Hordes: Blindwater Bog Trog Trawlers

So I like the Bog Trog minis... and actually played a game of Hordes for the first time in about 6 years so that gave me a little inspiration to paint something. I actually painted my Shambler unit too but not enough light for me to take photos of them at the moment, plus I haven't even undercoated the bases like I managed to do on the trawlers yet.
First guy is not converted but the second guy is. 

This guy I cut off the handle from his right hand and bent the arm carefully, then I replaced the handle on the gun with brass rod and roughly sculpted a strap onto it.
I took the knife off of a Metal GW Kroot shaper for the right hand. 

Mordheim Vampire Hunters: Campaign Master forces Ash's Mount

Today I have a work in progress paint job to show you.

The original model is from Epic Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire (Privateer press Warmachine figure). I have posted it before along with it's converted rider (Ash; the Zombie lord).
I still need to apply the tail and paint the hooves and some of the buckles but it's coming on ok (note: the model is not as pick as it looks (on my monitor at least).

Inspiration: Rhulic Adventurers

Not my work, just a few excellent conversion I had to share. These have all been converted for Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms RPG game using mostly Pribateer press parts, and a couple of Reaper miniature parts.

The below conversions are from "PsycoLaughs" over on the Privateer press forums, the picture is a link to the thread with some other photos.

This guy is from Rob Hawkins and can be seen on his blog here his blog also has some human, trollkin, elf and gobber adventurers.

This one IS my own, done a few years back for the fun of it (I have never played in a game of IKRPG), a Rhulic sniper converted from  GW Ratling sniper (basically I extended the knee areas to give the model Rhulic sized legs).

Moving away from miniatures, there is this lovely bit of art showing a Rhulic Light Labour Jack (upright) by nfeyma over on DeviantArt here I woulden't have gone with the Khador fists myself but then I can't draw a stick man so... nevermind lol.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Ironback Spitters (paint in progress)

 

Teedle deep and Tweedle derp about half way through the paint work so far, one coat of P3 heartfire orange (which has pretty poor coverage BTW, even over a brown undercoat, but it brightened up the model enough), one coat of army painter lava orange, one red ink wash, GW scorched brown, P3 Jack Bone (excellent coverage) and lastly Army painter Quickshade: Strong tone.

 

I need to go back over the guy's scales again as the covereage of the scorched brown was kind of .... well not great lol (painting in with poor light does that), so I need to make sure no orange is showing through, then some highlights, some varnish and i'll start on the back plates.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Ironback Spitters

 

A Couple more minor conversions for my Hordes army.

Both these spitters had the horn on their chin removed and filed down to a neat angle.

One of them has been posed looking to his left (picture below) the other to be much more up-right, which involved removing some of the metal from inside his torso, and one of his back spikes.

Both then had greenstuff applied to cover up some of the blank area that was mean to be covered by their torsos and then some in the neck area (the one below has quite a lot as you can see, in order to get the "looking left" pose I wanted. 

Both these guys will be straight on the painting desk and will be getting a similar colour scheme to the terrortoise so as they could be used in the same warband should ever I manage to finish my Modheim rules or play something else :).

Cheers for looking

Maxxev

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Witch Doctor (Paint in progress)

Just a couple of shots of another model for my Gatormen still got to paint his tongue (and the snakes) and knife, plus some highlights and touch up here and there.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Swamp Horror (no 2)

Barney the Squid

Couldn't resist getting two of these things, seeing as they are fantastic miniatures :P lol.I went with a completely different scheme on this one (another reason why i'm enjoying painting the minions) and I figured out what to do with all that space on the side of them, a bit of blobbing with some ink and I think it came out quite well :). Still need to varnish this one to take the shine off the purple ink but i'm liking him this far. I may have overdone it with the highlighting on the armour, can't really tell till after the varnish goes on, still might tone it down a little... not sure...

The eyes have only been undercoated so far.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Swamp Horror

He's Still WIP, got a couple of teeth to finish off and decide what to do about the big grey patches on the side (I tried a smooth grey, didn't like it, so went with a smudged grey but I don't like that much either :().

Love this model, if it wasn't for this guy and the Bog trogs I could easily have avoided buying into another army *sigh*. Still I hope that the model can pull double duty in another game system one day.

It sure is fun to paint things in a completely different way / choice of colours than normal though, the minions in general with their varied model races / creatures are well, just enjoyable to paint :) (well the blindwater side at least, I was fed up after my 6th Brigand for Thornfall... lol).

However this picture was taken while the base was still drying (actually it still is) but since taking the shot the damn water simulation type stuff has shrunk a LOT (it basically now just looks like a wet base, rather than a couple of MM depth). :(, going to try another layer in the morning and hope for the best but with the rate of shrinkage so far I think it's going to need about 30 layers.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Posse and Wrastler

Latest Gatormen to receive a paint job, the Posse and a Blackhide Wrastler.
I need to re-paint a bit of the posse leader as I failed to notice the gaping holes in him that required a fair amount of greenstuff work to fill.... lol.

So far I haven't converted any of the blindwarter figures but I have a couple of Croak hunters that will be converted and I want to do a bit of work to the ironback spitters before they I start painting them too.

So far i'm finding this army really easy / quick to paint, i'm loving the speed at which the army is coming together :).

Hordes: Blindwater catastrophe

Well as promised here is what befell my minions through the postal service :(.

On top of the pile of bits pictures below were 2 empty trays of egg crate foam (that the miniatures had been packed into) and a bit of bubble wrap... in Royal Mails defence, there was a fair amount of air in the top of the parcel, NOT in their defence... the parcel was sent by special delivery, which is supposed to mean handed to a driver, placed in the van and then hand delivered, not kicked around like a football....

I was pleasantly surprised at least to find nothing missing (bearing in mind a bunch of stuff fell out of a corner as I unpacked it). Some of the resin bases are also a little chipped (not just talking about the paint).

Any painted models were totally ruined (with the backs of the gator heavies acting like cheese graters to paint jobs). Thankfully I didn't buy the models for the paint jobs so all of the above wasn't such a huge slap in the face, though I was looking forward to being able to put models straight on the table, painting the bare metal first and then returning to the painted models to re-paint when I got around to it.... oh well....

Still the seller threw in a second Wrastler as a freebie so I can't complain (just moan a little lol).

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Thrullg

Just like barnabus this fella came pre-painted (dry brushed green with the pink tentacles), I didn't like the shade of green though so I inked him all over with a mix of turquoise and green inks with a bit of red added (I don't have a dark green ink). I applied the ink to get a stripey effect on the tail and I have put blotches on his head for patterning (but you can't see it very well in the photos). The spine had more turquoise than green ink and was painted in bone before inking (with the very peak I used my finger to lessen the ink so the bone shows through a bit).

Overall i'm pretty happy with him.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Bloody Barnabas

Here is my first painted Warlock for the Privateer press game Hordes, Bloody Barnabas.

The figure was second hand and came pre-painted in a vibrant green with the coat and axe in the same colour as pictured, I re-painted all the flesh in a more alligator colour and re-painted all the bones, then I painted the stitching, touched up a few missed spots of paint and inked him all over with Army painter strong tone. Personally I think he turned out pretty good :).  

So far the only other thing I have painted for the faction are the bog trogs (fishmen) posted a couple of weeks ago (and the paint work couldn't really BE more different lol). But the gatormen paint up really easily for me (was easier than the fishmen) so I believe I will finish a couple more models pretty quickly (though I only presently have one more caster and 2 Bull snappers for the gators).

More angles below :).

Cheers for reading.

Warmachine: Convergence of Cyriss (New faction announcement)

So, Privateer press announced a new faction as of yesterday (I think, different timezones confuse me lol)...
Images stolen from: http://www.brueckenkopf-online.com/?p=74707

The Convergence of Cyriss, from what little I know about them these are guys that worship technology to the point of "uploading" their consciousness into them (A bit like Ad-Mech in 40k). They have some art Deco styling about them and also some look much like other ideas out in the sci-fi world (e.g. I see a bit of Star wars destroyer droids and the infantry do look a little necron like).

Pictures have been released of some of the initial releases and they look OK to me, I particularly like the heavy "Vectors" (their version of warjacks), I see some potential uses there for 15mm or sci-fi games and may well have to get one once they are out later this year.

Heavy Vector Close up

Light Vector

Presumably the battle box / starter set warcaster (it is confirmed that there will be a Cyriss starter)

Not so impressed with these guys, but they are nice enough

Anyway, I haven't played WM or Hordes for absolutely ages so their release doesn't really do much for me, however I look forward to possible new conversions coming our way using these guys :).

Warmachine: Magnus the dwarf (Archive conversion)

Here's a couple of conversions I haven't got around to painting poroperly, when I played a lot of warmachine I thought it would be fun to play as magnus, but I really do love the Privateer press dwarves too much to invest in stuff I don't really like the looks of. Therefore I decided, magnus is speed 5, which is as fast as the faster dwarves.... why not make Magnus into a dwarf.... (or a dwarf into Magnus)

Magnus was converted out of all privateer press parts, a Hammerfall high shield body, the epic magnus model's arms and the non-epic magnus's backpack. For the head I spent ages looking for a decent dwarfy head in the privateer press AND Warhammer range, in the end I went with an elf head from the nyss hunters, bulked up the nose and added a larger chin and sideburns.

 Magnus has the ability to use unique jacks exclusive to him, the "renegade" warjacks, therefore I needed to work out how to make them, the above was what I came up with, a grundback runner chassis with a chainsaw from the GW Imperial guard sentinel kit (catachan), I got the gear bits from a GW Dwarf cannon kit. I was going to add a one shot missile to the back of the model... somehow to represent the renegades one shot gun and beef the little gut up a bit with some extra plating to represent the buckler the model has.

I might actually have a finished Terrortoise or two to show by the weekend, you never know lol.

Halloween Pumpkin Carving

So something a bit different today, basically I just wanted to show off my fiance's brilliant pumpkin carving :).

She said the pumpkin this year wasn't as good as last year (it started to fall apart in places), I still think she made a good job of it.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to get decent photos of lit pumpkins in the dark....?

As this blog is less than a year old I didn't post last year's so for your viewing pleasure here are the 2 she did last year (she didn't have time to do 2 this year).

Some old Warmachine Warjack piccies

Well i'm in the UK and Winter is very definitely coming... this means that there is no light to take photos of anything when I get home, not that I've achieved a whole greal deal of anything to take photos of.

I didn't manage to find any archive conversions to post up so instead here are my old merc jacks, I got as far as below on these and then haven;t touched them since. They are presently sitting in some foam wondering if they will ever see the light of day again (if I will ever use my non-dwarf mercs again). They certainly haven't been out for any excursions since MK2 hit the shelves (long before then in fact).

 

Talon light warjack (the only good thing about this jack is how cheap it is lol).

Mule Heavy warjack that steam cannon can cause havoc for the enemy should the mule role up a critical hit, that mace isn't particularily friendly either.....

Vanguard "light" warjack, this alrounder jack excels at defence but with a cannon in it's sheild and that massive pole weapon it's not too shaby at attacking either given the right support.

I painted them green and white to go with my Ashlyn who I think i've used maybe twice. I  then picked up the pirate captain Bart who I think i've used... erm once. Then I got the mustache... sorry I mean Drake Macbain, who i've still yet to use.... so my non-dwarf mercs don't get a lot of love basically...