Chaos update

Yesterday I base coated all the assembled Chaos Warriros standing on my desk. The next step  is another layer of spray paint. This time it's going to be a layer of Leadbelcher to get a metal look on them. Then I will test with one warrior to see if I need to use Runefang Steel to get them shiny, or if the wash will get the right effect on the Leadbelcher.

The back row are Slaanesh, the two rows in front of that are Nurgle, and the two and a half row in front of the picture are Khorne (the ones on round bases).

After this was done, I assembled the first box of warriors for the group that does not follow any specific Chaos God. I am still debating if they also should have metal colored helmets or if they should be black. I'm constantly trying to find ways to make my chaos army look unified as one big army even though I give the different units some special characteristics. So far I have decided that the Warriros following a Chaos God are all metal with washes in the appropriate color, All warriors will have black shields (at least the ones with metal shields), and all details will be painted similarly on all warriors no matter what god they follow. I plan to do this for the Bloodbound Warriors as well, But at the moment I am leaning towards painting their armour red, to show that they are a different tribe or clan, but still fighting in the same army. But I will see how the Khorne Warriors turn out before I take a final decision on that subject.

I also opened up a box of Putrid Blightkings to see how I would like to assemble them. I have two boxes with these elite Warriors of Nurgle, so I will make them in to one unit of ten Warriors with full command. There are several ways to put the different minis together, so I will have no problem making ten unique Warriors out of them. It will be more of a problem to make sure I get to build all the coolest ones, but I'm sure I'll find a way to get the ten I want most. Nurgle isn't my favorite cup of tea, so I will keep this part of the army rather small. Still they have the biggest unit of the army (Bloab Rotspaned) and the Plague Drones as well, so they will be quite visible on the battlefield. In the future I might add some more regular chaos warriors, but not until all the models I have at the moment is built and painted.

Plage Drones complete - Pictures

I'm calling the Plague Drones done now.
I decided to glue the riders on to the drones to make sure the correct rider gets on the right drone each time. It makes transportation a little harder, but it is hard anyway.
The light is not too good, but this is an attempt in the morning light today. Here is the unit together for the first time, ready to bring the blessings of Father Nugle to the world...

This is the musician. He uses a bone club with a metal scull attached to it to bang on the bronze bell. For some reason the followers of Nurgle likes bells. The musician in the Blight King box also carries a large bell around with him.

The unit champion is the most gory character, with his guts hanging out and flapping about. He had a scull hanging from his sword, but it broke off. And quite frankly I think it looks better without it.
I added a closeup of his open stomach. To get the gory effect I used Carroburg Crimson shade both on the guts and on the open belly, and I think this worked out very "nice".

Then we have the standard bearer. I was planning on painting the banner in the same color as the wings of the Plague Drones, but then I noticed that it looked very much like being metal. So I painted it in bronze instead, and I think it came out quite well.

This last picture is posted because I thought the light was nice here and it shows the base and the wings quite well. The light green on the bases are splotches of Nurgle's Rot.
The wings were washed with Agrax Eathshade, and I gave the shield a wash as well. That worked a lot better than the Biel-Tan green I used first. I also ended up using Agrax Earthshade on the horns and claws, and that also worked a lot better than the other choices I tried.

Like the Dwarf Ironbreakers I will try and get better pictures when the light is better.

Dwarf Ironbreakers - pictures

Here are pictures of the Ironbreakers. They are now done, and will be joined by more Dwarfs shortly.

The Ironbreakers are known for being fierce tunnel fighters, and they are clad in heavy armor.
Down in the tunnels they fight against Goblins and Skaven that dig themselves in to the tunnels of the hold. In my dwarf hold it doesn't happen so often as it is a relative new and small hold, but all the Ironbreakers have fought in bigger holds before.

This is the unit as it looks today. It will be joined by some more Ironbreakers as I get around to painting them again. They currently have a lot of red on them, and they are missing shields.
The unit is painted with both blue and green shields, as I had an idea when I did it that my dwarfs would have one very old fashioned faction and one modern faction and they would have different colored clothes and shields. But now I just think it looks good, and that it gives them a little variation. The champion has a double bladed axe, and the rest is armed with axes and hammers except for the musician. The Standardbearer is carrying a standard but also have an axe if he needs to fight.

Here are some close-up pictures of the unit. The light is not the best, so it is hard to get good pictures. I will try and take better pictures of them when the remaining Ironbreakers are painted and done.

Another update and yet a little sidetrack...

The Plague Drones are comming along nicely. I just finished painting them tonight, both the drones themselves and the riders. I gave both parties dark blue eyes, as I felt black would be to dramatic.
The riders also got a bit of Khorne Red in between their guts to make it look more like they had their bellies cut or ruptured.
All that is left to fix now is to go over the drones to get some small areas re-covered with wash, and I also need to think of how to wash the wings and claws. At the moment I'm leaning towards using a thin wash of Agrax Earthshade for those and Biel-Tan Green wash on the shields.
I'll see what I can do about it tomorrow afternoon.

I have finished the bases on my Ironbreakers, and the unit is now officially done.
The bases were covered in Astrogranite, and the rims got a layer of Mechanicum Standard Grey. The two colors are as close to identical as it is possible to get them.
I will do my best to redo the bases on my Miners in the same way, as they will look a lot better with those bases instead of the rocks that are on them right now.
I will add a few rocks to some of the bases if that is possible in the future, and then I will paint them Mechanicum Standard Grey if needed. I will see when I redo the bases if this looks like a good idea, or if I should just build some terrain or mining slag with the texture paint.

I will put pictures of the Ironbreakers up on the blog as soon as I can get good light for them.

While collecting all my built Dwarfs I found an almost complete Grimm Burloksson. Grimm is a master engineer, and uses a trial and error approach to engineering that I think will fit my army well. 

He must have come up with a lot of weird and crazy inventions, and I hope some of them might benefit my army. One of the things I know my army will use is the Badyear Blimp, but I hope I will find some more cool stuff to give him credit for.
I might think out a new name for him though, as I would like him to be my master engineer and not have a lot of backstory that I don't control even though it is a cool one.
I have finished him and his base now, and all that is missing is a wash in the same style as the Ironbreakers.

While looking through my miniatures I also found a Spacewolf Iron Priest. He is now assembled, and awaiting priming.
I know I don't collect Spacewolves, but the Iron Priest just looks too good to keep out of an army.
An Iron Priest is basically a Techmarine, and I plan to use him as such. He doesn't have all the servoarms that regular Techmarines do, and the reason for this is simply that he has a different role than them. A regular Techmarine is often working before and after battles, looking after the armour and vehicles and not to forget tending to the dreadnoughts of the chapter.
The Iron Priest model will be in the field with the combat marines, fighting alongside them. Then when something needs immediate attention he will do emergency repairs.
Regular Techmarines are red, but I am leaning towards painting my Iron Priest as a regular Space Marine but with some red areas to both show that he is a warrior while still respecting the Machine Spirits.

small update

The leader of my Nurgle faction is now completely built. Bloab Rotspawned is standing ready to be primed and painted. I plan to give him the same treatment as my Plague Drones, so it gets a look that is easy to see is part of the same army.
I wan't to do something special with the base, since there is a lot of room on it, so I have not glued the monster to the base yet. That can be done at a later time in the project.

I have done more painting on the first Plague Drone, and have done the wings and the base. The base will still get a layer of Biel-Tan Green shade and then I will put some Nurgles Rot on there, and also on the model itself. The base was painted with Lustrian Undergrowth, a dark green technical paint, and it completely covers the black and Zandri Dust up. When I get the Nurgle's rot on there I think it will look very nice. The wings are painted Celesta Grey, and that also seems to cover nicely after just one thin layer, but then it is a base paint so it usually covers nicely.
The one thing remaining on the drone itself is to paint the claws with my usual combo of Steel Legion Drab and Ushabti Bone, and then I need to do some painting on the rider.

The last thing I have done today is to base my Dwarf Ironbreakers. I used the Astrogranite texture paint for this. It was a bit darker than I had expected, but it appears to be almost identical in colour to the Mechanicus Standard Grey or at least so similar that they will be good together. I will try that out tomorrow afternoon, when I will paint the edges of the bases. If it works out, I think I might have a "trademark" for my minis. With my Marines that I used for the Armies on Parade last year I painted the edges of my bases the same color as the top to look good on the board, and I think I will do that for the entire army there.
My dwarfs will have grey bases as described above, and my Ogres will get white edges as they are snow bases.

For my other armies I will see what color I go with as I see what I use on top of the bases.

The Dwarf Clan is on the move

It's hard to stick to one project at a time...

While waiting for the layers of spray-paint to dry on my Chaos Daemons Plague Drones I used my time well, washing ten old Dwarf Ironbreakers with full command. I should have brought my last box of Chaos Warriors and assembled that, but the Dwarfs was more tempting...
These Ironbreakers have been standing in the "tray" of "almost done models" for a long, long time.
They were painted to a fairly high standard (at least for me) but had not been washed. So I sat down and used the same washes I did on my Ogres, The little bits of skin showing were washed with Reikland Flesh, armour with Nuln Oil and I also used Reikland Flesh on the hair and beards.
Because the Gromril Armour is supposed to be shiny, I drybrushed all platemail with the dry paint Necron Compound. The result came out very nice, and I will do this for all dwarfs wearing this kind of armour.

I still need to do their bases, but I am not hundred percent sure what I will do yet. I am leaning towards very simple bases, painted with Astrogranite, a grey technical paint.
The dwarfs are mounted on very small bases after all, and then I can do more with the miniatures where I have more base to work with, like with the Grudge ponies and cannons.

I found all my assembled dwarfs on Monday afternoon, and I see from my miners that using rocks on top of the bases is not the best alternative. I thought it looked real cool when I did it, but it don't look as good now. So perhaps will it be better to use more technical paints and less flock and stones. Then I can use only small spots of flock, stones, and other basing materials to break up the monotony.
I will see if I can scrape the rocks off the bases, if not I might have to re-base them. It is not a huge job though, as it is only ten miners. Their Grudge Ponies were not based, so I will base them along with the ones I am currently painting up.

I would like to have more Ironbreakers in my unit, and I found six more with the flat helmets in the box where I keep all the Dwarfs I inherited, so I will add them in to the unit after I have re-painted them to fit with the others. They will also need new shields as they don't have their shields anymore.

I have three new boxes of plastic Ironbreakers, but they look so different from the metal ones that I lean towards building them all as Irondrakes. They are also really cool and puts fear in their enemies with their harpoon-like weapons. A unit of 30 Irondrakes will really pack a punch, and I think it will look awesome on the table.

The next Dwarf project will be building my Ranger unit, as I have started to cut the Rangers off the sprues already. They will all be armed with crossbows and have axes on their backs. As they all have cloaks I will have to see how I do it with the axes, but I hope I can find a way for them to have them as I would like to separate them from the Quarrelers who will be armed with crossbows only.

But before I do too much with my Dwarfs I will have to see the Chaos project through, and that will take some time...

Nurgle update

I was at Games Workshop in Oslo yesterday and worked on my minis for a few hours. I had planned to prime and spray three Plague Drones, but because of the raw air outside I only got to spray one. All tree were primed, but after spraying the first with Zandri Dust I concluded along with one of the staff members that the weather was not optimal for spray painting. It was both cold and raw air, so the paint did not cover the model as it was supposed to. Instead of flowing smoothly it sort of clumped together a bit. I managed to spray the remaining two at home later in the evening, but they needed time to try before I could work on them.
The one drone I spray-painted at GW ended up looking quite ok, but I see that the paint layer is thicker than with other things I have sprayed.

The riders that will sit on the top of the Plage Drones were hand painted Zandri Dust with a brush after I had primed them with black spray.

The riders and the painted drone were then washed with quite a heavy coat of Biel-Tan green wash, and I think the result were quite good. It certainly gives the models a Nurgly feel, but at least on the riders there are details that will need other colors such as open wounds and intestines.

The plan forward is to paint the parts on the drones that looks like an armored shell with the same green as I use for the skin of my Orks (Castellan Green), and then I think the claws and horns will need to be painted with Ushabti Bone to make it look like the sculls, horns and bones I usually paint.

I'm still trying to figure what color I want to have on the wings, as I am thinking that they are about the same material as wings on bumblebees and wasps, but because the Plague Drones are so much bigger it might be a more solid material. At the moment I am leaning towards a light grey for them, maybe Celestra Grey.

The Nurgle faction of my regular chaos warriors are coming along nicely. I have assembled twelve of the twenty-four models so far, and will take the last twelve in a few days time. Then comes the time-consuming work of painting everything up. I am thinking of seeing how they will look with silver helmets washed with the right color according to their belief. The Slaanesh ones are all silver with purple wash and that came out very nice, so I am debating with myself if I might paint the helmets of my Nurgle and Khorne warriors silver and wash it green and red accordingly. This might be a thing to differentiate them from the black chaos warriors that don't have any specific mark, claiming that they either paint their helmets silver or remove the black paint as part of their ritual when they start to worship a specific Chaos God. If it looks nice, this would certainly give my warriors a distinct look, and that is something I like on my miniatures.

Being inspired after seeing that the Plague Drone with green wash looked good, I started to work on my Maggoth Lord. Long ago I decided that I would like to assemble mine as Bloab Rotspawned, and now he is mostly done. I have a few details left to fix on his saddle, and then I need to fix that to the beast. On this model I will try and do the base before I add the monster to it, so I will not glue it on to the base at the moment. It stands very well without being fixed to the base, so it will be no problem doing it that way.

I have also taken two packs of Putrid Blightkings up to my worktable and I plan to give them the same treatment as the Plague Drones to make them look sickly green and Nurgly. With these packs I can make ten warriors, and they will be the elite of the Nugle warriors.

Then I will assemble and paint some Khorne warriors from the Bloodbound boxes along with my Khorne Chaos Warriors, in order to get the same feel on the entire range. I am not sure if these warriors also will get the silver helmets or if they will have them in the same red paint as their armor. but I will have to see what I do and what it will look like.

What is planned for the future - Scenery

I have a lot of scenery for both Age of Sigmar/Fantasy and for 40K, and I'm always trying to think up ways to paint and build it.

There are generally three kinds of scenery, 40K scenery, old Warhammer Fantasy scenery and Age of Sigmar scenery.
I have a plan for how I would like to assemble and paint most of it, but scenery takes up a lot of space and takes a lot of time paint to a nice standard. There are some that will be built almost right out of the box, while others will be modified. For the 40K scenery, a lot of it is just small wall sections that is to be assembled in any way one likes, so they are almost all built as modified buildings, even though some are made to look like the box art.

The Age of Sigmar scenery consists of four Baleful Realmgates, and some ruins. I had originally thought about painting it all Administratum standard grey, but lately I've been thinking that Zandri dust would look really cool for the Realmgates, and if I go for that then I will paint the ruins in the same color.
The question is though, will it look weird with some ruins in dust colors and towers in grey?
I might work around that by painting the rocks gray on the ruins. At least for the Numinous Occulum and the Ophidian Archways I think this will be a good solution. And for the Realmgates they are arcane and full of magic, and because of that the rocks are of a different color than regular stones. I'll see what I can think up. I know I will have green flames on my Realmgates, as most gates I have seen use orange or yellow and I like my scenery to look good but still a little unique where that is possible. If I go for this solution I will prime these scenery black and then spray it Zandri dust and paint on the gray on the few rocks that is visible. First with Administratum Standard Grey, and then drybrush with a lighter grey.

I also have a huge project building and painting up a chaos fortress consisting of an Overlord Bastion, four Malefic Gates and if I'm not mistaken there is also a Skull Keep tower in there. This is something I will have to build one section at the time and use my time with, as there are lots of details and intricate patterns to paint. This is ok though, as I will keep the fortress in its individual pieces to ease both storage and transportation. 

I haven't decided if I will use dark grey or black on the walls yet, but I am leaning towards black as that is a good chaos color. Then there are tons of sculls and a lot of golden details to take care of.

The old Fantasy scenery are mostly towers of different sizes, and some of them are built and primed, but not painted yet, but a lot of it is still on sprues.
One of the things I have done already, is to join two towers together to make a high tower for an astronomer. Other pieces that are ready for painting is built straight out of the box, so it is a fine mix in the end. My plan for the Fantasy scenery is to make a small town, but I do not have any buildings that can pass for houses except for the one chapel building that I assembled and painted some years back. So it will probably be more of a garrison I expect. But time will tell...

The 40K scenery is a mix of buildings in different stages of assembly and a lot still on the sprues. I have assembled several large buildings, and I also have the huge Relicos Militarum to assemble and paint. This will be built as close as possible to the box art, but the instructions for assembly is really poor, so I am not sure if I will get everything to look exactly like on the box.
The idea for all my 40K buildings is to assemble them, then prime them black and when the primer is dry give them a good spray of Administratum Standard Grey. Then I will spend my time with painting details like metal, walkways and lights and wash everything in the end.

Hopefully I will be able to get some good progress on my scenery building in the near future by using the sprays from Games Workshop. Some of the buildings really doesn't have that many details, so with the spray I will come a long way towards completing them.

What is planned for the future - all army update - Warhammer 40.000

This blogpost follows up the one with the almost identical name, but this time focusing on my Warhammer 40K armies.

As with the Age of Sigmar update I'll start with the chaos. Chaos daemons have been covered in the Age of Sigmar update, so I will leave them out of this.

I have a small Chaos Space Marine army planned. It will consist of Chaos Space Marines and Cultists. It's not a huge number of models, but the Chaos Marines have quite detailed power armor, so it takes some time to paint them. I plan to keep it quite simple, but still make them look nice.
The first thing to be finished here will be the miniatures that I have painted already (ten Chaos Terminators and a Terminator Lord). They are just missing their bases, and I will do them the same way as with the Space Marines I fielded in Armies on Parade 2015. I will have to do some variations on the bases to break up the monotony in the future, but that is the same with the existing Space Marines that I have. I will also try to finish Cypher - The Fallen Angel, as I have assembled him but not primed or painted him yet. The idea with Cypher is that the Chaos Marines can be used as fallen Dark Angels if I like to.

This will not be a huge army, but it will be stand-alone. It might be an army that I get some trouble winning with as I don't have vehicles, but I know that if I start to buy that then this army will grow rapidly in to a new army the size of my regular Marines, and I don't want that. I want to have a small band of warriors on a mission or stranded on the planet, and then they have gotten some cultist followers who originally were inhabitants of the planet where they are. I will see where the fluff goes, but I like the idea of a small, hardened warband.

Space Marines is perhaps the biggest army I have and also plan to have. I have lots of unassembled units and many assembled in need of painting. I am always working on the fluff for my Marines, but basically I have my own chapter (The Gatekeepers), and I build it with Dark Angels and regular marines (Ultramarines) as an Ultramarine successor chapter. My original dream was to have minis for the entire chapter (1000+ troops), but I have modified that a bit. Still it will be a big army when I have built and painted everything that I have, and I might buy some more some time in the future (but not until I have built a lot of what I have already). I have plans for how I want the units to look, so it is just a matter of sitting down and working to get them done.
I also have two boxes of the "Betrayal at Calth" board game, and one of them will be painted as Chaos Marines and the other as my Gatekeepers.
In one of the campaign boxes there are about twenty Space Wolves but I have not decided if I want to build them or if I should try and sell them. At the moment I am leaning towards the latter as I don't think I will ever field them. They don't go too good with Dark Angels, and I plan to be able to use the Dark Angel miniatures as a Dark Angels successor chapter in some games as they have some special rules that I might like to use in some games. But for the most part all Space Marines will be Gatekeepers and played with Ultramarines rules.

There is a small contingency of Grey Knights on the shelves, and I have decided to paint them dark blue to blend in with my Imperial Guard special forces (Militarum Tempestus) and my Space Marines. When it comes to fluff this is done because they do not want to make their presence known among the population on the planet.They are very secret after all... A unit of five is already painted and just awaiting wash and basework.
They will mostly be played as a retinue for my Inquisitors. They have one Landrider Redeemer that is assembled and painted white with a lot of chipping and dirt, but for the reminder of vehicles I plan to just use regular Space Marine vehicles. I originally had a plan to give them their own white vehicles but I think the price is too high considering how rarely they will be fielded as a separate force.
This force will also include a handful of Sisters of Battle (Adeptus Sororitas) that I have picked up from Ebay way back in time. I just plan to paint them up and have them in the display case to break up the blue of the Space Marines. Still, I have the rules for them, so they might also join some Inquisitor on occasion, or see some action in a game of Apocalypse.
I have a few Inquisitorial Retinues as well, and they will serve alongside the different Inquisitors as I find fit depending on the missions.

A loyal and trusted ally to the Space Marines are the Astra Militarum, or the Imperial Guard as they used to be named.
I have almost as many units here as I have of the Space Marines, and among them are the super heavy tanks (three of them) and I do love tanks. My big goal is to build and finish enough tanks to field one super heavy tank company and one regular tank company. With the new sprays that have been released (that I already have) painting them is quite easy. All it takes is priming, spraying, painting tracks and details and washing the entire tanks. It should be possible to get a lot done in a short time, especially on the Leman Russ tanks, as they are very easy to build.
The Imperial Guard is split in to three different series, with the Militarum Tempestus as the one that sticks out the most. They are the elite soldiers, and have their own figures and vehicles. I am not sure how to paint their vehicles, but I have painted up a unit of troops so I know what color to use on them. The vehicles will probably be quite similar to the regular guard units, as this binds the armies together. The Imperial Guard is split in Cadians and Catachans and I have both. They have a lot in common when it comes to colors, but some small variations too. I have a general idea as how I want all my units to look, and a unit is added to the finished army from time to time. They will have the same bases as my Space Marines with a few modifications here and there, and I think I have several painted units that just needs their bases done.

Mechanicus is also a small army in my collection, and they also serve as allies for other armies, especially the Space Marines. I am not sure exactly how to paint these up, but I have a general idea. The idea here is that they are a small force on the same planet as the other armies, with a mission to solve. I look forward to building and painting their Dune Crawlers as they are some of the coolest tanks released lately.

Apart form the Chaos Space Marines there are mostly good guys in my Warhammer 40K armies. The exception is the final army in this blogpost, the Orks.
I originally got in to Orks because I wanted to convert stuff. That is still my plan, and I have several projects on my shelves that's just waiting for me to find the time to start that. Among the plans here is making the old, small Trukks in to mobile weapon platforms and fielding them with warbuggies rules. Then I will field the Trukks as troop transports and trucks.
The Orks are a little fiddly to paint as there are a lot of details, but they are also very cool. I have several ongoing projects at all times, and I plan to finish some of them soon. Some are just missing their bases, while others just miss small details before they can be completed. There are also a lot of units still in their boxes waiting for assembly. This army is something I do in between everything else, and I do love working with them, so I expect some units to be done in the near future.
I also hope to be able to start with my Stompas in the not so distant future, and when I do I will not build them in between other projects but see them through.

What is planned for the future - all army update - Age of Sigmar

It's been a long time since I've done a blogpost with an update for all armies, so I thought I would do it now. This post is sort of a foot in the ground, and a way for me to try to think and speculate a bit about the future when it comes to how I will minimize the amount of kits sitting in their boxes on my shelves. This post is for the Age of Sigmar/Fantasy part of the minis, and I will do another similar one for 40K.

First up is the Chaos and Chaos Daemons. I see these two armies as one, as I will only use the Daemons as allies to my Chaos forces. I can't see that I will buy a lot of them to make an entire army. I will keep it small and simple.
The Plague Drones are assembled as far as I can do, only thing I have to figure out is what to do with the riders. Do I glue them on, or do I accept that they don't fit snuggly on to the drones? They will be quite impossible to transport, but as they are quite difficult anyway, I guess it won't matter much...

The Deamons will work both with Age of Sigmar and 40K, so I will see how I do the bases. I'll probably make them match with the Age of Sigmar Chaos bases, as I suspect they will be used more there than in 40K.

The Chaos forces are well in production as written in several posts these last few days. My first plan is to assemble all the Chaos Warriors I have in my collection, then I will paint everything up, also the models already assembled. I would like to do this as sort of an assembly line if I find a good way to do it, so that I add the colors for all minis then move to the next color. A lot of things will be identical to give the entire army a feel of unity even though there will be four factions/warbands.
All shields will be black and gold, all weapons will be Leadbelcher. All leather will be brown, all Warriors will have golden armorplates on their knees, and so on.
After the Warriors are done, I will start with all the Nurgle units as there are some nice units there that I would love to build.

The second army I plan to work on are the Dwarfs. I plan to use them for my Armies on Parade 2016 entry in the fall, so I need to give them a lot of attention and build some nice models. I have always had very big plans for the dwarfs as I really love dwarfs in general when it comes to fantasy (they are my favorite characters in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings) and by using them for the AoP-entry I must force myself to finish them to a high standard. Much of the Dwarfs will be built straight out of the box, but some units like the Rangers, will get some modifications.
Among the things I love to do is to make the Badyear Blimp, and some observation balloons. I know how I want to make the blimp itself and the balloons, but what remains now is to figure out what material I want to build the baskets and control room with.
I have plans to make a separate Ranger squad for the army, as well as all the regular troops that usually frequent a dwarf army.
I have a lot of nice metal minis for the dwarf range, and I think I will do some repainting on those as well as painting up my own units from the boxes. A lot of the metal Dwarfs that I got from the guy who was quitting the hobby are missing their shields, so I will see if I can find a way to rectify that as they are cast in a way that makes it look really weird if I use them without. I have a few possible solutions here. One is using the shields from the plastic units that will not have them (like Thunderers and Quarrelers) and another is using buttons that my wife have bought dirt cheap from China if I find some that fits the size. I had originally planned not to repaint these models, but I see now that it should be done in order to get a feeling of unity for the entire army. However I will, at least on some of the units, try my best to paint it quite similar to what they are now, as I like many of the colors that have been used before.
The first thing I will do though, is wash the Ironbreakers I have assembled a long time ago and finish painting, washing and basing  the grudge ponies and carts.

As part of my overall Dwarf army, I plan to include the Fyreslayers faction.
The Fyreslayers are a new faction to Age of Sigmar, and can be played separately, just like the Sylvaneth who was split out from the Wood Elf facton. But to me the Fyreslayers are Dwarf Slayers, and I intend to use them as such.
They are mercenaries and work for good amounts of gold and ur-gold, so I will use them as part of a large Dwarf army, but also at times as mercenaries for my Ogres.
The novel "Fyreslayers" seems to hint about Fyreslayers working for chaos as well, and in some cases I might try this, but I have so many chaos models that that army stands quite well on its own so my Fyreslayers Lodge will fight mostly for Dwarfs and Ogres.
I will experiment a bit on the bases to make some nice ones that hints a bit of magma while still being true to the style of the other Dwarf bases.


Ogres is the army that I really feel bad for at the moment. I had such big plans for them, but they have been neglected time after time. However, I manged to finally finish the first unit this week so now I feel certain that they will get a boost some time down the road. I have no special plans as to the order I want to build the units, but I know I will build Bragg the Gutsman as one of the first models, and also that the next unit that will be finished will be the unit of Leadbelchers that stands partly assembled on my shelves as I like to finish what I have started before doing new stuff. I learned a bit about colors and washes while working on the Ogre unit I recently finished, and I plan to bring those experiences with me for the reminder of the Ogre army.


Greenskins is also an army that I feel a little sorry for. I was on a roll with them a long time ago, but all of a sudden everything just stopped dead in its tracks. I have a huge amount of assembled Night Goblins, and they really are easy to paint if I just pull myself up by the neck and sit down with it. The Goblins will have about six colors and two washes, and I will try my best to work with the ones already painted and based to make the rest look as similar as possible. But where I see that things should be done different I will try and do that, and see where it leads me. I have some very nice models to assemble and paint in this range, among others an Arachnarok spider and some Forgeworld Night Goblin leaders. I have a huge lot of Spider Riders where I can use bright colors to break up the monotony of black and green, and I also have a box with a giant that I haven't built yet.
The Giant that is already done will get the same skin wash my ogres got to give him better looking skin as the rest of the giant is washed quite nice already.

Finally we have the Sylvaneth. I got some from the same guy that gave me the dwarfs and then they became their own faction when Age of Sigmar came out and I bought some new boxes. I will not have a huge army of trees, but a sizeable unit still. The idea is that I can use them as a stand-alone army, or as allies to others if I would like that. I have the paint scheme that I want to use, so I will paint them up a little at the time. The main challenge I see with this army, is painting the Dryads in a way that makes them individual even though they are all almost identical. I tried to do that on some Dryads already, but I am not too happy with the result, so I will go back and do them a third time (my second but they were already painted when I got them).

Progress on the Chaos forces

I managed to do some work on my chaos forces today.
I have found the best way to assemble them is to glue the torsos to the base, and add the arms that stand out from the body. Then I can add heads and shield-arms (for those who will have them) after the torsos are painted.

I now have twenty-eight Warriors of Chaos with two hand-weapons each glued to round bases.
These are the Khorne warriors and they are mounted on round bases as they will interact with the Bloodbound who only come with these bases for their entire range.

Twelve more warriors are glued together, but they just have their sword-arm attached. The other arm will hold the shield, and that will get in the way of painting. These warriors will complete the Slaanesh unit I posted pictures of recently.

There are still thirty-six warriors left to glue together and they will be twelve regular chaos warriors and twenty-four Nurgle warriors. The Nurgle ones will have full command, while the other unit will add to an existing one and just be rank and file troops. These will all have shields, so I will just glue the weapon arm on, like on the Slaanesh ones.

I have finished assembly of the last ten daemonettes, so as soon as I get the chance, I will give all twenty a good basecoat and start painting.

One thing I have forgotten to write earlier is that the Nurgle forces also have a character that is ready for priming. The Harbinger of Decay is built, but I have not glued him to the base yet. I tried to, but the thin legs of his resin steed would not stick to the base. I had a chat with the Games Workshop staff and 

got a few tips on how to solve this. So now I will make sort of a scenic base for him (that was the plan anyway) and start with a layer of greenstuff and make sure that I can place the feet of the steed so that it sinks in to the greenstuff a little bit. That will make it stick.
Then I guess I will use the same basing techniques on that base as on the other chaos bases.

Future plans for the Chaos army

I have a lot of chaos warriors on my workbench, and I plan to do a solid production-line to finish a lot of units at the same time.

Earlier tonight I posted pics of my first twelve man unit of Slaanesh warriors, and I plan to add twelve more warriors to that unit.

I have decided that my chaos army will have elements of warriors not dedicated to any special chaos god, and they will be black like the more traditional chaos warriors. They will consist of warriors, chosen, knights and marauders (both on hoseback and on foot). I will probably use my chaos hounds with these units as well. I will use the Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount as a leader for this warband.

I will then have units made to serve three of the four chaos gods. My Slaanesh are already on the way with the first unit painted. They still need their bases done, but I will wait a bit until I have a good idea that I can use for the entire army. These warriors will be joined by knights that will be painted up the same way.
I have assembled a unit of ten Daemonettes with full command, and I am currently assembling ten more to make this a unit of twenty. They will have pale skin and heads, and I will use black and purple on their skimpy clothing and purple wash in their hair and probably on the tails and scaled legs..

Khorne will have his followers as well. Two boxes of chaos warriors will make up a unit of twenty-eight (the newer boxes comes with sixteen warriors instead of twelve) warriors with full command.
This warband will also have forces from all the boxes of Bloodbound units that has come with the new Age of Sigmar release, and they will have Mighty Skullcrushers on Juggernauts as their cavalry.
I haven't decided completely on how I will paint these, but I am leaning towards painting them like I do with the black ones, but using red where I have used black before. I have not yet decided who will be the leader of this warband, but I am leaning towards the lord from the Age og Sigmar starter set as he really looks the part.

My Nurgle warband will consist of all the nurge models that I currently have, and two old boxes of warriors. The warriors will be painted up in a combination of the Khorne and Slaanesh models with armourplates of green, but also with some light and metal areas that will be drybrushed with green wash.
For the units showing skin, I plan to paint that Zandri dust and wash it with green wash. I've seen Mathias at GW in Oslo do this with an Ork and it is amazing how you can get the washes to give color variations. So by doing this I might be able to give the models the nurgly look without having too many different greens.
This part of the army will work together with the other half of my deamon army, my nurglings and plague drones.
The Nurgle warband will be lead by Bloab Rotspawned.

The big plan is to base spray and paint the deamons and deamonettes together as one batch, and as much of the chaos warriors as possible as one batch. I plan to assemble all the warriors I have in a way that makes painting as easy as possible. That means gluing them to their bases, gluing the torsos together and gluing on the arms that have weapons in them. Heads and shield-arms will be added later.

First unit of Ogres completely finished

This unit has been standing around for a very long time waiting to be based and washed.
I have always liked the look of the Ogres, but not really found out what to do with them. After I had painted this unit up, it took a long time figuring out what to do with the bases that could be done for the entire army, and then I spent a long time figuring out how to wash the skin to make it look good.

I had a little skin accident with one of my old metal ogryns for 40K, and I did not want the same spotted skin for these.

After a tip from Mats at Games Workshop, I decided to go ahead and try my luck, and I now have found a way to do wash on all future models with skin colors.

I ended up washing the skin with Reikland Fleshshade in a thin, even layer, and I think this worked out great.
For the metal I used Nuln Oil, and for all the others Agrax Earthshade.

The bases is made with almost white technical paint, and has been given a drybrush with white dry paint after the technical paint was completely dry.

Here is a picture of the entire unit lined up together.   

The first row with standard bearer, champion (Chrusher) and musician (Bellower).

The second row consisting of three regular Ogres.

It wasn't easy taking good pictures of the standard bearer, so I had to cheat a little. In the building instructions it said that the standard could either be a banner with a gnoblar in a little lookout box on top, or a pole with a scull on top. But I wanted to combine them so I glued the scull on to the front of the box and made something I felt looked a lot better.

A bit difficult to see from the pic, but the gnoblar can see between the horns and still keep lookout for the Ogres.

The next plan for the Ogres is to finish the unit of four Leadbelchers that are standing partially built on my shelves. Then there will be Ironguts, cavalry, characters and more. I will try to make one unit at the time, and make sure that I get the colours constant for all units. For a lot of the units I will also add some grass turfs that stick out of the snow.

Chaos is on the march

The forces of Chaos are rising again. This unit started out as The Shining, and the plan was to use them under the leadership of Lord Sigvald The Magnificent. Sigvald would lead warriors and knights that used to be noble warriors but for individual reasons had fallen to Chaos.

The plan is a little different now, as Sigvald seems to have disappeared with the new Chaos book that came out, or rather his name has been erased. The model is still in the game, but now it is just called Chaos Lord of Slaanesh. On the Games Workshop webpage though, he is still called Sigvald the Magnificent, so I will keep using that name for him in my army. He will be one of my four warlords, and the leader of the Slaanesh forces.  

This unit has been standing in my box for a long time waiting to be washed. So I have the leather and fur washed with Agrax Earthshade, weapons and chainmail with Nuln Oil and then all the armor plates got a purple wash to make the unit look Slaanesh.

Here is a picture of the entire unit together. I plan to add to this with twelve more warriors, so that the unit gets to be twenty-four strong. The entire unit is armed with swords and shields.

Every unit needs a leader, and this is the Champion with his sword raised, bellowing commands to move his warriors forward.

This pic is here to show that even the standardbearer has a shield. This is attached to the arm holding the banner.

The musician needs to have one arm free to blow the horn, so he carries his sword in a sheath on his back.

Finally I have added three pictures showing parts of the unit up closer than on the first pic in this blog.