Tomorrow is October

Tomorrow is the first day of October, or Orktober as many Warhammer fans know it.

I have not ben able to do much with my armies these last weeks as my real life has been very busy. I have been playing with 3 big bands both practices an concerts and that has taken a lot of the time I normally would have spent with my minis.

But I have done something at least. I have built a unit of Warriros of Chaos with big axes and shields. They will go in to the growing army eventually and I alreadyknow exactly howI want to paint them up. The next thing I will do for this army is to add arms and heads on the ones I have painted metal, and then I will probably prime and paint them again as I think contrast paints will do them a lot more justice than the old washes I used on them. 

I will keep painting the Tyranid, but since it is October I think I need to so something Orky. The first thing is to finish my Ork driven Cargo 8 Ridge hauler from Necromunda. I need to paint the container and do some small details on the rest of the model before I can call it done. It has been standing on the edge of my desk for too long, so this needs to be finished.

Then I will do a BIG project and see what I can get out of it. I have a Stompa that I have decided will get a big bellygun in form an Imperial Eathshaker cannon. My plan is to cut away what I need of the panels to get the gun mounted and then I will install the gun shield on the outside of the armored panels on the Stompa to cover up the cuts. I have not decided how I will paint it yet, but tht wil come at a later time, the first thing is to get it built. 
I also want to do something with the weapons so it doesn't look exactly like my first Stompa, but I am not sure exactly what to do there. I know I want to replace the big chainsword on one stompa with a Ork-made flamer of some sort, and I think this could be the model to do it on, as it will have a limited use of a big sword because of the big, long gun sticking out of the belly.  I am sure I will figure out a way to do it as the build comes along. I have thought of using knight parts to make the flamer and then I will need to ad barrels and other things to make it both look functioning and orky.

re-visiting an old army and Tyranid update

I haven't been able (as usual) to paint as much as I would like, as I am busy two evenings each week playing the trombone, and also this Saturday (weekends are usually the time I get most Warhammer work done) I played a gig with one of my Big Bands together with a big reed-group from the local music school.

But I have actually almost finished something...

The Neurotyrant just needs a final looking over and maybe some clean-up. Also I need to paint some rust on the pipe it stands on on the base. This will be done with a pice of packing material and brown and silver colors and I will do this next sitting.
The two Neuroloids that comes with it are done. I will post pictures when the Neurotyrant is done too.

The Neurogaunts (both the synapsis creature and the 10 bodyguards) are as good as done, they need their final checkup to see if clean-up is needed before I call them finished.

The same status can be said for the 2 Ripper Swarms, they are also just awaiting their final check-up before I call them done.

I have put on the first coat of dark purple on the carapace of the Screamer-Killer, and the next plan here is to add the whilte (bone) color and then paint a second layer of dark purple to make sure the carapace is nice and clean and then the remaining colors will be added.

I made myself a "test" model of a Barbgaunt and a Von Ryan's Leaper and they are comming along nicely. The main colors (body, carapace and claws) are painted on as well as the eyes. But this is just one for each type, and there are 5 Barbgaunts and 3 Von Ryan's Leapers in total. Also I added another box of 5 Barbgaunts to the collection and this box needs to be painted up after I have assembled and primed it.

The 20 Termagaunts are still only primed, and I plan to batchpaint these in units of 5, but I might take more than one batch at the time. The plan is to add a color to one batch, then do the same to a second batch and the second color to the first. That way I will have nice progress and I don't get bored painting the same things all the time and then they will be finished 5 at the time.

The Psychophage is started on, I have painted the inside of the mouth (not the teeth but the purplish gums) and the "gills" but I am still debating what color to paint the "smoke" comming up from the chimney-like towers on its back.
I am currently thinking some sort of sickly green to make it a contrasting color while still looking nasty.

To do something else than Tyranids I started to put together a unit of Chaos Warriors for my AoS Chaos army. This is a quite new box of Slaves to Darkeness and they are armed with large axes and shields. The shield design istotally different from my older Chaos Warriors. They come in a box of 10, and I am making them with full command, then I will chek the rulebook and see how many of them can be in a unit to check if one box = one unit or if I should make larger units. Only thing I found so far is that all models in the unit need the same kind of weapons.

I wanted to make this new box to see how they compare to the older plastic Chaos Warriors that I have quite a lot of. So far I think it is the same issue as we have with "1st generetion" Space Marines compared to the Primaris where the new Chaos Warriors are like the Primaris when it comes to size.
It bothers me a bit, but not more than that. I will just keep them in separate units and say that the people from one part of the Chaos realms are just slightly taller than the rest. 

I intend to re-visit my box of partially painted Chaos Warriors of the old type that I have given shiny armor and painted them with the appropriate color for their chaos gods and use contrast paint over their shiny metal armor instead of the washes I used now. This will give them much brighter colors and I feel especially the Khorne warriors were bleak with the wash I used. They are just sligly pink colored metal but with contrast they will be bright red metallic and that seems more fitting for warriors of Khorne. Then I will see how the other looks, but I think it is best to give them all the same treatment but with different contrast colors so I reacon I will do the same with green and purple.

The Leagues are here...

There has been another week, and yesterday was the release of The Leagues of Votann, a long awaited release after a long campain of teasers. First we got Squats in Neccromunda and now we have them with a new name in 40K...

I never played Squats, they were gone before I got in to Warhammer but everybody still talked about them and I thought Space Dwarfs sounded sooo cool. 

I'm not sure why, but ever since I read The Hobbit as a kid I've had a thing for dwarfs. They are an exceptional race in fantasy in general and also in Warhammer. Because of that I started buing Dwarf models, then the Fyreslayers came out and I got them, then the Kharadron Overlords came swooping in like cyberpunk dwarfs and I got those too. I've later decided that the Fyreslayers ain't for me so I have decided to drop them. Dwarfs are rebrandes Duardins and they are no longer their own facion, but their models lives on in Cities of Sigmar, so I've chosen to make a Dwarf-heavy Cities of Sigmar army and I am slowly working on that.

Yesterday I read a copy of White Dwarf Magazine where 5 people are having a Killteam event and one of them is uing Astra militarum and had pictures and descriptions of his colorscheme and I liked that alot and decided to try it for my Squats, and I've been thinking a lot and if it works out I will use the same scheme for my Leagues of Votann army. I have already decided that I will not make of the known Leagues but instead create my own. I've already decided what I want their log oto look like but I haven't decided on a name. I hope the paintscheme will look asgood as I think as it mostly use colors I already have in other armeies but not in that combination.

I have also decided to boost up painting on my Sons of Behemat army as they are few but big models. I will paint my other Mega.Gargant like I did my first with Kislev Flesh as they are brothers and should look the same, but the rest of the unpainted Gargants will be painted Bugmans Glow as that paintcheme is the one I am most happy with of the four different I have tried so far. I will also use that on the future Gargants. 
I will not repaint the others as I think a little diverisy is ok, and Gargants are rather filty creatures anyway so I can try and camouflage some of the biggest mistakes and hide it as part of grime and dirt. 

The little I have painted this week has been on the Chaos Knight. I decided to make the plasma orange as tht is a color I haven't used yet so I figure that could work well for chaos. I need to decide what colors I can use to highlight it and make it work. I painted the tip of the weapon in orange as well, but that  did not work out so I've decided to paint it in some sort of metal color instead.

Rest of the week I have been working with planning my armies on paper, and writing some background on them. Next week will be rather busy with other things, but I will try ad get in some painting when I can. 

From the workbench #2

The first time I did this I did not think it would be a returning post, but I liked showing off what I am working on in a better way, as it is very inspiring to see progress in pictures.

After finishing the Great Unclean One I needed something else to paint, and I had some Stone Trolls (or Rockgut Troggoths as they are called now) standing in a box waiting to get painted. I had one that has both the soft and hard skin painted, two that only had the hard skin painted and these three that was just primed. The next step now is to take all six and paint their soft skin in the same color I use on the pants of my Cities of Sigmar army. I originally used a darker tone, but I can't remember whitch one and I think a lighter tone will look better anyway.

I also wanted to try my way with the Squig Hoppers and Boingrot Bounderz that I have primed, as I think these will be lots of fun to paint and see as a finished unit. I started with five Squig Hoppers and the big one is a Loonboss on a giant cave squig. I used three colors on them so far. Screamer pink on the tongues, Volupus Pink for the inside of the mouths and the gums and Fleh Tearers red for the skin. I use quite a lot of the red, and I like how it makes the skin look. Hope it looks as good when it is all dried. 

The River Trolls (Fellwater Troggoths) have been painted for a long time, and I finally got them based and the rims painted. But I have been putting off doing the drybrushing, but I'm doing something with it now. They are supposed to be in a mire or myddy water so I want the bases to look the part. I will try to make them without using water effects as that is not a part of the regular GW stuff.

I wanted to prime the Chaos Knight Tyrant after finishing it today, but it has been raining most of the day so I haven't been able to prime it. It is in pieces and that is because it needs to be primed like that to get the right colors in the right places. And I need to paint the arms and hook them on the body before I glue the big shoulderguards on to the body. Everything will be primed black, but then the legs and maybe the sides of the upper body will be primed again with metal.Then the metal parts will be washed heavily and the rest will be painted Dark Angels Green. 

The Great Unclean One is done

I am happy to finally show off a mini that is completed. This is my Great Unclean One and he is the mightiest of the Nurgle Daemons. The Great Unclean One comes with several options for heads and weapons, so I made the one that I liked best. This is also one of the most classic setups, so there are many that look just like this out there, probably painted a lot better too, but this is what I can do.

I had a bit of a problem getting the eyes to pop, so I brought the daemon with me to Warhammer Oslo, where Bertil helped me a bit. He is much better with fine lines, so he made a thin black line in each eye, and then he used some orange to make the eyes pop a bit. I am not sure if I can make the thin black line for my next model with big eyes (maybe if I make the black first and then use yellow on each side?), but the orange I can fix by myself. The eyes are sort of reptilian, and that looks very well for this model.

There are lots of gory details that you can have on the model. Some of them can be covered up with alternate parts if you don't like them. I chose to use most, but not all. One of my favorites was the intestines that comes out of the cut in his belly, and also the little nurgling being crushed under the bulk of the big daemon.

There are some gushes and wounds in his side and on his back too, I used a painting guide from Duncan Rhodes from he worked at Game Workshop as inspiration, but I did not follow it all the way.

To get the wounds to look like they were infested, I had a little bit of Nurgle Rot in the deepest parts of them. I used yellow to represent the fat under the skin, as I saw Duncan do that in the video.

I was thinking about making the metal very rusty, but desided against it in the end. I also wanted to try adding some tufts to the base as I think that looks a lot better than a totally flat one when I have room to do it.

Here are some more details of the unclean/dirty skin and deep wounds.There are a lot of boils on the skin, but I decided to not paint them in another color after all as I felt quite happy with the way the skin looked after I got all the greens on the model.

There are six nurglings that came in the set, but I could not find a way to fit them all on the model, so I decided to go with the ones I liked best. I placed this little one with a chain with a flaming ball to sit on the top of the Great One. I am really happy with the way I made the horns, and I plan to use this color every time I paint horns in the future. This is a contrast color.

Originally I thought I woud have the intestines a pinkish white so I used a light fleshtone on them, then I felt they needed to look a bit gorey so I added Nurgles Rot on them and it made them a little more gray, but all in al I am quite happy with the look, And talking about happy, that Nurgling standing in front looks really happy too. He looks like a proud little daemon. The one being crushed under the gut isn't that lucky and don't look quite so happy. But it is a great look on him so I had to add hm to this.

 All in all I am very happy with this model (can't really call it a mini when it is this big), and I look forward to painting up more Nurgle in the future. Nurgle is probably the Chaos faction with most big models. I have this Get Unclean One and this is probably the biggest, but I also have a Bloab Rotspawn model and the smaller Beasts of Nurgle and a Horticulus Slimux and I would very much like to get my hands on a Glotkin.

Some good progress on the way

I sat down in my workshop again today and had a lot of fun seeing some progress on the biggest Chaos figure I have built and painted so far. The Great Unclean One. I am actually going to say he is done now, at least I am 99% sure of it. I might see if I can paint some of the bigger boils in some yellowish colors to make them stand out a bit, but I am not sure I will as I am quite happy with the way it looks now.
I will have another look at the Youtube video where Duncan Rhodes paints it up and see how he has done it, and then I will decide if I shall try something of the same or leave it as it is now. All I will need if I decide to leave it as is, is to try and make the eyes pop a little more. I am sure I will get an idea of how to do that by watching Duncan.

The other progress I have done is with the nurglings that was in the box. I don't think I can fit all of them with the Great Unclean One, but I would like to place some of them with it. And today I have done all the basics so what is missing on them is wash and some drybrush work before I can glue them to the Great Unclean One itself or to the same base.  

I have also done some more work on my Ash Waste nomads for Necromunda. They are certainly a mysterious lot, and I have tried to think out how I would like to paint them up. I know what I want to do with the Dustback Helamites rides, so I have painted up some more on those. I still have a few details until I can call them done, but I think I am well on my way. The riders are assembled and waiting to be primed. I plan to prime them along with my first unit of Nomads on foot. The box is called a nomad War Party and consist of 10 figure, so far I have assembled 2 completely and done the torso on the third. I plan to chck what kind of weapons I could put on them so they are legal, but I would love to put in as many cool weapons as posible. I love that they can be used as snipers, and I hope to get in as many sniper rifles as possible.

Also yesterday I was at my Warhammer store (they changed the name from Games Workshop to Warhammer) in Oslo and picked up a box of the Necromunda Squat miners that I would love to get in to and also the Cargo-8 Ridgehauler Land Train. I bought two Rigdehaulers and plan to make one of them in to a land train, and the second one I would love to convert into a looted wagon for my Orks. I have an idea to ue the mean plough thing from a battlewagon in the front if I can get it to fit. I think I have one spare as I belive I didn't put one on the battlewagon that has the spiked deathroller in the front. So I will look trhough my bits and pieces and see if I can find it when it comes the time to buld it.
I also bouth three Trailers, so I can either give the orks a trailer or use all three and make a proper landtrain where I can have at least one flatbed trailer and one or two container trailers. If I love building those sets I think I can buy another unit and have two landtrains with two trailers. The Ridgehauler unit can be mae ither with a container or a flatbed so this would give me one of each, and then I would build the Ork one a a flatbed and perhaps put some sort of cannon or something on it. Or maybe they will have a container on top of the flatbed, one never know what the orks might think up. Maybe they have a tank with damaged threads that they use as a gun?

COS #8

I have not been painting for a few weeks, but now I am back on it. Today I have started on the skin of my first unit of Longswords. When that is done what is left is just a few little details and brushup, and then I will do the bases.

I like how this unit is turning out, and looking forward to paint an entire army this way.

The Longswords are sort of an elite unit, and becaue of this all the soldiers in this unit have some blue on their feathers. The other units armed with regular swords, spears or halberds are regular troops and in these units only the officers have blue on their feathers an thet mean three in each unit.

Officers have gold on some of their armor plates, regular troops have silver, and this also goes for the Longswords who have silver except for the high officers.

I have also started to paint four of the knights in the knight-unit, and I will work on deciding the colors for the remaining knights. I am quite happy for how that unit is turning out as well, and look forward to deciding on the colors for the remaining kights.

The first battle mage is also gotten a long way in the paint process. He has some more details than the Longswords, so he is a little longer from being done, but I think the progress is good on him as well.

I have also started to paint up a Great Unclean One, and after putting on his base color last time I sat down and painted, today I drybrushed his skin and gave all the Nurglings a first coat with the same color as the drybrush. Then they will be drybrushed a little lighter. Their horns will have the same color as the horns on the Grea Unclean One, and I will also see if there are other colors I can use to link the Great Uncean One and the Nurglings to tie them closer together. 

I also started to paint the biggest wounds, and I will paint the edges of these wounds with a yellowish color to look like fat between the skin and muscle. And when that is done I will try and find a color to paint up the guts sticking out of his belly.

Status update after another week - COS #3

Another week comes to an end, so I thought it could be fitting to place a foot in the ground and see where I stand so far for this year.

I have not painted any minis yet, but I have built and primed a Great Unclean One for my Chaos forces, and I plan to start painting him in the near future. I will look at some Youtube videos first to see how people who know how to paint do it to get that nurgly and unclean skin. But I do have a general idea on how I want to do it.

For my Cities of Sigmar army I have finished building what I can on my knights. I have 8 Bretonnian Knights, 7 with lances and 1 with a banner assembled and ready for priming, and I also have 1 separate Knight Errant from a blister that I have given the trumpet to be the unit musician since he is the youngest of the knights. I have not attatched their shields yet as they will block off painting half of their bodies. So I plan to prime them separately and glue them on later in the process. I will also glue the knights to their mounts later in the process, so that I can paint knights and horses as good as possible. They will be joined by 1 more Knight who will be the leader, and that is the finecast model of The Green Knight, that will be the Black Knight in my army. He is a finecast model, but I have bought some more superglue now, so I am ready to assemble him next time I sit down with my minis.

I have also almost completed the assembly of a box of 2 battle wizards. The only thing that is missing is glueing the tip of the staff to their staffs and one of them is missing a hand.
Today these wizards comes in a box of 4 instead of 2 different boxes of 2.  But with so many extra parts in the box that came with 2 wizards there should not be any problem making 6 different wizards so I m thinking on getting a box of 4 at a later time.

I plan to build one unit of former Bretonnians then one unit of former Empire (that is now the current Cities of Sigmar range) and will more or less do that until all the Bretonnian units are built. When the Bretonnians are done I might start up again with my dwarfs.

The comming weekend I hope I can prime what I have assembled so far. If the weather permits I'll prime on Saturday and start to paint on Sunday. I still need to deside on the colorscheme for the army. I know I will use dark green and cream, but I am not sure if all the human units will be painted that way or if I will bring in a second or maybe even a third colorscheme for some of the units. I guess it depends on how good the green and creme looks...
The knights will be painted in separate colors and they will be bright. To tie them in to the rest of the army I plan to paint the shields on the horses barding in cream. 
The duardins will continue to be painted in the colors I have used so far, and that is green, blue and some brown.

So, I am back again

This last 6 months has been quite troublesome in my real life, with events including selling my house and moving by myself to a much smaller place. While we worked on selling the house there was not much time for building models, as the house needed to be readied for showing to potential buyers in a couple of hours sometimes. That meant no time to start to clean up a work desk and store away projects I was working on.

I have moved now, and yesterday I started up again, and that is quite fitting since it is the beginning of a new year. I built the body of a Great Unclean One, and after work today I plan to finish him by adding the head, his arms and some remaining details.

I have burned myself so many times by pledging what to do throughout a year, so I will not do that this year. But what I will do is to try and get a lot more painting and building done than earlier years. The last years I think the biggest setback has been doing the painting, because I have tons of models that are assembled and quite often primed, but not painted. And I do think I am better at building then I am at painting.

With that said, I still want to say a little about what I plan to be working on in the near future. I plan to finish the Great Unclean One today, then I can prime him outside as soon as the weather permits it and get him inside quick so the primer can dry in a good temperature. I don't know exactly how I want to paint him up, but I will look at some painting videos on Youtube and pictures, and see what I come up with.
I plan to use him for AoS, even though he can be used in Warhammer 40.000 as well, but for 40K my Chaos army is very themed around Chaos Space Marines, and the idea I have for that army in my head does not include Daemons. For AoS I have some things painted up but not much. Of the things that I need to compare the Great Unclean One with is a unit of Nurgle Plague Drones, but they don't need to look alike as they are quite different, and a partially painted Beast of Nurgle, but I might prime that again and start over if I find a good way to paint the Great Unclean One that differs from what I have done with the Beast. I also have  another big model, sort of Bloab Rotspawned-thingy (think I made a mix between Bloab and one of the others) but I don't think I ever got around to painting it, so I need to find that in one of my many boxes at a later time and paint that sort of the same way.

I have also brought home my Bretonnian models that I never have gotten around to build or paint, and I plan to use them for my New Year New Army (NYNA) project for 2022. 
NYNA to me will not be done in the time schedule that Games Workshop have in their official event, but I would like to see if I can build an army thought out the year, and who knows, maybe that could be an Armies on parade entry come October/November? If I am to compete this year it should be an AoS themed board as the last time I participated (and got 3rd place) I used a 40K Ork setup.
I am not sure how I would field a Cities of Sigmar army, but while trying to sleep last night I thought of a way I could field a Gloomspite Gitz army with some giants in the middle of the board, lots of Goblins and Squigs on one side, and something else on the other side (Trolls maybe).

I will see what I have painted up when the time gets nearer and what I can field. I have ordered some Cities of Sigmar units from the current range, and I expect I might get them this weekend or next at the latest.

I plan to start painting Goblins on Squigs (mostly Boingrot Bounderz I believe) in the near future, as I have quite a lot of them primed here at my apartment. I also have lots of unbuilt at a storage unit not too far away when I have painted what I have built so far (if I ever get that far) as I brought with me all my Goblin stuff back home from storage at my cabin. There are also some trolls in the group I have at home that I would like to paint up as soon as possible.

The last thing I have a plan for working on (painting and repairing)are the old Warhammer scenery that I started to build last year. All my sets are built and primed now, and some of the sets have started to be painted while others are just primed. But some of them got damaged in the move, so I need to do some repairs as well as painting.

 And as I wrote that last section I remembered that there are one more big thing I would like to paint, and that's my Giants (Sons of Behemat as they are called now). I finished one regular giant and one big one before everything stopped when we put the house up for sale. But the rest of that army is primed and just waiting to be painted. I believe there are one big giant and if I am not mistaken five regular giants to paint. Might be more regular giants too, I am not completely sure right now. I love seeing those big models come to life, and although I am not 100% happy with the ones I have painted, I am happy enough that I will proudly present them as part of an army, either in a Sons of Behemat army or as mercenaries in the Gloomspite Gitz army.

Well, that is all for now. Hopefully I will get in to a good, steady rhythm of building and painting, so I will have things to post here on a regular basis this year.

Space Marines progress

Let us start with something else. I have primed all the remaining Sylvaneth I own, and now remains the huge task of painting everything up and basing it. I might need to prime the base on my Blood Bowl Treelord, but I have not built it yet, and I have to see how it looks when I do if I need to paint it or not.  

My plan is to build a pile of rocks that the Blood Bowl Treelord can stand on to get some height, and depending on how this will look when glued together I am debating to either leave the rocks looking like natural rocks or to paint them and try to make them look like rocks to fit in with any plastic moulded rocks that should be on other bases. But because it will not be any sculpted rocks on this base I really don't think it matters, and it would save time and work to leave them natural. From the rockpile there will be a little stream as I have some water effects I would love to try out, and I also plan to use some spare pieces from the Sylvaneth sprues as brush to give the base a little more life.

Then let us get to the progress of the Space Marines. 

I have finished assembly of the Dark Vengeance Boxed set and both the Space Marines and the Chaos Space Marines are ready for priming. Most of the figures needed new bases ,so I had to cut off the handle that goes in to the slots on the original slotted bases as the new bases didn't have slots. Only unit that went straight on existing bases was the Chaos Cultists as they are still on the same size (25mm).
For the bikes I actually drilled holes in the new bases and stuck the pegs in them as the bikes was supposed to be slightly tilted (at least one of them) and that was easiest to achieve by using the pegs provided. Everything is placed in cardboard trays and are ready for priming.

I have also assembled a box of the current Chaos Space Marines, and armed them according to the rules in the codex. A leader (Sergeant?) with boltpistol and chain sword, a standard bearer with a very cool standard with the skeleton head of an Imperial Guard soldier (helmet still on, that's how I know) stuck to it, two heavy weapon dudes (one with a plasma weapon and one with a flamer), and 6 regular Chaos Marines with boltguns. I was a little unsure about how to arm them, as there were enough chainswords to go around, but from what I understood in the rules the regular Chaos Marines can'tt use a boltpistol and chainsword, but they can replasce the bolt pistol with a chainsword. The marines that can use boltpistols and chainswords are the Khorne Berserkers.

And Speaking of Khorne Berserkers, I have a box of them as well. They come 12 in a box it seems.
I do not like the heads that come with them as they have very wide "horns" made of the same material as the helmets apparently. So I have decided to have some fun and do headswaps. Originally I thought about just using spare heads from the regular Chaos Space Marines but I figured that would make them hard to separate, at least if I find out later down the road that I can actually have boltpistols and chainswords on the normal Chaos Space Marine.
So what I ended up with was going to my other Chaos faction, the one in AoS that is. I got a box of Chaos Warriors, and I plan to use horned heads from that box to build my Berserkers. The set has something like 24 heads for 16 warriors. This means some of my Warriors will be headless, but not for long as I plan to substitute the missing heads for the Chaos Warriors with spares from the Chaos Knight sprues.

So I guess I will build the Chaos Warrior box when I have finished my Berserkers. I have so sickly many Chaos Warriors that is partially built/painted (at least 20 in a block, could be 30 or more, and there are 3 different blocks). So maybe this will give me an excuse to finish some of them as well. I don't remember if they are missing heads, but I know they are missing arms as I didn't want them to get int he way of painting the bodies. I have sealed plastic bags for each unit, and the arms (and maybe heads if they are there) need to be painted. I think the bodies are about done, but since I painted them Games Workshop has come out with Contrast paints so maybe I will use some of them to brighten them up a bit. I'll have to see how toned down the colored metal is after all these years. I already know that the red ones (followers of Khorne) are almost pink because that was the color of the red wash I used. Also I have purple tinted armor and green tainted armor for (Slaanesh and Nurgle). The Slaanesh warriors I planned to use alongside the old metal Sigvald The Magnificent figure and I plan to paint him up in the same way. I think he looks good and that the new plastic miniature looks a bit "much", wo I will not upgrade him to the new model.
I have not decided what kind of leaders there will be for the other two factions yet.

Of course I also have the Slaves of Darkness Chaos Warriors, and they will be the traditional black armored warriors they are in the pics from Games Workshop. I have a paint scheme I liked a lot when I worked on them last (way back in the days) and I intend to use that for most of my warriors.

Plans for 2021 - Age of Sigmar

I thought I would split the post about the plans for 2021 up in to two - one for Age of Sigmar and one for 40.000. We will start with Age of Sigmar...

The biggest plan for 2021 is to build a Sons of Behemat army from scratch. I have an old Giant set that I've had for many years and it will be used in this army. So far I have bought two new Mega-Gargants and two regular Gargants (they come in boxes of two now). I have assembled the first Mega-Gargant and started to work on a base for him. I have also assembled the old Giant and glued him to a base. Inspired by an article in White Dwarf I decided to give him a peg leg. Unfortunately it was a little short, but a small pile of rocks at the base solved that problem perfectly.

The next plan will be to build my second Mega-Gargant and two normal Gargants, and then I will check how many more regular Gargants I need to make this a working army. At the moment I figure if each Mega-Gargant have three regular Gargant followers it will make quite a solid army. I have chosen three regular Garants as that is the maximum number allowed in one unit.

I have decided to add a bird to all the "miniatures" or bases in this army to give it my special touch. There are two birds in the box with the two normal Gargants, and I have some spares from earlier so I can also cover the Mega-gargants if there shouldn't be birds in those boxes. 

The next army to build is the Kharadron Overlords. I bought a lot of these models when they were released, but I have never gotten around to do anything with them. This will change for 2021. I don't know how many points this army will be, but I will start with building what I have and see how the army looks when that is done and then supplement it if needed (or not, deep down I know I will get more models for this army no matter if I need to or not).
I have built a few minis from this army before, but only one is painted so far. I have also painted one of the smallest ships. I will decide on a paint scheme for the minis,  as I am not sure of the paint scheme I have used for the one figure that is painted. For the ships I will try my best to replicate the colors I have used, as I am very happy with that.

The third army I will work with is my Gloomspite Gitz. The plan is that part of my Sons of Behemat army also will work as mercenaries for this army if I ever get to take part in a big game. I have a lot of the old Night Goblins and Forrest Goblins (Spider Riders) for this army, and I look forward to seeing it grow. Many models are already assembled and primed and some are also painted and based. I think I will cut the finished figures that are standing on square bases off their bases and mount everything on round bases instead. The army will consist of Grots (Goblins), Gargants and lots of different Trolls. There will be lots of Squigs of different kinds as I really like them. We have gotten some new Squig riders in this range, and I already have built several units of these and more is on the way. For these units I have decided to try and add plants to the bases, and I will see if that can be done on some of the regular Grot bases as well as the big spider bases.

The fourth army are my Sylvaneth, I have two more Treelords to assemble and paint, and lots of regular trees. I know that I am missing a few character models for this army, and some medium sized models but they can be added as I go along. I know how I want to paint the models in this range, and how I want the overall look to be. I am very happy with how my two existing Treelords have turned out, and since I use contrast paints for most of the basics in this army I can get a lot done over a short period of time once the minis are assembled and primed. I have several forests that I want to build for this army. Originally I wanted a mix of the old and the new, but I found out I have so many of the old ones that I think I will stick to using them if that will work. 

The fifth army are what is now called the Cities of Sigmar. I don't know if I can make this a legal game playing army, but I do want to make something of it. I have lots of scenery that I am currently working on that will look good with this army, and I have more scenery that I haven't worked on yet. One of the things I haven't worked on so far is a big castle for "the good guys" and I would love to build that in to something special. I will see how much stuff I have and how it can be assembled. Also I have lots of the old Dwarf miniatures (Duardin now) that I would love to build and paint as I generally love those figures. I plan to place these on the square bases the came with. I have some Bretonnina models as well, and I would love to build them as part of this army as well, I am sure I can find some sort of "legal" description to fit them in to the units that are accepted to use for this army.

The sixth army are my Chaos army. At the moment I don't think there are rules for building a Chaos Unlimited army, but I have mostly elements from Salves of Darkness (what used to be Chaos Unlimited), Khorne and Nurgle with a little bit of Slaanesh  in the mix. A lot of this army are Chaos Warriors and Chaos Knights that has been started a long time ago but never finished and if I just start I think I can finish quite a lot in a short time. I love the old Chaos Warrior models, and I also have a unit of the new ones that look very good (and quite similar) so I look forward to getting those done. This is apparently one of the units where Games Workshop has done a lot for gender equality in the later years and there are supposed to be many female heads with the new Chaos Warriors. I will see how they look, and maybe if I get some to spare that don't look too chaotic, I can use some of them for my Astra Militarum army.

The final army are my Ogors. I have lots of them in my storage and I think I know how I would like to paint the regular troops up. I hope I can get something done on this army for 2021 too. As far as I know they have one piece of specific scenery, and that is ordered from Games Workshop. I have used some of these models for my Astra Militarum 40K army, but there is plenty left to make up a good sized Age of Sigmar army for this faction. Lot of plastic, but also quite a lot of resin models for this range.

General update

There has not been as much time for building and painting as I had wished for in November, but I have managed to get some stuff done. I've been a little low on energy because of new meds, but they seem to work better now so I feel I have a little more energy. Also with the Covid-19 situation all my afternoon activites (playing and conducting Big Bands) has shut down, so I have every night off now (except when I have to sit at my home office with my back to my workstation and work overtime with my day job).

I've had a Citadel forest in my bins for ages (turns out I built it way back in 2014 and just stuck it in a box with other things I wanted to paint soon) that I haven't gotten around to painting, but I finally grabbed myself by the neck, dug it out, primed it white (the darkest of the two primers made for the Contrast paints) and started painting.

This forest is meant to be a scary place, and it was originally built in store at Games Worskhop Oslo as part of a terrain masterclass. I used a chapel from the Garden of Morr set, cut it so it is a little crooked and glued it in the middle. Then I found some tombstones and a few zombies and added them too.

Since I have a Sylvaneth army I wanted the forest ground to match my Sylvaneth bases, but I also wanted it to look like Nurgle had been there, as the storyline says the Sylvaneth fights against the forces of Nurgle who destroy the forests of their realm. So I added some Nurgle Rot in puddles. 

The trees are painted with contrast paints like the Sylvaneth miniatures, but these trees don't have any leaves. They do have a few chaosy bits in them though, like bells and skeleton pieces.

I am working on the final details of the trees now, and will take pictures and show on the blog, and also tell a bit about how things are done in a blogpost when that is done.

But I found this to be rather fun, so I found my other painted forest where I only had some details left to paint and re-primed that as well, and I will paint that up like the one that is almost done. This forest is more normal and does not have any added things to it. I do think the trees have gotten some of the spare leaves from the first forest though, as the coverage look rather solid. I was quite happy with how I had done things several years ago on the base, but seeing the base on the scary forest made me see that I could do so much better, and also the colors I had used before didn't match my Sylvaneth at all.So I will redo it and get it to work with the Sylvaneth army. 

In the box with the forest from 2014 I also found two realm portals and I have started to paint them as well. I have an idea how I want them to look, but I don't have a good solution on how to achieve that look yet. But I am working on it and hope to get an okay result eventually. The main issue I have is with the magic "flames" that is inside the portal as I want them to look a certain way. But I will see what I can do, I think I have a little idea on how I can do it. The rest of the portal is basically stone and metals, so I know how to do that.  

While checking that everything was ok at the cabin last week I also had a look in my Warhammer boxes (I have lots of cardboard boxes with unbuilt models and terrain and two boxes of 40K terrain that is built but not primed or painted) and I saw I have at least a few more of the old forests still to build, so I will bring them home over time and work with them. But I don't want to have too many sets just standing around (I already have way too many as it is). But I found that one cardboard box had gotten moldy because it had been standing towards a wall that is moist so I emptied that box and brought the sets home. That was the remains of the Garden of Morr set (think I have one more that is complete in another box) the old Skulvane Manse house and one big and one not so big tower. I think I have found a nice way to paint stones, so I am not as scared to paint them now as I was when I bought them. I still have a few of the small towers left in other boxes. Only thing is that I need to find the top of the small tower and the tower in the Skulvane Manse set as I planned to swap the globe on the Skulvane Manse with a regular tower and vice versa. I started to paint the globe so they are in a box with partially painted stuff and not with the unbuilt sets. I will have to look for that next time I go to the cabin, but I will build and paint the rest in the mean time.

I have also put together the Loonshrine for the Gloomspite Gitz and primed that. And that will be my next big painting project. I like to take some time to make sure I get everything looking as good as possible with these things that will be like center pieces on the tabletop so I will do some figure painting in the meantime. 

I hope to finish some of the figures that are standing partially painted in boxes on my shelves, and I would love to finish some of my Chaos Warriors. There is a new Chaos Warrior warband coming out for Underworlds (I think) with a female warrior, and I would love to get that (hasn't been released yet, just teased) and I would love to have some warriors painted up by then.  I decided I wanted some silver Chaos Warriors just to experiement a bit with glazes (that was a thing way back when I started those) and I think the warriors themselves are almost done, but their arms with weapons and shields are not attached and not primed so I need to prime them with a brush and paint them up. I am debating with myself on how to do that, to make them cool but also make them tie in with the rest of the Chaos warriors in my army. Now these are the old warriors, but I also have one unit of the new ones to build and paint.

And I have lots of Goblins (or Gloomspite Gitz as I guess they are called now) built. The ones sitting on Squigs and dressed up a bit like knights that I would love to paint up and get tabletop ready. They will probably be the next batch I prime up.

Also I plan to build some 40K models as I try to get some big boxes away from my shelves. I will take some pictures of my stash and show off in a future post just to show why I need to get boxes done.

Long awaited update

A long time has passed since my last update. I will once again try to get better to use this blog for what it was intended.

I thought I would use this update to give you  little update on all my armies, and next time I do the same then hopefully things will show that I have achieved something...


We'll start with Age of Sigmar (Warhammer FB in the labels in this blog), and what they call The Grand Alliance of Order

The Sylvaneth army has been primed again, this time with a light primer, and I will paint almost everything but the leaves with the new Contrast paints. I have a dark brown and a dark yellowish brown that I will use for the wood parts and then I will see how I will paint the occasional weapons they have that is not wood. I will use autumn colors like orange and browns for the leaves with an occasional green leaf in the mix. I have quite a lot left to build, but I also have some of the models painted with the contrast paints. I have an idea on how I will make the bases look like Forrest, and I will try it out on a few of the smaller trees. I name all the characters in this army for the Latin names for different trees,

Duardin (Dwarfs) this army is an old one, and I have several painted units of Dwarfs that are ready for games. Some of them are not legal units in the game anymore as the Duardins have been robbed of most of their units in the latest years. Most of the painted Dwarfs were painted up for my Armies on Parade entry a few years back (2017) and this is an army I would love to revisit and finish more of. I have a big box of old metal Dwarfs that are painted  but that I would like to repaint to get them in my own colors and style, and I also have lots of boxes with units still on sprues. I even have several units that are partially built or partially painted. When I started this army they were called Dwarfs, then they became Duardin, and now the army is included in Cities of Sigmar where they work together with former Empire troops. I don't think I have much Empire stuff, but I have several Bretonnian Knights that I can paint up and use instead. 

The latest addition to this army are the old metal Slayer figures, they are in the mail from different sellers in Europe.
I have an old fortress that I could build and with a few modifications use as a home town for this army. I just need some plasticard or something similar so that I can have some cannon emplacements along the walls. The leader of my dwarfs are The Low King Thorir Thorgrimsson, and I will eventually also make a human General for the human elements.

An army that is sort of a steampunk spin-off from the Duardin are the Kharadron Overlords.
I plan to have a little army of them, but it might grow big over time. I have several boxes of these short dudes to assemble and paint. So far I have started to paint some characters to try and find the look for my army, and I have also painted up one of their smallest sky vessels that I just have to add the two parts together and do the base to call it done. But I will wait a little bit with the base until I have decided on how my army will look overall.

Another duardin race is the Fyreslayers, and they were something I had planned to build a lot of, but now I am thinking of selling what I have as I don't think I have the time or the interest to make this in to an army. For now the boxes of unbuilt minis is in a big cardboard box in my basement. Instead of having a Fyreslayer army, I will have a unit of old Slayers in my Duardin army.

From The Grand Aliance of Destruction I have two armies.

Ogor Mawtribes is what was called Ogres when I started with the army. I have not planned for a huge army here, but I do have quite a lot of units still. So far I have only finished one unit of Ogor Gluttons (they too had a completely different name when I stated) and I have a unit of Leadbelchers that are assembled and awaiting priming and painting. I look forward to working more with this army as they really appeal to me.

The second army I have from this alliance is my Gloomspite Gitz. The idea for this army was to make a fun-to-play Greenskin army without the Orcs as I tried making a Black Orc unit that ended up looking like they all had chronic back-pain. Like all my armies it has taken me many years to not finish, and in the meantime Games Workshop came out with rules for just such an army that I wanted to play, called the Gloomspite Gitz.
This army do have some finished units, but still most of the units needed are in boxes. I have lots of Night Goblins that are assembled but not primed, but I also have several of the newer units that are primed and just waiting to be painted. The army will consist of lots of Goblins (and most of them Night Goblins) at least one Giant (Aleguzzer Gargant as they call them now) and this one is fully painted and based. I also think I have one more still in his box, but I might make that one to fit with my chaos army but I have to see what happens. Might be cool to do some conversion stuff and use him in this army.
I also have different kinds of Trolls (or Trogoths) that will fight along side the Gloomspite Gitz.
The leader of the army is the old figure Skarsnik with his giant pet squig. In my army he is called Turnip instead, and his squig is named Blabla.

Finally I have what could be used for several armies from The Grand Alliance of Chaos.
Personally I would love to use everything as one big undivided army, but they can also be used as smaller armies worshiping one specific Chaos God.
I have several of the newer stuff for Khorne and Nurgle, and they are made to look like they worship their specific god. But I also have regular Chaos warriors painted up that worship these Gods.
I have a small following of Slaanesh, and they can either fight with followers of other chaos gods or alongside Deamonettes. I even have quite a big fortress for the Chaos forces.

Fall is over us...

The fall is here, and with that comes "Armies on Parade". After receiving 3rd place last year with my Ork Mek army with Grot mechanics, I've decided not to take part this year. But I hope to be back again with a new board next year.

I have five Super Heavy tanks in various stages of painting, as well as lots of regular tanks and vehicles. I had planned to finish some of them off, but got a little tired of all the gray and big panels, so I started working on some of my other armies.

I have taken up work on my Mechanicus army, and the plan with this is to make it into a Cohort fighting as part of a large Exploratory fleet. It will not have all the units the Mechanicus range offers, I don't like the Electro Priest models, so there will be none of those. I plan to field lots of Skitarii, both Rangers and Vanguards, but they will all have the hooded Ranger heads. Instead I will separate them and keep them apart by using different colors on the inside of their robes.And they will of-course have the designated weapons of their type so that will also keep them apart. The spare heads from the Vanguards I hope to use for some special forces troopers for my Astra Militarum army.
The army will have both Scorpius versions and Dunecrawlers. So far I have built one Dunecrawler with an Icarus array, and it is waiting to be primed and painted.
I will also have quite a lot of Kastelan robots and some Kataphron units. There will not be any Knights in the standard army, but I plan to have some Freeblade knights that can assist when needed. These Knights will also fight alongside my other Imperial armies when called upon.

I have re-planned my Knights army, from being a proud Knightly Household to being the remnants of a Knightly Household fighting alongside a lot of Freeblade knights. Four of these Freebldes are working together as a unit known as the Knights of The Apocalypse, and will be painted to fit the classic Biblical tale of the Riders of the Apocalypse with a modern twist from the Pratchett/Gaiman book "Good Omens" adapted to 40K. At the moment I am looking for parts to use for the specific modifications I need to do to them, but it is not too much that needs to be done.
I also plan to make one or two Knights to fight alongside my Chaos Space Marines chapter, The Knights of Oblivion. One of them will be a knight that used to fight as one of the four Knights of the Apocalypse before it was corrupted by Nurgle, and will be a specially hated enemy of these knights.

I am also working on building and painting my small force of Necrons that I started because there were Necrons in a box with Mechanicus forces that I bought to get the Knight Armigers when they were released for the first time. I am using a base of Leadbelcher with some green and yellow-brown paints to give a metallic look to them. The force is just a "Start Collecting" box with a few units added, but I believe I might add to this quite a lot over time a there are some very nice flyers in this army. But for now I will build and paint what I have and see how far that gets me.

But it is not only 40K that I dabble with, I've also taken out my Sylvaneth army from semi retirement and decided on how to paint them up. Games Workshop have released a new range of paints, and along with a light primer they say that this will make painting large armies go a lot faster without loosing anything to the quality of the old paints. So I have decided to use two colors, one dark brown and one more yellowish brown for the bark. Then I will use "fall" colors for the leaves mixed with a little bit of green for variation. I'm thinking rather dark colors for most of the trees an very light colors for the little creatures that live among the branches.

A bit about names

After writing a little about the names of my Imperial Guard officers in my last blogpost, I thought I would take s little time to write about how I name my characters, why I do it and who gets named.

I generally give names to the leaders and characters in my armies. I also name miniatures that stand out in certain ways and sort of demands to be known.
In addition to naming, I like to make a little background on the miniatures to say just the basic things abut them.
A good example of what kind of background I make is the background for Sergeant Bastion. I read a background in one of the old editions (4th or 5th ed I think) of Warhammer 40.000 about Sergeant Luc Bastonne, a Cadian of Noble heritage that takes every loss of his men personal. Inspired by him I made Gunnery Sergeant "Luck" Bastion, a veteran sergeant leading a squad called Bastions Bastards. Sergeant Bastion have been promoted to higher ranks several times, but have refused to accept the promotions as he likes to be on the ground in the field with his men. Once a colonel took it so personal he reported Bastion for insubordination, but the Senior Commisar in the Regiment felt it was for the right reasons and let it pass. Bastion and his Bastards are made from a Cadian squad set, modified with bits from the Forgeworld Cadian Veteran set.

For my Sergeants I just like to use names that sounds good. One will be called Remagen, but I am not sure who he is yet.
For the commissioned officers I use names from the American Civil War. A lot of them were generals in real life, but I have to demote them in my army. I do not care if they fought for the North or South, but I will not use persons I find inappropriate like Quantrill, who was a guerrilla leader fighting for the southern cause. I don't use Lee or Grant either as they are too well known for that special period (they are probably the only two names Norwegians can name along with Abraham Lincoln when asked about the American Civil War). The General in charge of the Walpurgian 3rd Brigade is Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

For my other armies I have chosen other areas to get names from. My Space Marines chapter, The Gatekeepers, have Roman names for the Chapter Master and Captains. Now that Lieutenants have been introduced, I will use Roman names for them as well. The Apothecaries  and probably the Librarians will be named after Greek philosophers. My chapter Master is called Otho Vitellius.


My Mechanicus army, the Cohort 9-1 Alpha from the Mechanicus fleet ship Gloria Inveneris is Magos Explorator de Orellana. His commander is the commander of the entire Mechanicus fleet, and his name is Arch Magos de Sousa (I will use the Belisarius Cawl figure for this one).
They are named for famous explorers, at least explorers that come up on Wikipedia when I search for Famous ones.

I also give names to my badguys, and my Chaos Space Marine army is called The Knights of Oblivion, and their commander is Arch-Commodore Falstaff. All the named characters in this army will be Shakespeare characters of some sort.

My Orks gets their names from famous people, and they get "orkyfided"   The warboss in charge if the army is Hazza Hoff (as in David Hasselhoff) and he has his pet squig Hoobie. The figure is Grukk Facerippa, a huge Ork.

My Inquisitor army is led by Lord Inquisitor Van Dorn, a name that just came to me and for this army I will just use names I like.

I have not found any names for my Genestealer army yet, but I need to try an find out how a Genestealer would be named. Also my Chaos Daemons are without names, as daemon names should not be spoken.

For Age of Sigmar, I have no names for my Chaos Warrior armies yet, but that will come.
Like in 40K the Daemons will get no names.

My Duardin (or Dwarf) army are led by Thorir Thorgrimsson. The characters in this army will all be Icelandic or old Norwegian sounding names. The choice of Thorir for the King is a tribute to the coach of the Norwegian female handballteam Thorir Hergeirsson who is a great leader and sort of short (not saying he is a dwarf though).

The Fyreslayers are sort of cousins of the Duardin, and I figure they should have old nordic sounding names too. Maybe Icelandig sounding for them too, but at least sort of viking names.

The Kharadron Overloards are also related somehow, but maybe a little more distant. I will see how many Icelandic sounding names I can think up, if I get enough they will get those kind of names too, if not I will see if I can find some other sort of cool idea to use on them.

My Sylvaneth army are named after Latin names for all kinds of trees. So far I have named the ancient Treelord who leads the army, and its name is Quercus and this is Latin for Oak.

My greenskins army in Age of Sigmar will all get sort of querky funny sounding names, and for my leader I use the Skarsnik figure with his big squig. In my army the Leader is called Turnip, and his squig is called Blabla.

I have yet to pick a way to name my Ogres, but hopefully I can find something fitting for this nice army of big miniatures.

Progress on new units

I have gotten in some more painting time, and there are two units that are progessing nicely. 

They are: Dwarf Miners, 15 Dwarfs with musician and standard bearer. I'm not sure where I have them from, but I think they may have been bought on Ebay a long time ago.
My first unit of Miners that I painted many years ago got very dark, with the darkest of blue on their armor, so this time I wanted to do something a little lighter. I went for Death Guard Green, as it looks like a little muted color that I haven't used on any other dwarf units yet.
The chainmail is painted Leadbelcher instead of a more shiny metal color as the Miners wear their armor as much for protection in their daily work as for going to war. I hope to get some more painting done on them this weekend, as I am missing the hair, candles on top of their helmets (with flames on the candles) and some details (lanterns, leather pouches, golden medallions and so on).

The second unit I am working on is a unit I have started some time ago. That is my first unit of Longbeards, 10 Dwarfs with full command. The torsos have been "almost ready" for a while, but now I have primed the arms and heads and have started to paint the heads. My plan is to paint the beards before gluing the heads to the torsos so that I don't spill a lot of gray paint on to the already painted torsos. The arms and shoulderguards are being primed seperately, and I plan to keep them like that until they are painted and ready to be glued on to the torsos.
When this unit is done I can start to prime arms for my Thunderers as I don't have space for too many different small pieces on my table at the same time.

I also have an old metal Miner that I am painting up, and my plan is to have him standing by himself working on locating new oars to mine down in the lower level on my AoP board. The idea is to set him up so that he is visible from at least two sides when you look in to the board.
I think it's cool to see the difference between this old dwarf and the newer figures, as this metal figure has a much more outstanding nose that gives him a totally different character compared to the newer dwarfs that GW have produced. That is some of the beauty (hopefully people seeing my board will agree) of showing off models from different times and ages mixed up together. They are all legitimate GW figures, but some of them are just from a forgotten generation. I am sure the GW team will remember them, but not sure that the young people in the store have ever seen these old metal figures.

I have also sorted all my Chaos models, and placed them in tubs after what chaos god they worship. I didn't think I had that many Chaos Warriors, but almost all the tubs have 20 or 30 warriors in them. But then again, they are the models that introduced me to the Warhammer hobby so they have a special place in my heart.

There are four gods, but I only have figures to follow three of them.
I have a large goup of Chaos warriors that follow Khorne, and that tub also includealmost all the new Blood-something releases that came with the Age of Sigmar starter set and after. There are also some heavy cavalry, represented by 6 Scullcrushers (and I think I have more somewhere else)
The Nurgle tub have the largest model in my army, the Maggoth Lord Bloab Rotspawned, along with several relatively new Nurgle models from the end times releases. Also there are some Plaguebearers, Plague Drones, two sorcerers and the big unit of Chaos Warriros.
The third tray is dedicated to Slaanesh, and here I have a big unit of Chaos Warriors (seeing a pattern yet?) a Sorcerer, and when I find the box he is currently in, I will move Sigvald the Magnifient over to this box. Along with this gang I can field my Daemonettes, and a chariot but they are not in this box.
The last box have the units that doesn't have a Chaos mark, what used to be known as Chaos Undivided. These are Chaos Warriors that will have black armor  and in this box I also have a large chunk of Warriors, some Chosen ones, some Knights in all stages from just awaiting to be based to just been taken off the sprues and a lot of hounds that is only missing their bases.
When my dwarf army is ready for AoS I will try and spend some time painting and basing my Chaos army alongside building other Age of Sigmar sets and 40K stuff.

Started with the dwarfs

I have started with my dwarf army for Armies on Parade now. The entry will be a Dwarf hold getting ready for war. I will not use all my Dwarfs for this as I have lots, but I will build and paint enough to show that there is a considerable show of force and that they mean business. At the same time I will get a Dwarf army to use in Age of Sigmar after the parade is over.

A long time ago I started to cut out Dwarfs from sprues to make a unit where everyone wore capes, and this would be my Rangers, the rest of the Dwarfs on the sprues would be regular units of Thunderers or Quarrellers. I have gotten some doubts if the Rangers should have capes or not, as I will need to give them all axes on their backs and I'm not sure how this will look if they have capes. Trying to find this out, I found that I somehow have managed to misplace all the sprues with arms and equipment for these dwarfs. I have their bases, the torsos and heads, (sorted in two boxes one with and one without capes) but all the sprues have been placed in a box when I was moving everything out of my old hobby room, and now I can't find that box. I am sure it is buried deep in one of many cardboard boxes with either Lego or other Warhammer stuff, but I have not managed to find the box yet. I hope I find it this weekend.

Instead I found an old box of sixteen Warriors yesterday and have stared to assemble them. These Dwarfs are totally different from the warriors on sale now. They are just a little bit smaller than the current Dwarfs, but that is not really noticeable unless you mix them in to one mixed unit.
What makes them stand out is the way they are assembled, and how they are dressed and  armed.
These dwarfs are not assembled with a full cast body where you just add a front piece with head and beard like the usual warrior range, they are assembled more like orcs where the legs are one piece, the upper body is one piece, and then you place the head on an outstanding neck.
The regular Warriors have chainmail armor and some of them wear a cape, and that's it. These old ones have other clothes outside of their chainmails. There are a few different patterns of vests, one who look like it is made of sheepskin with the fur still on it (like it's made to be warm) and another that looks more like it is made to look nice (without the fur).
The heads look a lot different too, as they look a lot more well-groomed than the average Dwarf. They all look like they have been to the barber recently, even though I've read that a Dwarf never cuts his or her beard.
The difference in construction also makes the old Dwarfs look a lot thinner, as the traditional Dwarfs look rather bulky.

When it comes to the weapons they have axes and hammers that just look like an older design than the ones in the current boxes, sort of more bulky but this is very typical for the weapons made in that period. The crossbows have a traditional design, but instead of posing them ready to fire these crossbows are posed like they are being carried in to war by  marching unit.
The configuration I will be using is some quite long axes carried on one arm, and then I will use shields on the other arm. This will make them stand out quite a bit from my other Dwarfs.
I will only have one other type of Dwarfs using long axes and that is the Longbeards who will have axes to stand out from the Hammerers who are built from the same box (except I plan to only use old metal Hammerers in my army as I have lots of them). The Longbeards will have both hands on their axes though and I doubt they will have shields, but time will probably show...

I must make some fluff for the old Warriors, and that fluff will say that they are city Dwarfs who live above ground and trade with the humans in the area. They have taken to the human ways of hair and clothing. But facial hair and chainmail is a big part of the Dwarf identity, so they groom their facial hair and wear clothes outside their chainmails to blend in without forgetting where they come from.
So when the hold goes to war they are ready to fight just as hard as any other Dwarf in the clan.

Soon that time of the year...

I have to let the Chaos rest for a little while, but I still plan to assemble the remaining army relatively quick and paint it up.
There are only a few months before Armies on Parade is here again, so I need to get my army started. This year I am doing Dwarfs as last year didn't have any of them in the competition.
So I need to get my gameboard tile, the scenery to go on top it and the figures ready.
I am not sure yet exactly when the date of the competition is, but last year it was held in October.

I think I have talked about the plan before, but a quick recap can't be wrong...
I will use an old Warhammer castle gate as the gates to a Dwarf keep, then I will use some sort of building foam to make the mountain walls and some details.

Outside the walls I will have a forest (might be just one tree, we'll see how much room I get) and in the forest I will have a unit of Rangers.

I will check if I'm allowed to use old miniatures (I think I am as long as they are made by Games Workshop or Forgeworld), and decide what units to use when I see what I have.
There will be Quarrelers, Thunderers and Warriors for sure. If I am allowed to use old miniatures I will also have Hammerers, the old metal Ironbreakers, Thorek Ironbrow and probably also Lord Alrik and his Shieldberers.

There will also probably be a Gyrocopter, a Gyrobomber and my much talked about Bad Year Blimp.
I will also see if I manege to fit in a unit of miners and my Grudge Ponies and minecarts.

Revisiting an old box - Warriors of Chaos Spearhead

Several years ago Games Workshop released a box called Warriors of Chaos Spearhead. This was a box with all the new models that came out for a Chaos release. I'm not sure when this was, but it was several years ago when characters were released in metal.
The box included the following units: Ten Chaos Warhounds, five Chaos Marauder Horsemen and five Chaos Knights. These are all plastic minis, and it was the first release of the new plastic knights (the ones still on sale).
The box also contains a lot of metal miniatures: Five Chaos Warriors chosen, five Chaos Warriors chosen command, a Chaos Nurgle sorcerer, a Khorne Chaos Lord on Juggernaut, a Chaos Lord on Daemonic mount, a Chaos Champion of Khorne, Sigvald the Magnificent and Wulfrik the Wanderer.

I have built and painted the Chaos Warhounds a long time ago, but then the rest of the units have stayed in the box.. So I figure this is a good time to get a big box off the shelves.

The Nurgle Sorcerer didn't need any assembly, just a cleanup so he is ready for priming and painting. The mini is exactly like the current plastic one, but the details are more crisp and clean on the plastic one. I plan to use them both in the army.
Sigvald the Magnificent will lead my Slaanesh faction, and as mentioned earlier he will still be Sigvald in my army even though the official rules has reduced him to a plain chaos lord. I have cleaned him up and started to assemble him. I've gotten his torso together, and tomorrow I will attach his arms. His sword has kept up magnificently well in the box compared to other thin parts in the box.
The Khorne Lord on Juggernaut will lead my unit of Juggernaut riding warriors, so I will paint him up like them, maybe use a little more gold to show he is a Lord.
The Lord on Daemonic mount will be one of the leaders for my Slaves of Darkness faction, and I'm not sure yet what role Wulfrik will get (or the Exalted Hero of Chaos as he is reduced to) but he will also be in the Slaves of Darkness part of the army.

The Knights will be batch built along with the other Knight boxes, as I have thirty Knights in total. I'll probably build maximum fifteen a the time. I need to get new bases for a few of them as they have the small square cavalry bases in their boxes. I'm not sure if I will use those small square bases for the smaller Maruder horsemen or if I will get them cavalry bases as well. I'll chat with the guys at the Games Workshop store tomorrow and hear what they mean and see what size bases they come with in the current box.

I think I need to use the bitzbox extensively for my Chosen and Chosen command, as they seem to have several broken or very badly bent wepons. I'll salvage what I can, and then I need to find replacements for what cant be used. I plan to use them with my Slaves of Darkness.

More chaos

Feeling a little excited that Games Workshop has released new scenery for Warhammer 40K. They have released transport containers that works well as cover for normal troops, and they look quite cool. 

The box contains thee big containers, nine barrels and twelve crates of different sizes. I'm looking forward to starting to assemble these sets, but I will hold off until I have finished my AoS Chaos army.

Another release that I like a lot is scenic bases of all sizes for 40K. The bases are made to match the game board that looks like a city, I plan to get some of these for my Space Marines and Imperial Guard armies in the future, but I will have to see what units I would like to use them on first, so that I buy the right sizes. Both these armies operate in different terrain, so I will not use them for all the minis.

I'm almost done assembling the AoS starter set for my Chaos Army. The final five Bloodreavers are assembled but not glued to their bases yet. They are all standing on one leg, so if I just glue them and drop them they will fall down. So I either need to sit and hold them in position until they dry, or find something to lean them up against.
When they stand firmly on their bases, I will take all the figures from the start set and prime them black.

Not sure what the next unit for assembly will be, but I know I'll have to start painting something again soon, as the units pile up on my desk and in boxes standing around it. I thought I would see if I could rearrange the units a bit so that each box contains units of the same faction. This will give me a better overview of what is left to paint for each faction.