The end of another week

Once again it's getting late on a Sunday. This week I have built almost all of the Leagues of Votann box that I got when they were first released. I have 3 Hernkyn Pioneers (the dudes on the hoverbikes) left to assemble, but I have made 20 Hearthkyn Warriors, 1 Einhyr Champion and 1 Kahl. I have decided to keep the head separate, so I have drilled a hole in to the bottom of each head and glued them on a stick thingy that Games Workshop sells. It gives me someplace to hold when I paint the head, and I can paint all around it. And I can paint the entire body and then just clip the head from the stick after and glue it to the body. Having it on the stick also makes it possible to prime it porperly. This is the same way I did it when I painted my Squats, so I am quite sure this will work out well.

I also painted the skin on my Sons of Behemat King and one of the other Mega-gargants. That leaves me with one Mega-gargant and 8 Mancrushers left to paint the skin on. Then comes all the other things that need to be painted on them. For the Mega-gargants it will be a lot of brown leather, while the Mancrushers will have colorful pants. One of them will have his pants painted in the bone and green that I use for my Cities of Sigmar army, and one will have his pants painted like the people being held by my finished Mega-gargant as that was the colorscheme I originally planned for my Cities of Sigmar army. I will also paint up some of the humans being held or running away as my Cities of Sigmar army.

Today in Gargant news...

This week I have been busy with life so I haven't done much Warhammer. But one thing I have done is looking over all my Mega-Gargants and Mancrushers and given them all individual names. I've had the names for a little while, but I had not decided what Gargant had what name. So this weekend I sat down with the lot, looked at them and wrote their names under their bases. Like I think I have said before the names for all my Sons of Behemat is the British common names for types of Fungus. The same type of names I use for my Gloomspite Gitz army, where all my Goblin characters have names like that. I had originally planned to name the Trolls like that too, but I think now that the Trolls should get some other kind of names to show that they are totally different creatures even though they are in the same army.

It is not the first time I do things this way, as my Sylvaneth Charachters all are named with the Latin name for different kind of trees and bushes. But the Sylvaneth are sort of higher beings, so I found it fitting that they had sort of "High Gothic" names (basically Latin), while Gargans and Gloomspite Gits are more down to earth simple beings that don't have so many fancy words so the Latin names would not work for them. Also it gives them a little more comedic side, and especially for the Gloomspite Gitz I find that very fitting. 

The coming week I plan to assemble some Squats or Leagues of Votann, and continue painting my Sons of Behemat army. I also plan to work on the backstory for my Necrons and Leagues of Votann. 

I have decided that my Necrons are from the Tang Dynasty, and that their king is Sherek Khan (Shere Khan is the big bad tiger from The Jungle Book, but I felt adding the k at the end made it more oriental). The Tang Dynasty is really from Chinese history, and was a very "successful" dynasty for about 300 years from 618 to 907 AD. The Khan is more Mongol I think, but this is not really historical so I allow myself that "adaption".

The Leagues of Votann army will either be called The Valiant Veteran Alliance of the Valiant Veteran Conglomerate, I haven't quite decided what I like the most yet. I think I need to see how the other Leagues that has these words in their names are organized and then decide how I want to organize my League and use what suits that best. I guess they could be an alliance, as I plan to paint them as similar as possible to my Necromunda Squats so they could certainly be part of the same alliance. 

More update on the gargants

This weekend I have finished building and priming the gargants for my Sons of Behemat army.

The status now is one Mega-gargant completely finished, but as I want to use his base for King Brodd, I need to paint up a new base for him. I have placed a fence on the base so I need to paint that, but apart form that the rest is just filling the base with Stirland Battlemire and Stirland Mud, then drybush with various greens and paint the rim. Maybe put some grss tufts on there as well...

I also have a finished Mancrusher, he is glued to his base, and the base is done. He is slightly modified with a pegleg, the only gargant with that. 

Then there are King Brodd and two other Mega Gargants standing primed and ready for pant, and two more bases with some fences on them. 

That leaves 14 Mancrushers where 6 are partially painted with skin and pants done and 8 are just primed.

It is going to be a huge paintjob but a good thing with itis that there are many large areas to paint so it is not as fiddly as smaller models. I am very hopeful getting the army painted in time, so I will just have to work on and see what I can do.

From Squats to Gargants

From buiding a unit of Squats I have moved on to the gargants of the Sons of Behemat. 

A few days ago I finished building King Brodd, and today I primed him and the base. The base will be used for my first (and only) finished mega-gargant as the base that I made for him will be used for King Brodd.

Today I have built the other new gargant, the Beast-smasher. He uses some of the same new parts, among other things the handle on his club. When you see it held in one hand, you see how long it really is.
The good thing with the way he is hoding his weapon is that I didn't have to fit the other hand like I had to do with King Brodd. So there was no need for greenstuff for this figure. I have also made a base for him, but it is rather simple with just a fence between his legs that he is walking over, so I will try and see if I can make something more of it before it is time to add the texture material on it. The only thing missing on the mega-gargant himself is to add the bird somewhere on him. I sort of forgot that today, but I am sure I will find a good place for it when I sit down to work more tomorrow. I fixed the hand with the weapon to the arm, but to get the arm to stick to the body I needed to keep it still for a long time so I managed to make sort of a cradle and got it in a position that let it dry properly.

I sat down again tonight and was happy to see that the arm had attached like it should, and decided I wanted to build more, so I started to assemble two mancrushers.  I have decided on their weapons and assembled all the parts to get them ready but I need to glue the weapon and the arm they are holding it in to the torso. Also I need to assemble and glue all the stuff I want them to have like an extra club, some food and/or drink and other things I have added to my other Mancrushers. Hopefully I will fix all of that tomorrow so I have two more gargants to add to the unit in the not too distant future. 

This means I have four more Mancrushers to build, and I will need to take some time to think about a few conversions for them to make them tand out as all the Mancrushers have the same poe with only a few selections with arms and heads. 

I might try to make a club as a weapon, or maybe make antother pegleg or someting to make the Mancruher stand out a bit.

First unit of Squats complete...

As I had hoped, I managed to complete the first unit of Squats this weekend. I'm quite happy with how they turned out, and I look forward to start my second box to bulk the unit out a bit. As the Squats are a Necromunda gang and not a complete army I will not have that many boxes of figures, but at the moment I am thinking of having three. I think that will give me enough Squats to play games with them (two would probably be enough for that, but three will give me the chance to add some variation). But there are not that much variation to add since there is only one box to choose from in the range, so more than three boxes might be an overkill. But things can change as the game evolves and if we get new boxes more units will be added for sure.

The Squats are painted with a quite simple paint scheme but I think it worked out nice. I got the idea from White Dwarf Magazine where one of the players participating in a series where different kill teams fight each other used the green and gray color scheme on his Astra Militarum Kill team and I liked it so much I wanted to try it. But where he has painted, washed and layered, I have gone for paint, wash and drybrush.

The base colors are Mechanicus Standard Grey for their suits and Deathworld Forrest for their armor. A few of the Squats are wearing coats, and they are painted Death Corps Drab to make them look heavier than the suits. This was also done partly because I wanted to see how it looked as my Krieg Guardsmen will have this color on their coats and legs. Then the coats and suits were drybrushed with Dawnstone dry paint, and the armor with Straken green layer paint. Between the base color and the drybrush I washed the models with Nuln Oil.

The skin is painted the same way I paint my Gargants for AoS now, with Bugmans Glow as the base and then a wash with Guilliman Flesh. If they showed more skin I would have tried to do some drybrushing or layering with Bugmans Glow but I think it looked ok with just the wash so I left it there and used Averland sunset on all their facialhair.

Kneepads and boots were painted with Abaddon Black, and the gloves with Thondia Brown. I used that brown for all the other leather parts as well. For the belt buckles and the big head on the front of their suits I used Runelord Brass as I felt miners wouldn't have shining gold details on their suits.

All the metallic parts on the weapons, tools and suits were painted quite traditionally with Leadbelcher, and then washed with Nuln Oil.

I used Retributor armour for the visible amunition on one magazine and for a portion of the head of the club for the leader, and also as the base color for the lenses they all wear. And while we talk about the lenses, they were afterwards given a wash with Blood Angels Red contrast paint. This was done after I got a tip from an employee at Warhammer Oslo when I aked him for advice for  lens color. I was originally thinking the lenses should be black but shiny, but decided to give the red a try and I liked it a lot. So I will use this for my Leagues of Votan as well.

The weapon casings were painted Lupercal Green and for the small screens on the arms of a few of the Squats I used a slightly darker green that I don't remember the name of. But for the next batch I plan to use a green contrast paint that makes the scereens look like they are turned on instead.

On the back of the helmets I painted a stripe of Khorne Red just to add some color, because I feel that a little color might be a smart thing when you work in a mine. But I decided to use this color as I didn't want something that took all the attention away from other parts of the model as I feel something very bright might so. Also if I end up with another Squat gang in the future, then I could use the same colors and just change the stripe on the helmet to tell them apart.

The bases were coated with Armageddon Dune and Armageddon Dust, some only with dust and some with a mix. Then I washed with Agrax Earthshade before drybrushing with Morghast Bone. Then the rims were given two thin coats of Thondia Brown.

So after all this presentation, lets have a look at the finished models...

Here are the first two. There was four figures on each sprue and two sprues in the box, so these are the same model with different heads and arms. These are the ones with heay coats.

I really like handguns, so I made two more Squats with pistols, and I plan to make some more in the next batches.

These two have the "standard" weapon for the Squats, and for the next batch I will make the maximum number I can with these. They are not the best looking weapons, but being the standard I feel there should be most of these in a gang.

I really love the big gun on the left, and I will make more of this in the next boxes. The one of the right seems like a modification of the standard weapon that also looks quite cool.

Finally I added this picture just to show off the arms on the suits a little better. I like how the drybrush really got the arm design to stand out.

I like the way these colors turned out, so I have decided to use the same colors on my Leagues of Votan army.  After all they are both "space dwarfs" and even though the Leagues don't like to be called Squats they are related and some sort of kin. So maybe sometime in the future we will get some rules allowing them to be used together on the battlefield.

More progress

I've managed to get more work done on the Squats today, so I expect they will be finished tomorrow. What remains now is to wash and drybrush the bases and then paint the rims. 

The gold with a red contrast paint over them turned out quite well.

I will post better pictures when the bases are done, but here you can see how the lenses turned out. It is Retributor Armor gold with one layer of Blood Angels red on top.

I went to my storage facility today with two big bags of models that I haven't gotten around to assemble yet, some big boxed sets and all of my boxes of Horus Heresy sets. I like the 30K sets a lot and would love to build and paint them, but for the moment I think I should focus on what I have started. That means the Sons of Behemat first, but also my Cities of Sigmar and my Imperial Guard units. 

I have also kept my Knightkits here, as I would like to finish my Chaos Knights and maybe even build some Imperials.  At the moment I have started to put the base for my partially finished Chaos Knight together. I glued some cork to the base with Gorilla grlue today, but it seem to take a long time to dry so I will look at it tomorrow. 

While at the Storage facility I also brought back my Stompa that I plan to build with a bellygun and the two finished gargants that I finished earlier. 

Here is a pic of the Mancrushers that I have assembled and started to paint so far, the finished one is in the back. And on the right is the finished Gatebreaker. I plan to make him a new base, so that I can put King Brood on that base. I also have two more Mancrushers that are assembled but I haven't gotten around to painting them yet. 

Update on the Squats

I have gotten some work done on my first unit of Squats, and hope I can manage to finish them or t least nearly finish them this weekend.

What is left now is to drybrush them, and then glue their helmets to the bodies. and after that I might need to freshen up the red on the back of the helmet. I also need to paint the lenses on their helmets with a red contrast paint ovr the gold I have painted on now.  I was very unsure what coor to use on the lenses, so I asked Mathias at Warhammer Oslo for some advice, and when he heared what colors I had used on the mini he thought that the combo of gold and red could look good. Having an open mind I trust the judgement and advice of good painters so I look forward to seeing how it will turn out as I think it might look quite good. 

When the figures are done I will base them the same way I do with my 40K armies. 

Next plan is to clean up my workspace a bit, as I have so many unbuit kits around that I need to take some of them to my storage facility for a while. Then my plan is to build the last two Mega-Gargants for my Sons of Behemat army, and then six Mancrushers. I got the new rulebook for the army, and it seems they have taken the Aleguzzlers out of the rules but it might just be that they have that as a sub-species of the Mancrushers. I will find out that as I read the rules to update myself.

I will paint up all the ones I have, and find the ones that is already painted that is stored in my Storage area so I can have the entire army togther. I will check if the Mega-Gargant that I have painted already is loose on its base because then I can use that base for King Brood and make a new one for the Mega-Gargant I have already finished. I don't think I would want to build another tall base, and it is important that the King, the General of the army, is on the tallest base. 

Space Dwarfs in the making

I have started to paint my Necromunda Squats and really like the colors I have used so far. And because I like them, I plan to try and use the same colors on my Leagues of Votann. 

It is a quite simple colorscheme, based on gray and green. It will look a little different on the two armies, as their armor is a little different but the basics are the same.

The suits are dark gray and the armor is green.. Then they have black boots and protectors and brown leather gloves and leather details. Their weapon will be metal with dark green gun casings.

I decided I wanted their helmets to be the same color as their armor, but I gave them all a khorne red stripe down the middle. 

The skin on their faces I plan to paint as I have found to work with my Giants for Age of Sigmar, and I hope that will work even on those small faces. That means Bugmans Glow followed by a layer of Guilliman Flesh.Then they will have yellow beards (all of them) and I need to find a color to paint the eye protection/sunglases that they seem to wear. I might just go black on them, but I will try and see what other people have done and see if I get some tips.

For the Leagues of Votann there will be a little more difference in the units, as they wear more varied clothing. But still I plan to stick with the colors I have for my Squats for those parts that are the same, and then I'll need to find new colors for the special gear they have. Like I have some of them wearing bomber jackets of leather lined with fur, and they have a priest wearing some sort of robes. The great variation in kits have not been released yet, so I have a lot of time to think out how I want to do the more special things, and also how I want to paint up their vehicles when they are released. But I think I will see how the guncasings on the Squats turn out, and if it looks good then I might use that same dark green for my vehicles.

Also today I orded the new battletome for the Sons of Behemat, and I look forward to finding out how that army will work with the new rules and the point values for the different units. I figure the army I have is between 3500 and 4000 points with 4 Mega gargants (one of them the king) and 12 Mancrusher or Aleguzzler gargants (the ones who used to be caled Giants back in the days). I will decide jut what kind of Gargants the diffrent ones are when I see the new rules. 

I am also considering adding more of the smaller gargants to the army sometime in the future, but it won't be for a while as there are so many nice models out there and I need to spend a little less money then I have done in the past on models so I need to see what comes out when. 

As for painting things goes well. I have one Mega gargant all finished and one primes, the remaining two needs to be built. The smaller giants I have one that is all finished, three I need to build, ttwo tht is primed, and the rest have gotten both their skin and their pants painted. Some of them also have more details done, like woden parts like cages, clubs, ale barrels and so on. When my first unit of Squats are painted, I will keep working on the Gargnts.

The Leagues are here...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have continued to work on my Rockgut Troggoths, and I am almost ready to do the repair-job on the skin where other colors have gotten on to it as I have painted more details. There are a few details left, but not many before I can call them ready for basing.

I've also started to work on my Mancrusher Gargants to try and complete them. But it also ended up with me buying two more the last time I visited my local Warhammer store, so the army will continue to grow. I am waiting for the release of the new rulebook, and the new King of the Mega-Gargant sprue that will come at the same time. I still have one Mega-Gargant to paint up, and I plan to start on him in the near future. He is the brother of the one I have painted before, so I will have to paint his skin the same way.

For the Mancrushers I started to expriment with different skin colors as I wasn't completely satisfied with the first one. Before I put the project on ice last time I had painted one Kislev Flesh and one Bugmans Glow. The Bugmans Glow looked really redish (sunburned), so I wanted to try another color so I took one that was just primed and applied a contrast paint called Guilliman Flesh. I had a thought that the contrast paint would work well on its own, but I wasn't that happy with the result as it ended up looking very streaky. I got a few tips from one of the employees at the Warhammer store and tried to fix the streaks but it din't help as much as I had hoped. Using the tips I might get it decent if I try on another primed model. I also tried to use the Guilliman Flesh over the Kislev Flesh and the Bugmans Glow, and for the Kislev Flesh it also got a little streaky but still a lot better than it did over primer, but for the Bugmans Glow it actually ended up looking quite good so I have decided that most of my remaining Mancrushers will be painted up this way.

Since I couldn't do much more for the skin, I decided to start working on the rest of the models. I had painted some of the wooden parts before, and painted the rest with Gore-Grunta Fur and that was a lot lighter than I had used before, but it looked more like crafted wood so I will keep using that for wood that has been manifctured, and then I plan to use Cygor Brown for the wood that is "raw".

I also started on the pants and painted what I could do with a regular brush, and will come back later to do the intricate parts. I used Morghast Bone for one, as that is the same color I have on the pants of my Cities of Sigmar Army, Averland Sunset as I used that yellow for the pants on the soldier that the finished Mancrusher is holding in his hand. That soldier has a Khorne red jacket, so I plan to use that for the pants of a future Mancrusher, and also paint one with the combination of the red and yellow.
The last color I used today was a new green I picked up yesterday that is called Nocturne Green. It is really dark but still kind of bright, so I just wanted to see what it looked like. That is the great thing with this army that I can use any color I want for their details as they roam all over the world. Then the idea is to try and match the colors to other armies that hey can have fought alongside or against. 

there is still progress

I feel that there is an ok progress on the miniatures since the last time, although I wish I was structured enough to finish what I have started instead of always starting new things. Still some of the "new" things mean painting things that have been standing on the shelves for far too long.

The Chaos Knight Tyrant is now being painted. I have gotten most of the metallic colors done, and started on the armor plates and some details. The legs and arms are starting to look like they should, but the torso still has a lot left before it is done. I still have to decide on some of the important stuff before I paint it, like what color to paint the plasma coils. Traditionally I have used bright greens for this on my Astra Militarum and Space Marine armies, but since this is a chaos force they could have a different color if I wanted to I guess. Also I need to decide if all the armorplates should be green or if I should add some conrasting colors. I know one shoulderplate will be black, like my Marines, but apart from that I have not decided yet.

My Gloomspite Gitz are coming along nicely. The Squig hoppers/Boingrot bounderz are really coming along. I have added one more color each time I've been sitting down to paint, and the Squigs are now mostly done as well as most of the Grots on top of them. I still need to to eyes on the Squigs (some sort of yellow) and on the Grots (probably red) and I have not started to paint their weapons yet, but I think I know how I will do it. Also I need to figure out how to paint the things that keep the Squigs up in the air. Some of the Squigs seem to have some sort of magical thing that does this, while other stands on top of mushrooms.

The Fellwater Troggoths are done for now. I am debating if I should add even more color to the bases, but I think they look rather good the way they look now and I am a little afraid that adding more would be too much. I am just letting them rest for a while until I have decided before either adding more or taking pictures and calling them done.

The Rockgut Troggoths are coming along. I have painted the softer parts of their skins now, and am quite happy with the way it looks. I will have to do a little clean-up with the blue/gray color to get all the details perfect, but that was expected. I will do that next, as well as start to paint the weapons and the various bling they are wearing.

Also yesterday I decided to try a new contrast paint called Guilliman Flesh on one of my Mancrusher Gargants (the "old" giants).  This is supposed to give a darker skintone than the ones I have ued before, but after applying one layer of it I think it covered less than expected and it seems a little streaky (the last part might be because of the selected brush for all I know) so I have not decided if I like it or not yet.
I used it directly over a light basecoat, but it is possible it would cover better if I first applied a layer of another flesh color. That is something I can experiment with a bit painting future Gargants, as they don't all have to have the same fleshtone. I still have a bunch of the Mancrushers to paint and also one of the bigger ones. Also I know I will be getting at least one new big one as GW have leaked the release of an upgrade sprue making it possible to build a Gargant king of some sort later this fall, and I know I will want him to lead my rater sizeable Gargant army.

From the workbench #2

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Unclean One is done

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Workbench

Here are a few snapshots of what is going on at my workdesk at the moment. Before I say anything else, I know I need to tidy up, and I will. My challenge is that I have such a small workplace so I have no place to store ongoing projects so everything ends on the desk. But I plan to get some more shelves and that will solve some of this problem.

First picture is of a Chaos knight in the making. This will be a Knight Tyrant, the biggest of the Knights awailable from Games Workshop (Forgeworld might have some bigger, I haven't checked). The main idea is that my Chaos Knights will be fighting alongside my Chaos Space Marines (The Knights of Oblivion). Originally I had planned to have one knight, then all of a sudden they were two as one of my Knights of the Appocalypse had fallen to chaos as part of the back story, so I needed an Imperial knight that was slightly corrupted and not a full on Chaos one, and now I think there are four Chaos Knigts plus two Chaos versions of the smaller Armiger type. So I might actually be able to field the Chaos Knights as a force of their own (I do have the rulebook to do so), but I will see then they are done how many points I have.

Here are two pictures of The Great Unclean One. There is a little bit of work remaining, as I need to paint the rim of the base in green and also use some green tones on the top of the base as drybrushing to give it some depth. This will make the base identical to the style I have on my Sylvaneth. I don't think all Age of Sigmar bases will be exactly llike this (there will be some moutntain bases for my Duardins for sure, and some snow bases for my Ogors), but I try to make basework quite similar for all my armies to show that they fight on the same battlefields.

I will also add some Nurgles Rot on a few places on the Great Unclean One, like the intestines and some of the deepest wounds.

To the left we have an ongoing Necromunda project. This is the start of one of the three factions I have decided to have for this game (with a hope to also be able to use them for 40K in the future). This is a unit from the Ash Waste Nomads. The other two factions are Squats and Enforcers. I have finished the "fleas" but the riders are only primed as I am trying to figure out what colors to use on their capes.

I plan to do some more with the bases (washing and maybe add som tufts) but I need to do some planing first, and I need to paint the rim of the bases dark brown..

Beside the "fleas" is an Empire Steam Tank with a Duardin Engineer as a commander. This tank is primed and I am debating if I should paint everything as it is now, or glue the remaining parts on and paint everything after. 

To the right of that is a Chaos Space Marine Warpsmith (their equivalent of a Tech Marine) that I glued together on Monday, and next time I have enough models to fill a boxtop I will prime him. He will go in a box awaiting priming the next time I sit down as he is glued solid to his base now. 

To the right of this is a unit of Empire Greatswords with some Bretonnian Knights in the back. The Knights are still being painted, while the Greatswords are just waiting to get a little tune-up before they get their bases painted.

Here we see more Bretonnian Knights and the Greatsword unit, and together with the Steamtank they are the beginning of my Cities of Sigmar army. 

Among the Greatswords is a Cyclops Demolition Vehicle (from Forgeworld), a small remote controlled vehicle filled with explosives for my Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) army. 

In the background is a unit of painted Duardins that I painted several years ago as I was making a Dwarf Armies on Parade board, but I couldn't fit them on the board so I left them for later. But all their arms has been put in a little plastic box, and that was laced in a storage box when I moved and I have not found them yet. If I don't find them I am sure I have plenty of spare arms to use on the sprues of other units.

To the right (just behind the torso of the Knight) are three River Trolls for my Gloomspite Gitz army. Like the Great Unclean One they are missing paint on the rim of the bases and drybrushing with green on top of the bases. 

That is all for now. I will present the units in separate posts when they are 100% finished. And next time I make a workbench update, I hope it looks a bit more tidy.

Some good progress on the way

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

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

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

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

what have I done since the last update?

As usual I am not too good at  th the blog, and for a little while I have not been doing much with the minis either. 

Stil, I have managed to do a little. And among the things I have done I have done most of the painting on my first unit for the Citie of Sigmar army. All that is left is a little cleanup, and then making the bases. I plan to make them like I have done with my Sylvaneth, but with a little less green drybrushing since they are not in a forrest. 

Also I just have a little detail work and basing to do to finish off my Great Unclean One. I need to paint the little nurglings though, but I am not sure I will use all of them on the Great Unclean One. I might use some of them for other projects.

COS #8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cyclops Demolition Vehicle

This must be the smallest vehicle in the entire 40K universe. I knew it was small, as I know it can ride inside a Chimera. But that it was so small supprised me.

Here you have the entire thing laying in pieces in front of my Deathwatch Watch commander.

The set consist of a body and two side panels with tracks. 

Since this vehicle is so small, I plan to paint it up in a simple paintscheme. I usually have both dark green and black on the sides of my vehicles, but for this one I will go all black. Then the body will be Mechanicus Standard Grey as with all my vehicles.

If I have undrstood it correctly, the Cyclop is filled with explosives and then driven by remote control to the target where it explodes. This means that the Cycop will only last for one attack, so for this reson I have decided not to give it any identifying marks as I would like to give the impression that there are more than one in the army. I will dedicate one Chimera to be the Cyclop transport vehicle, and will probably modify it a little bit to make it stand out a bit from a troop transport. I might buy a second Cyclopfor the rmy in time. but frst I will prime and paint this one to the best of my abilities.

Painting faces and COS # 7

 We'll start with the Cities of Sigmar update...

Since the last update I have done some more painting and priming. All the built minis are now primed, including all the shields that will be glued on to the knights and men-at-arms later and the poles that are dug into the ground as barricades.
I have done some more painting on the general on foot, his standard bearer, the commander of the first Greatsword unit, my first wizard and three of the knights. I think I know how all their color schemes will be now.

I have also done a cool discovery with the Steam Tank, and this will affect my army and lead to some more converting. I have discoverd that the hole in the turret is wide enough for a Duardin Engineer (Cogsmith) to fit in the hole. I might have to add a plate in the turret as he probably is shorter than the original figure, but that should not be a problem as I have plenty of armorplates from my Imperial Guard vehicles. I had planned from the beginning to group the tanks together in threes, just like the artillery. They will probably be separate units, but I will paint and detail them so that they look like units of three anyway if I can find a way to add some unit colors. At least one of the three tanks will have a commander in the turret. I will see when I build the second tank how it looks with the turret closed, and if it looks good then two of the three tanks in the unit will have closed turrets. This will give me two tank commanders with the amount of steam tanks I have now, so I will have one human and one duardin commander. The remainder of the commanders will be used other places in the army.

And now for the face-paint...
Today I attended a class at the Warhammer store in Oslo to teach me to paint faces. I would have thought it was a class with 3 or 4 people attending, but it was only me.
I have painted lots of faces before, but they don't look like they have any character. That will change now hopefully. Mattias took the time to teach me how to paint with thin layers and watered down paints, and showed me how to do layering in a way that added shades and highlights in the right places. I hve seen it done in videos on Youtube before, but it was something else to try it with someone giving me good feedback and help while doing it.
Mattias also showed me a few other detailing tricks to use to add some character to the faces, and I look forward to trying different tricks on different faces.

I will try to use what I learned on the Cities of Sigmar army, but I think the army where it will really come to shine is the Imperial Guard and my Valpurgian 3rd, as they have several models without helmets so you see the entire head, while the Cities of Sigmar army mostly have faces only as they have helmets on. But I will try to apply what I have learned for all heads and faces going forward and I might even go back and redo some of the faces on minis I have completed earlier. I look forward to showing off painted miniatures in the future.

More progress - COS #6

I have done some more building and painting this weekend, but not  much as I had originally planned to do.

I have finished assembling the last unit of Bretonnian Men-at-arms (except for the shield arms that will be glued on after painting). And with that I have finished all the Bretonnian units. I still have a couple characters left though (the Green Knight and some ladies). 

I have also done some priming, so now I have lots of units to paint up. I have started on some figures to get an idea of how I want my color scheme to be, and have landed on most colors I think.
All pants will be Morghast Bone as I think I have mentioned before. Then the tunics and hats will be Caliban Green. I was considering making the hats another color but I think matching hat and tunics makes sense. 

After visiting Warhammer Oslo on Saturday to get my last mail order with more troops for the army I got a tip on how I could paint the feathers. They will be painted Celestra Gray first, and then Ulthuan Gray. Thet way they will get a slightly blue/grey color instead og being white, as I would not be happy with all white fethers. Then the officers will have the quite bright blue Caledor Sky on parts of their feathers to show rank. And the rule is the higher rank, the more blue it will be.

I have also decided atfer talking colors in store that the brigandines of the Bretonnian forces for the most part will be painted Khorne Red. There might be a few variations if it looks more like they are wearing other kinds of a garment though.

Three of the Knights have gotten their colors now. I have one red, one Caliban Green and one light purple. I will come back to the names of the colors of red (used contrast pints) and purple when I have chosen colors for more of the knights.  

With the archers there are some barricades made of stakes and chain that come in the boxes, and today I have figured out how to assemble them, so I made one base up, and for my next sitting (hopefully tomorrow afternoon) I will make the remaining seven. I will place some clusters of arrows ranomly on the bases, and also "pauldrons" of hot coal (to make flaming arrows) and some chopping blocks with axes on to look like they have been used to make the barricades. 

I have also made a little more progress on my first Steamtank.So now the back part is done, and I will start on the front next time I build on it.  

Another weekend is almost over - COS #5

As this weekend is comming to an end I think it is time for another Cities of Sigmar update.

This weekend I have managed to assemble two new units. The second (and last) unit of Bretonnian bowmen, and the first of two units of Bretonnian Men-at-arms. I hope to ssemble the second and last unit of Men-at-arms on Monday or Tuesday. 

I can not complete the Men-at-arms because if I glue the shield-arm to them, then it will be impossible to paint half the front of their body. So I will prime the shield separtely and glue it on when painted. 

small archer painting update COS #4b

 I just learned that was I thought was a protective leather coat probably isn't. It is actually something called a Brigandine ans this is many small metal plates studded together against a cloth to hold it together. This means if something is broken, one can change out just the damaged little plate instead of an entire chestplate. So it is much easier to repair and also much easier and cheaper to produce.

Also the Brigantine gives you a lot more mobility and flexes more than the full plated armor (chastplate). So it is much easier to wear that when you use your arms extensively like you would do as an archer.

And one more thing, being metal plates studded through fabric, it means you can have it in almost any color you would like, as you dye the cloth to the color you want just like regular clothing.

What does this mean? Well, it means I will not be painting this in leather, so I will see that I can come up with. Perhaps the archers will have the green tunics with a blue Brigantine outside? Or maybe I will use a variety of colors making the two units look different. I will start to think about it and see what I can come up with. I need to prime the models first before I can paint them anyway...

A new unit is built, and painting has started - COS #4

 After almost two weeks there has been more progress on the Cities of Sigmar army.

I started to build a Steamtank, but then decided I needed to see how the Bretonnian units look so I could start to plan how to paint them. So I assembled a unit of Bretonnian peasant bowmen. This unit was rather static, as 12 of the figures were monopose archers, but the remaining 4 could be assembled with the arm I wanted to use. They all needed to get their heads glued on though, and there were several extra heads in the box to choose from. One of the characters looks like a warrior monk, and I made him the standard bearer as I think he can't use sharp weapons as part of his religion. Since the unit is archers they don't want a big banner flying over them that can get in the way of the archers shooting arrows where needed, so he is carrying a little shrine on a short pole instead. For the second unit there is a bird-like figurine to use on the banner pole, so I plan to use that. Then for the two units I have of old Bretonnian men-at-arms (don't remember the exact name on the box) I plan to use the big banners. I might also use the spare banners for some of my Freeguild units as the banners look great and it will both unify the army and make them stand out a little from other peoples Freeguild units. I will have to see how the arm connect to the shoulders though, as there are some differences from set to set here.

I decided to try my paint scheme to see how it would look so I started to paint one of the Greatsword soldiers. For the pants I used a color called Morghast Bone, this is a base color so it covers very well with one coat over a light primer. I think that color looked great, and I am exited to see how it will look after I give them a careful wash of Agrax Earthshade and then I will see if I need to layer up or if it will be okay with just a drybrush.

I painted his tunic Caliban Green as I like the contrast of light and dark. Also I know that both these chosen colors will look good together with the brown I will use for leather, and I can use a pink or a purple to give color to some of the feathers in their hats to separate rank-and-file from officers. The idea with the feathers is that all troops have light colored feathers (Same color I plan to drybrush the pants with) and then officers will either have parts of the feather in pink or purple or depending on their rank the entire feather (or some of them if they have more than one). 

The archers seem to have a proetctive coat of some sort on top of their long tunics, so that will probably be painted leather. To get some color variation I was thinking of painting the tunics dark blue for the Bretonnian units. Since they look a little different when it comes to armament they might as well look a little different in uniform as well, and then I will say they are from another area than the Freeguild units but they are all fighting as part of the same army. But to make the units look more unified, I plan to use the same color pants on all units. I was originally planning a more Swedish look with dark yellow and dark blue, but at least for now I am so happy with the color of the pants that I think I will use that for all troops.

I have also started to paint the general on foot and his standard bearer, so far they have gotten the pants painted, and the general has a light green cape that will match his Caliban green tunic. I wanted to check how a red contrast paint would look, so I painted the bardings on a knight horse red (Sir Phineas the Fortunate), the dragon on top of hi helmet and also the tunic of one of the wizards. I also decided on what color to use for the horns of the knight that has antlers on his helmet (Sir Samuel the Huntmaster, although his name and title might change), and here I have used the same contrast paint I use over the metal parts of my Necrons. I also think I will use that color on all the longbows, as it looks rather nice.

Status update after another week - COS #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

One more unit assembled, COS#2

Like I wrote yesterday I have two boxes of the Empire General box. Yesterday I posted pictures of the General and his Standard bearer on foot, and today I finished gluing together the General and his Standard bearer on horseback. Because they were on horseback, I used the short banner pole that was provided in the set, and glued that to a pretty solid statue (well more likely it is the remains of a hero or an enemy). In his other hand the Standard bearer holds a big sword. I was planning to give him a handgun, but the only guns I had available was for the right hand, same as the standard, so I ended up with the sword. It's the same that my General on foot uses, but they will not be standing close to each other on the battlefield, so I don't think anyone will take notice. And if they do they probably will not have a reaction to it, as it is basically just a big sword. 
The General on horseback got a lance and a shield, and on the shield a bird has landed. I have crows or ravens on all my Sons of Behemat models, so maybe there can be some Sons of Behemat mercenaries in the army if the enemy is right. I love that idea, as it would give me yet another reason to finish that army.

I have also started assembling my first unit from the old Bretonnian range, the only box I have of knights. I would love to find more knights, but they are super expensive so I can't afford it unless I find someone who sells them dirt cheap.

I also have a knight errant blister, so I would like to build him so that he can be the standard bearer and the remaining eight knights can have lances and be ready to attack the enemies. I will see how this will look as soon as I get some superglue to glue the knight errant together as he is a metal mini. I probably need to replace his lance holding hand anyway as the metal lance is so bent I think it might break if I try to bend it back, and it also the arm looks very thin compared to the plastic arms.

I have glued all the horses together today, and tomorrow I plan to glue the plastic knights together as much as possible. I will not glue the knights to the hoses though, as I will prime and paint first to get the best result, and then just a drop or two of glue on their behinds to get them stuck to the saddle once painting is done.

I was trying to find a way to make one of the knights stand out as the leader, but then it hit me that I think I have one more knight, The Green Knight, and if so he will be a natural leader for the unit. I will look into this when I sit down to assemble plastic knights later today.

The first two units for my Cities of Sigmar army is assembled - COS #1

I've had a nice time this weekend putting together the first two units for my "New Year, New Army"-project, the Cities of Sigmar. The original plan was to build one, but as they needed a little time for the glue to set, I started on a second one as that happened.

The first unit is a unit of Freeguild Greatswords, they can be assembled with either straight or "special" sowrds, so I decided not to mix the different kind of swords, but to make different units instead. I have no idea how big the units should be, as the rulebook say that he unit has any number of models. So I am thinking that the units should be at least 20 strong, but I'll start with 10 and expand them after asking advice from the staff at Games Workshop.

I have not decided on what to do with names for the minis yet, but I am thinking that I need to name all the units, and then at least the command units and chracters. 

The pictures are not the best as the models are all gray, but I will take more detailed pictures showing off the different units as the project goes forward.

The first unit was made with the normal looking swords, and I gave them a captain/champion, a banner bearer and a musician. In this picture they are in the back row, as they were the first I asembled.

The second unit I made today was one of my Generals and his banner bearer. This set can be assembled with one model on horseback and one on foot so since I had two boxes I decided that both the General and the Banner Bearer will be either on foot or on hoseback. And this unit is the one on foot. This set is the old Empire General set, and is no longer in production.

The General is built strait from the box with a big sword ad a pistol. I thought his face looked a bit ike a young Clint Eastwood, so I named him General Clint Easterwood. You can't see it on the picture, but he has a cape too. I have not placed him on the base as I would like to be able to paint his back as well as the inside of the cape to a good standard and I think having him on the base will complicate that.

The trusted Standard Bearer is a mix of sets. The arms are from the Freeguild Greatswords set, and from that set I also took a sword in a tabbard and glued to his waist. The standard itself is from the general box, but there it is attached to a lance by the ribbon, but I decided it would look better if the standard was attatched to the figure, so I used my drill and made a hole to fit the banner pole into.

I also started to assemble the horses, nd one of the challenges here is that the old square cavalrybases had slots in them, but the new oval bases GW have upgraded to doesn't. That mean I have to cut slots in the bases to fit the horses. But the result is quite nice though.

 

I am not sure if I will do the same for my Knights as it seems those horses might have all four feet on the ground, so then it might be just as easy to just cut the "skis" off and glue them directly to the new bases. I will verify that all horses are made the same way before making the final decision.

I have also started to assemble the riders for the horses, but I will have to make them in two or three sittings, as there are so many parts that need to dry before I can attach the next.

So, I am back again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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