packing up...

I have to leave my hobby room, and all my minis are gong down in boxes to be stored at my cabin.
The plan is to do a lot of building there, and then take the minis home to paint and finish.
We'll see how it goes, but I will do my best to keep the pace up, so that I can finish my armies (I know you never really finishes, you just build what you have and then wait to buy some more).

The Chaos army is moving slowly forward. Today the weather was good enough to allow me to spray the remaining warriors Leadbelcher. So the next ting to spray now are Bloab Rotspawned, Mighty Skullcrushers, the Blight Kings and the chariot.

I have brought the remainder of the Chaos army up from the basement, and I now have a more correct list over what remains to be done..
I need to assemble and paint all the Bloodbound sets, including the Age of Sigmar start set. There are a lot of single characters in the Bloodbound series, and I have one of each, except for the three that will be released this Saturday. I'm not sure I'll be getting them later eiteher, at least not for a while.
What I might need though is more Marauders.
I thought I had a few boxes, but I only have one box of each. The old Marauder box have sixteen marauders on foot, and I think I should have at least two units of that size (the new box includes twenty). The old Marauder Horsemen box only have five horsemen, so I do need one more box to begin with so that I get a unit that will work on the table. Then I will have one unit of fifteen.

I found I had three boxes of five knights, one box of ten, and then there were five in the start collecting box. That gives me the total of thirty knights, and I am thinking three units of ten. One of the units will be sprayed silver and painted up as Slaanesh, and the remaining knights will be unmarked black.

I also have some old metal special characters, think it is Sigvald the Magnificent, Wulfrik the Wanderer and the Lord on Daemonic Mount.
Then there are ten Chaos Chosen, five command and five regular ones. These are also metal, and came in the same box as the special characters way back several releases ago...
I know some of the Chosen is damaged, and that is one of the reasons that they have stayed in the box for so long. But I will try and see what I can salvage, and if I can find good ways to fix what is damaged.

Eventually I will also bring my Chaos Hounds up and base them the same way as the rest of the army.

Bad weather today...

The rain pours down and the wind comes from all sides at once, so there will be no priming or spraypainting Leadbelcher today. At least not for a long while.
Instead I think I will sit an enjoy reading "The Last Wall" - the fourth book in "The Beast Arises" series, and later on do some painting.
I will try to get a good production line running on my Chaos Warriors as my main focus now is to get a Chaos army painted up, but I must not forget that I want to field a Dwarf army for "Armies on parade" this fall. So I have a lot of Dwarfs that need to be built and painted, and a lot of Dwarf projects in various stages of assembly that need to be finished.
I also plan to do some painting of my Slaanesh Deamonettes, as this practically can be said to be working on my Chaos army as they will be used along with the Chaos army. I am quite interested in seeing how my new purple paint will look alongside the black clothing and pale skin.

My wife and I bought us an old house in Sweden to use as a cottage, and in order to afford the loan on that house, we need to rent out the basement apartment at our original house. This means that I need to pack up all my Warhammer and Lego in boxes again, and move it to the house in Sweden. So I will probably do a bit of packing today as well.
I have found that if I pack my armies in boxes in a very organized way, then it will be possible to work like I do now with one army for a given time period. I can just collect the box (or boxes in some cases) marked with that army and bring it home from the house in Sweden, and have it alongside my workplace at home and throw the box when the minis are built.
The good thing about the house in Sweden is that in the basement there is a room where I can sit and work with things like styrofoam so I will not have to depend on good weather to work on my Badyear Blimp. And there is plenty of room, so I will get the space i need to have Warhammer armies displayed in cabinets like I do in the basement now.

The chaos army is still growing

I'm trying hard to stick to my plan of building an entire chaos army before I build other stuff. So far it's working out quite ok, but I havent been able to build and paint as much as I would have liked due to other engagements.

Since the last update I have finished the six man strong unit of Mighty Skullcrushers. They are missing the shields and the banner, but that will be glued on after I have painted the beasts and riders. Then I need to glue the beasts on to the bases, but I would like to try and do some work on the bases first.
I had planned to prime them today, but there were not room on the board with all the other stuff I wanted to prime. So they will get primed next time out.

I did prime all the remaining Chaos Warriors today though, and the next step now is to spray the two remaining Khorne Warriors and all the Slaanesh Warriors with Leadbelcher. I hope to do this on Sunday if the weather allows it. If not, I will start to paint my unmarked Warriors (or Slaves to Darkness as they call them these days). I also primed the two sorcerers that I have for the army, and I might have an idea for a third one by doing some converting. All I need is a regular chaos warrior as a start, and I'm sure I can scare one up from somewhere.

I have also done some building today. I finally assembled the last five Blight Kings, so now I have a unit of ten. I will post pictures of them just to show how different they can be assembled.

The coolest thing I assembled today was a Chaos chariot pulled by a Gorebeast. I gave the champon head to the leader of my umarked Warriors, as there were several heads on the sprues, but in the end I ended up using a head from the Knights sprues instead as they looked more commanding.

The next unit to be assembled is a unit of Chaos Knights for the unmarked faction, but it might be more than one unit as I have several boxes of knights laying around so I might do a little production line of them as I do with the chaos warriors. Then after them I will start with the Bloodbound units, and I'll probably do the units in the Age of Sigmar starter set first. If I manage to assemble all the units from that set before I find a buyer for my Stormcast Eternals I can sell the assembly booklet without having to split it between the Stormcast and the Chaos.

Small update

Yesterday I finished assembling the last members of the first unit of six Mighty Skullcrushers for my Chaos army. They will be the cavalry for my Khorne faction, but they will not be very numerous.

I think I will make two units of six Skullcrushers with full command, and one unit of three without command. This will allow me to use the boxes I currently own, one old box of three and two boxes of six.

The beasts are quite big, but still the bases look like they have space for some extra detailing, so I will see what I can think up for them. I recon some technical paint and some grass turfs at least. I am only certain of two things, and that is that there will be no nurgle's rot on the bases, and no wild splashing with blood paint.

The general idea is to paint the riders Mephiston Red. I used that color on the red armourplates on the Khorne Warriors, and I plan to use it on the Bloodbound Warriors as well. Then the beasts will be painted Khorne Red to give a contrast to the rider. I am not absolutely sure about the Khorne Red, but I think it might look good. The only alternative I can see at this time is painting them black, but I don't think that will look the best when the riders are bright red.
Then there will be a lot of gold details to paint both on beasts and riders, and also metal.

I plan to prime them at the same time when I prime all the remaining Chaos Warriors, and then I will paint them up as soon as possible. Maybe in between the Chaos Warriors as a welcome distraction.

The next units to be assembled now are the chariot from the "start collecting"-box, and the last box of Putrid Blight Kings. The Blight Kings will join the five already assembled, and they are the most Nurgly unit I have in the army. I'm not sure what part of the army the chariot will join, but I'm leaning towards using the Goarbeast instead of the steeds, and if I decide on that then the unit will join the unmarked, as a Gorebeast does not fit well with Slaanesh in my opinion.
I am sure I can find another use for the two steeds, pulling something else in the future.

The weekend in chaos...

I have been busy this weekend building Chaos Warriors. I am happy to say that all Chaos Warriors are ready for painting now. This blog post explains what has been done.
The Nurgle unit is already thirty strong, so I have not done anything with them this weekend. I had originally planned to paint up two of them to see what they will look like, but I'll start with that later.

First up in this post is the two missing Warriors to make the Khorne unit thirty strong. I will prime them and spray them Leadbelcher when I do the Slaanesh Warriors, and paint them up along with the other Khorne Warriors. I have them armed with axes and hammers, as I feel I don't have enough of those lovely hammers in my armies.

This next pic is the remaining twelve Warriors needed to make a thirty strong unit of unmarked Warriors. On the right side you can barely see a few of the six warriors that came to the unit after I split up the original Shlaanesh unit. The remaining six went right in to the Nurgle unit to get that up to number. Hopefully they will get the same deep black colour on them as the others, even though the others are sprayed black while these are silver.
The remaining twelve warriors of this unit are in a box on another table, as they were primed black on Friday afternoon.

Then we have the first of two single characters assembled this weekend. This is a Nurgle sorcerer called a Rotbringer. He is a one-piece resin figure, so saying I assembled it is perhaps a bit misleading. I did cut him off the sprue and did a lot of cleaning up to get him looking his best and fitting his base.

The second single character, I actually had to assemble. This is a Chaos Sorcerer Lord, and I have not decided what part of the army he will join yet. I originally planned to have a few sorcerers in my army, but apart from the Rotbringer above and a Gaunt Summoner, who is a powerful Tzeentch sorcerer, there are no other sorcerer models in the range. I had originally thought I might replace the staff to make different apearances with the same pose, but the staff is attached to the arm, so I'll see what I end up with.

Here are some pics of the headless Khorne Warriors that I have painted up so far. The red plates are washed as part of the priming, but the other colors have not gotten their washes yet.
The scull and the rope it hangs from is not painted yet, I will do that in the near future, so that is is done when the head is ready to be glued on. I will also correct the few spills of paint, like the red on the left hand of the figure in the first pic.
At the GW Store on Satuday I got an explanation as to why the Leadbelcher didn't get as red as I had expected. Turns out the wash is more pink than red, so that explains a lot...

And finally, this evenings work. Thirty Warriors of Slaanesh. To outfit all of them with swords I had to give six warriors swords in their left hand instead of the right (seven if you count the standard bearer, but he is the same in all units in the army). I took some right arms with weapons and cut the weapons away, and I plan to glue shields on the arms like I have done with the standardbearer from the Slaanesh unit that is assembled and painted.

That's all the pics for now.
Before I left my work table this afternon I started to assemble a box of Migthy Skullcrushers. They will be painted up all red, and used as Khorne cavalry. I figure Khorne red for the beats and Mephiston red for the riders to match the other Khorne armour.
There are six beasts and riders in the box, but I have just put together the first of them. I have not added the shield or shoulder guards yet, as I need to figure out if it is a good idea to do this before I paint the red armour or not.

Iron Priest convertion

I really love the Iron Priest model from the Space Wolves range. But I don't play Space Wolves and have no plan to start. So they (I have a few of them) will be added to The Gatekeepers in the role of combat Techmarines.

A regular Techmarine wears a big servo harness that helps him perform his tasks but it does not make him very mobile. The Iron Priest model only have one servo arm mounted on a special backpack, so I plan to use them as special combat Techmarines. They do what needs to be done to keep a vehicle working during a firefight, and making sure they get back home for more permanent repairs.

I built the first right out of the box, so I thought I would do a little converting on number two. I decided to swap his very special plasmagun (I know it really is a Hellfrost pistol, but since he won't be a Space Wolf he is not allowed to use a Hellfrost weapon, so a very special plasmagun it is then).

Before converting: 

After:

And finally a pic of the new arm glued on to the finished model. Next step is priming and painting...

chaos in the making

Here is a new update (only text this time) on the army. In the next post I plan to add some pictures, as there has been some progress.

I decided that I wanted to see what a Khorne warrior would look like, so I have taken two warriors from this unit and done most of the paint on them. I see now that the armour plates I painted red are standing out nicely, and is more than enough to show that this is a unit of Khorne Warriors. The washed amour is only visible on the shoulders arms and chest (and the helmet when that is done), and it's quite ok that it is a very pale shade of red. I showed the test model to my wife before I started adding more colors, and she didn't really notice that it was washed red at all until I pointed it out. The wash is a bit more powerful now though, as this was the test with one thin coat. But it still is very toned down compared to the green of the Nurgle warriors. I look forward to see how the green Nurgle warriors will look all painted up, and I think I will have to paint up two test models for them this weekend.

For the Slaanesh warriors I have made a final judgement that I will paint up thirty new warriors in the same way I have painted Khorne and Nurgle. I have not decided on the color to use on the armour plates yet, as the paint I thought I would use was way too pink (one should think the name Screamer pink would give it away...).
The twelve I have now will be the unit called "The Shining" and will be joined by Prince Sigvald the Magnificent (or Exalted Hero of Slaanesh as he is affectionately known as today). Well, my Exalted Hero is named Prince Sigvald and is magnificent, and that's the end of that discussion...

The twelve warriors I'd sprayed and planned to use as Slaanesh warriors have been split fify-fifty between Nurgle and the unmarked. I am missing twelve unmarked to make a unit of thirty, but I have more boxes to assemble, and plenty of spare square bases.
And typing about bases, I have decided to place the remaining thirty Slaanesh warriors on round bases as they do not have to fit in with another unit like they needed before. Also, being on round bases they have more likeness to the Deamonettes of Slaanesh who is already on round bases.

This leaves the unmarked and Nurgle warriors on square bases, but I have more that goes with them on square bases, so I think that will work out nice. The Nurgle Blight Kings are on square bases, and I think I have some heroes on square bases as well. Also all of the Marauders are on square bases, and they will go along with the unmarked.
The Chaos Knights are on both square and round bases, but as long as I keep the units on matching bases, then I don't see that as a problem.

I still need to figure out what to use on the bases, but I guess I'll figure it out sooner or later. I have some ideas for some of the bigger bases, like Bloab Rotspawned, but it depends a little on what I end up with on the small ones. The idea is to keep the bases simple for the rank and file soldiers, and do more with the bases that has more room on it.

More chaos

I have finally gotten around to prime all the Chaos Warriors I had on my workbench. There will be one more batch to prime later, as I didn't have room on the bench to assemble all at once, but that will for the most part be the black warriors with a few exceptions. I am thinking of making all armies thirty man strong, but I am doing some calculations to see if I need to buy more to do it or if it is manageable with the boxes I still have left to assemble.

I first used black primer as I always do, and then I tried the Leadbelcher spray for the first time.
I think the result was a little bit grainy, but that is probably because of the weather conditions when I sprayed as the air might have been a little to moist at the time. Still it looks more than good enough for the future plans that I have as I intend to wash or re-paint everything.

This first pic is focused on the Nurgle warrior. The green stuck really well to the Leadbelcher, and I am currently debating if I should paint the green details before or after adding the wash as I had a little clash with the green paint and wash on one of my plague drones. On this model the details were painted after, and I have not painted the shoulder clasp as I found I wanted to do that later in the process so I will go back and do it for this one.
Update: I decided to do the wash before the details, so the entire thirty man unit is now washed in Biel-Tan green.

The red one didn't come out that bright and clear, but you can certainly see a red glow on all the metals still. The thought I am working after is that these warriors have smeared their armour with blood from fallen enemies, and if that is true then I guess it would not shine bright red anyway. But that is just some fluff to be decided in the future. I am thinking about trying one more red wash to see how that will turn out.
Update: I tried one more wash but it didn't stand out more anyway. So the twenty-eight warriors are now washed with one thick layer and have their red armour plates painted on.

I also added a picture of the purple I did before, just to compare. I'm not sure I can replicate the other colors exactly, so I'm leaning towards keeping this unit as a unit of twelve, perhaps as a unit joined by Prince Sigvald hiself, and making a new unit of appropriate size.
I have some issues getting the gold and the fur exactly the same, as these paints have been replaced and rebranded by Games Workshop since the last time I painted warriors. I don't think there will be a big notable difference, but it might just be enough that it looks weird in the same unit.
I will start painting the Nurgle and Khorne and see how it looks as they will have the same capes, fur and gold as the Slaanesh ones.

And a final shot of the two new looks together. I have high hopes for this chaos army now, all it takes is the stamina to finish it as there are a lot of models to paint...