantasy world. I’m not sure what the tats mean yet, but I’ve used a simple triangle theme throughout with a couple of more complex ones. it breaks the skin up. To get the fine lines i used a thine brush with AV Heavy Charcoal mixed with acrylic medium.

Last bit? The bases. I am not happy, but I need to look at how the smaller infantry bases look in that style. They need some rocks to break them up a little I think, and possibly murder penguins. This is why they aren’t finished.

Things i hate. I’ve spent three months painting in oils, which has led me to not being great with acrylic. Even with acrylic medium it doesn’t flow or mix in the same way. It’s almost like relearning a tool again. This also maybe because of the size of the minis.

Right….where’s my Stalkers?