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. 

First November update

Since last time I have finally gotten around to finish the last models of my Leagues of Votann intro box that was released when the Leagues came to 40K. Now I have 3 Hernkyn Pioneers on their magna-coil bikes ready to prime and paint. I look forward to this as I think they will look good on the tabletop.

I have also built the mini of the month for November from the Warhammer store, a Hernkyn Yaegir (basically the same dude as the ones on the bikes except that he is on foot). So while at the Wahammer store I ordered a box with 10 Yaegirs to add to my army.

I also bougth a Hekaton Landfortress. This is the biggest transport for the Votann and I plan to build that next.

The Fortified Manor is built and is right now waiting for better weather to be primed along with lots of other miniatures.

I have not yet decided on how I want to do the setup, as I am not a big fan of how some of the fences go together, but I plan to get more of these as I would liike to have other buildings (certainly an Inn and maybe another chapel) and some more towers, so then I will get more fences. I already have a plan for some of the walls that come in this set and an Inn I plan to build, but there will be plenty of fences to go around. I would like to use the wall with gates as pictured on the box art (but I will not glue it on, just put it in place when dispalying as it will surely break in transport if glued) and wen I get more fences with other sets I would like to use the brick fences on both sides. I will see next time I sit down how tight they fit together and decide if they sould be glued in to 90 degres fence or a square or just left as stand alone pieces and placed down for display. 

The walls from futures sets I would like to add together back to back to make a fenced in Inn.

I have done some meassurements and it looks like it could be done. 

All in all I am quite happy with the way this Manor ended up even though the instructions made me assemble the tower wrong so that the fix between the tower and the building didn't fit as snug against the tower as I would have liked. I had to us quit a lot of greenstuff in the gaps. I am not great with that, and it didn't help that my greenstuff is getting old and a little dry. But I hope it will look quite ok after I paint it up. I don't think this will be somethng people notice on a causal look, but I would not put the building on an Armies of Parade board. But it will be great for games and display.

Troggoths and scenery (and some Imperial Agents)

I have been working some more on my Troggoths today, and as soon as the weather is nice when I have time I will prime the Troggoth King.

Last weekend I was at the Games Workshop store in Oslo and picked up some paint and a few mail orders, among them a box of Old Word Dwarf miners the Kasrkin Stormprooper model that is exclusive for Warhammer+ members, a pair of hills for The Old World and the mansion also for The Old World. 

Also I got two inquisitorial agents, one priest and one navigator. 

The Priest, Navigator and Kasrkin Stormtrooper are all built now and will be primed alongside the Troggoth King, the Malcador tank and the two hills (as they did not require any assembly).

I love the Old World models and have started to build the mansion. I have assembled most of the house/chapel, but now I need to figure out how I can solve a few issues. The building has a hole in the roof, and I don't like that. So I will try to see if the little annex you can add to the roof can be put so that it covers that hole instead of being on the other side of the roof where it is supposed to be. If that works I can put the pipe on that side (it is optional to use that, the annex or a hatch).

 

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

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

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

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

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

And that's not all...

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

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

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

 

2021 is upon us

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

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

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

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

Status update

My haunted forest is done, I will take pictures as soon as I get a day with good lighting and then post it here. I used the same way of painting the trees and making the bases as I do with my Sylvaneth, but I gave the wood a drybrush of XV-88 after and I think I will try that on some of my Sylvaneth figures as well as I liked the result a lot.

In the middle of the forest there is a temple, and that is from the Garden of Morr set. I have built the remaining set, but need to prime it when the weather allows for it. This was in a box that had gotten some water damage at my cabin, so it was very good to get it built so I could throw away the box that was beginning to get moldy. There is an open space on one of the bases where the temple used to be, so I have added a stone that can either be a tombstone or a stone with an inscription telling who is in the sarcophagus that used to be inside the temple. At the moment everything is separate so that I can paint inside the buildings before I glue them to the bases. This is important as all the buildings have gates that allow you to look inside. I am also thinking on assembling the entire set on a thin base so that I can glue everything together to one solid piece of scenery with the wall around it, but if I don't do that strait away at least I can glue some of the fences together even though the instructions say not to do this. I guess they say that because it should be easy to store and move around, but I plan to store my scenery in plastic bins after it is built and painted, so I won't have that problem. My only problem might be to find a place to store the bins and a system that is stackable enough, but we'll get to that sometime in the future.

I also have a completely unopened box of the same set, that was re-released after Warhammer Fantasy was re-branded to Age of Sigmar, but the content is exactly the same so I can build that with the temple some time in the future.

I just assembled the Skullvane Manse, and that was in the same water damaged cardboard box in the basement, but this box was not damaged. Sometime many years ago I decided I wanted to build the Skullvane Manse without the telescope globe in the tower, I wanted that cupola on a different tower instead, and since it is the exact same tower as the Deathknell Watch that shouldn't be any problem at all. During a move some years ago I packed up everything I was working with in boxes and they were not always placed with the models, so I have to look for it when I can go back and stay at my cabin for a while. I would love to make the tower twice as tall as the original, as it really is quite small. So that it is higher up towards the stars. I think I have at least two more towers so that should not be a problem as long as I find the cupola.

The Skullvane Manse is the first of the old big sets I have built, and I must say that Games Workshop have gotten a lot better at producing scenery. There are a lot of cracks that need to be filled with Greenstuff, so I have gone over much of the joints with liquid Greenstuff and a sculpting tool and then smoothed it out with my finger (wearing a latex glove) after. I think it looks quite nice now, and I have some specific ideas about how to paint it all, and look forward to getting it primed so I can start.

I also assembled a Deathknell Watch, and that is why I say it is so small. But I think it also will look quite nice once it is primed and painted, and I would like to use the same colors on it as on Skullvane Manse so that it appears to be built with rocks from the same region. I will probably need to give it a round with the same liquid green stuff routine as the Skullvane Manse, but it is not so many different joints so it should be handled quite easily with enough liquid green stuff.

Tomorrow I also plan to at lest start to assemble Witchfate Tor - The Tower of Sorcery. This is yet another tower from Warhammer Fantasy, and the biggest of the lot. I look forward to  getting this together. It is supposed to be modular so that you can take it apart and look inside (and even play with minis standing on the different floors). It seems to be four floors tall so it will be exiting to see how much green stuff I need to make it look good...

I also hope to get some more painting done on my Goblin Loonshrine (I know they are called Gloomspite Gitz now, but to me they are Goblins still). I have started to put on the basic colors on the mountainside and the big moon, but I need to give the moon another thin coat of yellow and then there will be a lot of drybrushing, especially on the mountain to get it to look good.
I am not sure what colors to use on all the fungus and mushrooms yet, but I think there will be a lot of purples and reds for the hats, and some sort of off-white for the stems.

...and suddenly it's fall...

Summer has come and gone with me not getting much done, but now it's fall and things have started to happen again.
Armies on Parade is about one and a half month away so my main focus is on finishing my entry for that. It is as mentioned earlier Orks, and I'm going for an Ork encampment where they have a small workshop with Grots working on repairing existing warmachines and weapons and building new ones.
It will not be as many figures on the table as last year when I fielded a Dwarf/Duardin clan going to war, but I will have some figures and some warmachines.
Right now I am working on a little bit of everything, trying to paint everything up to a good standard. The good thing with the Armies on Parade competition is that it is the total result that counts and not how you have painted each individual model. And it is everyone that comes to the store that votes so it is not the well known painters that will win (although they sometimes do as they are good at what they do). Everyone has a fair chance, and I like that.

So far I have painted the main parts of my Orks and Grots, the skin and clothes are done but I still need to work on tools/weapons, eyes and mouths and a few minor details before everything get a wash of Nuln Oil to finish it off after the bases are done.
For the bases I'm thinking of using either the Agrellan or the Stirland textured paint. My first board was painted Martian Ironearth and last year everything was Astrogranite Gray so I think one of the browns will fit my Ork army. I should probably try to keep my armies with similar bases as they might face each other on the same gameboard if I ever get around to making one, but I like to be able to do some variation too. And the bases I will use for my Deathwatch will not look that good on my Orks. 

I'll see what is most possible to get as a similar cheap paint for my board, but at the moment I am leaning towards the lighter Agrellan color as it is lighter and will brighten up the figures a little. Especially since Orks are rather dark with their green flesh and purple or black clothing.

I am working on the details of Da Punisha, my Stompa, and there are lots of both big and small details to paint up in different colors. The big trick for the Stompa is to paint in such a way that details stand out but not making it too colorful as it's supposed to be black.

The three mobile Rokkit lauchers are mostly painted, and the Rokkits themselves are also mostly done.  I hope to have these finished in a few sittings. The cars are painted Khorne Red and the Rokkits are black with red, yellow and white details.

I have also done a lot of painting on my home made Grot tanks, and I have started to put the details on them. They are all Khorne Red with Leadbelcher barrels and belts. The belts will be lightly drybrushed with Ryza Rust to give them a worn look, but I will have to decide if this should be done before or after the wash is applied. At the moment I'm thinking after to keep the rust color fresh.

The final big thing that is built is a Morkanaut but that needs priming before I can start to slap the paint on it. I am still debating if I should go for Khorne Red like they're usually painted, or let it be black like the Stompa but with more colorful details (maybe black with red details?). If I go for the last option, this could be to the specific likings of one Big Mek and he could have more black vehicles and warmachines in the big Ork army I will eventually make. Then I could have other Meks or Big Meks with more traditional cravings like red or yellow.

Next week I will make the size of the tabe in paper, so I can see how much space what I have now takes up on the board and plan how I can build the terrain pieces I'd like to have on the board. I would like to get that built quite soon as there are lots of small details to paint on the new Sector Mechanicus terrain. I also hope to get in a few pieces of the old Imperial terrain on the board to act like ruined buildings and some broken pipes and things like that.

Ran out of glue?

For the first time ever I've managed to run out of glue! I have no idea how I did it, as I had several tubes with some glue left in them,  but I suppose all the scenery building just made me use more than expected.

When I was at Games Workshop last week I planned to pick up my final order of terrain sets for the refinery area, but for some reason it was not delivered. The helpful employees checked it out for me and the package somehow got lost in the warp. But being customer friendly, they made sure that Games Workshop shipped a new package free of charge as they didn't have the sets in store so hopefully I will get it when the mail orders arrive in store tomorrow. It is a Prometheum Forge and a set of Haemotrope Reactors.

While at the store I got more glue so I've been able to sit down and do some more building these last few days.
I finished the Void Shield Generator that I had started before I ran out of glue, and next scenery to be built is a Galvanic Magnavent to go around it. I need to find out where I should place the tank that is in the set as that usually go where I plan to put the generator. If I leave the tank off entirely, I might be able to place two tanks on the Prometheum Forge. I'll see what I do when the Forge arrives.

I had planned to have a few generators, but it was not a fun build so I don't think I'll buy more. It looks great and the plan behind the design is quite brilliant, but putting it together was a pain. It was really hard to figure out how the designers had planned for the pillars to be mounted to the base (what parts to glue and to what), and they did not fit as the instructions said they should. I got it all together, but lost some of the "playability" in the set. It still looks nice, but I will not go another round with it. Instead I will build the rest of the Sector Mechanicus scenery. I also have tons of ruined buildings for Warhammer 40.000 to assemble and even more to paint up. And I have some scenery for Age of Sigmar that I should build and paint.

To celebrate that I got glue again, I bought a box of Space Marine scouts with sniper rifles. I seem to have a thing for them, so I can never get enough. On the GW web page it looked like they were going out of production a while ago, so I had to have one more box. While writing this I checked the web again, and now they are back in stock and looks like they will stay (thank you GW). Four are outfitted with sniper rifles and the fifth is armed with a rocketlauncher as a support weapon.

I have also built an Imperial Guard command squad, and I'm using some of the spare weapons from that kit and the last command squad I assembled to outfit my second unit of veterans that I am putting together at the moment. I had a hard time finding what "special weapons" was, as there is no Special weapons list (at least not that I could find) in the codex, official rule-book or the Index-books for the Astra Militarum. All I find is ranged and melee weapons. But the Command squad instruction book (who I chose not to follow) had the rules for the command squad and a list of ranged, melee and special weapons.

My command squad is equipped with a veteran armed with a Space Marine sniper rifle that was a spare from the scout set, and I have it attached to his back. He is bent down on one knee checking a map and pointing with the other hand. He also got the spare sniper head. The officer is holding a bolt pistol and the other hand is lost in combat earlier and replaced with a bare metal arm holding a powersword. I have not yet decided who of my commanders this figure will be. The Standard bearer is holding the standard in one hand and a laspistol in the other.
I did not want the medic to hold bandages as they seem to always do that, so I put a medi-pac on his back and put a laspistol and a chainsword in his hands. I also gave him a head with a cigar stump in his mouth. The fifth guy is the vox operator, and he's got a lasgun slung over the left shoulder and ready to be fired with one hand.

The veteran squad will have a sergeant armed with a plasma pistol and chainsword, and his unit will have a vox operator probably with the same lasgun as the one in the command squad if I have any left. If not he will have a regular lasgun in both hands.
There will be two snipers with longlas rifles, a heavy weapon operator with a plasma gun and one with a heavy flamer. I would like to outfit a few troopers with autoguns or shotguns, but I don't have any at the moment. I do have some in the Necromunda House Escher sets, and I will try and see how that looks, and if it looks good I'll add some heads from the same sets to the figures that get these weapons to represent female veterans.

I also love to try and build a unit or two of Fyreslayers as I see so many cool pictures of them in White Dwarf magazine and other places. I might try to do that in the near future as well.

Happy new year!

Happy new year!
2017 is now history. The last things I did in 2017 was building a Command Chimera for my Imperial Guard army. The Chimera will transport my Artillery commander and her command squad, and it is equipped with an extra antenna on the back.
I also bought and started painting the new Sly Marbo figure that came out in stores just after Christmas. I participated in the Games Workshop Oslo Secret Santa event, and I got a box of Genestealer Brood. I have started to paint this unit of eight, and I am going for a purple look on them. I will use two or three purple colors with Naggaroth Night as the base and the darkest color. I will see if I need a contrasting color for some details, but I will look in to that when the skin is about done. So far all eight are painted Naggaroth Night, but only two of them have gotten the next layer on.

2018 has started with building of scenery for Warhammer 40K. I have several of the Mechanicum scenery sets, and I am planning to make a big refinery area. So far I have made four structures. The biggest one is the Promethium Refinery where I have used all the pieces to make one tall massive tank with gangways and smokestacks. The second largest building is a Ferratonic Incinerator with Alcomite stack pipes on top. Then I have the biggest pipe from the Alcomite stack set as a separate build, and this will connect with the tank in the Ferratonic Incinerator set through pipes on the ground. The pipes are also built, but I have not glued them to stack or incinerator as this makes it a lot more easy to paint and store it. I might glue it to the stack in the future.
From the gangways on the Incinerator there is a short ladder that can connect to the final build so far, the Thermic Plasma Regulators. They have been built with a plasma conduit between them and are glued together as one unit. In the future there will be another plasma conduit going from the second plasma regulator to two Haemotrope Reactors.

I have five more sets to assemble before I start to prime and paint this scenery (well, six counting the reactors), and that is a Galvanic Magnavent (this will be assembled with a Void Shield Generator in the middle if that is possible), a Promethium Forge, another Ferratonic Incinerator and a Ferratonic Furnace. The Ferratonic sets will have some smokestacks on them from another set of Alcomite stacks that I have. All buildings will be connected somehow, either with pipes, conduits or gangways (or a combination) and I will have ladders going to the ground from all structures.
I will try and post some pictures when all the terrain is assembled, and then everything will be presented in painted glory when that is done sometime in the future (do I dare say later in 2018?).

Keep painting and building, and enjoy your hobby in the new year!

More chaos

Feeling a little excited that Games Workshop has released new scenery for Warhammer 40K. They have released transport containers that works well as cover for normal troops, and they look quite cool. 

The box contains thee big containers, nine barrels and twelve crates of different sizes. I'm looking forward to starting to assemble these sets, but I will hold off until I have finished my AoS Chaos army.

Another release that I like a lot is scenic bases of all sizes for 40K. The bases are made to match the game board that looks like a city, I plan to get some of these for my Space Marines and Imperial Guard armies in the future, but I will have to see what units I would like to use them on first, so that I buy the right sizes. Both these armies operate in different terrain, so I will not use them for all the minis.

I'm almost done assembling the AoS starter set for my Chaos Army. The final five Bloodreavers are assembled but not glued to their bases yet. They are all standing on one leg, so if I just glue them and drop them they will fall down. So I either need to sit and hold them in position until they dry, or find something to lean them up against.
When they stand firmly on their bases, I will take all the figures from the start set and prime them black.

Not sure what the next unit for assembly will be, but I know I'll have to start painting something again soon, as the units pile up on my desk and in boxes standing around it. I thought I would see if I could rearrange the units a bit so that each box contains units of the same faction. This will give me a better overview of what is left to paint for each faction.

What is planned for the future - Scenery

I have a lot of scenery for both Age of Sigmar/Fantasy and for 40K, and I'm always trying to think up ways to paint and build it.

There are generally three kinds of scenery, 40K scenery, old Warhammer Fantasy scenery and Age of Sigmar scenery.
I have a plan for how I would like to assemble and paint most of it, but scenery takes up a lot of space and takes a lot of time paint to a nice standard. There are some that will be built almost right out of the box, while others will be modified. For the 40K scenery, a lot of it is just small wall sections that is to be assembled in any way one likes, so they are almost all built as modified buildings, even though some are made to look like the box art.

The Age of Sigmar scenery consists of four Baleful Realmgates, and some ruins. I had originally thought about painting it all Administratum standard grey, but lately I've been thinking that Zandri dust would look really cool for the Realmgates, and if I go for that then I will paint the ruins in the same color.
The question is though, will it look weird with some ruins in dust colors and towers in grey?
I might work around that by painting the rocks gray on the ruins. At least for the Numinous Occulum and the Ophidian Archways I think this will be a good solution. And for the Realmgates they are arcane and full of magic, and because of that the rocks are of a different color than regular stones. I'll see what I can think up. I know I will have green flames on my Realmgates, as most gates I have seen use orange or yellow and I like my scenery to look good but still a little unique where that is possible. If I go for this solution I will prime these scenery black and then spray it Zandri dust and paint on the gray on the few rocks that is visible. First with Administratum Standard Grey, and then drybrush with a lighter grey.

I also have a huge project building and painting up a chaos fortress consisting of an Overlord Bastion, four Malefic Gates and if I'm not mistaken there is also a Skull Keep tower in there. This is something I will have to build one section at the time and use my time with, as there are lots of details and intricate patterns to paint. This is ok though, as I will keep the fortress in its individual pieces to ease both storage and transportation. 

I haven't decided if I will use dark grey or black on the walls yet, but I am leaning towards black as that is a good chaos color. Then there are tons of sculls and a lot of golden details to take care of.

The old Fantasy scenery are mostly towers of different sizes, and some of them are built and primed, but not painted yet, but a lot of it is still on sprues.
One of the things I have done already, is to join two towers together to make a high tower for an astronomer. Other pieces that are ready for painting is built straight out of the box, so it is a fine mix in the end. My plan for the Fantasy scenery is to make a small town, but I do not have any buildings that can pass for houses except for the one chapel building that I assembled and painted some years back. So it will probably be more of a garrison I expect. But time will tell...

The 40K scenery is a mix of buildings in different stages of assembly and a lot still on the sprues. I have assembled several large buildings, and I also have the huge Relicos Militarum to assemble and paint. This will be built as close as possible to the box art, but the instructions for assembly is really poor, so I am not sure if I will get everything to look exactly like on the box.
The idea for all my 40K buildings is to assemble them, then prime them black and when the primer is dry give them a good spray of Administratum Standard Grey. Then I will spend my time with painting details like metal, walkways and lights and wash everything in the end.

Hopefully I will be able to get some good progress on my scenery building in the near future by using the sprays from Games Workshop. Some of the buildings really doesn't have that many details, so with the spray I will come a long way towards completing them.

Unboxing the Relicos Militarum set

I thought I would try something I haven't done before, and that is a picture presentation of the unboxing of a set. I have made a new tag for this, simply called "unboxing". I will not do this for regular small sets, but I will do it for sets that I feel deserve it either because of their size or because they are special in some way.

First out is the quite large scenery set called the "Relicos Militarum". This deserves an unboxing post because it is the biggest senery set in the Games Workshop scenery range (at least so far), and it is combined from parts from many other existing sets (I'll come back to that further down in the post).

The set is a big sacred building that has been bombed and damaged by war, but it still holds some secrets. It comes with its own rules for use in games.
I plan to use this as a center piece for games or displays, so I could wish it came with better assembly instructions or at least better pics of what the designers have used where...

This is the front and back of the box. The back is the only place that really show how everything is supposed to look when built, so do not throw the box away until you're done building...

This is what meets you when the lid is taken off. Lots of sprues with lots of parts...

One sprue contains a broken Aquila and some rubble. This is half the set that is sold as the "Honoured Imperium". The parts that are missing, are the ones you use to build the statue of a Space Marine.

There are four sprues with the walls with the eagle heads. These are some of my favorite wallsections for Warhammer 40K scenery, and I look forward to combining them with regular wall sections unlike how it is done in the Shrine of the Aquila box where these walls originate from.

Here are the last parts for the walls above, the two head parts of the eagle and the stairs. There are also two tall ruined wall sections on each sprue, one large an one small. Four sprues in total. These are also the same sprues that are used in the Shrine of the Aquila box.

Then we have four whole cathedral walls. Two sprues with two walls on each, the total of four walls. Just like the two previous sprues, they come from the Shrine of the Aqila box.

There are four sprues with floors. These are standard floor secctions that comes with all the existing buildings. If I like to use more than there are in this set, I can always borrow some from some of the other scenery sets I have.

There are also four sprues of these wall setions with nice support collumns. These are the nicest collumns of all the existing scenery sets, and these sprues comes from the Basilica Administratum set. The wall sectons here are very detailed, with lots of sculls and other little details that needs extra attention when painting it up.

And Finally there are two sprues of double doors and wall sections from the Santcum Imperialis set. These are also nice walls, but their details are not so complicted to paint as the ones above.
The support collumns on these sprues have been used in different places on my buildings before, both as collumns and as wall decor. I also love the lamps on these sprues, and I might add some from my spares to use on this building as this will certainly be a center piece.

I don't have very high hopes for a quick assembly and paint process for this set. I will need a lot of space and a lot of time to get this done to the high standard it deserves and demands. As a center piece I really feel I should put an extra effort in to all the little details, and give this set the tender love and care that it needs to be the best I can make it. I will need to prime it, and that might have to wait for some warmer weather.

First building painted and washed

Since I was on the roll with the pictures, I felt it was about time to show this building as well.
It is mostly done with parts from the Manfactorum set, but since I mix up building parts a lot I can't be 100% sure. This pic is taken top-down, just to show the wash effect on the walkway.

Here is a picture of the front of the building, showing a little detail as well.

 This pic is in here just to show how the other wall looks like.

And finally a pic of the back or inside of the building, just to show that it is painted there as well...

Nobody expects the Inquisition...

This last week has given my forces a new tank. On saturday I attended a workshop on painting white and how to add weathering like rust and grime to your tanks. We had to bring a white tank, and since I don't use white in my armies (except for the helmets of my veterans and a few details) I decided to make a vehicle for one of my Inquisitors.
The choice fell on a Landraider Redeemer that I felt was the perfect choise for the Inquisiton.
The Landraider is a tank that can take almost any beating, and the Redeemer version has huge flamers on the sides that will clean a battlefiled of most enemies.
I started the assembly Thursday night with getting the hull together and painting the interior, then the rest of the tank was assembled on Friday.
I discovered that the tank was a little bit crooked when I was ready to assemble the roof, as it didn't fit as snug as I expected. It seems like the top of the side walls was a little bit tighter than the bottom. So next time I assemble a Landraider of any sort I will place the top on without gluing it when I assemble the bottom part, so make sure everything fits perfect.
I don't think it's easy to see the problem when you look at the assembled tank, but I surely noticed it when assembling it and glueing the top on...

Saturday was spent painting the tank up and getting it to look like it had been in the field for a long time, with dirt (might add some earth down toward the tracks in the future), rust and paint chipping. Then I've spent a little time on Sunday and yesterday to paint up some of the things I didn't have time to paint at the workshop (weapons and small metal details mostly).
Yesterday I also gave most of the metal a brown wash (Agrax Earthshade), but I know I forgot to take a few small details, so they will be done in the next sitting.

While waiting for the different layers to dry on Saturday, I also did most of the work on the Inquisitor I had started to paint earlier. I will have him/her (decided to have one female and two male Inquisitors, not decided who's who of the two with witch hunter outfits and a braid yet) ready in one more sitting, just have to paint some tubing. Then it will be a cleanup and a wash before basing.

Since I decided to make the Landraider an Inquisitorial vehicle, I decided I needed to have some solid troops to follow the Inquisitor in to battle, so I brought home a box of Grey Knights (five minis).
I have no plan to start a Grey Knight army as I have more than enough with the four 40K armies I have already, but the models look really cool and will be Inqusitorial Marines of a chapter yet to be named... Not entirely sure about the color scheme yet, but I'm thinking blue and gold (sounds a little bit familiar...)...

On Saturday March 28th Games Workshop Oslo has a painting competition where the item painted should be a tank. I have the Landraider to field if my original plan fails, but I hope to field a Vindicator painted up with the same techniques I learned Saturday. It was already assembled, and now it is painted and washed. Next sitting I will start to add the chipping paint and the rust to it. The Idea is to place it on a base built with a picture frame and cork, but not attach it, so that I can take it off for gaming and have a base I can use for photos of other vehicles as well.

The ork flyer is still not 100% complete, but there is not much left. I have decided to use the techniques I learned on saturday on parts of the underside of the plane, for the parts that will look like they are in contact with the ground on takeoff or landing. Then I will add some rust and oil streaks to it, and see if I can give it a gentle wash all over.

When it comes to scenery, I have stated to paint the base of my first forest (not the haunted one, but the regular one), and I have decided how I want it to look. I will paint it up as I wait for other projects to dry.
I have also detailed and washed my first building, so the final step for the building is a gentle drybrush. This will hopefully be done some time this week.

I hope to take some pictures of the finished Landraider and make a post of it in a few days time, depending on how fast the wash that I will have to apply on the final metal bits dry. If it dries fast, I can take the pictures today, if not I will have to wait until tomorrow with that.

I also plan to make a small tutorial with the Vindicator if it works out the way I hope and plan for...
If it works out, I will use this method for all my vehicles, both Ork, Space Marine and Astra Militarum (the amount of chipping, rust and dirt will be different from project to project though).

More progress

Ended the day yesterday with basing 3 Cadian heavy weapon teams. I used Stirland Mud texture paint, to make some nice and muddy bases. The teams have built up their fortifications with Tamya 1:35 sandbags that they managed to find (think I need to keep my warhammer stuff away from my scale models from now on), and I had originally given the sandbags a wash of nuln oil, but that does not look too god after it has dried, so I will repaint the sandbags and give them a devlan mud wash instead.

My Chaos Space Marine Terminators are done, all that remain with them now is adding bases (black aquarium rocks) and going over the models to fix flaws in the paintjobs.
Hopefully I can have them ready before Saturday, as I would like to show them off in a painting competition at Games Workshop (but if it is allowed I might show off my heavy weapon teams instead).

I went a little crazy with my Chaos Black spray yesterday, and all the scenery I have built is now basecoated black. Well, almost everything as some of the small corners remains unpainted. There were a few spots I missed, but I am now all out of black spray, so either I will have to live with the basing I did yesterday, or I will have to redo some of the scenery when new spray is in the house next weekend. I'll probably redo it, as I ned to spray some tanks anyway.

I have also assembled my first Hellhound, and that was a mixed experience. The set is beautiful, but I had some issues with getting the top to sit right, so I will need to work some greenstuff magic on it.
I have three more to make, so hopefully it was just a flaw on the one I assembled yesterday...

Pictures will follow as the basing is done and the tanks and buildings are painted up.

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.

...and it actually ended up as a productive weekend after all...

The weekend is now officially over, and I managed to finish my forrest (didn't use all the leaves I thought I would though so I have some left for future woods), I have a Hydra almost complete (still missing 2nd crewman and some paint), and I have two new buildings for my 40K town.

Below is a small description of each new project and some pictures taken on my workbench last night. 

I promise to add much better pictures once everything is painted, as the pics look quite messy with the weird things in the background.

Here are two pictures of my Manufactorum building. This looks pretty much like the building at the back of the Manufactorm box, but there is a modification... The building is one piece longer so it is 3x4 instead of 3x3 (if you count whole panels).
The chimney was a pain in the butt to glue on, so next time I will only glue the bend and add the rest of it when everything is glued solid.

The forrest seen from different angles to try and show the different trees. I might add just a little more leaves on them when I look over them tonight, but if I do it will just be small leaves to hide naked branches.

This is a conversion I think there will be some of in the ruined town. I try to get as many "whole" buildings as I can, and that means that these parts often ends in the bitbox. So why not use them?

This is the frst pic of the Hydra. The black panels on the side will be similar on all Chimera-based chassies, and I will try to think up something similar for the Leman Russ chassies. The rest of the tank will be Administratum Standard Gray. Gunbarrels and tracks and details will get their appropriate colours... In the back by the waterpot you can see the commander of the Abhuman Auxilia, where he commands Ratling, Ogryns and Bullgryns. He will have a command squad consisting of humans, an Ogryn Bodyguard and the unit will have their own commisar.

Here is a look inside the drivers compartment of the Hydra. If you look closely you'll see a little red field by the drivers left arm. That is a tank of some sorts, probably a fuel tank or something. On the platform behind the gunner/driver there will be another crewman, and I am painting him up now.

The second building is a pumping station. I will go over it with greenstuff today and fix some holes that are around the pump units (above the pipes comming in) and some cracks between the roof tiles. 

I really like these streetlights, and want to add as many of them as I possibly can to my city. That means I will build several of these small corners. This weeekend I made two. Both of them have battle damaged floors, and I think most of them will have that, as those tiles are the ones most often being left for the bitbox after assembly of a building.

The second one got a little more battle damage. Looking at these pics now it seems like I really wanted to take a pic of my plastic watercup, but that just happened to be standing there.

Happy new year! Revisiting "old" projects...

For several weeks I have not been able to sit down and do much in the workshop. Life has just been too busy with everything else going on at work and with other hobbies.
But I have managed to do a little bit of painting here and there, and these last few days I have gotten to do a bit.
My Tempestus Scions are slowly comming along, but there are lots of details so it takes a lot of time. The banner is the only thing that is completely finished. I used 7 different colours on it, but only 6 are visible as one was used to give the white the right look.
Then colour number 8 was used on the banner pole.
The Scions themselves will also end up with 8 colours or more, so I apply one colour and while it dries I do another project.

The Chaos Terminators also gets a little paint from time to time, and so far I have one that I can say is about done, while the others still need to get their weapons and some small details painted, but they are comming along even though it goes slow.

One of the old projects mentioned in the title of this blog is my Hydra Flak tank. It was really standing around waiting for a nice day when I could take it outside and prime it black, but I decided not to wait any longer so I painted it by hand instead. That also ment I could go on with the building, and status now is that alle the parts except from the second crew member is assembled. The Hydra itself is about 80% painted, and the only things missing to glue on is the cannons (they are assembled but will need some paint before I add them on, the gunner/driver needs to be fitted, and the second crew member needs to be assembled (but with him it is also a matter of painting some parts before assembly).
I do the Hydra in the scheme I have thought up for chimera based chassies, and that is Adeptus Standard Gray with Abaddon Black details on the side skirts. The ring around the front hatch is Dark Angels Green (or Caliban Green, don't remember what name is the current one), and the hatch itself is black.

Since the first tank I painted got a yellow ring around the turret, I thought it would be nice to give another colour to the artillery pieces in the army.

I think this colour scheme will be used for the tanks as wel from now on, but I will have to see how I can get the black details to fit on their side skirts as they are different from the Chimera based chassies.

The second and much older project that I revisited is the Citadel wood that i started on ages ago. I had only glued the two parts of the trees together, so today I gave the trees some love and care and went over all the cracks with liquid greenstuff and glued all the branches on to the trees.
The idea is to use a lot of leaves, as may as I can fit on to the trees. I have all the leaves from the wood that I used to make my haunted forrest presented in an earlier blog post, so I have plenty of leaves.
So far I haven't started to glue the leaves on, but I plan to start with that after work tomorrow, or at least some time during the weekend.

As usual, pictures will follow when I have actually finished something...

What have I done this week?

This week I have done a little different things.

I have participated in a Games Workshop Terrain Masterclass and made a haunted wood (see the two previous posts for details),  this will be used as a terrain piece for my Warhammer Fantasy line-up when it is painted up.
It can be used either as a separate piece, or in combination with other wood terrain or the Garden of Morr.

That is the only Fantasy related thing I have done, apart from finding one Witch hunter that is about 75% painted on a shelf and put him with the Ogres I have assembled but not painted yet. I will finish the paintjob on him and use him as part of the armed forces defending my little village for my Warhammer FB scenery.

For Warthammer 40K I have worked with 3 things (two of them is connected).

I have put more paint on my Orks band with sluggas and choppas (including two heavy weapons and a Nob). This is nineteen models if I remember correctly, and then I have the two test models for the army that will make up the rest of the group.  They now have all the black painted, all the green skin, and about half of them also have all leather parts painted.
I noticed when I painted the leather that I need to go back and sharpen up some lines with black at a later time, but that should not be a big job.
Next I will finish the leather for the rest of the grup, and then I will start on the metals for the beltbuckles and weapons, do some red and yellow armour, and paint the remains of the weapons with red or black and paint the ammunition gold. I estimate a good 4 or 5 sittings with this unit to get them ready for the final washes and basework.

Then I have painted a Chaos Terminator Lord and 10 Chaos terminators. These have all gotten their Dark Angels Green (or Caliban Green depending on if it is an old or new pot of paint) armour painted. I have painted the torsos, the arms and the heads. Next step here is to paint the silver details on the armour, and then I need to paint the weapons (base colour of black, but with lots of detailing), and some other details like horns (two colours ) and other stuff. So I estimate about 4 sittings with these fellows as well.

Some details of the Haunted wood...

Took some more pictures of the haunted wood. Was a litle dark, so I used the flash on the camera.
The pics are not great, but I thought I should post them anyway as they show how things are built, and with the flash I sort of thought of lightning...

First we have a shot of the whole thing...

Details of one tree,  Notice the two heads hanging by their hair in the back of the tree, and a small shrine bolted to the tree.

When the tree is removed from the base, this appears. The dead man burried here must have been burried in a hurry, as his feet still are above ground...

This zombie is almost out of his grave. I chopped off his feet (the ones used on the previous picture) to get this effect.I needed him to be of  a certain height in order to arm him with the schythe.

This zombie is just as eager to fight, but he hasn't gotten that far out of his grave yet. He is pulling himself up though. This was done by adding one arm at a slightly weird angle, and the torso was cut just a little to give it a perfect tilt.

Here is a close-up of the temple, and how greenstuff has been added to fill the gaps between the base and the temple. I tried to make the greenstuff look a bit like moss or weeds.

A man has been hung from this three, and then left there to rot. If you look closely, you can see his arms and one leg on the ground under the tree...