What's going on

After Armies on Parade was over this weekend, I wanted to do something completely different for a little while. So I sat down and assembled 5 Tartaros Terminators (these can be used both in 30K and 40K games), 5 Ork Nobz and 3 Kurnoth Hunters. The Nobz actually came on 20 or 25 mm bases, and I've been told a long time ago that Nobz needs at least 32 mm, so I put them on that. My regular Boyz might get 25 mm bases, but the Nobz are a bit more powerful and needs to stand out a little more so they need bigger bases. I will come back to these units in more detail when I have primed and painted them up in the future.

I think I have presented this unit, or at least the females earlier in the blog before they were primed. This is my first attempt at making female guard soldiers, and based on this I am quite sure I will make a few more in the future. I have just replaced two heads with the most human looking heads from my Daemonettes of Slaanesh boxes and I will stick to that making more in the future. I will not have very many females, but I still think I need more than just two. This unit has a female sergeant (the one with purple hair) and a trooper with blonde hair. I have not done anything with the bodies, as the armor is quite bulky and comes as "one model fits all" from the producer. I have wanted some female guard models ever since I read the "Valor"-series written by Tanya Huff where the hero is a female Marine sergeant called Torin Kerr.

When I was looking for basing material for my AoP board I stumbled across a little box with miniatures. These are my only unit of veterans so far, but I will add more in the future. This is my way of giving Imperial Guard troopers some special weapons, as veterans can use almost everything as they pick up things on the battlefields.
Back in the days there was a character named Luc Bastonne. He came from a "fine" family on Cadia and could have been an officer if he wanted. Instead he joined as a private and has been promoted to a sergeant. He remember every trooper that has died under his command and have their named tattooed on his body. Ever since I read about him in the rules I have wanted him for my army. And even though he is no longer an official character, I will have him in my army. I changed his name and home planet to fit my army, so he is now Sergeant Bastion, and his squad is known as Bastions Bastards.

The final figure I have taken a picture of is a Sister of Battle figure that was released as a special figure. For some reason I can not get her to stay glued to the base. As you can see from the glue puddle on the base I have tried several times and with both thin and thick superglue. Recon I'll take her with me to the Games Workshop store and ask them to give it a try for me. Maybe they have a trick. Worst case I will have to do some drilling and pin her to the pile in front and greenstuff her other foot to the ground.

After this I also managed to finish another figure that has been around for a while. That is not a Games Workshop miniature (don't have many that aren't) but it is a female Commissar. She is also made of resin, but she was quite easy to glue together with thin superglue. I plan to paint her up and put her in my Imprial Guard army, but I will leave her out of the game if I go to play at Games Workshop. I plan to prime her along in the first batch of figures to be primed, and paint her up soon after that is done. I know most of the colors I want to use to paint her.

Armies on Parade, finished board (picture heavy)

This weekend was Parade day, and I got everything ready for the event just in time (as usual).
I was washing and basing a lot of Dwarfs Friday afternoon and in to the night.

I see that I have not taken a good picture of the lower table before I put the top on, but hopefully the pictures that are taken under the board shows what needs to be seen.

First up is two pics of the entire table, and then we'll get to closeups of the units.

At the front of the table there was a separate little cave where my White Dwarf subscription Vampire hunter model was located. This model has been laying around my workspace for a long time, but I'm really glad I pulled myself together and finished it, as I think it is a great little model. The next Subscription model to be worked on is the White Dwarf World War 1-style pilot.

Then we have come to the pictures from the mine on the lower level.  The first picture is taken from the front. The Grudge Ponies are going up the hill with full wagons. For this event they were loaded with chocolate that looks like rocks. In the front of the picture the unit with 15 Miners working in the mine can be seen from behind. Then in the middle the Ironbreakers are marching to stop the Goblins in the back. To the far right you can barely spot the old Prospector working on a potential new place to make a mineshaft.

And here are the same scenes seen from the back of the board. I am quite pleased with how the Night Goblins turned out, and look forward to painting up a whole lot of them for my greenskin army in the future.

This picture doesn't really show much of the figures, but I think it shows some of the terrain in a nice way. The small knolls were made with expanding foam (byggskum as we call it in Norway). It was just sprayed in a big lump on a piece of plastic, and when it was all dried up then I carved out the pieces I wanted to use. Next time I work on a board I might use this instead of styrofoam as it looks much more natural. This was proven by the winning entry in Oslo. She had used this material to build up hills on her board.

Here is a closeup of the Grude Pony coming out of the mine, up the ramp. I had a little accident with the moss to the left of the pic, as it was damaged in transport. So I had to do a hasty repair in store before the competition.My wife came up with the idea of attaching moss to the front and side of the opening of the mine to make it look better, and I think it worked well. Next time I plan to do something like this I want to make sure I have dry moss, as that could be glued on. The moss here is attached with wire and gluedots.

To the left of the ramp up from the mine, I had lined up my Dwarf Rangers. They are basically Quarrelers with an axe glued to their back. This used to be a separate unit entry back in the days...

This is the Warden King, and he is the leader of the dwarfs in this keep. He is standing on an oath stone in the front of the outer walls of the keep, rallying his troops around him.

Next up is my Longbeards. I only had time to paint up one box for this competition, but I have two more so this unit will grow in the future. The boxes can be made up as either Hammerers or Longbeards, but I want to use my old metal Hammerers so these new looking dwarfs will all be Longbeards. I'll make one more unit with full command, so I can field two units of 15 or one unit of 20 and one of 10.

An old metal Dwarf Thane on the left. The Thanes seems to have disappeared from the Duardin model range, and I find this a little sad as they used to be the leaders of  their clans. There are many lovely sculpts of Thanes, and I hope to find a way to use several of them in my army.
To the right is a slightly newer metal model, a Dwarf Engineer with lots of guns. 

I am very happy with the beard on the Engineer, and I wish I could remember what color and wash I used to get that look as I would like to have more dwarfs looking like this. It might be the perfect color for my Fyreslayers army. I will try and experiment a bit on spare heads and see if I can recreate it.

I love the old dwarfs, so I just had to have this unit in a visible place on the board. They are in the middle of the board, and have just marched out of the keeps gates. This is a unit of 16 warriors, and they have two handed axes slung over their shoulders. They have a lot of soul and character, and quite a different look from the regular plastic dwarf warriors. They have a more slim look to them, and some of them wears leather vests or sheep skin vests outside their chainmail. They also appear to have groomed beards, not the wild and bushy beards that comes with newer dwarf boxes.
My back story for them is that they have returned from the big city where they live among humans, to assist their clan in times of war. Living around humans have made them adopt some of the human traditions in clothes and style.

The two gun crews are lined up on each side of the gate. I originally had planned to have them on top of the gates, but  in order to do that I would need to modify the gates quite heavily with plastic sheets and I never got to drag myself to a store where I could find what I needed. So I put them on each side of the gate instead. It is not so visible on the pictures, but they both have a trolley of extra ammunition, a scope for aiming and a trough for dipping the rod they use to ready the cannon in. Both cannons also have a shell inside them.
I had a gap between the wall and the mountainside, so it was fixed by adding moss to look like a bush or a small tree.

On the top of the keep a Gyrobomber is hovering. The number is just to indicate that I was the 3rd entry in to the competition, so pay no attention to that. This set was a lot of fun to build and paint right until it was time to build the rotors. I did exactly as the instructions said, and still the rotor blades did not attach perfect. I have more of these, so I will try again at a later time. I had originally planned to have a blimp, but I never got around to making the cabin on it. I will make one in the future though, and maybe a few balloons, so that my Dwarfs can have that even though their cousins (the Kharadron Overlords) have airships that they will bring in support if it is called for.

Here is another Engineer, this one is a resin model. He has a huge mechanical hammer. Sorry for the bad pic of him, but I had to take the pictures after my army was set up on the table, so I couln't get any better angle without messing up one of the units on front of the wall.

Then we have a former character, the Engineer who lost his arm and made a mechanical one. I belive his name was Burlok Damminson, but I am not sure what he will be named in my army yet. In the Games Workshop catalogue he is now only known as Cogsmith. I think it's really sad that they removed so many nice characters without introducing new ones, but at least they kept many of the models in the range.

Here are my two Runelord figures. The figure came with alternate heads and arms, so naturally I had to buy two so I could make one of each. They will get names eventually...

This is the last unit I finished before the competition. It is 16 warriors with hand weapons and shields. I like this configuration, as I love the shields the dwarfs have.
I plan to have more Dwarfs armed like this, but also some Warriors with two handed weapons to have this configuration represented as well.
There is a big possibility that this unit will be extended to 30 warriors in the not too distant future.

I also managed to paint up a unit of Irondrakes. Originally I wanted to have more Ironbreakers, but the new plastic Ironbreakers looks so different from the old metal ones that I made them in to Irondrakes instead. I have more boxes of these, so I will do the same as with the Longbeards longer up in this post, and make it so that I can use larger or more units depending on the gameplay. I would also like some more of the old Ironbreakers, so I might look around for some used ones to repaint.

And finally I have two more Grudge Ponies These are loaded with equipment, so I felt it would be better to have them above ground. These will accompany the Dwarfs on their march to war, carrying equipment to the front, and maybe some riches back to the Keep when the fighting is over.

All in all this was a nice event, and there were plenty of people who came by to look and vote. I do not know how many votes I got (and I don't really want to know either). I have come a long way towards getting a Dwarf army ready for the tables by working on this project, and I have many more dwarfs to come in the future. For a little while now I think I will work on something else, but I will continue to expand my Dwarf army until all sets I have bought are assembled, primed and painted. 

And who knows, when that is done, I might return to the army and make another display just for my self...

Armies on Parade - Board update

Yesterday I told about the snags I had while building the Armies on Parade (AoP) board, and that I felt it looked a bit like something a 10-year old kid would do for his home project.

I complained even more to my wife about it from the day I started working on the board and experience the snags, and while I was out leading a youth bigband yesterday she helped me a bit with the finish of the mine (the lower table).

For a long time she has been into scapbooking, and she know a thing or two (maybe even three or four) about washes, shading, and things like that as this is techniques that also is used in that hobby. So she made the mine come more to life with some shadows on the recessed areas and a bit more light where that could be expected. And also she added on some gold and silver areas in the mine, to show off that there are rich mineral ores down there. 

I am very grateful for her assistance, and I think the board increased its quality at once. There are still some work to do on the top table, but this is minor work compared to what needed to be done down in the mines.

My board will automatically look a little less shiny compared to other boards for many reasons. First mine is made of plywood and is thinner and flatter than a Games Workshop tile, second it is a mountain area, so it is mostly gray compared to other boards that can have more color on them.

I had hoped to use a Games Workshop tile for my top, but when I got to the store to see if they had tiles for sale, they were sold out on the Age of Sigmar tiles, and the 40K tiles were city tiles and they are way too futuristic for my purpose. So I ended up with plywood both on top and on the bottom.

And even though my tiles are Mechanicus Standard Gray (with some added shades and highlights) I plan to brighten them up a bit with the dwarfs I bring to the table.

The dwarfs uses many colors, and some of them are quite striking while others are more neutral. There are metal, silver, bronze, gold, greens, blues, yellows and other colors to help lighten the table up a bit. There are also quite a lot of figures that will go on the tables:

Down in the mine I will have 2 Grudge Ponies with carts, and a third on the ramp going either up or down.

20 Nightgoblins as one unit

15 Dwarf Miners working along one wall

1 Dwarf Prospector (old Miner) working as a sort of mini diorama, on a little hill down in the mine. He will have a wheelbarrow and dynamite around him.

10 Dwarf Ironbrakers (the old metal ones) marching to stop the Nightgoblins

and in a special cave I have the White Dwarf subscription Vampire hunter miniature with a coffin with a goblin in it.

On the top table there will be:

2 Grudge Ponies pulling carts loaded with equipment that the dwarfs will carry to war with them.

2 Dwarf Engineers

1 Dwarf Warden King

1 or 2 Dwarf Runelords (little uncertain if I have 1 or 2 of them)

10 Longbeards

10 Irondrakes

20 Dwarf Rangers with crossbows and axes

16 Dwarf Warriors with shields and hand weapons

16 Dwarf Warriors with long axes (the old type of plastic dwarfs)

3 Goblin Nasty skulkers 

2 Cannons with 3 Dwarf crew each (6 figures in total)

1 Dwarf Gyrobomber (helicopter)

This leaves me with 47 figures on the lower level, and 86 figures on the top level (if I get to place them all I will see how much space it actually takes when I set up the board). That is a grand total of 133 figures. 

As promised yesterday, pics will come. I will try to take some pictures on Friday while finishing the boards, and then I will take pictures as I set the board up on Saturday.

Armies on Parade - just a few days away now...

It's just a few days left until Armies on Parade for Age of Sigmar (they split it in two this year and completely forgot the Middle Earth/Hobitt brand while doing it).
My Dwarf board looks like something a 10-year old has put together at the moment, but I am hoping that with a little touch-up with some more paint and details it will look ok before I go to bed on Friday night.
I have encountered almost every snag possible on this project. First of all my glue did not set as I supposed. I bouth special glue for styrofoam, but insted of melting the two plates together it made a small gap between them. But they stuck togehter for the most part... This was very obvious when I started to cut the plates in to the correct basic shapes.

Then the plates were cut in to rough shapes, but now it was almost impossible to cut them in to the detailed shape I wanted to make the mountan sides. Here you can see my design drawn on the styrofoam, but it diodn't end up quite that way.

I thought I could make some nice terrain with plaster, but that dried so fast it was dry before I got it out of the mixing bowl.So the result looked like this when I gave up. The rest of the board was painted over with PVA glue. This took 24 hours to dry, so I lost a lot of time to work on the board while I waited for this. I had thought it might take some hours, but not 24...

There are quite a lot of dwarfs that needs to be painted up and based. Here are some work in progress pictures from the weekend. They are now painted up, but still needs their bases done and a thin layer of wash.

My centerpiece on the top board is the tower gate, and this is what it looks like after wash but before I tried drybrushing it. I was so sure I had gray dry-paint to use for the drybrushing, but that was about the only paint pot I didn't have when I looked through my paint boxes. So I ended up using regular paint and making sure I got most of it out of the brush before I stated. This is the one thing I am satisfied with on the board so far.

The plan for Friday is to base about 60 dwarfs, wash about 30 more and about 25 goblins. Then I will clean up some paint on the boards and add some streaks of gold and silver down in the mine and glue some turf and moss to the top board. Somehow I don't think my wife will see a lot of me before after the AoP event is over...

I will add some pictures of the finished board when I set it up at Games Workshop on Saturday, and post it here when I get home.

More Dwarf progress

Another weekend has passed, and things are still going the right way.
This weekend I have completed the Longbeards and Miners from the last post, so that they now just need their bases done and a thin coat of wash to finish them off. I will do that when I have some more units ready, as this can be done as part of an assembly line.

This weekend I completed my Subscription only Vampire hunter model. The base is done, but I will need to give everything a thin coat of wash after I have glued the different parts together.
I am quite pleased with how it turned out, and while painting this I have found a new color to use for the skin of my Goblin army when I continue to work on them. One unit will be done up for the Armies on Parade (AoP) board, as they will have sneaked in to the mine, and I am hoping to have some Nasty Skulkers ready to hide out on the top level of the board as well.

I have also started to assemble my first Gyrobomber (the long version of the Gyrocopter), and I hope to get this done so that I can add it to my board. The hardest painting is already done, as it was a whole lot of details on the pilot and inside the cockpit that was painted up earlier. This will never be seen, but I was not 100% sure of that when I painted it.
I still have to assemble the rotors, and I will probably do that later this week, and then paint them up separately.
I will need to give everything a nice coat of paint before I assemble any more, as there are lots of details that will be very hard to reach once everything is assembled. But I have a clear plan for what I need and want to do, so hopefully it should be rather easy to get it all painted up in the timeframe I have to my disposal.

The next unit to be painted up is the Imperial Dwarfs, and they have gotten a lot done to them this weekend. I have painted their heads, and glued them on to the torsos I had painted earlier.
All the arms are fully primed. The arms carrying the axes have gotten the first color on them (Rhinox hide for the axe handles) and will get more paint this afternoon.
I love these old Dwarfs as they have a lot of character, and I hope to do them justice so that people who see my board on Parade day will be positive to them. They will be quite visible, as they will be in front of the wall or mountain side, marching towards the Dwarf camp to join up for the battle the Dwarfs are rallying for.

So far I am thinking of putting my Miners and Ironbreakers on the lower level, along with the Vampire hunter and an old Miner figure. If I have time I will make a small mini diorama around the old miner. I will also put some Grudge Ponies in the mine and on the ramp going up or down.

On top there will be some characters (finished), some Engineers (one finished one needs wash), my Ranger unit (finished) the Imperial Dwarfs, and if I get them done in time I have one unit of warriors, one unit of Irondrakes and a unit of Thunderers that can join the army. Also the Gyrobomber will stand on top of a mountainside and I will have a gate that will be guarded, hopefully, by two cannons with crew.