New week, new chances...

Didn't get to do much last night. When I finally got home at midninght I had to remove over 20cms of powdered snow from the driveways. First time in a long time I got to use my Volvo as a snowplow...

 

Before I went to work this morning I found the time to catch a quick look on the new chaos warriors, and I really like their look so far, and I don't belive the unit will stop at 12 warriors. I will do some calculations to see how many warriros that gives the best effect, and add up. So far I am thinking either 4 rows of 6 warriors (total of 24) or 4 rows of 5 warriors (total of 20). If I go for the last option, I will have 4 "spare" warriors to use for another unit as they come in boxes of 12. I will have to do some math to see how it all adds up in numbers and points. 

I do know I want a chaos army with as much warriors as possible as I love the models, but it is important to make sure that it can also perform on the gaming table and it's not much help in having lots of units that never gets used. Then it is better to spend the time and money on units for other armies so that they can be used as well... At the moment I'm thinking of going for a 3000 points army, and I think I will get several units of warriors in there, along with knights, a General of some sort, a unit of chosen (maybe more than one), hounds and marauders. Might add some magic in here as well, depending on points. 

I have been thinking a bit on how to build a blimp. Building the basket hanging under it should be no problem, plenty of materials that can be used there. The challaenge as I see it will be the air container (balloon) and the ropes attaching the two pieces together. One idea I have is to use a balloon, fill it with some air and put plaster around it. As a kid I remember we did this in scool to make an Easter egg. The chalenge is to find a shape that makes it look "blimpy" while still maintaining the feel and smoth surface of an airship. Will think some more and try to make a sample as the weeks go along. The blimp won't be my first project anyway. I also started to think about doing some buildings, as I feel I have very little scenery. I have a temple and a guard tower that is painted, two Citadel woods (one halfway assembled, one still in the box) and a Temple of Sculls (assembled, not painted). Would be nice to have some more buildings. Some not straight out of the box if possible. Then again, some of the boxes makes pretty nice buildings as they are. Also it would be nice to have some buldings for the dwarf clan that is on it's way (so far it is King Alrik with shieldbearers, an old version (I believe) of Josef Bugman and a unit of miners...). A brewery and a blacksmith of some sort would be nice. I am already thinking of how to make a mineshaft. But first I have to build and paint some minis...

The Shining...

The Tank is only missing the shoulderguards, arms and head of the tank commander and the serchlight. Painted the skin colour tonight, hopefully I get to paint a little more tomorrow night. I'm going to a concert with my wife, but I hope to be home well before bedtime. If so I will give the arms their final colour and glue them on to the torso, and also try to paint the helmet.

I did a final brushup of the turret tonight, and I think the tank looks very nice now.

I also started to do the first colours of my second unit of Chaos Warriors.

The first unit is the first I ever painted, and it is very black. This time I am going for a totally different look, while still trying to maintain a similarity so that it will be easy to see that they are part of the same army.

This unit is called The Shining, and they are regular warriros from the Empire or Bretonnia, that has been temped and later consumed by chaos. Their commander will be a champion called Kubrick (and yes, the pun is intended).

Their armour is a 3 color scheme with Chainmail, Shining Gold and Mithril Silver. Boots and capes are Bestial Brown.

To make them identifiable with the other units I am thinking of painting the shields black with gold details like the other shields, and have this as a signature thing for the entire army. Also all further warriors will have Bestial Brown capes and boots. But most of the remaining units will have black armour. There will be a unit of Khorne warriors though, that will be black with red armour plates.

Well, time to hit the sack. Are going to participate in a commercial for a telephone information service (sort of the old operator services that patches you through to people you don't know the number to) tomorrow morning in about 8 hours...

The Low King is comming...

I feel a little like the White Dwarf magazine now, speaking of something to come in the future...

But I re-discovered dwarfs these last few days, and I have already decided my next project in the Warhammer genre (after I finish 24 chaos warriors) will be dwarfs, dwarfs and even more dwarfs.

As I told in an earlier post, I bought some new dwarf boxed sets on a trip to Sweden to shop for food and beverages.
I have used some time trying to think if I would like to have Thunderers or Quarrelers built from the box. For the cannon I have already decided on an organ gun (as I have a cannon and crew already). This means I will have a spare cannon that can be used for other purposes.

I seem to buy every number of White Dwarf Magazine that comes out, as there is always at least one interesting article in it (usually a lot more), and have for this reason decided to buy a subscription for 2011. Since the 2011 subscription miniature is a dwarf fighter pilot or engineer, I have decided to build an attack-blimp for him. How I will do this, I do not know at the moment, but several ideas are running through my head. Some of these involving thin metal sheeting and balsa wood...

I also thought it would be very cool to design a large stronghold for my dwarfs, and these last few days I have started to think how this can be done. A stronghold complete with a brewery, big mountain gates, a watch tower and not to forget a landing pad and service area for the attack-blimp and gyrocopters. This will have to be quite large, so I don't see me building it in the near future, but then the planning is a lot of the fun anyway and the building mostly a pain in the behind to get it to look as good in real life as it does in ones own mind. I should probably start small and build a few buildings or terrain pieces. One thing I plan to build to get some experience is the entrance to a dwarf mine for my grudge pony and miners.

The Dwarf fluff always mention the High King of the Dwarfs, but I like to go against the grain, so I have decided that I will have a Low King. He might answer to the High King, I see no problems with that, but my idea is that the Low King lives in the deepest caves of a dwarf stronghold, and thus has the title Low King. I haven't yet worked out the details around it, as the title really is borrowed from Terry Pratchett and his magnificent books about the Disc World.
If you haven't read these books yet I would certainly recommend you to check them out at once. There is no need to start at book 1 and read all the way through, just find a book with a story line that intersts you, and take it from there. Some of these books tell a lot about dwarfs, and others don't mention them at all... Some very funny characters like Officer Carrot of the police department, who was adopted by dwarfs as a kid and thus see himself as a dwarf while he really is a giant of a man. Not at all like Warhammer, but several of the races are there, and the books are really hillarious at times.

so much for progress...

What I wanted to name this blogentry was "Watch out for the Cavalry" (or something in that way), and then post pictures of the finished Leman Russ. But it seems like that tank is a project doomed for stand-still even though I really do want to get it finished.

Saturday me and the Wife was in Sweden (just across the border) to do some serious shopping. Norwegians go to Sweden, Swedes go to Denmark, Danes go to Germany, Germans go to Poland, and the Polish go to the Baltic States. There's always some place where you can save a lot of money on food and other stuff.

Since we were in Strømstad, I decided to stop by the local Citadel Miniatures supplier to see if they had some sets that I wanted. Since Games Workshop have the same price for Norway and Sweden I tend to save some money on this, because of the difference in the currency.

This was probably my last time shopping miniatures there, as they had a clearance sale for what Warhammer stuff they had left. Everthing was 30% off.

I am quite sure I could have bought myself a decent Skaven or Ogres army (the last one was actually quite tempting), but instead I ended up with 4 boxes for my existing armies.

1 Space Marine Chaplain on bike (plastic biker kit with a metal chaplain). 1 Imperial Guard Sentinel (the new all-plastic kit), 1 Dwarf Cannon (will be used to build an Organ gun), and finally 1 unit of Dwarf Thunderers (the future will decide if the will be Thunderers or Quarrelers).

Today (Sunday) was Father's Day here in Norway, and I spent some time with my father helping him around the house. Among the things we did, was packing all his outside furniture away for the winter.

Speaking of Dwarfs, I really like the new mini you get if you buy a subscription for White Dwarf for 2011. I buy the mag anyway, so I might as well subscribe and get it home instead of trying to remember to stop by the store to get the newest edition.

The miniature is sort of a fighter jockey, and that got me set on an idea...

In the 8th Edition rulebook for Warhammer there is a pic of a Dwarf blimp, and that gave me the crazy idea that some time in the future I might make myself something like a small elite Dwarf Airforce. I already have the first gun for the blimp as there are both a regular and an organ gun in the Cannon set... I will start to think about this and see what I can come up with. Might get some help from people that are more handy than me to make the blimp itself, we'll see...

Progress is slow...

I just have minor details left before the Leman Russ is finished. I have to paint the commmander's head and arms, and the medals upon his chest. Also I need to paint and glue on the searchlight to the tank tower.
The only problem is that I seem to have lots of stuff going on beside painting miniatures.
Last weekend I was an instructor on a Big Band seminar, the weekend before that I had a big concert on Saturday and who knows what on Sunday. And the afternoons just fly by, with me comming home from work quite late, dumping down in my chair ending up in front of the computer and staying in a vegitative state until it's time to take my dogs for their late walk and then go to bed.

This weekend I'll try again... But on Saturday I know I am going for a field trip to Sweden. Who knows, I might pick up some more Warhammer stuff while I am there...
Sunday I will help my dad for a few hours, but there should be time to get the tank done. Unless I have to babysit my Niece and Nephew, but I haven't heard anything about that yet...

So hopefully on Monday afternoon there should be a picture of a finished Leman Russ with a commander in the hatch on this blog.