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. 

Ogryns with ripperguns - 1st unit

Here are the pictures of my first unit of Ogryns with ripperguns. I am sorry the lighting is different in some of the pictures and not up to its best. I will keep working on that as these picture was taken the first time I used my lightbox. Hopefully when I take pictures of my second unit in the future, the quality of the pictures will have improved a bit.

This first pic shows what comes in one box of Ogryns, 3 figures with slightly different poses.

Like I have written in earlier blog posts, I like to replace their heads with the heads of their Age of Sigmar counterparts to smarten up their looks and make them look a little more wild.

The Ogryn on the right in this picture is my favorite so far.

Originally from the instructions in the box, some of the Ogryns come without shoulder guards and most come just with one if they have any, but I think they should wear two if they can, so all my Ogryns is equipped with this as standard equipment. I think it makes the models look cooler, sort of more military and more in uniform. I imagine they strap them on somehow, and that is why you can wear them even though you don't have any other body armor. The exception from the shoulder guards are some of my Bullgryn suppressors that I have built from the Age of Sigmar Ogor sets, as they don't come with shoulderguards in the box. But they look so different anyway that this can be easily explained.

One thing that is not uniform is what they carry on their belts. I try to add a mix of pouches, grenades, extra ammunition and water bottles to give them some individual character. 

Here are two more. The one on the left in the pic is the squad leader, a so called Bone'ead.
For the Bone'eads I like to use the heads supplied in the box, and for this reason he looks a little bit different than the troops he command. He doesn't have the wild beard his other fellows often seem to have, but he has a mustache instead. He also has a steel plate in his head where he has gone through some augmentation, and it is much easier to show that by using the original head than trying to implement something by cutting in to- and gluing on to the others.

I was not too happy with the color of the t-shirts of this unit, but since it was called Ogryn camo I just had to try it. I think it came out a little too bright, almost neon, but still it looks ok so I decided to keep it. I might even use it on another unit at a later time, but for most of my Ogryns I think I will use more of a traditional light green color.

Then we have the final two, to make this a nice unit of six.Like the first two this is one with and one without t-shirt/singlet. 

Long awaited update

A long time has passed since my last update. I will once again try to get better to use this blog for what it was intended.

I thought I would use this update to give you  little update on all my armies, and next time I do the same then hopefully things will show that I have achieved something...


We'll start with Age of Sigmar (Warhammer FB in the labels in this blog), and what they call The Grand Alliance of Order

The Sylvaneth army has been primed again, this time with a light primer, and I will paint almost everything but the leaves with the new Contrast paints. I have a dark brown and a dark yellowish brown that I will use for the wood parts and then I will see how I will paint the occasional weapons they have that is not wood. I will use autumn colors like orange and browns for the leaves with an occasional green leaf in the mix. I have quite a lot left to build, but I also have some of the models painted with the contrast paints. I have an idea on how I will make the bases look like Forrest, and I will try it out on a few of the smaller trees. I name all the characters in this army for the Latin names for different trees,

Duardin (Dwarfs) this army is an old one, and I have several painted units of Dwarfs that are ready for games. Some of them are not legal units in the game anymore as the Duardins have been robbed of most of their units in the latest years. Most of the painted Dwarfs were painted up for my Armies on Parade entry a few years back (2017) and this is an army I would love to revisit and finish more of. I have a big box of old metal Dwarfs that are painted  but that I would like to repaint to get them in my own colors and style, and I also have lots of boxes with units still on sprues. I even have several units that are partially built or partially painted. When I started this army they were called Dwarfs, then they became Duardin, and now the army is included in Cities of Sigmar where they work together with former Empire troops. I don't think I have much Empire stuff, but I have several Bretonnian Knights that I can paint up and use instead. 

The latest addition to this army are the old metal Slayer figures, they are in the mail from different sellers in Europe.
I have an old fortress that I could build and with a few modifications use as a home town for this army. I just need some plasticard or something similar so that I can have some cannon emplacements along the walls. The leader of my dwarfs are The Low King Thorir Thorgrimsson, and I will eventually also make a human General for the human elements.

An army that is sort of a steampunk spin-off from the Duardin are the Kharadron Overlords.
I plan to have a little army of them, but it might grow big over time. I have several boxes of these short dudes to assemble and paint. So far I have started to paint some characters to try and find the look for my army, and I have also painted up one of their smallest sky vessels that I just have to add the two parts together and do the base to call it done. But I will wait a little bit with the base until I have decided on how my army will look overall.

Another duardin race is the Fyreslayers, and they were something I had planned to build a lot of, but now I am thinking of selling what I have as I don't think I have the time or the interest to make this in to an army. For now the boxes of unbuilt minis is in a big cardboard box in my basement. Instead of having a Fyreslayer army, I will have a unit of old Slayers in my Duardin army.

From The Grand Aliance of Destruction I have two armies.

Ogor Mawtribes is what was called Ogres when I started with the army. I have not planned for a huge army here, but I do have quite a lot of units still. So far I have only finished one unit of Ogor Gluttons (they too had a completely different name when I stated) and I have a unit of Leadbelchers that are assembled and awaiting priming and painting. I look forward to working more with this army as they really appeal to me.

The second army I have from this alliance is my Gloomspite Gitz. The idea for this army was to make a fun-to-play Greenskin army without the Orcs as I tried making a Black Orc unit that ended up looking like they all had chronic back-pain. Like all my armies it has taken me many years to not finish, and in the meantime Games Workshop came out with rules for just such an army that I wanted to play, called the Gloomspite Gitz.
This army do have some finished units, but still most of the units needed are in boxes. I have lots of Night Goblins that are assembled but not primed, but I also have several of the newer units that are primed and just waiting to be painted. The army will consist of lots of Goblins (and most of them Night Goblins) at least one Giant (Aleguzzer Gargant as they call them now) and this one is fully painted and based. I also think I have one more still in his box, but I might make that one to fit with my chaos army but I have to see what happens. Might be cool to do some conversion stuff and use him in this army.
I also have different kinds of Trolls (or Trogoths) that will fight along side the Gloomspite Gitz.
The leader of the army is the old figure Skarsnik with his giant pet squig. In my army he is called Turnip instead, and his squig is named Blabla.

Finally I have what could be used for several armies from The Grand Alliance of Chaos.
Personally I would love to use everything as one big undivided army, but they can also be used as smaller armies worshiping one specific Chaos God.
I have several of the newer stuff for Khorne and Nurgle, and they are made to look like they worship their specific god. But I also have regular Chaos warriors painted up that worship these Gods.
I have a small following of Slaanesh, and they can either fight with followers of other chaos gods or alongside Deamonettes. I even have quite a big fortress for the Chaos forces.

A bit about names

After writing a little about the names of my Imperial Guard officers in my last blogpost, I thought I would take s little time to write about how I name my characters, why I do it and who gets named.

I generally give names to the leaders and characters in my armies. I also name miniatures that stand out in certain ways and sort of demands to be known.
In addition to naming, I like to make a little background on the miniatures to say just the basic things abut them.
A good example of what kind of background I make is the background for Sergeant Bastion. I read a background in one of the old editions (4th or 5th ed I think) of Warhammer 40.000 about Sergeant Luc Bastonne, a Cadian of Noble heritage that takes every loss of his men personal. Inspired by him I made Gunnery Sergeant "Luck" Bastion, a veteran sergeant leading a squad called Bastions Bastards. Sergeant Bastion have been promoted to higher ranks several times, but have refused to accept the promotions as he likes to be on the ground in the field with his men. Once a colonel took it so personal he reported Bastion for insubordination, but the Senior Commisar in the Regiment felt it was for the right reasons and let it pass. Bastion and his Bastards are made from a Cadian squad set, modified with bits from the Forgeworld Cadian Veteran set.

For my Sergeants I just like to use names that sounds good. One will be called Remagen, but I am not sure who he is yet.
For the commissioned officers I use names from the American Civil War. A lot of them were generals in real life, but I have to demote them in my army. I do not care if they fought for the North or South, but I will not use persons I find inappropriate like Quantrill, who was a guerrilla leader fighting for the southern cause. I don't use Lee or Grant either as they are too well known for that special period (they are probably the only two names Norwegians can name along with Abraham Lincoln when asked about the American Civil War). The General in charge of the Walpurgian 3rd Brigade is Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

For my other armies I have chosen other areas to get names from. My Space Marines chapter, The Gatekeepers, have Roman names for the Chapter Master and Captains. Now that Lieutenants have been introduced, I will use Roman names for them as well. The Apothecaries  and probably the Librarians will be named after Greek philosophers. My chapter Master is called Otho Vitellius.


My Mechanicus army, the Cohort 9-1 Alpha from the Mechanicus fleet ship Gloria Inveneris is Magos Explorator de Orellana. His commander is the commander of the entire Mechanicus fleet, and his name is Arch Magos de Sousa (I will use the Belisarius Cawl figure for this one).
They are named for famous explorers, at least explorers that come up on Wikipedia when I search for Famous ones.

I also give names to my badguys, and my Chaos Space Marine army is called The Knights of Oblivion, and their commander is Arch-Commodore Falstaff. All the named characters in this army will be Shakespeare characters of some sort.

My Orks gets their names from famous people, and they get "orkyfided"   The warboss in charge if the army is Hazza Hoff (as in David Hasselhoff) and he has his pet squig Hoobie. The figure is Grukk Facerippa, a huge Ork.

My Inquisitor army is led by Lord Inquisitor Van Dorn, a name that just came to me and for this army I will just use names I like.

I have not found any names for my Genestealer army yet, but I need to try an find out how a Genestealer would be named. Also my Chaos Daemons are without names, as daemon names should not be spoken.

For Age of Sigmar, I have no names for my Chaos Warrior armies yet, but that will come.
Like in 40K the Daemons will get no names.

My Duardin (or Dwarf) army are led by Thorir Thorgrimsson. The characters in this army will all be Icelandic or old Norwegian sounding names. The choice of Thorir for the King is a tribute to the coach of the Norwegian female handballteam Thorir Hergeirsson who is a great leader and sort of short (not saying he is a dwarf though).

The Fyreslayers are sort of cousins of the Duardin, and I figure they should have old nordic sounding names too. Maybe Icelandig sounding for them too, but at least sort of viking names.

The Kharadron Overloards are also related somehow, but maybe a little more distant. I will see how many Icelandic sounding names I can think up, if I get enough they will get those kind of names too, if not I will see if I can find some other sort of cool idea to use on them.

My Sylvaneth army are named after Latin names for all kinds of trees. So far I have named the ancient Treelord who leads the army, and its name is Quercus and this is Latin for Oak.

My greenskins army in Age of Sigmar will all get sort of querky funny sounding names, and for my leader I use the Skarsnik figure with his big squig. In my army the Leader is called Turnip, and his squig is called Blabla.

I have yet to pick a way to name my Ogres, but hopefully I can find something fitting for this nice army of big miniatures.

Status on the Chaos project so far

I have finished ten of my Khorne Warriors. They were entered in the painting competition "The Fang" at Games Workshop in Oslo as an Age of Sigmar unit entry, but did not end in the top three.
I will take pictures of them and pose them here, as soon as I get the minis home from the store. It will be some time next week probably.

I also entered Grim Burloksson, who in the current edition of Age of Sigmar has been reduced to a "Cogsmith". In my army he will be a character, the crazy engineer and inventor of the Badyear Blimp and several other wild inventions. Age of Sigmar have divided the Dwarfs in to two factions now, where the Cogsmith, cannon, organ gun, Gyrocopter and Gyrobomber has been put in a faction along with the Empire Steam Tank and cannons. The faction is called "Ironweld Arsenal". The rest of the Dwarfs that still exist in the game is called "Dispossessed". Stupid name if you ask me, it sounds more like someone that has been under a curse or something and manged to get rid of it. So in this blog, and in my mind I will keep calling all my Dwarfs for Dwarfs. I will field an army consisting of a lot of stuff that is end of sale, as I will use all the Dwarf units I have in my possession (pun intended) in my army. Might think a bit on what to do for the Armies on Parade though, as that might demand current issue minis. Grim entered in the Aos Single miniature category, and I did not believe he would stand a chance of a top three placement, and he didn't. The winner was an Empire general who was insanely painted with small and intricate freehand work (a worthy winner).

For the Aos Monster category I entered my Giant, or Aleguzzler Gargant as the AoS books now call him. The Giant (lets call him what he really is, so everybody knows what we're talking about) was painted and based a long time ago, but he recently got a new wash on all the skin parts. He didn't reach the top three in his category either, but I like him a lot anyway. It's sort of insane to see how big he is compared to an Ogre, who are the biggest minis I usually work with. I will take a pic to compare when I get him back from the store.

In the Open category, I entered my first Ogre unit (or Ogors as AoS like to call them, from the Gutbusters faction). They received their new base not too long ago, and I painted the trim of the bases to match just before entering them in to The Fang. They didn't reach the top three either, but I can only speculate that they might have done better than my Chaos warriors if I had entered them in the AoS Unit category instead. But with only one entry allowed for each category I had to choose...

As for the chaos army I have now primed all assembled minis. I will start to paint up some of the bigger ones alongside my chaos warriors in the near future, as they take up a lot of space on my table.

Ï have done a lot of the paint on the Sorcerer Lord, but I need to decide on how to paint some of the details before I go on.
I have also started on my Rotbringers Sorcerer for the Nurgle part of thee army.

First unit of Ogres completely finished

This unit has been standing around for a very long time waiting to be based and washed.
I have always liked the look of the Ogres, but not really found out what to do with them. After I had painted this unit up, it took a long time figuring out what to do with the bases that could be done for the entire army, and then I spent a long time figuring out how to wash the skin to make it look good.

I had a little skin accident with one of my old metal ogryns for 40K, and I did not want the same spotted skin for these.

After a tip from Mats at Games Workshop, I decided to go ahead and try my luck, and I now have found a way to do wash on all future models with skin colors.

I ended up washing the skin with Reikland Fleshshade in a thin, even layer, and I think this worked out great.
For the metal I used Nuln Oil, and for all the others Agrax Earthshade.

The bases is made with almost white technical paint, and has been given a drybrush with white dry paint after the technical paint was completely dry.

Here is a picture of the entire unit lined up together.   

The first row with standard bearer, champion (Chrusher) and musician (Bellower).

The second row consisting of three regular Ogres.

It wasn't easy taking good pictures of the standard bearer, so I had to cheat a little. In the building instructions it said that the standard could either be a banner with a gnoblar in a little lookout box on top, or a pole with a scull on top. But I wanted to combine them so I glued the scull on to the front of the box and made something I felt looked a lot better.

A bit difficult to see from the pic, but the gnoblar can see between the horns and still keep lookout for the Ogres.

The next plan for the Ogres is to finish the unit of four Leadbelchers that are standing partially built on my shelves. Then there will be Ironguts, cavalry, characters and more. I will try to make one unit at the time, and make sure that I get the colours constant for all units. For a lot of the units I will also add some grass turfs that stick out of the snow.

Female guards, deamonettes and more

My first three Plage Drones are now completely built and waiting for warmer weather so I can prime them before painting. Before I start with the paintjob I will have a look at pictures of other peoples work to get some impressions of how I can paint them up. The minis need to look nicely painted but nurgly at the same time and that is a challenge I have not faced before. I have also found the second box of drones and will put that together in the near future so when I start to prime and paint there will be six drones to do as a batch job.

I have also assembled a unit of ten Deamonettes of Slaanesh with full command. I was not very happy with the musician, because the instument didn't stay in the air as I had planned. But that's what you get when you're not watchng the minis dry. I think it was quite fiddly to get the arms to sit right on the tiny sholuders, but apart from that it was a nice and fun little box to assemble. And I am quite sure that the unit will be expanded in the future. I have a few ideas about painting these, and I will go for purple and black clothes with gold details.

I have just made a conversion I've been wanting to do almost since I started with Imperial Guard, and that is to make female troopers. First time I thought about it was after seeing Starship Troopers. I've read the old fluff that says that only very few women join the Guard, but I feel some need to be represented. And with the spares from the Deamonettes box right in front of me I had the perfect start.
While assembling the Deamonettes I had this plan in my head, so I saved two heads that didn't look too deamony (is that even a word?) and today my first two female troopers were born. One of them is quite inspired by one of the characters in Tanya Huff's Confederation series. A non human with high purple hair (don't remember the name).
I might call her Sergeant Kerr in recognition of the series, as she will get a "normal" hair colour in my army.
The other female trooper have a pony tail of the hair she has left, and she is a regular trooper. I sort of figue most enlisted men to have very short hair, so in that way the deamonette heads with hair only in the middle of the head will fit nicely. You can't see that the enisted men have mohawk hair too, as they have kept their helemets on...
I had originally thought of using elf heads earlier, but on those heads the pointy ears were too visible.

I have also made snow bases for the entire six man unit of Ogres, and I will use some time later today or tomorrow to drybtush the technical paint with white to make it look even more like snow. On other bases, like cavalry and monsters I will try and add some grass turfs to break up the monotony of the white, but I don't think I will do that on these bases.

I also assembled Cypher - The Fallen Angel yesterday for my Chaos Space Marines warband. He is a metal mini but still quite nice with some nice details. This will give me a choice to field my Chaos Marines as fallen Dark Angels if I like, or if I choose to have my own chapter Cypher can have joined them for a duration as he is known to do such things according to the official fluff. This also says he attract fallen Dark Angels, so we'll see what I end up with in the future. But since all my Chaos Space Marines will be Dark Angls Green, then they might be fallen angels...

Merry Christmas to all...

I didn't get any Warhammer related stuff for Christmas, but I had not expected to get any either. I have so many kits on the shelves already, waiting for some tender love, glue and paint.
I did however participate in a Secret Santa event at Games Workshop, so yesterday I was in the store and got a present from another participant.
Everyone that wanted to participate bought a set from any of the modelranges. The price should be 250NOK or more. For about 250-280 NOK you get boxes with troops and units for most of the armies, so that is a good price. Then the staff members wrap the presents, and yesterday we were allowed to choose one present each.
I got a box of Plage Drones in my present. They are from the Chaos Deamons range, and can be used with the same bases both for Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40.000. In the earlier days you had to mount the flying stems on square bases for Fantasy, but now I can just use the flyer bases on them for both systems. The box came with enough stems to make both kind of bases though, so it was not much job to use them for both system earlier either.
Now I have three flying stems that I can use with my future plans for my Dwarf airforce. I have been inspired to make a few balloons to use as observation platforms as well as the Badyear Blimp.

I built the three Plage Drones as a command unit, and then I will build three more as regular Plage Drones to make up a unit of six. If I happen to come across a single model in the future, I will add it to the unit as seven is a more Nurgly number, but I'm not buying a box just to build one of three. If they work great on the battlefile though, I might add more units, and then one box can provide the seventh drone for three separate units. Only the future knows what will come...

A little time ago I bought the Games Workshop backpack (known as the Munitoruim Battlepack Case Harness), and this can be used as a regular backpack, or you can open it to hold either one crusade case, two battle cases or three skirmish cases in a harness behind the rooms of the pack itself. I bought it as a bundle, and saved some money getting the Crusade case at the same time. This can carry a lot of models, so I felt it was stupid to just carry three ork Killa Kans and a Cannon. So I went down in my hobbyroom and found a lot of other projects that needed some love and care and brought them along as well. Now I have them in the case, so I plan to finish them all (not a lot of work left for many of the units) and get them ready for the display shelves and for future battles.

So the plan for the next few days is:

- Wash the unit of six Ogres that has been standing ready for the final touch for a long time. I see that I spilled some paint on a couple of pants, so I will need to repaint those. But apart from that it is a matter of washing the models. I have put this out because I've been a little worried about how the skin will turn out, but I think I am ready to give it a shot now. I also got some wash advice from the GW staff yesterday...

- Wash the unit of Slaanesh Chaos Warriors (The Shining ones). This is fairly easy as they all just need a thin coat of Nuln oil to make them look a little bit dirty, but not too much. I might also use a little drybrushing on the armourplates to make them shiny again. After all, the unit is called The Shining...
Then some time in the future I will paint up Sigvald to lead them. And right now I am also putting together a unit of ten Daemonettes of Slaanesh to fight alongside them on the battlefield...

- Wash and drybrush a unit of Dwarf Ironbreakers. They need the same care as the Chaos warriors above.

Then I have a cannon with crew that needs washing, and I need to finish painting (and then wash) my Grudge ponies. I wanted to put them on bases, and with the help of Mats at Games Workshop we decided that the square bases that came with the Plage Drones are perfect for this task. Since I have two boxes of Drones I have enough bases for all the ponies, so I will try and make these bases look like a trail of some sort, and add some turf and some technical paint to them as I do get a little room on each side of the ponies to work with. If this works out nice, I will use some of them on my Armies On Parade board next year...

-Finish paining my Killa Kans, the Kustom Mega-kannon with crew and a lot of Boyz for my 40K Ork army. I had not primed the Killa kans, so I gave them all a good dash of red paint to use as a base. The plan was to paint them up in the store yesterday to use them in a game at noon, but I ended up building Plage Drones instead.
The Killa Kans will be red with yellow details, just like my Battlewagon, and the Kannon will be yellow like my Trukk with both red and black details. I will paint the crew so that they can be used on other wehicles as well. There are five crew to each cannon, and I have four of them, so I thought I migh use some of the crew for other projects, as all grot helpers can be switched betwewn sets, and it will give a bit more life to the army to have a little variation. Besides, all of the different cannons won't need five crew to operate. And I might need one or two crewmembers on my Stompas.

Pictures of the finished projects will be shared here as units are done.

The first units of Bullgryns are done

I've managed to get some work done this last week, and I have now finished both groups of Bullgryns that I have been working on.
The three Bullgryns with grenadier gauntlets and slab shields will be part of a larger unit in the future. They are a legal unit as they are now, with one bone 'ead and two regular Bullgryns, but since I can have up to ten in one unit a larger unit will look really cool. I am thinking a unit of nine.

The five Bullgryns with battle mauls and suppression shields will probably be the only ones with this armament, and will work as one unit. I might have to add one more Bullgryn as this unit doesn't have a Bone 'ead yet, but I am not sure if that is a must (but I belive so). I will look in to that and build from there. There are two small details left on these, and that is painting the tips of the power generators on their battle mauls and on the shields and painting a circle in the middle of the shields a lighter blue (need to decide on the blue to use before I do that).

The remaining boxes on the shelves will be made in to Bullgryns with slab shiels (two more boxes and I have a unit of nine) and regular Ogres.

The Abhuman Auxiliary command squad is also comming along. The uniforms are painted, and the armour for the ones wearing that is also done. I have also painted the banner, but not attatched it to the pole yet.

The Chaos Space Marine terminators are also getting close to completion. I have added everything to them, and painted six of ten with all the silvery bits. The remaining four will be done shortly.
I have also started on their trophy racks, and so far I have painted the leather pouches and the "pompoms", and the next job will be painting skulls and helmets before I finish with painting the tips of the racks metal and do a clean up. Then I plan to add rust to some of the chainmail and the broken trophy racks.

I have also done a little painting on my first Inqisitor. I'm missing a lot of details still, but he comes along slowly. I have not decided what unit to use him with yet (might be mainly for display purposes), but I am leaning towards a unit of Tempestus Scions. He's armed with a plastma pistol, and I think that might fit well with either Scions or Space Marines where the unit maxes out on their plastma weapons.
The second Inquisitor is still waiting to be painted. He is armed with an Inferno pistol and power sword, and he will fight alongside a squad of Sisters of Battle, but I might also use him with other forces if I want to add him to a game. These two Inquisitors look a lot like old witch hunters, and that is probably why I ended up getting them, as I love that look.
The third Inquisitor I have, looks a bit more special with a rather special helmet and armed with bolter and powersword. He will be accompanied by two Crusaders, as I think these figures fit together.

I have also dived in to fantasy for some experimental basework. I decided to base my Ogres with a snow theme, and I used texture paint for the first time on the base of one of my Ogres. I used the one called Mournfang Snow (if I remeber he name correctly). The idea is to use both this texture paint and the snow powder (same as static grass only white it seems) to make some snow effect on the bases. Still all bases will not be completely covered in snow, there will be som mud, some rocks and some small forms of vegetation as well.
If the texture paint works well, then I will use some of that on my Dwarf army, but then with mud and rocks. The only Dwarfs based so far are my miners, and they are based mostly with gravel, and I think I will use that for my remaining Miners, maybe combined with texture paint.
I also plan to use texture paint on the ground of my Citadel woods, both the two regular forrests and the haunted forrest.
If the temperature is kind to me, I hope to basecoat a lot of buildings, the haunted forrest and the one finished regular forrest this weekend.

What's left to make... Ogre Kingdom

The time has come to present the Ogres.
I like to use spare heads from my Ogres to build Bullgryns in Warhammer 40.000, so I have hopes that this army will have some progress as I need to take the heads I need for the Ogres in the box before I can take spare heads to use on my Bullgryns.

I have a unit of 4 Leadbelchers (1 box) that are partly assembled. There are some places where it would be hard to paint if I build everything first, so I will assemble the rest after they are painted
Also i need to paint and add some details like axes, pouches with meat, beer barrels and things like that.
I will add some Gnoblars to the unit, but I will have to do the painting first, to see where I have room to add them on the bases.

I have 4 characters for this army. 1 Tyrant that I plan to use as the boss, 1 Slaughtermaster, 1 Maneater (the paymaster, a web exclusive miniature) and Bragg the Gutsman. These are all finecast minis.
Bragg is a miniature that ended up in my posession just because he looks cool. He's sort of like a real mean hangman from the middle ages, and I like that. I look forward to painting him up, and hope I do him justice.

In addition to the unit of Leadbelchers that I am currently working on, I have 2 more units still in their boxes, so I get to field a lot of cannons on the battlefield. I am not sure how I will field them yet, but I'll figure it out as I paint the Ogres up.

2 boxes of Ironguts adds up the rest of the infantry so far, along with a painted unit of regular Ogres.
I need to buy some more infantry units in the future, but not before I have painted up what I already have.

I have 2 boxes of Gnoblar fighters. They are probably not the big fighters, but I plan to have some fun with them. I am not sure if I can field both boxes as one big unit, or if I need to make two uinits of them, but I plan to keep them in as few units as possible. Maybe I might swap some of them with the Gnoblars that come with the other Ogre boxes. I also plan to make a command squad with a standard bearer, a so called champion and a musician. If it works, I plan to use some drums that are left from an old orc box and glue them to the back of one Gnoblar, and have another one walk behind him to bang on them. They will not have any practical use as  a command squad in the game, but I just like to make the unit look a little cooler.

The cavalry is made up of 2 boxes of Mournfang cavalry. This are very nice sets, and I plan to paint the fur of the Mournfang in the same colours as the Rhinox that pull the Ironblaster or the Scraplauncher (depending on what I choose to build as the box can make either one). An then I can use the same colours on the Thundertusk or Stonehorn as well. This will give all the animals a nice coherent look and make the units look as they come form the same area.

Started to add to my Ogres

When I built my first box of Bullgryns I wanted to use some heads from the Ogres to make them special.
Because of this I opened a box of leadbelchers, and took a head from there.
So now I decided to build the box of leadbelchers, in order to see what heads I have touse on fuure bullgryns.

I haven't done very much so far, but yesterday afternoon I spent some time cutting all the parts I need from the sprues, and putting them in nice piles, so I know what to use for each leadbelcher.
There were four in the box, so I found heads with a burning stick (they need to light the cannon fuses after all) for three of them, and the fourth have a gnoblar with a burning stick sitting on his right shoulder.

I will use more extra bits and pieces to make them special, things like powderhorns and pouches, but I keep it on the sprues until I have painted the ogres so I don't loose it.

Bullgryns

I have started adding to my Imperial Guard army, or Astra Militarium as that army is called now. And first out is a pack of 3 Bullgryns.
A Bullgryn is basically an Ogryn with other armour and weaponry, but apart from that they seem to be identical. And Ogryns are really just the 40K version of Ogres.
So I decided to try to do some headswapping with Ogres. The first Ogre box I found was a box of Leadbelchers, and that kit includes a lot of great heads for this kind of swapping, while still leaving enough great heads to build the Leadbelcher unit.

The Bullgryn box can make 3 Bullgryns, and as I needed one Bone 'ead (the Bullgryn Sargeant) I only needed two heads as the Bone 'ead has implants in his head. The Bullgryn box also comes with one bearded head, so in the end I only took one head from the Leadbelcher kit. But for my next Bullgryns I will need to steal 3 Leadbelcher heads to make them unique.

One of the things I like with Warhammer Fantasy Ogres is that they have so many cool heads, and I don't really need to use the dull bald heads. But these heads might look good on regular 40K Orgyns.

The three Bullgryns I have made now are armed with Grenadier gauntlets and Slabshiels, and I plan to make several more like them, as they are the models that I like the most from the Ogryn/Bullgryn range. These models can be used for several roles on the battlefield. Two of these roles being linebreakers or line holders, and I think that these roles fit Ogryns well as they seem to be too stupid to be scared. These models will all have heads with facial hair of some sorts.
Then I will make some Bullgryns (thinking of a unit of 5 as 2 is too little for a full unit) with battle mauls and suppression shields. The last mini of the box(es) of 3 will be used as the character Nork Deddog who will be the personal bodyguard for one of my army commanders. The Bullgryns with battle mauls will have heads with gasmasks.

I will also make regular Ogryns with ripperguns, and I will try to use bald heads to make them stand out from the Bullgryns.

I am not sure if I can use Orgyns and Bullgryns as part of the same units, but they might be from the same company and that company will have one or two Commisars. One of them will be the one newly released from Games Workshop, as he looks really mean. He will be a character and get a back story in the fluff.

Forgive me people, it's been too long since my last blogpost...

First a little update on the buying front.
Renewed my White Dwarf subscription and got the exclusive model. This year I do not have any plans at all for the mini, a Peter Jackson director dwarf is not something I feel I can fit in to my dwarf army.

Also walked out of the store with two Imperial Guard artillery pieces, the Basilisk mobile artillery platform. One old box and one new, only difference between them seem to be the size of the box (the old one is a little bit bigger).
And then I brought with me an Ogre Thundertusk/Stonehorn model. Not sure what it will be yet, but I will get to that when I get to building it.

and now...
Trolls! They are finally all painted up and all glued together.
I am sad to report that the deep water troll face (the dangling light) broke off while the trolls were being stowed away. Makes me a bit sad, but then at least I am 100% sure what I should use as one head for the next 3 trolls.
All I am going to do with them now is to let the glue dry, then give the trolls their wash.

I finally got around to pack up my lightbox, and my wife have used it with some success on taking some scrapbook pictures. So I will take pics of the trolls in that, and post them here this weekend (maybe even before that).

My plan now is to do my 40K project, as I do one Fantasy and one 40K and then one Fantasy again, one 40K and so on...
For my 40K project I will try to finish off some of my half painted stuff, like the imperial Guard Heavy weapon Squad, the Kommissars, and some Space Marines.
I have a bunch of Space Marines just needing a shoulderguard painted and some wash added, and I will see what I can do about that.

Break in construction

There has been a halt in the painting process. I've been away for a holiday for two weeks, and when I got back we started to tear down the kitchen. We are now in the last part of the process of building the new kitchen, but I expect I have to work on the kitchen for at least a couple more days and then I expect I will need at least one day to help the wife get everything back down from the attic and back in to the new kitchen cabinets.  But as soon as that is done, the Imperial Guard will get their reinforcements, and I will start to paint my River Trolls for my Goblin army.

Had a trip to Games Workshop the other day, and brought home a solid reinforcement for my Space Marines. In 6th ed. the Stormraven is allowed as a flyer for all chapters, and as a result of that I had to have one. I had planned to get one some tine in the future anyway, but this gave me the kick to get it now. Imagine a Stormraven comming in to a hot landing zone flanked by two stormtalons... 

I admit I only have one Stormtalon at the moment, but I expect to have at least one more sometime in the future. But I won't buy the second one until I have built my first. If it is crap to build, then I will manage with one.

I also got some more Ogres to make up my army. I will sum up what I have here in a later post, as I don't remember right now what is down in the basement.

The Imperial Guard get their first psyker later this week, the Primaris Psyker. He has been ordered through the collect in store option at Games Workshop in Oslo and they hope to have it in store on Thursday afternoon so that I can collect it after work on Friday. In the same shipment is also a unit of Regimental Advisors.

The Ogres gets a maneater in the shipment, but I am thinking of using him for another position after having a chat with one of the team at GW. It is the Maneater with the treassure chests (Paymaster Maneater), and I look forward to working with him. 

The Goblins gets some Gnarly Cave Squigs. I have been wanting to get those squigs since I started to collect Goblins, so they might be bumped up to be the next Fantasy project after the Trolls. But they are really not a big job, so I might do them in between other projects as well. I'll see how it looks when they arrive.

The final item in that shipment is an Inquisitor. I will probably field him with the Sisters or my Marines, but I really got him because I love the model. I have been looking for it on Ebay for a while, but now it is released in Fine Cast and I felt it was the time to get him home. It is the Inquisitor who looks like he could have been on the Mayflower when it first came to found English colonies in North America.

Well, off to the kitchen for some IKEA assembly-work...

Update on the Armies

I see I did a "what to come in the future" for my armies some months back, and thought it would be nice to look in to the crystal ball again and look at my futrure plans:

Scenery:
As stated in my last post, there are things happening here. Temple of Skulls is the first thing I plan to work on, to try and get the good vibrations for my way of painting rocks before I get going on all my towers and buildings. I will also prime and paint the forrest that I have started to build, as I have a good idea on how I want that to look as a finished piece.

Bretonnians & Empire:
I don't think I ever will have my own armies for these miniatures, but I plan to paint up Brets and Empire to use as citizens for my town. I might get the Empire rulebook sometime in the future to use those rules if I end up playing with this army. But for now this will purely be a good exercise in Diorama making. I have several core units of Brets to paint, and with the new paint range from Games Workshop it should be cool to paint colorful knights. I also have an Empire witchhunter to paint up, and I think he will be done first as he is intended as an inhabitant of the Skullvane Manse.

Chaos (Warriors of Chaos):
This army is looking at an update containing more warriors (one unit of Khorne followers and some general units), more knights (currently only have two knights painted up, but these are not based yet), some chosen warriors, special characters, Lords and heroes and let's not forget the Marauders.

I will also finish the bases for my hounds.

Dwarfs:
This is an army that I do intend to play with. The next things to come for this army will be Thundrers and Quarrelers, a Gyrocopter, some special figures (White Dwarf subscription minis for 2011 and 2012) and then I will expand the army with the minis I have on the shelves. There is at least two units of regular warriors, I have the metal Thorek Ironbrow and his smitty, a metal Goblin heaver, one or two cannons, and some minis bought from Ebay and other places (among them a unit of miners and an almost finished Avatars of War dwarf to lead some thunderers).

Goblins:
Next thing to do here will be my River Trolls, a unit of three trolls are already partly assembled and will be painted up as soon as I have finished painting my ongoing 40.000-project.
Then there are several units of Goblins of all kinds to paint up, along with an Arachnarok spider or two and a giant who can work both in this army and my Chaos army.

Imperial Guard:
The first thing to come here is the Cadian heavy weapon squad I am working on at the moment. Then there will be a veteran unit (Bastion's Bastards), the remaining 5 troopers to make a whole unit of my five loose troopers, and there is a myriad of troops and special characters to paint up here. I also have lots of vehicles to paint (including two super heavy tanks and several Leman Russ tanks). I should also finish up the unit of Ogryns and a command unit that has been standing on my table for a long long time. This army will grow in to a solid army over time, and what I plan to paint next changes from day to day as my mood shifts or inspiration comes and goes. But a good bet would be that I will do my best to get the units already started off my painting desk.

Ogres:
There are two items to paint up here. I have a unit of Leadbelchers that is standing on the shelves, and also a special figure (Bragg the Gutsman). Of these two Bragg is the one being painted first, but I would like to try and paint another resin figure that is a little cheaper before I start on him as he costs as much as a whole unit from another army.

Sisters of Battle:
There are some semi-painted minis on my work table, and I plan to finish painting these up. At the moment they will only be used for adding some detail in a Space Marine or Imperial Guard diorama, but in the long term I hope to be able to have a small force of Sisters to field in games of Appocalypse alongside my Space Marines.

Space Marines:
There are so many things to paint up for this army. I have started to paint lots of Marines, and I will need to finish them. Then there are all the Marines I have bougth that are assembled but not painted, and lets not forget all the units still in their boxes and on their sprues.
I have an entire first company in Terminator armor to paint up, and several other first company veterans. There are also lots of different troops and vehicles that needs to be painted.

Ogres are finally finished!

It sure took long enough!
I finally got the Ogres done this afternoon, and it sure feels good to have finished my first project in a long time.
Now I'm going to work faster with my Imperial Guard heavy weapon squad, so I don't have to write as many posts about them... That is not the motivation, but I do want to get them done as soon as possible for other reasons.

But before I go on about the heavy weapon squad, I would like to finish talking (or rather writing) about the Ogres.
The unit consists of six Ogres, and they all have some sort of extra equipment like a bag of food or a keg of grog or something similar, and they all have an extra knife or a butchers axe. All in all I am quite happy with the way they turned out, and I am pretty sure that this was the first batch, and that several more will come at a later time.
The lookout platform on top of the banner is tilting a little bit forward, as it was rather big to stand on a thin pole while the glue was drying, but I figure that is just the proof of the quality (or should I say lack of quality) on gnoblar engineering. The glue has dried well now, and it should stay on.

I have earlier said that my next Fantasy-project should be dwarfs, but something has come up. This something is that I found an old can of paint that was bought for one special GW set, the plastic River Trolls. The Trolls will be used in my Goblin army as either two units of three, or one unit of six (whatever works best according to the rules existing at the time I finally get my Goblin army ready for the gaming scene) . The project will be three of these trolls (one box), and if they turn out well, then the remaining three will follow shortly.

But before I start on those trolls, there is time to do a 40K project, and that project is a Cadian heavy weapon squad for the Xerxes Imperial Guard.
For this project I will add some Tamya 1:35 sandbags to the bases to make it look a little different than all other heavy weapon bases. The sandbags will be a little big, but I figure with all equipment available so far in the future they are sure to have something to help them lift heavy sandbags. After all they are transporting the heavy weapons around, and the lascannon is bigger than a man.
This first six man squad will be armed with two lascannons and a heavy bolter. I know it's most usual to have three of a kind, but there are no rules that I can find that says it has to be so. My reason for splitting it up is that as a commander I would be concerned about not being able to defend the lascannons against an infantry attack (that is where the heavy bolter comes in). So until someone tells me it is legally wrong, I will add one heavy bolter in each heavy weapons squad.

Status on the Ogres

It's Monday again, and the beginning of a new week.
This Monday is a holiday, so I am sitting home working with my miniatures and watching time fly in front of my computer.
I know I could be down in my workroom, tidying it up and making space for me to sit down there instead, but I love sitting in the living-room working. And as long as I only have one box with all my stuff in it, and the box fits neatly under the table the wife doesn't complain that much.

All Ogres are now finished and can be used in a small game. What still remains is to add the lookout to the banner, but this will be done shortly. At the moment the platform and the large scull are given a chance to dry up before I add the Gnoblar to the platform and try to add it all together.

new week, new chances

This week must provide me with some opportunities to paint, as the Easter holliday starts on Wednesday.
Saturday was my Wifes birthday, so the day was spent making ready for a family party, having the family over, and then cleaning up afterwards.
Sunday was spent assembling new furniture, removing the old and getting clothes and stuff in to the new furniture. I also got to spend some time in between the things that were done to read The Imperial Munitorium Manual. And after reading about punishment, I am starting to feel a little sorry for the Guard soldiers I'm assembling.
I think I will have to write some special adjustments to the general Munitorium rules to guide my Commissars on right and wrong to assure that I still have an army to fight with when I reach the gameboards. Fighting on a world with stone, ash and coal for surface and with heavy winds howling almost non-stop, then it is hard to look like a posterboy all the time.
Fortionately both Commissars with the 101st Infantry, Commissar Wayne and Commissar Scott, are hard but fair. So hopefully they will not punish fighting men for looking a little dirty as long as they are healty and fights well.

My Orges will be done in a couple of days now, there are small but several details that needs to be fixed, but if I manage to stay awake while sitting in my chair after work I might get something done quite fast. There are many small items with small details, so it is possible to work with several items at the same time. I have also gotten a great start, and apart from the big scull to add to the banner, everything is painted in a basic color. Then what remains is to get the items glued on to the bodies, and get it all glued in the right positions.

The end of yet another week

I was hoping to say that I have finished the Ogres, but sadly I still need a day or two. Lots of details on these fellows. Need 3 colors on the kegs alone, and I need to apply each color two times as the kegs need to rest on one side to dry. Same thing with knives and butcher axes. Still, even if I have some details to paint yet, it is nice to see the progress. I managed to find what I think is a good mix of equipment to help give each Ogre a little personality.
It just hit me that I have one more detail to fix up, and that is the teeth of the ogres. I have to find a good color to use on them, and i figure I could use the same color on the big scull for the banner. I just have to find something white-ish, but not scull white as I figure they don't have perfect teeth.
I'll have a look in my paint collection tomorrow and see what I can find.

While looking around for some other pieces today I found a small plastic lid lined up with half painted Spacemarines. This means I will have to finish them one of these days. Among other things are some Close Combat Terminators. Guess I can take them among my Imperial Guard heavy weapon squad, but time will show. For the Imperial Guard heavy weapon squad I will try to personalize the bases on most of them with sandbags and other things that might come in handy. This will also be a golden chance for me to try out the 40K basing set, as I might find something there to add to the large bases.

Getting near completion...

Once again I have been able to spend a few hours with my Ogres, and I am really close to a complete project now. I have selected the extra pieces today and started to paint it up. I have a half crazy idea that I will add the rams-head (or what ever animal it is) to the platform on top of the banner pole. The head is originally designed to be glued directly to the banner pole instead of a banner, so I am not entirely sure if it will work or not.
On top of the platform there will be a Gnoblar lookout, and I hope it will be able to see something between the horns of the skull.
I hope I will find the time to do the remaining paitjob tomorrow, as I have to go and play a gig at a wedding tonight. Going to watch Formula 1 Malaysia Grand Prix tomorrow, so I think I will get some painting done during that. And hopefully later on as well, not much else going on tomorrow as far as I know.