Tales of a hobby butterfly

These little chaps gave me something to do on a damp afternoon.

2 squads of 5 ork bikers

A squad of buggies and another squad of boar boys.

Speed paints are great for models of this scale.

Now these units are done I can treat myself to painting up a gargant which I have been looking forward to

Thought I would start the new year by hunting out an old project I started a while ago.

I kind of fancy the idea of completing armies for epic games through the ages starting with the 80s adeptus titanicus through the editions to the fancy new legions imperialus.

As each set of forces is completed I can give each set of rules a go to see if they are as cool a 9 year old me remembers them or if its rose tinted glasses.

After a fun day sifting through the bitz box of doom I hunted out loads of epic bits and bobs.

The titanicus titans turned up first which was lucky then I uncovered a tub of 1st edition space marine dudes, they had not fared so well and quite a few of them had been squished  by the chunky land raiders so I decided to 3d print some old school marines to replace them.

I split the Rhinos, land raiders and whirlwinds up equally and then devided them down into the formations from the 1st edition space marine book.

Then I added 2x tactical 1x assault and 1 x devastator platoon to each force

These two forces should let me play most of the scenarios in the rule book. In the advanced section of the rules it gives the option to add titans from titanicus so can add some titans to bulk up the points for larger battles.

Painting epic stuff is great with speedpaints was able to get this all painted up in a couple of evenings.

The vehicles do not need to be on bases but I stuck them to washers so they stick to magnetic sheets for storage I don’t want any more squished marines.

These warlord titans had a good bath in dettol stripping back layers and layers of paint.

Decided to magnetise the weapons and they are now ready for some games of old school adeptus  titanicus

The sculpts are still awesome to paint and I love the models with their iconic beetle backs and interchangeable weapons. The card void sheild trackers in the bases even survived the years of neglect.

Next step is to get some second edition forces in the go.

I already have a chunk of space wolves painted and ready to roll.

But I feel the need for an epic waaaaagh so got to work stripping and sorting out my orks of doom.

With the bits I have I can make a core unit of snake bite boyz supported by boar boyz and 2 units of squiggoths although they are not 2nd edition sculpts I’m sure the orks won’t mind.

The next boyz mob will be evil sunz looning around on battle waggons supported by warbikes mobs and some other battle waggon types.

The special choices will be taken up by a slasher gargant and a Warboss.

Recently I have had a fancy to play some small scale Napolionic skirmishes on the table top, with that in mind I set about deciding on which country to build a force for. As always a new army starts with a rummage through the pile of shame.

I found some cool stuff, the warlord peninsula veterens set, some spannish gurillas on horses an old victrix cannon with no crew and some thugs and deserters from the silver bayonet.

It was with this last find that I decided rather than going with the 95th rifles and the brave charismatic Richard Sharpe I would go with Sergeant Hakeswills robbers and rogues, a vicious band of thugs and cutthroats plundering baggage trains and chasing pay chests not caring if its British, French or Spannish gold.

Turns out I had enough chaps to make a 400 point force for shakos and bayonets this rule set should work perfectly for the small scale skirmishes I have in my minds eye.

The only other thing I needed to do was have the whole thing built and painted in 5 days as I had a new game arriving at the end of the week and I new if it was not done by then it would slip back into the shame pile.

With that in mind I went with a simple undercoat, block out colours with speedpaints followed by a bone drybrush then army painter strong tone and a matt varnish. Bam 💥  job done.

The force itself is based on a spannish list as that opens up options for gurilla infantry and reluctant line infantry which I think will fit the idea of the small force perfectly.

The small force will be lead by the French deserter pot au feu  who turned up in sharpes enemy

He is ment to be in a green uniform but I forgot so now he wears a nice red uniform probably stolen from an officer he shot I’m the back or looted from a baggage train.

These chaps were mostly painted over a weekend once again with the superb army painter speed paint, strong tone wash and some drybrushing.

Bam 💥 painted up the dragon using army painter speed paint and strong tone wash.

Kept the colours to a minimum to get the dragon painted quickly.

Once the base colours were dry the whole model had a dry brush with bone paint followed by a watered down strong tone wash.

Once that all dried I had some fun with flock leaves and tufts

Was sifting through my bitz box and found the body of an old warhammer chaos dragon.

It still has its legs but one of the heads (the chaos dragon had 2) had gone missing or been given away as had the wings.

It just so happens that I need a dragon for a wood elf army so this was a good starting point.

Time to see what else I can find in the bitz box of doom.

I kind of wanted a wiggly dragon rather than the gw lump, so cut up the tail and drilled some holes to attach some gardening wire to create the shape and did the same for the neck.

I can now bend the dragon to shape and use greenstuff to fill in the gaps

1. The wings were going to be tricky gw wings are crazy expensive.

I decided to try building my own.

I drew the shape I was after making a template from some card then using the metal from a tomato puree packet I made the basic shape that could be bent to the shape I needed.

For the outside edge I rolled the edge of the metal over some gardening wire leaving a bit of wire sticking out to attach to the dragon.

Details were then added to the wings with milliput.

Once the wings were attached green  stuff was used to build up the body where they attach.

Once the wings were set they were coated in modge podge for two reasons, the paint should be less likely to scratch off the modge podge and it will provide a less even surface so hopefully the wings should look more organic.

Bult up some chaps to defend the objectives.

They are a mix of German parts from bolt action with some gw and mantic heads

I have not had a chance to read the 0200 hours rules yet so am not sure exactly what I need so just made a mix of figures

Thought it would be cool to give the. Different hats to tell the different troop types from a distance.

The sentries have plain helmets and the regular infantry have covers.

For the unusual infantry types like the dog handlers I am using bodies with cammo smocks