More Chaos Marines built

I have just finished a unit of Khorne Berserkers, and I am quite happy with the way they look.

It is a little weird that half of them have a standing pose and the other half a running pose (6 of each), but I am considering getting one more box so that I have one unit of each, but I will have to see how it fits with the amount of heads I need. As I mentioned in a previous post I decided to use heads from the Age of Sigmar Chaos range, and I ended up with heads from the Chaos Knights box and the Chaos Warriors box (about half of each). The heads fitted well and they give the Berserkers a unique look in the army.

I also decided the Berserkers should have a banner, so I took one of the two banners from the Chaos Warrior box and just cut off the hand and glued it together. The arm is a tiny bit loner because of it, but not so much that someone will notice it when you see the unit together. If I end up with another unit as well, that unit will not get a banner, as it is probably enough to have one banner for all the Berserkers. 

The Berserkers are armed with chainswirds or chain axes and poltpistols. The Stanfdard bearer only have a bolt pistol. I am still considering adding some seremonial swords, but I might use them on various command models in my army instead. as there are not enough to go around to all of the Berserkers.

The next unit out now will be my second Chaos Space Marine box with 10 Marines. That is also an old box, so they come on 25 mm bases, but I have just enough 32 mm bases in my spares for this unit. And I have a lot more bases waiting on my at Games Workshop, and I plan to go there early next week and pick them up.

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.

Space marines

I felt it was time get rid of a big box, so I decided to assemble some Space Marines.
I've had the Dark Vengeance boxed set with Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines laying around for ages. From what I have been able to find out my box was released back in 2014, and I guess I must have gotten it about then as boxes like these usually sell out quite fast. Seems like the base sizes for some of the units have changed since then (from 25mm to 32mm bases) so I will have to fix that.
For some reason they are on slotted bases and not just bases with holes to stick their legs in, so I will have to do like I did with my Night Goblins and cut the "taps" off them and glue them on bases that aren't slotted. Luckily some of the models like the Terminators and bikes for the Dark Angels and the Chaos Cultists and the Chaos Hellbrute can use their original bases.

It seems like the Chaos Space Marines are followers of Khorne originally, but I figure if I just paint them up in the same scheme as the rest nobody will need to know. They will just look a bit blood-thirsty. I don't think I can explain that my Chaos army has a third faction, it was hard enough comming up wtih a story explaining why I have two so different types as the regular Chaos Marines and the Nurgle stuff so I don't want to even try to explain why some are red and worship Khorne. So I will paint them the same dark green as the rest of my regular Chaos Marines and just say they are blessed a little bit more by the Chaos Gods. Or maybe it is the other way that the regular Chaos Space Marines have not been blessed by the Chaos Gods (at least not yet). But no matter I will find good explanations why it is so as I would like to use all the models I have. 

One thing that I really like about the Dark Angels in this box is that they have printed shoulderpads both with the Dark Angels symbol and the unit designation. There are two small problems though. The first is that the shoulderpds are molded on to the minis as they are snap/fit and monopose. The second probleem is that I don't have a Dark Angels army, so I will either have to cut it awway, explain why there are regular Dark Angels in a Ultramarines successor chapter, or run them as Dark Angels. The Dark Angels I have in my army todayhave given up their colors to have their armor painted like the Gatekeepers. This is in agreement with the current leaders of the Dark Angels and is a rather complicated agreement that I will try to explain in the back story and it has to do with The Fallen and where these Marines were at the time when those events took place. But even though they might have a shield or a weapon with Dark Angels symbols on them, they look like Gatekeepers in most matters. This will not work with the Dark Angels in this box though. It would be a shame to cut away the symbols as they are excellent. I will not think too much about that at the moment as I am sure it will take some time before I get around to painting them and things might look different by then. I guess they could be a separate Dark Angels army just fighting alongside the Gatekeepers on the same battlefield or something like that. Well see when we get there.

I have built my Aspiring Champion for the Chaos Marines today, he was the only model in the set that was not snap/fit, and I believe he was a special character added to the box to give it more value and give the box something exclusive. I know they did the same for the 2012 version of the box, when they added an Interrogator Chaplain. I remember getting him off Ebay as it was awesome. Now you can get them in the regular range though, but back then you couldn't. Next up will be to build either the Chaos Cultists or the Dark Angels Terminators or Bikers as they will go on the bases that are in the box. The main reason for this is that when my wife has to go to the office we get up a bit earlier than when she can work from home, and then I have some time from I have walked the dogs to when I have to log on to to my work, and I have found working with miniatures in that time is a good way of getting stuff done. 

And the Gloomspite Gitz army keeps growing...

I have managed to work some more on my Goblins, but not as much as I would have liked as I have been distracted with some other not miniature related stuff like watching my favorite female football team (or soccer team depending on where you are from) loose another game (but we'll beat the next team for sure!) and watching Formula racing on the TV.

I have re-based my Goblins that were on grass turf and they have now moved from their square bases to new round ones. So now I have a complete unit of forty Night Goblins armed with Spears and shields. Also I have fixed up seventeen Night Goblins that was armless and placed them on new round bases. I had planned to glue their arms on this weekend but I will do that one of the days next week. They will be armed as Stabbas with swords, clubs and different one-handed weapons. I had three extra Night Goblins from the bag I brought with me back from storage that will go with these seventeen to make a unit of twenty. One of them already has a stick with a spike through it, and the other two is a spare icon bearer and a spare leader. Then I just need to bring another box home to make this grow in to a unit of forty.

I have also built the last of my Goblin Regiment. I ended up with sixteen instead of seventeen as I managed to loose one torso. I talked to the boys at GW in Oslo and they told me that I could use the unit with less troops and just pay for a full unit. So I will do that for this unit. For my Wolf Riders I bouht a box with three wolves originally for Warhammer underworlds. The wolves look a little different, but I already have two different wolves in the unit so that will probably be ok. I will have one too many, but then I can use one of them as an extra Boss, and the one armed with a spear can become a standard bearer if I just change the angle of his spear and put some sort of banner on it. Either I find a banner in one of my bitz boxes  or I'll have to make one with greenstuff.

The task for tomorrow - more Goblins/Grots

While I was at the cabin the last time, I brought with me some painted minis that needs to be converted to the new standard of basing. 

I need to remove the old square bases that was done with flock and rocks and move the minis to new round bases. This is the minis I have left to re-base. For the ones in the back, I have round slotted bases. but the ones in the front needs to have their "stem" removed and the minis glue to plin round bases.

These are the few models I have managed to move to new bases today. I plan to repaint the squigs, as I've seen so many armies that looks great where they have just one color. I might also repaint some of the figures, if they seem to need it but I hope I don't have to do them all as they have the right colors for the most part. Maybe I'll just repaint their skintones to get it uniform throughout the entire army.

Building Goblins

I have started to build my Goblin units, and today I finished the Wolf Riders. They were ten in a box, then I had one Big Boss that came in a blister pack. Also there were three extra wolves with some weird riders that was thrown into the box. The three wolves was larger than the others, but the Goblins were smaller. I was thinking they may have been from the Middle Earth range, but I see now that the Wargs they hvae there looks quite different. These are old though, so they may have changed them in later years. Anyway, I am sure that they are a Games Workshop product, as they had a slot on their legs and the old square slotted bases just like the wolves in the box had. A clue that they were of a certain age was not just that they were on square slotted bases, but also that the bases was painted green.

So to make it all look like one unit, I decided that I needed to boost the regular wolves a bit if I could. Originally the wolf belonging to the leader has armored headgear, but I found I had enough armored heads to give it to all the smaller wolves and I figure that makes them as tough as the big ones in combat.

I decided that I wanted to assemble my Wolf riders as archers, but putting the cog with spare arrows on their backs would hide the nice details and probably be hard to make to stay glued on, so instead I glued them on to the sides of the wolves so the riders can reach behind them when riding and pull out a new arrow instead of grabbing it from over their shoulder. I also had enough left arms holding an arrow to give one to all the Goblins holding their bows in their right. Like the armored wolf heads there was one arm on each set of sprues, so I had an arm for all my regular riders. The Big Boss is a metal figure holding a spear in his right arm and a severed head in th left so he didn't need such an arm. The leader for the ten man strong unit from the box has a sword in his right arm, so he got a left hand without anything in it, same goes for the banner bearer and the musician who holds the banner and a horn in their right hands.

Next I plan to add two metal squig hoppers to round bases, and also some resin Gnarly Cave Squigs. 

When that is done I will build my Goblin Regiment as my next unit, and I will use them together with the box I have already assembled as a forty man strong unit. I had to use three Goblins as wolf riders so the unit will only be thirty-seven strong, but I figue I can find  way to sneak in three bases with something else as unit fillers. Then if some in the unit gets killed in combat I will remove the unit fillers from the tabletop first. I will just have to use my imagination and see what I can come up with.

Goblins for the Gloomspite Gitz army

I was over at my cabin in Sweden today to check that everything was ok there and it was. But while I was there I also rummaged through some of my boxes and brought home some fun.

I took with me two units of Chaos Space Marines (10 Marines in a unit) and a Hellbrute.
I checked what is left in storage for this army, and there is not too much. I have two boxes of terminators, one box of resin Obliterators, two boxes of Raptors (if I remember the name correctly, they are the ones with jump-packs) an Aspriring Champion and then there was one more blister that I don't remember what was.

I also have two boxes of the Horus Heresy boxed set that came out some years ago and I think one of those boxes could be made up as chaos. If they don't look very "chaosy" I will refrain from adding them to this army and instead make everyone up as Gatekeepers, since they have a lot of old warsuits still in use. I plan to bring these boxes with me back home next time I go over.

But it wasn't just Chaos Space Marines that came home with me from the Warhammer 40K range, I also found a box from the Ork range that I took with me. That was a special box with Kaptin Badrukk and his Flash Gitz. I think that box was just available for a shor time, and it contained the Kaptin and ten Flash Gitz and some quite cool looking Grots I haven't seen before. I had planned to have some Flash Gitz in my army, so I look forward to building and painting this box. I also found I had two mor boxes of five Flash Gitz each in storage, so I will at least have twenty of them in my army. I also found one Morkanaut, a box of Boyz, four boxes of Mek Gunz, two boxes of flyers, a Big Mek, a box of Nobz, a box that can be Burnas or Lootas,  two boxes of Big Meks in Mega Armor and finaly two boxes of Deff Dreads with one in each box and a box with two in one box. I also have a box with a Stompa standing  in storage. 

I also went through my Greenskin army and brought with me some goodies to build and paint. What is left in storage now is three boxes of Night Goblin, a few small plastic boxes with Night Goblins with spears from the Battle of Skull Pass starter set (these are monopose figures) and a box of Night Goblins without arms. 
I have lots of spare arms, so adding arms to the ones that are missing them is no problem, although I am sure somewhere there is a plastic box or a ziplock back with their arms. I think I will bring these boxes home with me next time I go to the cabin.

There are also a few weird metal figures that I will take a closer look at. Some of them I believe are old Netters, and some are cool but not from Games Workshop.

What I did bring home though is some blisters. A Goblin Boss on a big spider, a boss on a giant squig, a boss on a wolf and a blister with squigs. I also brought home a bag containing what looks like resin Gnarly Cave Squigs, or something like that. I look forward to putting them together and adding them to the ones I already have assembled. 

The last two boxes I took with me was a box of Goblin Regiment and a box of Goblin Wolfriders. The sprues are identical, in thee boxes, but the Wolfriders have wolves added to the box.

I have started on the Wolf riders first. Tuned out I had three extra wolves in the box, but their riders is either from another range or non Games Workshop so I need to replace them. I have thought a lot on how to do that, and the only solution I can find is to take some of the troops from the Goblin Regiment and turn them in to Wolf riders. This means I will get an odd number of Goblins in the Regiment, but I think that will be the best solution. I plan to use the Regiment box together with the Regiment box I already built as one unit and the numbers will just have to be what I can make them.

For both the Wolf Riders and the Goblin Regiment I will end up with a weird number of troops, so I am thining I could make a few Unit fillers to even the numbers. I am not sure if that is allowed in the AoS rules as of today, but I will check with the staff at Games Workshop Oslo if they recommend doing this or if I should just keep the odd numbers. Not sure what I will end up with for the Goblin Regiment, but for the Wolf riders I will end up with 13 and the normal would be 15. 

More Sylvaneth and Deathwatch ready for priming

This weekend has been quite productive, and I hope I can be productive for a few days of my short holliday as well.

I have built my Warsong Revenant, and I must say that this was one of the more tricky minis to assemble as there were some parts that was almot impossible to fit together in that exact spot they needed to get to. But it worked out in the end, and I got it on it's base on Saturday. After that I started with my last Treelord on Sunday and finished it this morning by gluing on the owl and a few "flies". 

So as of now all my Sylvaneth miniatures are assembled. Then starts the job with priming and painting, but I need to have some better weather before I can prime as it is raining right now and I need to prime outside because of the fumes from the rattle cans. I might also need to go to the store and get some more double sided tape to use for placing the minis on the cardboard box I use for priming. But I will use what I have first and see how far that will get me.

I have also finished putting shoulderguards on the last 10 Marines of my Deathwatch army (unless there is a box with Space Marines that can not be used as Gatekeepers that I just neeed to have for something else, or some very cool new Deathwatch that is released). The Space Wolves I just finished was part of the box with the new Ghazghkull Thraka model and I got the box to get him. And that is also the same with the last Space Wolf box I got as they were part of a box with another army I wanted. 

Because of them the Watch fortress Alamo Bexar had to add a sixth watch company. This last unit of Wolves were Primaris Marines and they were not supposed to have solid shoulder guards on both sides. They also came with plain shoulderguards as they were supposed to use "stickers" for the Space Wolf symbols and I couldn't have that since all my other Marines in the army has chapter symbols that are made from plastic. So I had to do a lot of cutting on their right shoulders to get them small enough to fit the shouder guards I bought at Games Workshop outside of the existing shouders. On their left shoulders they have the Dethwatch shoulder guards like everybody else in the army, and this is where the Space Wolf symbols were supposed to go originally. I got a new, sharp blade in my scalpel and got to work. I managed to get all the new sholder guards on, but during the process I also cut myself several times in the right thumb, one of the times so deep I had to stop for a while to stop the bleeding and get a bandaid on. These Marines will also be primed first chance I get.

The next thing I have planned to build now is an old campain set with Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines to get that big box out of the house.  And also some units for my Gloomspite Gitz army and Orks as I plan to go to the cabin in Sweden tomorrow to check that everything is ok there, and then I will bring some more stuff back home with me. Not too much though as I have so many things at home to build, but I figure if I bringsomething there to store for a while, I can bring something home to build...

Treebeard is built

Finally managed to finish building Treebeard. The job itself didn't take more than two sessions once I got started. Had a hard time with some of the instructions as the illustration pictures was even worse in the Middle Earth range than in the regular range of Aos and Warhammer 40K.

Here we see the Ancient Treebeard standing next to the Treelord Ancient. As we can see there is quite a difference between them,. Treebeard has thicker and more natural looking legs, but the rest of the body is skinnier and has a lot less branches. 

I was surprised that Treebeard looked so small when I built him, but I see when he is built that he is about the same size as the Treelord Ancient. 

it is impossible to see on this picture, but to make Treebeard blend in a little bit more to the Sylvaneth range I made sure he had an owl sitting on him. The owl is sitting on a stump on his head, just about where the Hobbits could sit if I would like to have them on the miniature. I had originally thought I might replace them with a Duardin, but when I saw how tiny the Hobbit figures were I scrapped that idea immediately.  

I stopped by Games Workshop in Oslo yesterday afternoon and picked up what I was missing to finish the Treelord minis (or rather Treebeard and the Blood Bowl tree) and that was 105 mm oval base. I had ordered them a little over a week ago together with a Skitarii Marshal for my Mechanicus army in 40K and a White Dwarf magazine and the new Sisters of Battle codex that was released this weekend. 
With the bases in house it means I can finish the treelords and prepare them for priming. Treebeard just needs to be glued to the base, so he is easy to fix. For the Blood Bowl tree I want to add some height to the base, so I will have to work a bit with that. The idea is to build up a platform of rocks, and maybe some cork in the middle, and then place the tree on top of that. If I end up with cork in the middle I will make sure it is painted with Astrogranite technical paint, but if I can get the same result just using natural rocks I think that would be best. Another positive thing with doing that is that I can add some branches (leftover back parts from the Dryads) in the cracks to make it look a lot more that it is part of the undergrowth in a forest. I have lots of  packs with rocks from Games Workshop, so it is just a matter of finding rocks that is stack-able enough.

I also picked up my Warsong Revenant, and I will build that and the final Treelord next, before working on some of my other armies. I have a unit of Space Wolve that I need to do some work on to get them in to the Deathwatch, and ots of Necrons and Space Marines to build.

The Sylaneth army is slowly growing

 The Sylvaneth army is slowly growing again.

I have assembled my Ylthari's guardians box with Ylthari and three guardians, and they will work as one unit in my army as they have special rules for hust these four minis. I've also assembled two boxes (five minis in each) of the Tree Revenants that will work as one unit with full command. I have painted up a regular Dryad in the color I want to use for the spirits, and have tried two different colors of washes on it to decie what to use on the minis. I am quite happy with the green now, so the next step is to paint some of it with the color I use for bark, and then a branch will be painted with the yellowish brown I use for young woood as I plan to use that for the hair of my Tree Revenants. I am sure the bark paint will work with the green, but not hundred percent shure the yellowish brown will. But I have to try it to make sure, and if it doesn't work I need to go back to the worktable and think out something else that can look either magical or like wood.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the blog before, but the final (for now) three Kurnoth hunters are just waiting to be primed. This gives me a legal unit with swords and a legal unit with schythes. They will grow to six figures in each unit with time, and I might add more units with bows and swords but I think I will keep the Scythes to one unit of six. It's not that they are bad models, it's just that I feel I need more ranged weapons and swords work better with Duardin blacksmiths than schythes do in my humble opinion.

The original Treelord Ancient is built and ready to be primed. He will be the only Treeord Ancient built from the riginal kit, then I have the short but stubby tree from Blood Bowl and I also just got my Treebeard model rom Lord of the Rings in the house.
The Treebeard model was a lot smaller than I had expected, but the parts look great so I am sure it will look amazing. One of the ideas I had thought about was replacing a Hafling with a Duardin, but that will not look good when Treebeard himself is the size he is. So I will build him without anyone ridng on him.
Because the Blood Bowl tree is so short I would love to raise the base to get some elevation and I will see if I can do this with rocks, building up a rock pile, and maybe I will use some cork in the middle to get the right size. I will do some experimenting with the rocks I have and see what I can come up with. The main reason for making sort of a rock pile is to save on the technical paint as I spent way too much on the base of my Sons of Behemat general that I only built with cork.

The final mini I have built for this army is Druanti the Arch-Revenant. This is the only miniature in the range that has wings and can fly. I am not entirely sure how I will paint this up either, but I'm figuring a mix between the regular Dryads and the Tree Reveants, with more green in the bark than the other trees.

What remains to build now is Treebeard and my final Treelord that will be a young lord, then I have built all the minis I currently own, but ths army will grow with time but I don't think I will buy more before what I have now is painted.

So, what is going on now?

It has been a long time without a proper update again, even in this ties of Covi-19 I don't seem to get the hang of regulat painting sessions and updates even though I did ok on the models work and paint for a while.

Games Workshop teased a great looking Sylvaneth Tree Revenant comming out somtime in the future, playing some sort of "flute of life" and transporting some soldpods (if I am not mistaken). So since I want that miniature in my army I need to add some other Tree Revanents in the army too.

So far I have bought and built a unit of 10 Tree Revenants with command, and I plan to make that the standard unit size as a unit can be from 5 to 30. By makingthe units any bigger it will take too many miniatures to make the amount of units that I need.
I have also ordered a box of Ylthati's Guardians, a unit of 4 Tree Revenants that really is a unit from Warhammer Underworlds but the unit is also a legal unit for Age of Sigmar. They should be in store waiting for me, along with Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings range.

I have been working with asembling some units for my Gloompite Gitz army. The first unit is a unit that doesn't seem to be an official unit anymore unfortionately, the Gnarly Cavesquigs. I hope I have another unit of these in storage as they ar the best looking Cave squigs ever made and 10 squigs is enough for one unit. If I doesn't have anymore I will blend them in to an existing unit just to get them on the table.

The oher unit I hve been woking with is not relly a single unit, but a single set from Forgeworld. 

 It is called The Night Goblin Command Set and consist of one shaman doing some heavy stuff, one standard bearer with a big stick with two banners on, and a grot riding a giant squig with a lot of armor on it. They all looks great, but I think I need to use them as separate figures or in other units. I will probably use the Standard berer as the standard bearer for the Goblin King or his highest ranking General. The goblin on a giant cave squig I am sure I can field alongside some of the others I have, I will have to check the rules to see how many there can be in a unit, and the Shaman is probably a sngle figure anyway.

Aslo I have been able to paint some skin on a couple more of my Sons of Behemat gargants. I am trying out a couple of different skintones as I like some variety. The Bugmans Glow got to be very dark pink when used on the white primer, so I am exited to see how it will look after a wash and drybrush. I will keep using Kislev Flesh on the original bothers and my other Mega Gargant, and I will also use Cadian Fleshtone on some of them.

There hasn't been many updates lately, but that is not because of lack of projects. It is more the lack of being able to finish what I start.

Since the last update Games Workshop have changed the setup of my Sylvaneth Army. The way they have done this is by teasing an upcomming release of a Tree revenant playing a sort of "flute of life".
I want to have that model in my army, but I can't have only one Tree Revenant as that would look very weird. So even though I originally planned on only having trees I am now going to get myself some boxes of Tree Revenants to add to the army. I still will have a majority of plain trees of all sorts, but I will have a few units of Tree Revenants. Exactly how many it will be, time will show.

I have also decided after reading about the Ironbark clan that I ned more Kurnough Hunters. The idea now is to expand all units from tree to six strong. I will also need one or two more units with swords, so that mean I will need several boxes, but I will do it a little over time. 
I have also decided I will get the Threebeard figure from Lord of the Rings to add to the army as a Treelord Ancient. I had planned to get the regular Ents as well, but I think they will stand out too much so I have decided (well, almost decided at least) to leave them out of the army.
At the moment I am working on glueing together the last three Kurnough Hunters that I have in the house, to complete the units with swords and scythes. This gives me one legal unit of each type. Then as I wrote above each unit will expand in size at a later time. I will also assembe the last two Treelords so I can prime and paint them. I will make one as a Treelord and one as an Ancient.

For Warhammer 40K I have started to paint up my captains for my Deathwatch army. They have been standing on my desk with their capes done for a long time, and I figure I need to get some work done on this army as it is all assembled and primed black. So far I have done the faces and the weapon casisngs for my 6 captains, but I plan to keep working on them  a little at the time until I can call them done. I also intend to take a trip to Games Workshop in the near future, as they hav reopened after being closed due to Covid-restrictions in Oslo. If the store is not too crowded when I m there I will ask for tips on how to re-create the blue glaze that is out of production now. I would very much like to use that on the bases both for Deathwatch and Kharadron Overlords from AoS so I need to use something that is available now. I am thinking that I might be able to use a blue contrast paint thinned with the Lamian medium made for the Contrast range. But I will hear if they have any better ideas.

I also have some Ork models standing on my desk that I would like to paint up. I have the dinosaur gun-platform that I need to prime and paint but I have not decided on what color to use yet so I might just prime it and leave it on the shelf until I decide. 
The Wazbom Blastajet I primed black and will be painted black, so I think that is the unit that will be finished first. I will have to cover everything in a thin layer of black paint so that I can cover up any mistakes as the paint from the pot and the primer has a different shine to it, and then there are a lot of different details to paint. Still I don't think it is too many different colors. I am thinking that I will use two metal colors (one copper and one plain metal) and then sme tubes will need red paint, and the pilot needs several colors. But I think that will mostly be it.
The last unit is the new Haza Hoff. I have actually re-written my fluff to explain how Ghazghkull Thraka can be in two different armies with two different names, and I think I have come up with an explanation that will work well both for the real Ghazhgkull and for my warboss. It will need several colors and has a lot of details so I will take my time to make sure I paint him as a centerpiece. He is not the biggest model in my army, but he is perhaps the most important and a lot of people will probably look at him if I field him. 

I have just finished going through the entire blog, I have fixed several spelling mistakes and fixed the label tags for every post.
It was quite interesting to read through everything I had written and see when I talked about doing things for the first time and how long it takes to get things done.
I have a few examples that stands out that I would like to mention:

- Blimp for the Dwarfs: This was first mentioned in a blog post way back in Novermber 2010 where I talked about building a Dwarf Airforce. This was many years before we got Kharadron Overords who are sky-travelling Dwarfs, and the only flying Dwarfs was a Gyrocopter set. And one of the things I talked about for this Airforce was to make a blimp. It took 3 years before I named the bimp the Badyear Blimp (pun on Goodyear). It is still just a few pieces here and there... The Airforce got a Gyrobomber for Armies on Parade in 2017, but that is all they have at the moment. I still have plans both for a blimp and for balloons,

- Building of towers: Back in January 2011 I said I would have several towers finished before the year was over. They are all built now, and I have started painting them. So maybe they will be done by the end of 2021 as sort of a 10-year aniversary.

- In 2014 I talked about my scary forest, and that is as good as done now. Only thing missing is to paint the rim of the base and that will be done as soon as I have cleaned up my desk a little so I have room to put it on the paper covers while painting. This mean I have to paint leaves on about 12 Sylvaneth Dryads first,

- In August 2015 I talked about having gotten some trees. Back then I think they were still part of the Wood Elf range, but now they are known as Sylvaneth and is their own standing army. These trees are some of the ones I am working on now... Some of them have been painted up before, but then they were primed again with a light primer when I decided to use Contrast paint on my trees. It is still the same minis that are released today, and the same sprues.

Army size Warhammer 40.000

In the last blogpost we sized up the armies for Age of Sigmar (formerly known as Warhammer Fantasy). I had planned to put everything in one post, but there was so much to write that the post would be too long. So I split it up, and without any more smalltalk let us take a look at the Warhammer 40.000 armies and say a little bit about how I see the armies coming out in the end. As with the Age of Sigmar post we will go from smallest to largest, and we'll start with four separate armies that are so small they probably will end as warbands or mashed together as one army.

The smallest of the four is my Sisters of Silence. There are just two units made for this army, so it is really hard to make this in to an army of their own. My idea is to use the Sisters as an addon for Deathwatch, Space Marines or use them in a bigger army of the Inquisition.

Then I have the Inquisitors and their retinues. They can be used by themselves, but like with the Sisters of Silence they will not make an army with that many points. But the thing with Inquisitors is that they can request support from the units they want, so they can get Deathwatch, Astra militarum, Space Marines or combinations to fight with them .I have some Inquiitors, some of their retinues, and some Grey Knights that will make the basis of this army.

The Adeptus Custodes might have enough points to be a small army by themselves. They are the protectors of the Emperor, but after the great rift happened some of them have fought on other planets lone or beside other Space maine chapters. 

One army that quite probably will evolve in to something bigger is the Siters of Battle. I have alays said that I would like to have an army of them when they came as plastic minis, and we are there now. So far they are just a warband, but I am not sure what this will end up as. It will not be a huge army, but it might be an army on its own. Games Workshop keep pushing out nice models for this range so I know it will grow...

Now lets move in to what is full armies. And first out, just as with the Age of Sigmar (Fantasy) is the army with the biggest models. The Imperial Knights. I am not really sure how many models I will end up with for this army, but it will probably be a little more than the Sons of Behemat. I will have three sizes of knights, and they will work as a separate army or as backup for other Imperial armies.

The next army when it comes to the number of minis is my Genestealer cult. They will have a variety of models, and will come both from the Planetary Defence Force and the mines on the planet where they are. It will be mostly infantry, but they will also have a few Leman Russ tanks and Chimera troop transports as well as mining vehicles (these are great looking minis) and bikes.

Then we have the Adeptus Mechanicus. This will be a nice size army, but nothing too big. They will be a varied force with Skitarii as the basic troops but they will have lots of different support elements. This will certainly be a stand alone army of a certain size, and if they ned to they can call in the Knights for support.

The two next armies will probably be about the same size, but some has to go first, so I will put the Chaos Space Marines first. They will have two Knights fighting along side them, but apart from that most of the army will be infantry. They are really two different Chaos armies from the same chapter so I can either split them up if I want to have a Nurgle army or a classic Chaos Space Marine army and run them with just that rulebook, or I can run them togther as one big army. I am planning on using them as one army as much as I can. I have some old models in this army, but I do believe they are all legal still, as well as newer units especially in the Nurgle part of the army.

Then we have the Necrons. They are my own dynasty, and all units are units that are available in the current range as I started collecting them not too long ago. I don't have all the models for this army yet, but they come in a little at a time. Some of the units are ready to be based, but there is still lots of the army on the sprues. This is probably the army that use the fewest colors as the base for everything is metal. Then I have two contrast paints that I use to get some colors on to the metal.

The one that just didn't make it to the top three is my Deathwatch army. It is all built and 95% of it is primed, but I need to paint it up. Only unit that is painted is my test model who also is my Watch Master. I have one final unit that isn't primed and that is some Primaris Space Wolves. I need to find a primaris upgrade kit for them as I want to have shoulderguards with printed chapter inignia on them, but that is hard to find. I look for it every time I am at the Games Workshop store, but haven't seen it yet. Next time I go I might just order them online.

The third biggest army is my Orks. This is the army made for doing conversion work as well as just  having fun with it. I am currently building several units for this army, and writing their backstory. I have lots of units for this army in my storage that I can't reach because of Covid-19 restrictons, but there are plenty to work with at home as well. I still buy units for this army from time to time as I get conversion ideas or if I find I would like to have more of a certain unit. This is the army I go to when I want to havesome fun.

The second biggest army is the Gatekeepers Space Marines. My original idea was to make an entire chapter, 1000 Marines strong with all the support elements that go with it, but I don't think the army will be that big as Games Workshop started to fase out the original Marines and replace them with Primaris Marines. I am not the biggest fan of Primaris, even though they do have some nice models so I plan to have about one company of Primaris but who knows maybe there will be more in the end.

The biggest army is the Astra Militarum, or as I like to call them the Imperial Guard. I love tanks, so this army has a lot, also artillery and troop transports. I use all kinds of infantry in the army. Cadians are my main force so far, as they are the easiest minis to get a hold of, but there is also quite a lot of Catachans with Tempestus Scions a little rarer in the mix. I love Ogryns and Bullgryns, so I have a whole lot of them. I think I could field an entire army just with them if that is legal. I know it is legal to have an all tank army so I can certainly field that, but what I like most is to field a good mix of everything.
This will probaly not be an army that I will ever call finished, but when I get to a certain point I will only add more units if Games Workshop releses something brand new that I feel I need to have. But for now I am adding units, especially infantry, when I don't buy too much else from Games Worshop as I am short on Infantry units. Like many of my other armies this is also in every state from finished to still on sprues, and I have a lot primed, especially tanks and other vehicles. 

Army size Age of Sigmar (Fantasy)

I thought I would use this blogpost to size up my armies for Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40.000 and say a little bit about how I see the armies coming out in the end. This blogpost will be so long that I will split it in two posts.

I will go from smallest to largest for both systems, and we will start with Age og Sigmar (Fantasy):

Sons of Behemat is the army with the biggest figures, but also the army with the fewest figures. This army has just 11 figures (can't get myself to call them minis). These 11 makes this army about 2400-2500 points, so this is a full army as it is. Still I liked building the Gargants, so I am not saying that there won't be more in the future, but even if I double the amount of figures it would still be the smallest army when it comes to figure-count. This is the only AoS army where all the figures are assembled and primed. I have 2 of the 11 figures painted up, so the army is about 10% done.

The next army in size is my Ogor Mawtribes. I used to think the Ogors were quite large minis, but after working with the Sons of Behemat they are rather small compared to them. Still, they are bigger than most other minis. The Ogors are great figures, and I have 1 unit painted up and 1 unit partially built, the rest are still on their sprues. I do have quite a lot of minis for the army, so it is really a matter of assembling, priming and painting. One of the next things I am going to get built is actually the only scenery model for this army and it is called a Great Mawpot. When I can get to my miniature storage room (unable because of Covid-19 restrictions at the moment) I plan to bring some of the boxes home so I can start to assemble some of them as they are great minis. This is one army where I will step away from my base rules, as they come from the mountains of the North I will add snow to their bases. Some will have all snow bases (the finished unit do have this) and some will just have patches of snow. I haven't really decided if I should use grey rock bases or brown mud bases where I don't have snow. I might do a little of both.

The army on third smallest is probably something that will shock some who have read this blog for some time. It is actually my "legal" Duardin army, at the moment called The Dispossessed. The Duardins I have that are legal but can't be used for the Dispossessed  can be used for cities of Sigmar together with my Bretonnians that can count as Empire models and I think as an army they will be about the same size as my Dispossessed. 

Then we have the steampunk dwarfs, the Kharadron Overlords. They are an army I hope to spend a lot of time with pretty soon, as I am very fond of them. At the moment I have 1 unit (the smallest ship) painted up, but I need to do the base an I also need to glue the globe to the ship. I laso have a test model for the infantry pinted, but I might change the colors on him yet... This will be a fairly sizeable army as I love the ships and a lot of the units in this army. I had originally planned for them to have bases that looked a bit like clouds or sky, but one of the main ingrediencies for making these bases has gone out of production, so I need to see if I can find a replacement for that component. If not I will think up something fitting, and then it would probably be the grey rock base of the duardins or something to match the decks of the ships. I will have to check up with the Games Workshop staff and listen to their advice if I can make the bases I originally intended. I will paint up models first and when I have some units done I can start to think about the bases.

The third biggest army is probably the Sylvaneth. I have a handful of Treelords from the original range, and I will add Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings range, and I might add the other Ent model as well. Then I have the low but wide tree from the Bloodbowl range that will be a druid, and lots of regular trees. I also have several of the old woods that work as scenery for this range. I have painted some of this army, and I have several primed minis waithing to get their bark and leaves painted. And still there are a lot on sprues.

The second biggest army for AoS is the Chaos forces. If you break them down by Chaos Gods then some of them will be rather small, but I like to look at everything Chaos as one big army as it was intended before Age of Sigmar split it up in to factions, and then it is quite a big army. I have forces for Blades of Khorn, Hedonites of Slaanesh and Maggotkin of Nurgle and also what used to be called Chaos Unlimited but they go by the name of Slaves to Darkness now.
When I get all these forces together the Chaos army is my second largest army. I have some really old metal models for this army, but most of those are still legal to field even though they might not be the newest versions out there and they might not be characters anymore but they are still legal to field.
I also have some chaos deamons that I can field along side this army.

The biggest Age of Sigmar army is the Gloomspite Gitz. This might also be the most varied army I have, and like Chaos it can be split up in to separte smaller armies fr smaler games. I can use my Trolls as an army of their own, and I can also do that with my squig units, or I can use everything as one big army as I plan to do most of the time. I still have some units I want to get for this army, but I have tons of models for this model in storage and also some in all stages from being still on sprues to being painted. I also have some older models that I have based on bases filled with turf, and I plan to take them home from storage and do their bases again in the new style. I have plenty of spare bases, so that is no probem.
Like the Chaos army there are all kinds of models here from old metal models through resin to several generations of plastic models. There are even some Forgeworld models in the mix.

I also have a large Dwarf army, and I guess they are about the same size as the Chaos force or maybe just a little smaller. But this army is not legal for the Age of Sigmar edition we have now so I am not counting them officially in this setting. Still I want to build and paint all the models, and the ones I bought that were already painted I intend to re-paint to get them to fit with my army even though they are painted quite well. Maybe I can play the old Warhammer Fantasy game, I know some people still do. But even if I don't play them they will still be a great looking army and I love Dwarf models as the old ones have so much character. I have lots of painted Dwarfs but lots still on sprues.

More orks

So far these last few weeks, I have finished building quite a lot of Orks. I have the Stegadon walker that I have showed off. This is just waiting for me to find a box with a battlewagon, either in my storage when I am allowed to go there (Covid-19 restrictions) or when Games Workshop Oslo opens again (closed at least two more weeks due to Covid-19 restrictions) so that I can get an Ork gunner. I have plans to get a couple more Battlewagons in the army anyway, and one of them will be a Gunwagon with the main gun from a Stompa, so that will not need its gunners.

I have also finished a Wasbom Blastajet, a unit of 11 Boyz,  a unit of 5 Nobz, Ghazghull Thraka and his Grot banner bearer, a unit of 3 Meganobz, a start collecting box from Age of Sigmar that will give my army a unit of 10 Bad Moon boyz, 1 weirdboy and a unit of 3 Bikers that has replaced their bikes with Gore Grunta beasts.

And today I plan to build a Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy and maybe also a Boomdakka Snazzwagon. Then I will prime some of the Orks I have built so that they can get their paint later. And if my hands don't shake too much today I might start to paint more of my Gargants for my Sons of Behamat AoS army.

Then next for the Orks there will be the remians of the old bord game that was released some yers ago (think it was called Speedfreaks?) and that is one wehicle and at least 3 bikers (maybe even 6). I have built the Shokkjump Dragsta and almost finished painting it, so I am thinking the remaining vehicle might be a Kustom Boosta-blasta (at least I hope it is as I am currently missing that in the army).

The Ork Waaagh!

 Today I want to rant a little bit about my Ork army.

As I was looking through the current Ork codex, I was a little baffled by all the pictures of the good looking armies in there. What baffled me was not that the armies looked good, everything Games Workshop puts in their books are painted with a high quality and the pics usually look quite well. No, what baffled me a bit was the unison look of the armies. They all looked like they were one big group of Orks come together for some sort of action group photo.

And that got me thinking, what would my Waaagh! look like on the table? 

Being an avid collector, my Waaagh! has several different generations of figures and vehicles and is just as ramshackle as I think an Ork Waaagh! should be. But still these pictures has gotten me to start thinking of being more color coordinated. 

I have decided to be more conscious about what colors I use to make it all fit nicely together. 

I have four basic colors for my vehicles at the moment, and I will try to keep it on that level. My Speedfreaks have red vehicles, and they need to have that as red goes faster. I am using two different reds but will try to use mostly Khorne Red for basic colors and then I can do some details in Mephiston Red if I feel the need on a few vehicles for diversity. My biggest vehicle is painted Mephiston red, and I will not repaint that. That is the Battle fortress of my Ork "General" and is made of Battlewagons and Baneblade tanks by the staff at Games Workshop in Oslo many years ago. It will not be used much in games though as it is so massive (I think it would be an army of its own) but it is cool to field when showing off the army and hopefully I could use it in an Apocalypse-type of game.

My biggest Mek in my army, Big-Mek MekGyvver, likes black and I already have one Stompa and one Morkanaught that is painted black. I will keep painting some things black with either Khorne red or Averland Sunset (yellow) details for his benefit. And I think that for the future all my Meks will have black vehicles as this will add some consistency to a multi-colored army. If you see a black vehicle on the battlefield you know it belongs to a Mek. It might not be driven by a Mek, but it is "owned" by one...

I also have some wehicles painted up in yellow in Averland Sunset, and I think that is a nice color to paint so naturally I will also have that color in the army. It is also a nice contrast color to use on red vehicles. What needs to go fast will be red, and what doesn't need speed can be yellow. It will not apply 100% to my planes, as I would like to have some yellow bombers, but the fighter planes will be red though, so maybe it still applies after all...

The final vehicle color I have at the moment is metallic. I have one Megatrakk Scrapjet that I am really happy with that is painted metallic and heavily washed with Nuln Oil, and I would like to use that color for some other vehicles as well (the Scrapjet have red fins though as they add speed). One of the vehicles that will get some of this treatment is the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy, but on the areas where there has been a lot of squigs I will add some heavy rust effects. 

I will try to keep with these colors for all future vehicles, but I will need to add brown fur for my furry animals and I need to find a good color that is not too screaming for my Stegadon walker(s).

The Orks themselves I should also try to keep in a few colors, and lot of them will have black clothing, sort of the traditional Ork color. Then some armor will be red or yellow and there will be some metallic colors and rust as well as needed. Some of my orks already have some deep purple, but I will try to keep it at that and not add lots of other colors. The only exception to this rule will be my Flash Gitz that might get a few more bright colors to liven them up, but they are supposed to stand out so I think that is just fitting.

I also have some Grots that stand out from the rest, and the are my Tech-Grots that work for MekGyvver, as they have taken to wearing red clothing as they see that this is the custom for their enemies like the Astra Militarum, Space Marines and Adeptus Mechanicus. These Tech-Grots are rather few though, and except for those manning the Stompa called Da Punisha they stay where the Meks have their workspaces.

As for skin-color, I have used different greens from I started and up to today, but for the Orks and Grots that will be painted in the future, I have decided on what colors to use for their skin so from now on they will get the same skin colors. Waaagh! Flesh for the Orks and a light green for the Grots.

Presenting the Armored Stegadon Walker

I promised some pictures of the armored Stegadon when it was built, and now the Mek-Grots of BigMek Gyvva have done the job and are ready to present it...

The Idea was to make my own Squiggoth, as this model cost about 1000 Norwegian kroner (pluss postage and fees) from Forgeworld. So for a half the cost (actually a little less than half) and the use of my bitz boxes I managed to put together the little brother of the Squggoths, the Stegadon. I did not expect it to be so small though, but I made the best of what I had to work with.

 Here it is from the side and from the front.

 

I built the Stegadon after the instructions provided by Games Workshop, but stopped once I had built the animal and the basic platforms on its back. Then I went into my bitz boxes for the Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard) and collected shields from the Ogryn/Bullgryn sets and an autocannon from my  heavy weapons sets. I tried arming this little beast with two heavy bolters but they would not fit properly because of how the front platform is constructed in the set, and I also thought about using mortars, but there was not enough room for that with the current configuration (but I have not totally dropped this idea yet). 

I had two thoughts when making this little beast. First I wanted to have something to walk alongside my organic bikes (Gore-Gruntas from Age of Sigmar) that I plan to build shortly (just need to build some Boyz so I get some spare hands with shootas as the Orks in the AoS start collecting box all have choppas as they are made for another time and place). 

Secondly I've been wanting to use some of those Ogryn/Bullgryn spare shields for a long time as they take up so much space in my bitz box. I have thought about making defense lines with them, but decided it would be much cooler to let the Orks have some of them as spoils of war. I have so many left that I have enough to make at least one more of these walkers if I feel like it at a later time, and I can also equip a unit of Orks with these shields if I like (but I fear the shields might look too big for them as the Ogryns/Bullgryns are quite a lot bulkier than your average Ork). 

I am very happy with how the front armor and the back part of the side armor turned out on this build. The back could only be one single shield because of the space I had available so it is as it is, and the platform is designed so the front part stands out further than the back so I had to add a single shield on each side of the front platform. That is why I'm thinking of using steel girders if I make another one as I could have the same width for the entire platform. Also it would be nice to fit a little more armament on such a beast.

The crew for this one will be a Grot gunner and a Grot tech (had one Grot with a wrench left after building my first stompa some time ago). I am considering putting an Ork on the back of the platform to have command of the walker, but I might sacrifice him for some more dakka and a few more Grots. This is something I don't have to decide on right away as the weapons will be added after some of the paintjob is done so I can reach the details that needs painting.

For my next AoS to 40K project, I am playing with the idea of making something with a set from the Ogor Mawtribes range, the set that can either build an Ironblaster or a Gnoblar Scraplauncher. Not sure what kind of weapon it would be yet, but the Gnoblars in this set is just amazing, and they would probably make for some nice Grots for other builds in the future if I decide to not use all of them in one build. From looking at the original sets, I either see this as some sort of walking artillery piece with a cannon of some sorts, or maybe as some sort of catapult lobbing some type of small bombs.

Right now I am building a Wazbom Blastajet for the Orks and this will leave me some spare rokkits and bombs and "big shootas" that I can use for my next Stompa but also maybe for a Scraplauncher or a future Stegadon build.

Something for the Orks

I got my new conversion-piece a few days ago.

I plan to convert a Seraphon Stegadon dinosaur in to a walking fortress for my Orks. Forgeworld have some very beautiful models of Squiggoth and a giant Squiggoth, and I was hoping for my Stegadon to be about the size of a Squiggoth, but it seems after I took a look in the box that it is a lot smaller.

Time will tell how many Orks I can field on the Stegadon, but the idea is that it will have a heavy weapon of some sort (probably autocannon or a big shoota) up front, and some troop carrying capacity. I might need more than one to transport a unit though.  

The Orks will be shielded with armor from the Ogryn/Bullgryn box as I have a lot of the big shields in my bits boxes and the whole idea with this conversion was to use some of those to free up some space in the box.

I will post pictures once I have done the build.

Sons of Behemats update

Just a quick little update on the Sons of Behemat army.

I have gotten the last two Gargants home. News came that the Games Workshop store had to close down for two weeks due to covid-19 restrictions in Oslo, so I took a quick trip to the store on Monday (they closed from Tuesday morning) and collected my mail order with the Mancrusher box, a dinosaur from the Seraphon range that I plan to convert to a Warhammer 40K Ork "vehicle" and the new Uriel Ventris Space Marine figure. 

I found how to make the magical item in the hand of the weird Gargant, or at least I found the piece.
I was gifted a burning globe that belongs to Magnus the Red (Primarch in Warhammer 40.000), but the builder of the fig liked him much better without it, so he gave it to me and I am now trying to decide if I should cut it to get the flames on one side stand straight up or if I should just use it as it is. Booth look rather good, so I will try to figure it out by trying to hold it at different angles and see what I like the most. If it had been smoke I think it would have to stand straight up from the hand, but since it is flames they might just as well go more sideways than upwards. I don't need to decide before an our or so before priming, and it look like the weather will be good for priming all week.

Hopefully the last two Mancrushers will also be built when I go out to prime, but if not they will follow shortly. I still haven't decided how to paint their pants, but that is no stress anyway as I can decide while painting the other four. I also need to decide what heads to give them, but usually I decide on that when I build anyway. 

I hope people will find that the army has enough diversity once it's done, even though it is based only on two models (Mega-Gargant and Manchrusher Gargant). At least I've enjoyed thinking out how to build them and make them look different and making my modifications.

I will make a post just showing all the Gargants when I have built the final two, and also post pictures as the army is painted up.

Sons of Behemat - first models finished

Here are the first two models I can call finished for my Sons of Behemat army. This is not a gargantuan army, but it is an army of Gargants. The finished army will consist of 2 Mega-Gargants and 9 Mancrusher Gargants and this will give me 2420 points. This army can also be played at 1940 points with only 6 Mancrushers.

The big gargant in the pic is the General of the army, Beechmast Candlesnuff, and on his left is Drumstick Truffleclub.

Let us start with our Mancrusher. Drumstick is primed with Grey Seer (all models in this army will get a light primer color), and his skin is painted Kislev Flesh and then washed with Reikland Flesh shade and then drybrushed with Kislev Flesh again. 

I plan to use different colors on the pants of the Mancrushers, and that will be colors that they would meet while wandering in the world. This one has black pants, as my gargants often fight alongside the Gloomspite Gitz so he has probably gotten fabric from them.

He has a club with swords and axes driven through it, and in his other hand he is holding a soldier he has picked up from the battlefield. 

Here you can see why his name is Drumstick, as he has a peg leg. I saw this conversion in a White Dwarf magazine and decided I wanted to do it. But I think they did it on the other leg, because I followed the instructions, but his leg got too short. Not a big problem though, as I had some rocks I had cut away from my tower walls, so I glued them on the base and made a little pile of rocks for him to rest his leg on. 

The soldier he holds in his left hand I painted with a Khorne red jacket and Averland Sunset pants, and I have decided to do that for all humans that appear as part of this army, and I might also do this for my Cities of Sigmar army that I will build eventually if I don't find a more fitting paint scheme before I start with that army.  

Every figure in this army has a bird on them. Either on the Gargant itself, or somehere on the base. The bird is painted black and drybrushed with Russ Gray.  

The Mega Gargant is a huge model, but still I wanted to make my general stand out more as I will have two Mega-Gargants in the army (you never know if the army will be tree or more some time in the future though). As he is a Gate Crasher I decided it would look good to have him walking over walls. This meant I had to make quite a tall base, as I wanted him to step on the top of one wall, so the base was filled with cork and it was quite a lot to cover with basing material. I used almost two bottles of Stirland Battlemire. I built this Gargant straight out of the box.

As one can see he has a bird sitting on the armor he has made and wrapped around his lower arm. To show how much bigger these Gargants are than the normal Gargants he is holding two soldiers in his hand instead of one. 

The base got the stone wall in front but I also placed one in the back that he could rest his back foot on.

This is what he looks like from behind. Here you can also see a little bit of the base an how it as built up with cork and covered with Stirland Battlemire. I painted the base like I do on my Sylvaneth Army with a green rim and three different greens drybruhsed over the brown of the Stirland Battlemire. 

That is all I have finished at the moment, but on my table now I have another Mega Gargant and two Mancrushers primed, and four Mancrushers that has gotten their bodies built but are still missing the bird and some other details like a club, some food or drink in the belt and some other details that I might want to add. One of them has some magical capabilities, so I would like to make something magical in one of his hands, and I am currently trying to think of a way to do this with what I have available on sprues or in bits boxes.

If you counted up the Gargants I have spoken of here, you will see that I am missing two Mancrusher Gargants. They are at Games Workshop in Oslo along with the Necron Rulebook, the new Uriel Ventris model and a few other things  I ordered. I had planned to go and get them this coming Wednesday, but today it was announced that all stores in Oslo will have to close down for at lest two weeks, so it might take a while before I can get them. But I have plenty of models to both paint and build, so I will not run out of projects in the mean time... 

I learned a bit painting up these two models, and I will bring that with me when painting up the rest of the army. 

Funny what you find when you are not looking for it...

I was at my monthly trip to my cabin yesterday to see that everything was ok, that there wasn't mice in the house and that the water and power was working as it should. 

After this was checked I decided to look through my cardboard boxes filled with Warhammer stuff to see if I could find the missing cupola for Skullvane Manse. I seemed to remember that I had started to paint it, and I had long since decided that I would not have it on Skullvane Manse but on a tower instead. And not only did I find what I was looking for, but I found so much more...

First I found the cupola, and it was sitting on top of two Deathknell watch towers stacked on top of each other. That means that somewhere I might have one more base without a tower that I can use as a Chaos Shrine. I found that the tower sits very sturdy on the base without being glued on, so I have decided to paint the tower base as a Chaos shrine (after all it is rocks on the outside with a big pool of skulls and blood inside) so I can use the base separately or it can hold up my tower (and then no one will see the shrine anyway). There are nothing with seeing inside the tower, so I intend to glue the rest of the parts together (two tower elements and the cupola) and that will be a good astronomers tower I think. 

But while I looked for that, I also found some pretty nice Warhammer 40.000 scenery that I had built and primed before (and I have lots that isn't primed as well and also quite a lot that is still on sprues) so I think that when I have finished with most of my old Fantasy and also some of the newer Age of Sigmar scenery I will start to bring home some 40K scenery to finish. It is a little bit easier maybe to do the 40K as I would like that to be in a few different colors. I paint the bunkers gray, but I would like to have my buildings in several colors. I think I will try to use some of the spray cans I have with different colors on some of the buildings, and then also paint several of them in a dark green like Dark Angels Green. Then everything will be washed with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil.

And that's not all...

I knew I had a box of River Trolls (now known as Fellwater Troggoths) in a box where I have my greenskin stuff (along with some old human boxes like Empire generals and Bretonnian knights and archers and even a few boxes of zombies it turned out). In that box I found something I didn't even knew I had and that is regular Goblins. I think they were meant to live above ground in small villages while the Night Goblins lived in caves or under ground. I found two boxes called Goblin Regiment, each box containing 20 Goblins and I took one box with me home to see how they assemble. Being an old set I knew the instructions would be poor, but they were totally missing. Luckily it is not that hard to figure out how to assemble them.

I do not know how I would like to arm the Wolf Riders yet, but I think I will make two units of 20 with spears and shields. I was originally thinking of making one unit with spears and one with bows and arrows, but the Night goblins have units with bows and arrows too, so I think two units with spears would stand out a bit more on the battlefield. But I will make the final decision when I have built the first unit. 

I also brought with me the units I had with Spider Riders, and I look forward to building and painting those as well. They all come with square bases, so I need to see what size "round" bases that is most similar and see if I have enough of them or if I need to buy more. I will even check if it is ok to use square bases before I glue them to the bases, as the old Spider Rider bases has some nice details to them that I will loose if I switch.

 

2021 is upon us

The calendar says January 2021, the year of the Beleaguered Badger (according to Discworld). 

I have built and started to paint some of my old scenery from Warhammer Fantasy (that will be used for Age of Sigmar now) and it comes along slow but steady.
I am trying to find the best way to make the stone walls look natural and not just one color of gray, and I think I have worked out something that might work, but I will need to get more paint from the GW store in Oslo before I can complete some of the builidings. In the meantime I am trying to paint the parts that are not going to have these stone colors like the wood and natural rocks that are not cut to bricks. For Skullvane Manse I can do quite a lot without painting the stone walls. There are a lot of wood, other rocks and also some stone walls that are covered in something I could call plaster for lack of the real word for it (sort of like the concrete of the middle ages). I plan to paint that in more of an off-white color, and I got a good idea how I want it to look in the end.

I am also working on my New army for 2021, the Sons of Behemat. So far I have built and primed about half the army, and that is one Mega-Gargant and three Mancrusher Gargants. I had planned to have this army at about 2000 points, and this is 970 points. Because the Mancrusher Gargants come in packs of two I will get four more so I will get another 970 points with the Mega-gargant I have already bought but not built and three of the Mancrusher Gargants as they have a maximum unit size of three. Then I will get 180 points for one single Mancrusher gargant. I might make the last one a single Aleguzzler gargant that has only just woken up in a cave with a bad hangover. They both look the same, so I can use him as I wish. I am not sure of the rules, but this will give me either 1940 points if I don't use the last regular Gargant, or 2120 if I add him.

But it is not just only gargants I have been working on, I have also built and primed 15 Squig hoppers (and primed 15 Boingrot Bounderz), built and primed 6 Rockgut Troggoths and one Dankhold Troggboss. I know how I want to paint the Rockgut Troggoths but haven't found the colors yet I have two of the three, but need to find the darkest blue. I also have a regular Dankhold Troggoth to paint and I have planned to make him a darker blue as well, and a Mollog that will be more purple. These will all join my Gloomspite Gitz army.