been building figures

This round I have been building miniatures and primed them. 

Among the stuff I have built and primed are five more of the new Terminators. They will go into my Gatekeeper army alongside three primaris Eliminators.

I have also built and primed 20 Mk VI Tactical squad matines that are made for Horus Heresy, but I will paint them like my Gatekeepers  and show them off alongsie the 40K army. The Gatekeeper lore says that they have a lot of the old armor in their ranks still.

And I've always tried to add as many beaky helmets as I've been able to and that usually came down to one for every ten marines as there usually was one beaky helmet in a box of ten marines.

I also look forward to painting up Borgit's Beastgrabbaz. It is a unit for Underworlds, but I think they have roles for regular games of Age of Sigmar too. The figure I look forward to painting the most is a tiny troggoth.

Happy New Year! First update of 2025

This is the first update of 2025, and I have finished a few models, and will try to take pictures of them in a couple of days and then I will post them here.

I have continued to work on the models from 2024, and I managed to finish several of them.

Trugg the Troggoth King is painted up, and I have glued him (it?) onto the base. I need to do the basing, and then I can call him done. He is painted like the Dankhold Troggoths, and I am quite happy with how he turned out. I will take one last look after I have done the base, just to make sure that there isn't too many colors that have splotched over to other areas where they shouldn't be. Then pictures will be taken.

The Dankhold Troggoth and the Dankhold Troggboss are both done with finished bases, and I will post pictures of them in the near future. They are done to the best of my abilities at the moment, and I am quite happy with the way they turned out. 

I also painted up a smaller troggoth sculpted in much the same way. I don't remeber if he was made for Warcry or Underworlds, but it seems like this troggoth is no longer in the current range. I had no plans to play that game anyway but planned to add him to my Gloomspite Gitz army along with the others. He originally comes with several other smaller figures, like a flying squig, a rock with a mouth and I think there was one more. They are not done yet, but I am working on them, and they will be added to the army when they are done. I will post the picturee of the Troggoth though, along with the Dankhold ones.

I have also finished my first unit of Hernkyn Yaegirs for Killteam. Basically they are the Hernkyn Pioneers from the Leagues of Votann but on foot instead of riding bikes. I have finished the whole unit of 10 plus one "miniature of the month" making it 11 figs in total. However I saw someone showing a lore video of Squats earlier today, and the pictures there made me think that maybe I should add a few final details on their arms before I call them completely done. But no matter what I end up with I will try and get some pictures of them the way they look now. It is just a matter of adding some color to a small panel they have on their arms. I might do that after they are photographed too and show it off as I finish my next batch of 10 (they are primed waiting to be painted).

There is not a big update for Oldworld (Fantasy) but I have started to paint the guard shack for my mansion, and I am very happy with the way I painted the roof this time even if I changed it from the last buildings I panted so long ago. I had a great recepie for red roofs, but can't find it anymore so I changed to the classic blue that we have seen in a lot of Games Workshop pictures from back in the day. I will keep the red roofs as they are because they look good, but I think most new roofs will be painted in this "new" blue style. I plan to use a dark blue wash on the roofs later on in the process, but I will post a picture in a few days of how it looks now.

I have also used an old piece of fence to try out how I want to paint all the wooden fences that came with the mansion set, this piece is from the old fence set (but that is identical to the one they sell now, it has just gotten new packaging). I tried to paint a fence row of wooden planks and some braided willow and also a signpost. I am not 100% convinced on the braided part, but I love the sign. I will try to remember to take a picture of that as well.

Finally I have started to build some new stuff. For my Secret Grotmas exchange at the Warhammer store I got a box of  5 Terminators, so I have built them already. This is the new type that is more in line with the Primaris Marines. Most of my Terminators are the old type, but I think they will blend in nicely as long as I keep them as a separate unit, and I am sure there will be more. I know there are some in the Leviathan box, but I have only started to work on the Tyranids side of that box as of now.
I had planned to prime my new Terminators, but it has been either very cold or snowing so I haven't been able to do that yet. 

I have a Primaris Spacemarine that was "free model of the month" some time back, and I have been using him to find the way I want my Space marines to look, so I know how I will paint the terminators when I get to start.

The last thing I have been working on is the new Killteam box "Brutal & Cunning". I started with the cunning part, and have assembled 6 Ratlings, a dog and a few traps. I have to say the ratlings are really detailed, and it will probably take me quite some time to get them painted up for that reason, but this also makes them look very good so I don't really mind. 

I haven't played Killteam before, and I sort of doubt I will begin, but they will fit nicely in to the Walpurgian 3rd Imperial Guard army for Warhammer 40.000. 

The Brutal part of the box will be part of my Ork Waaagh! that is slowly growing. 

Last update of 2024

I have my dog again this week and will have her to after New Years Eve, so this will be the last formal update for this year. I think I have been fairly active this last period, and I look forward to finish some of these units.

Last update I told that I built 3 Rockgut Troggoths and Boss Snikrot, and they have now been primed and are ready to be painted up. Snikrot is primed white and the Troggoths are primed grey. As I have already partially painted up 6 of the Rockgut Troggoths I plan to paint this 3 the same way, or at least as close as I can remember.
They will be painted mostly with regular paints. Boss Snikrot will be painted in a mix of regular paints and contrast paints.

I have maneged to build several figures and units, and everything I built I also had time to prime.

First out was the Commemorative series of the Red Gobbo called The A-Bomb-inable snowman. This is the Christmas special model for 2024. Lsst year we had two of these, one with the red gobbo on a rooftop (that is about 97% painted on my desk) and one where his sort of nemesis, a blak dressed santa-gobbo, was riding a big squig (standing primed on my desk). This years second model was from Age of Sigmar and was two Witch-hunters (Galen and Doralia ven Denst) that can be used as separate figures or as a diorama on a larger base. I plan to build them as the diorama, and I just got the set yesterday. 

For the Necrons I built and primed Orikan The Diviner who is a so called master Astromancer who gides the Necrons to their future of his own choosing. I haven't painted Necrons for a long while, but I look forward to painting him up, and I expect he will have quite a lot of golden details (well yellow/brown contrast aint really, but it looks sort of golden on the shiny silver below). As my Necrons have more of this the more important they are I figure this one will be pretty golden.

The Tyranids got a medium size figure built and primed, a Neurolictor. This is a mind destroying saboteur and one of the more stelthy tyranids according to the description. It has lots of details, and I think it will take a little time to paint it up.

The final single figure that is built and primed is the Bloodpelt Hunter from the Ogor Mawtribes. This is a rather weird hunter with small elk or moose horns on his forehead. I haven't seen those horns on any monster figure yet, but who knows what the future might bring. 

I also built and primed two units, the first one is a unit of 7 figures from the Inquisition, the box is just called Inquisitorial Agents. They come in the army called Imperial Agents, where everything from the Inqisition, including inquisitors and their retinues (so said to be the Deathwatch as well), Adeptus Arbites, Imperial Navy breachers, and not to forget the assasins.
These 7 figures will be joined by an Inquisitor, and I think that will be either my version of Eisenhorn or Greyfax as they are the two inqisitor minis I have.

The last unit I biult and primed I also started to paint up, and that is another unit of Hernkyn Yaegirs. I am painting this up along with the single Yaegir I got as a miniature of the month last month. 
I have gotten most of the base colors on, only missing a few facial detils like hair / facial hair and some cloth used to cover up the lower part of their fasce. Then I will need to add layers and drybrushes and do the bases.

I also got to do a lot of painting on my Trugg the Troggoth King figure. He is still some way from being finished, but he has gotten along quite nicely. Most parts have gotten the basic colors on, but he will need some drybrushing and detailing before he is done.

There has been too long (again) since I updated this blog.

This last week I have been working on catching up on my Warhammer and have managed to get some things done.

Just a few weeks ago, Games Workshop relased a little "vignette" with two ratlings taking cover and having a meal during combat. The set is called Provisionally Prepared. I don't know if this will get its own rules to be used in games as is, but if not it can still be used as a Ratling sniper and spotter I guess.

I built and primed this and look forward to painting it up using both regular and contrast paints.

They will be painted up as members of the 1st Abhuman Regiemnt of the Valpurgian 3rd.

I also built and primed a Leagues of Votann unit called Brokhyr Iron-master. This includes an Iron-master, a robot the size of the votann and 3 smaller simpler robots. This will probably be the next Votann unit I paint up from scratch, but I am still working on painting my Grimnyr and his two flying robots and hope to finish them soon too.

I had a session priming up a lot of units that I had already built. This included the 3 Hernkyn Pioneers on their hoover bikes I mentioned in an earlier post. I am still not sure how I will present these, but right now I am thinking of adding some cork on their bases to get them to hover or leviate a little more, but not too much. But I think I can raise it a bit and then maybe put some flowers or tufts underneth to make it look like they are flying more in terrain.

And speaking about Votann I also primed a unit of 10 Hernkyn Yaegirs to go along with last months miniature of the month that was a single figure that could be assembled from this set. I primed it along with my Old World Mansion last time I was priming and it was primed White Scar. The minis I primed now were primed Greyseer but I don't think that will be any "problem" when the minis are painted as the main thing on these minis are their great coats and they will be painted in dark brown to be leather.

I had 2 units of Ork Boyz and they were also primed when I was at it with the rattle can. Each unit consists of 10 Boyz and 1 Nob. They were also primed Greyseer as I have found that I like to use a dark green contrast paint to paint the skin of my orks. For this reason I am thinking abour re-priming my Ghazghkull Thraka that is primed all black so that I can use the same recepie for skin on him and his little banner bearing assistant.

There was also another Ork that I primed this round, and that was the newest Big Mek model. 

He is quite big compared to the Boyz , and  I think I will use some flashy contrast colors on him to make him stand out a bit on the battlefield, while still having the sombre Big Mek look that I give to all my Meks.

The final unit I primed up this round was an Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) unit of 10 Kasrkin. This is originally a Killteam set, but I plan to use them as Special Forces soldiers for the Valpurgian 3rd.

After all the priming was done I still felt like building some more minis, so i built another Ork. This time it was the single figure of Boss Snikrot, the Ork Kommando who is the most Kommando of all the Ork Kommandos. He will get a new name (no idea what it will be yet, but probably something fitting to Arnold Schwarzeneger, Sylvester Stallone or Dolph Lundgren or something like that) and Snikrot will be the leader of all my Ork Kommandos.

When he was done I was sort of in the building groove so I built myself a unit of 3 Rockgut Troggoths. They will join the 6 Rockgut Throggoths I still haven't finished painting. I have't decided exacly how to paint them yet, but I think I will try my best to paint them up like the 6 I have already started on. I don't remember exactly what colors I used but I have a good idea, and they are Troggoths so I don't think they mind  if there is a little color vatiation as long as the main color sceme is about the same...

Finally I finally started to paint up Trugg the Troggoth King. I painted his horns and fur and some banners and shields. Next step is painting the skin, and I will start on that next time I get time to sit down and paint. Tomorrow I will pick up my dog again so next week I will be with her as much as I can. This week will be the last rehersals and concerts with the big bands before Christmas, so when my Shelte girl goes back to my ex wife in a weeks time, I will have two more evenings in the week to sit and paint so hopefully that means that I can be a little more productive.

summary of the week

This week I've been a little all over the place.

I started last week with a Field Ordnance Barttery, and finished building and priming it this week. I had hoped I could build them with 5 troops and 1 sergeant, but there were not enough arm-options for regular troops to do this so I had to make one sergeant for each gun. That means a big unit will have 6 sergeants unless I can find some arms that I can use in the regular infantryboxes with the new guard models or with the upgrade sprue that I will have go get anyway as I would love the arms holding wrenches to field as crew for my revcovery vehicle. But even if I can make some changes in future sets so I only have one sergeant for every second gun I have come to the conclusion that I will need to make some Ensigns (2nd Lieutennants) to take command of a battery of six guns as that is how I would love to field my guns. I would love to add some kind of unit markings on these guns, especially on the Bombast gun and the heavy las-cannon as they have quite big shields in front that would look rather monotone if I just paint them in black. I am thinking of painting the front shield black and the reas of the gun Mechanicus standard gray as that will match with my tanks. Then I plan to add a vertical stripe of a brighter color as a unit marking on the guns on one side of the shield just like Games Workshop has done in many of the pictures in the rulebook. I will also bring my tanks home from storage just to add the same vertical stipes in the front on each side of the tanks.

I primed up my Lord Castellan Ursula Creed that I talked about in an earlier post. I look forward to getting her on the battlefield in the future. I managed to get her primed separately from the base, so that I can paint both to a good standard (at least for me) before I glue them together. I think I know what colors to use on most of her details, so it is just a matter of getting started.

For Age of Sigmar I primed up the unit of Ironguts and I have also started to paint them and has gotten the first layer of skin color on. Interestingly, I see that Games Workshop now has that unit marked as "Sold out - no longer available online" on their web page and this is a little weird. I am quite sure they are in the new rulebook and will continue to be a unit, so it will be interesting to see what they will do. Usually when they mark them like that it means the unit is going out of production, but it could be that they will release them again in a new packaging. I hope so, as I would love to have more of them as I love their armored heads. 

The final model I have primed this week is the Squigboss with Gnasha squig (ot the seeing-eye squig as I think it looks like with the harness) and I already know how I will paint this model as I have a planned scheme for all my Gloomspite Gitz. 

When I had painted the first layer of skin on my Ironguts I wanted to sit and work more with minis that day, but didn't really feel like painting more so I decided to start on a unit I haven't built before.
I started to build a Leviathan Dreadnought with ranged weapons. Interestingly Games Workshop lists this as both a Leviathan Dreadnought and a Leviathan Siege Dreadnought, but it looks like it is the exact same model with the exact same weapon options. I have two of this unit and one Close combat one, so I look forward to adding them to the Gatekeepers in due time. My idea is to try and weather them a bit by stipling some metal color on the blue paint so that they look their age while still looks like they are being well taken care of. Since they are relics from the Horus Heresy and I plan to have them in my 40K army I think this is only fitting. And if I should play a game of 30K then it just looks like they have been in combat and seen some action and I think these Dreads probaly would be where the fighting is most intense so it would work well there too. 

I haven't yet decided on what weapon options to give them, apart from the very cool four barreled Storm Cannon. There is a Cyclonic melta lance and a Grav-flux bombard to choose from, so I will read a little bit in the rule books to see what the different weapons do and how they seem to work on a field of battle, and either I find that one is so much better than the other that I need to take it for both, or I will make one of each. But I love the look of the Storm cannon, so both of them will field that but I think one would have it on the right arm and the other on the left just for the diversity. I might consider getting a third in the future and give it two Storm cannons just because I think it would look really scary, but I will read the rules and see if that is a legal option first. Also I nned to get the model and an extra weapons sprue first. 

The Leviathan is rather massive and big compared to a regular dreadnought, but still I though they would be even bigger looking at pictures of them. But I haven't placed them beside a Contemptor or a regualr old-style box yet so I might change my mind on them whan I do that nce they are fully assembled. I will post a picture in here for comparison when I do that. 

So far the Leviathan has the legs and most of the torso assembled, so I need to finish the top and back of the torso and add the arms and weapons an then glue it all together. I amsure it will look awesome, and I hope my painting will do it justice. 

works in progress

This week I have finished my Mangler Squigs, and I have readied the parts to make the remaining fourteen Dwarfs of the Rat-pack unit with crossbows and with axes on their backs. So now I can sit down and clean the parts and glue them together. I have sorted the parts in to different boxes, so if I choose one part from each box I get legs and back, head and chest, arms with the frame of the crossbow, the bow string and a bolt, and finally the axe they can hav on their backs. Because of the axe on the back, I made sure that none of the Dwarfs have capes in this unit. I am also, because of their description of being specialists in catacomb and sewer fighting, rethinking having a banner and instead finding something cool that they can have on a pole instead of the banner that will get unspeakably dirty in no time.

For my Imperial Guard army I have built a store anniversary fgure called Sergeant "Ripper" Jackson, a tough female Catachan Sergeant with a metal leg. She will be one of my veteran infantry sergeants for the Walpurgian 3rd. It is a great mini and I look forward to painting her up. I hope i can prime her tomorrow.

I have also built a unit of four Ogor Leadbelchers with their big cannons. I was originally hoping I could have some fun with the cannons, mixing them up with the cannons for the Steam Tank, but it turns out that would be really hard because of the way they are assembled So I will have to use the cannons for the sets they came with.

Speaking about the Steam Tank... I have started to paint it up, and I plan to paint the armorplates and then add the details that goes outside them and paint that as it is glued on. I have no idea if this is the best way to do it, but I have already found that there are so many fiddly bits to paint that I think it is worth trying.

I am quite happy with the wooden parts, and I need to see how the armorplates turn out. But I have planned to drybrush them with Necron Compound dry paint anyway so I think they will turn out well in the end.

Since I didn't use the commander for the tank, I assembled him on a base, and I plan to use him for some position or other in the army. He has a special pistol and a looking glass, so I am thinking either crew for one of the guns, or as some sort of officer. Maybe he is an engineer or something, I'll see what I can come up with.

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. 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today I thought I would write about how I name my armies and their characters. To me that is a big part of creating an army, as I like my armies to have a lot more history than just a bunch of random figures on a table with point values for their equipment.

I like to make up a history that fits the models,  and explain why they look the way they do and what they are doing there. For some armies it includes where they come from, how that place is governed, where it is, and other times that info is not possible to provide. Sometimes I also like to make it easy to explain why the army fight alongside another army on the same battlefield.

Let us start with Warhammer 40.000. 

The first Army worth talking about here is what I thought would be my biggest and my main army for Warhammer 40K, my loyal Space Marines. My regular Space Marine army is called The Gatekeepers. I don't really know why I chose that name, but after doing it I think it sounds like a great name for an Ultramarines successor chapter. Here I have chosen Roman and Greek names for my characters.
My chaplains and apothecaries have Greek names, while my captains and characters have Roman names (usually put together from Roman Emperors). My Chapter Master is called Otho Vitellius and the Gatekeepers have their home world of Luminus Prime. The planet got its name after some planets I saw on an old map of the known universe where they had the Luminus Cluster and I used Prime because that indicates it is the first or the biggest planet in a system.

I also have a Space Marine army of the Deathwatch. They share the monastery with the Sisters of Silence (Sisters of the Shield) that is a small army I have (just a few units really).
I named the fortress Alamo dé Bexar and the chapter master (Watch master) is named Barret Travis. This is from 1836 when Texas got to be an independent country and  broke away from the rule of Mexico. The Alamo was a little mission that they fortified and where all defenders were killed by General Santa Ana and his soldiers. Today the ruins of the mission is an important part of the city of San Antonio and is a tourist attraction (and yes, I've been there). This is the place where among others Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie died. Travis was the commander during the siege and battle of The Alamo, so I found it fitting to use his name for my Watch Master. The Deathwatch is a special kind of army as it consist of marines from other chapters, so I have decided to use names for the characters that sound like the names Games Workshop uses for the same Chapters. 

I also have a Chaos Space Marine army, and they are called The Knights of Oblivion. They used to be loyal to the Empire but during the Horus Heresy they fell to the other side. Their Chapter Master is Arch-Commodore Fallstaff. Arch-Commodore is a named that was used for leaders of the Space Marine legoins before there were split up in to chapters and the leaders became Chapter Masters, so I found that title fitting for an old Chapter. All characters here will be named after characters in Shakespeare plays as I think Chaos characters often have dramatic names.

My Astra Militarum army have all their characters named after officers in the American Civil War (mostly high ranking officers like colonels or generals).
I have used personnel from both sides of the conflict and I have named all my officers and special characters. There are a few that has gotten other names, but that is to show that they originally came from regiments that has been assimilated in to the army after they became too small to live on by themselves.
I have named the army The Walpurgian 3rd. 3 was chosen to show that the planetary system have sent large armies to fight for the Imperium before, and Walpurgia was chosen because I found out that in Sweden they light bonfires to remember a Swedish Catholic saint on the night between April 30th and May 1st. Her name in Swedish is Valborg, but in  English her name is Walpurgis. The General of the entire army of the Walpurgian 3rd are Major General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

My Adeptus Mechanicus army have their leaders named after famous explorers throughout history. They are part of the vast exploratory fleets that look for old artefacts and lost technology, and the leader of the entire fleet is Arch Magos deSousa, and the ship my forces belong to is the big exploratory vessel Gloria Inveneris. The commander of this ship, and with that the commander of my force called Cohort 9-1 Alpha is Magos Explorator de Orellana. 

My Necron army has yet to be named, but I am thinking about using some ancient Chinese Dynasty as a basis for their names.

The final 40K army that I have plans to name are my Orks. They Orks themselves are all named after actors and movie charcters. The Big Mek that is in charge of all the vehicles and war machines are named Big Mek Gyvver (McGyver) and one of the war bosses is Hazza Hof (Da Hof) (after David Hasselhof) and his pet squig Hoobie. I have not found the name for my big warboss yet, originally that was Hazza Hof as he was a big ork warboss (Grukk Facerippa), but then we got a new and plastic version of Ghazghkull Thraka and I knew I had to have him as my ultimate warboss. 

I also have a small army with Adeptus Custodes, the before mentioned Sisters of Silence, a small army of Sisters of Battle and an army of Genestealer Cultists but I have not yet decided how to name them.

For Age of Sigmar I have the following armies:

My Sylvaneth army is called The Ironroot Glade, and it is lead by Quercus Petraera. This is the Latin name for Silver Oak, and I will name all characters in this army after Latin names for trees and bushes. Since this is an army of trees I find it only fitting that they have tree names, and it's much better to be called Quercus than Oak.

I have always loved the Dwarfs, and I have lots of them, though most of them is still on sprues. I want to have a huge Dwarf army, and even though I can't play them as that anymore (at least not in a regular game of Age of Sigmar) I just want to have loads of them and they need their own back story. I can use some of them in a Cities of Sigmar army, but then I will need some Imperial troops to go along with them. I also have some Bretonnian units that I like to use as substitutes for the Imperial units in such an army. The Dwarf contingent will then have a leader called the Low King, and his name is Thorir Thorgrimsson. Thorir is an Icelanic name, and as so happens is the first name of the coach of the female National handball team here in Norway. He isn't the tallest man I know, so I thought it would be cool to make him a Dwarf king. The last name I just picked. For English speaking people it is possible to pronounce and it sounds like a proper Dwarf name. All characters in this army will have names that sound like this, Icelandic or old Norse names.

I also have an army of Kharadron Overlords, they are sort of steampunk dwarfs, and I plan to use the same kind of names for them as they are Dwarfs too. I will not use a known clan but make up my own backstory and make them my own, just like I do with my Dwarfs. Originally I also had an army of Fyreslayers, but I decided I had to choose between Kharadron and Fyreslayers and the Fyreslayers lost. I might buy a unit or two though to use as Slayers in my dwarf army as the old metal slayers are really expensive on the used market. But I am trying to scavenge some slayers here and there as they really have a special look to them that I like, and that fits very well with the rest of my army.

When starting a dwarf army back in the days (I think I started buying dwarfs as my second box of Games Workshop minis ever, and I haven't stopped since) I felt I also needed to have someone they could fight against. Back in those days dwarfs had two natural enemies, and that was Night Goblins and Skaven. I didn't care that much for painting all the fur of the Skaven rat-people, so I went for Night Goblins as they had capes and hoods and that ment not so much skin to paint. They are now the backbone of my Gloomspite Gitz army.
The Gloomspite Gitz is an army book that has come out just about a year ago, and it is perfect for me. When I started buying Night Goblins and other units from what was then known as the Orcs and Goblins range I was dead set on not having any Orcs in the army as I bought a unit of Black Orcs that was the meanest and badest Orcs back in the days. But when I assembled them they just looked like freaks with severe back-problems and they all leaned freakishly forward. So I said I wanted to have a Goblin warlord instead and started to buy Goblins. But you can never win a fight only with Goblins (or Grots as they are re-named to now) so I had to have some mercenaries. I bought two Giants, built one, and also got some River Trolls. With the Glomspite Gitz this is now a legal army, where the Grots can have trolls, giants and other monsters as allies so I plan to slowly bring home my models and get them on modern bases and ready for use in the game. The characters will be named after British names for mushrooms or words related to this. Imagine a shaman called Psilocybin, and "heroes" like Wood Mulberry, Stump Puffball, Yellow Stainer and Moss Oysterling just to mention a few. And in 2020 Games Workshop released yet another big army (big is the operative word here) called Sons of Behemat.

Sons of Behemat are giants (now called Gargants), and their big brothers the Mega-Gargants. Some  of them can go to war as mercenaries in my Gloomspite Gitz army, ut they can also be fileded in full force as an army of their own. I am currently reading their rules and trying to find out how many Gargants I need to field to have a legal army. So far I have two Mega-Gargants and two normal Gargants, but I want to get a few more of the normal ones to be followers of their big brethren and to do some fun conversions like giving one of them a peg leg. Like the Gloomspite Gitz they will have names after British words for mushrooms.

I also have quite a lot of Chaos models, and I want to have a big Chaos unlimited army, but at the moment I am not sure that this is even possible (it used to be in Warhammer Fantasy, and might come back). But I haven't decided how to name the characters in this army yet. But I need to finish some of the many models I have started for the army. And I also have Ogors, the big brutes from the North that I would like to make in to an army, I have a big box of models to assemble so I can build quite an army. 

Making scenery

I have been working on building more than on painting my scenery, but now I've come to the part where I can start to work on the painting.

I started with Skullvane Manse, and that got primed yesterday and I hope to start to paint it in just a few days.

I have completed the Deathknell Watch but I need to go over it with a mix of Greenstuff and Liquid Greenstuff to fill the cracks. That is also the status on the big Witchfate Tor and the ruin called the  Dreadstone Blight. I will begin this process after breakfast tomorrow, and when that has dried I need a day with fair weather so that I can do my priming.

I had to do some slight modifications to the Witchfate Tor to get it to stay together as all the floors were just sliding on top of each other like a hockeypuck on ice, so I installed some support struts inside to keep it together. This make the floors look weird when they are unassembled and the third floor can't sit flat on the table, but hopefully everything keeps together when the tower is standing tall.  

I have also finished the Witchfate Tor ruin, known as The Dredstone Blight. I did a few small modifictions to it from the drawings, but I think I made it look quite nice. When it is painted up I plan to add some vines to it to make it look a little overgrown and deserted, but I think I should paint the tower and the vines separately.

One of the employees at my local Games Workshop store told me about a way I could paint one or more of my towers, and I plan to give it a try with the biggest of them all. I plan to prime the inside of Witchfate Tor as I always had planned to with the light primer, then assemble the tower and seal off the windows before spraying the outside with the gray paint that is supposed to be Mechanicus Standard Gray and then use a light coat of the light gray primer on top when it has dried. Apparently I should be able to get quite a nice look on the tower with washes after that. It sounds like an interesting way of painting the stonework and I am sure it will make the tower look a little different than the Deathknell Watch.

I thought I had three Deathknell Watch towers, and had some nice plans to make one twice as tall as the original, but one box only had a few parts for the tower, and another was full of old Dwarf sprues. I still might have most of the parts for one more tower stacked away somewhere with the cupola for the Skullvane Manse, and just as I write this I think I might know when to look next time I go to check that everything is ok at the cabin. I seem to remember having built at least some of it before, and that might explain the few parts in the one box I found. So I might have a built tower in a box to take home and fix with Greenstuff and then prime and paint to add to the colection.

I have also assembled my first Mega-Gargant for my Sons of Behemat army, and it will also be used as part of my Gloomspite Gitz army from time to time. I plan to build at lest one more Mega-Gargant, and then to start with three regular Gargants and then I will have to read the rules to see how many Gargants I need to make a complete Sons of Behemat army.

General update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 I feel I've had quite a productive weekend.

I am still painting a little here and there on my many unfinished Imperial Guard tanks to try and finish more units. At the moment I have one command vehicle (Chimera with a little extra antennas and a Commissar in the turret) a regular Chimera, two Leman Russ tanks and one repair vehicle standing in vaious stages of painted on my workbench. The one that has come closest to completion is my repair vehicle. It is just missing some minor details like the driver and the two crew members and maybe a little touch-up here and there, so I hope to finish that this week.

I have also started to paint up my last Grot tank (so far at least, I'd love to make more in the future). This is a former tractor made for working in the big industrial complexes pulling cranes or other things that needs to be pulled. After the Orks came and made their base in the complex, the Grots have made this vehicle in to an armored vehicle. It does not have any big guns, but it has several heavy bolters.

It's painted yellow as vehicles of this kind often is, and the Grots haven't bothered with removing the Mechanicus insignia, as it is painted rather neutral on this working vehicle.

My love for Ogres and Ogryns is not something I hide, so it should be well known by now. These last days I have been building a box of Necromunda Slave Ogryns as they are built in the instructions, and I have one more box that I plan to build freely. There are 6 Ogryns in each box, and while some of them clearly are cyborgs, not all of them need to be. When I get to painting I plan to give the ones thata re clearly not regular Ogryns anymore a pale skin, while the others will gt the same skin I paint for my other Ogryns. This box have them armed with power lifting gloves, welding gloves and heavy tools, so my idea is to use them for my support company as mechanics and heavy muscle. But that doesn't mean that they can't fight if the need arises. I have seen some great paint-jobs of these big dudes, and I can hardly wait to get started myself (just need some decent weather so I can prime them).

But they are not the only Ogryns I have worked with, I have also made myself a squad of 6 Ogryns armed with grenade gauntlets and big heavy shields. They have gotten heads from the Age of Sigmar Ogors as I usually do, and the box I got the heads from I plan to build as Bullgryns with electrical clubs and smaller shields and then I will give them heads with gas masks.