Sons of Behemat update

I felt I managed to put in quite a nice little workout on my giants today.

I managed to put the first layer of skincolor (Bugmans Glow) on 1 Mega-Gargant who is my version of the Beast-smasher, and no less than 5 Mancrushers. This means that all my gargants at least have their skin painted. Several of them have gotten a lot further but they are far from done yet.

I also managed to paint the hair on 3 Mancrushers. 2 of them got the light brown hair (XV 88) and I think it looks nice even though I haven't tried that color for hair before. The last Mancrusher got the yellow hair as I have used tht before and like the color. Originally i was thinking to use some sort of terracotta to make them red haired, but I couldn't find the right color. But there are plenty of gargants to paint yet, so I am sure I will find it so I can use it later.

Sons of Behemat, working on more models at the same time

Here are some more work in progress pictures of my Sons of Behemat Mancrushers. 

My idea is to get as many gargants with their skin and pants painted as possible as this is the biggest parts of the models. Then I plan to do the remaining details in bigger batches. The skin looks a little glossy here, but I have only added the base paint (Bugmans Glow) and then I will add a layer of Guilliman Flesh that is a contrast paint and that will give it a more natural looking skin tone and tak the gloss off.

I have also started to paint some of the wooden parts like the handles of the weapons. The barrels that most of the gargants carry in the back of their belt will be painted a lighter brown-tone later. This is done with contrast paint as I think that gives it the natural wood look.

The first gargant here is Elder Whitewash, he has Khorne red pants, and will have grey hair. I have not yet decided on what paint I want to use to achieve the gray hair, but I will look at some turorials and see if I can find a recommended method to use. He has a massive rock on his base, and the bird that has to be on all gargant miniatures is sitting on that rock. The rock is made from one half of the club that came with the new sprue to make the Sons of Behemat King and that other gargant that came from the same new sprues in that box.  

I just wanted to add this pic to show how I keep track on who is who. All bases are named like this so that I can easily see who is who without getting out my laptop and checking my Excel spreadsheet with information about the entire Sons of Behemat army.

The residue you see under the base is a reaction from the primer and the double sided tape that I stick them to the cardboard box with when priming the models and it will be scraped off before I paint the rim of the base when the model is fully painted.

Next gargant on the table is Ruddy Brittlegrill. I wanted to do something a little different with him, as he has a big shield with some spears behind it glued on his back. This is just a trophy, but sometimes the thin spears can come in handy to pin down pipsqueaks on the battlefield until he has time to come back and collect them for food. 

Because of the shield I couldn't add any barrels to him, so I placed one on the base instead, and put the bird on top of it. I also added a pitchfork that came with the Mancrusher sets, and I think they will appear elsewhere too. Either on other gargant bases, or with other armies as I have plenty of them in my bitz boxes after building 15 Mancrushers.

Ruddy is the gargant I talked about in an earlier post where the color of his pants really surprised me. This is quite a heavy coat of Sigvald Burgundy, and is quite purple and not the very dark red as I had thought from the name. But it is no problem as I really liked this purple, and the pants are not ment to be a unison color after all. Here I have also painted the top of the statue that is attatched to his "sling" hanging from his belt. This will be drybrushed with lighter grays later, and the straps will be painted either like leather or like some sort of canvas when it's done. 

For the last one for this update I didn't manage to get the best picture, but this is Ryddys brother (I think Ruddy is the older of them) Tardy Brittlegrill. There are a lot of brothers in this army, because there are so many fungus/mushroom names that share the same "last name".I do believe Tardy is the only left handed gargant in this army and possibly in the entire realm, so he is easy to recognize on the battlefield. With so many arm/hand options in the set I find it a little weird that GW didn't give us any left handed weapon options. I took a piece of club from the Mega-gargant box and glued it to an open hand. It is not as perfect fit as it would be if it was molded , but it is the best I could manage with that I had available. I didn't want to use greenstuff on it to make it fit better with the hand as I then would have to add greenstuff to the entire thing if I wanted it to look natural, and that would make the giant club even bigger and more out of proportion. 

I do believe I have one more gargant with the same club, but he holds it in his right hand, and there I used the same right hand Ruddy and Elder have and just cut the staff just a little above the hand so it looks like he has made a handle for his club. The club looks huge, and apart from the Space Marines I think this is the only army where you can use  such oversized weapons with no worries.

The club was painted before I settled on a standard way of painting wood, so I have not decided yet if I want to go back and prime it again with a brush and repaint the club with the new standard color or if I feel it will be ok. I will take a look at all the gargants that had their wooden details painted in this way and make a decision the next time I sit down to paint.  

He has green trousers, but I don't remember the name of the contrast paint right here but I will write it down next time I sit down to work so that I can report it correctly when I show him off when he is done.

That is all for this update, and in the next post I hope I have some updates on the Mangler Squig you see partially on the left side of this picture.

Sons of Behemat, base done

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I had to make a new base for my finished Mega-Gargant as I needed his tall base for King Urchin Earthfan, So now Beechmast Candlesnuff is placed on a flat base. 

I haven't taken taken any detail pictures to show off Beechmast himself as he has been presented before.

The base is made with a wall from an old Warhammer Fantasy scenery set that consisted of several wallpieces and a few signposts. Then the base is covered with a mix of Stirland Battlemire and Stirland Mud just to make a little variation. Most of the base is covered with Battlemire though. Then the base is drybrushed with three different greens. The fist is Death World Forest and that is also used on the rim of the base. Then I used Elysian Green that is a little lighter and brighter, and finally the much lighter Nurgling Green. originally I just used Nurgling gren on small areas, but here I used it almost s much as Elysian Green. I also glued on some grass tufts, and that color is called Mordian Corpsegrass.

Here is a closeup of the wall. At the base of the wall is a little row of grass,When i looked at this picture I noticed I had forgotten to pint the metal ring on the fencepost, so I need to do that the next time I sit down to paint and then I will paint it either Leadbelcher or Iron Hands Steel depending on what pot I find first, then I will drybrush it a little with Ryza Rust. 

I really like the closeup of his feet were you can see how his nails have been painted with Snakebite Leather, and this will be used for both fingernails and toenails for all the Giants.

Happy New Year and some progress

First of all, happy new year. We have made it to 2023 now...

I see so many people show off how many minis they have built, painted and so on at the end of a year or the beginning of a new one. So this year I have deided I want to try and track what I do. I don't think my numbers will be nearly as high as the people usually posting about this, but that doesn't matter. It is just to see how much I actually manage to do. I have also decided that a mini is a mini no matter the size or type.

Today has been the first day of painting in the new year, and I have started to work on my Sons of Behemat army that is all built but not painted, and also my Gloomspite Gitz army because I just love them.

First off is the Mega Gargant I had completed and put on a high base. Since Games Workshop released a King for the Sons of Behemat I needed the high base for him, so I had to put the finished one on a new lower base. This base is completely flat with a fence on it. The fence is from an ancient Warhammer Fantasy scenery set, and I have used parts of that for many of my bases. The new base needs to be drybrushed, and I need to paint the rim but this is what it looks like so far...

I will make a dedicated post about this one when all the work is done. I hope to get to finish the base tomorrow if nothing happens that will keep me from painting.

The next model I have started to paint for this army is a Mancrusher. I have decided on what colors to use on my Sons of Behemat after trying a few alternatives on my already painted models. One of the things I have found a way to paint is skin, and another is wood where I have one color for things like clubs and another preferred color for barrels. But one thing that I love to do is to try out new colors on the pants of my Mancrushers. I feel that is where I can make the army colorful and differenciate between the various models. For this Mancrusher I used a new Contrast paint I found called Sigvald Burgundy. I expected a dark redish color so I was quite suprised when it turned out it was purple. Still I like it a lot, and I am sure I will use it for other projects. This is what he looks like so far...

I also added a closeup showing how the wood looks. I will have to see what it looks like tomorrow, but right now I am thinking that with the Contrast paint I will not need to drybrush with other colors to make it look like actual wood like I need when using the tradtional paints.

The final model I am working on right now is for the Gloomspite Gitz and it is a Loonboss on Mangler Squig. I really like squigs, and while painting the first of my Boingrot Bounderz I decided on a lot of the colors I want to use on the army. I know there is a chance my army will look quite unison, but I hope I will find ways to work against that, and even if I don't it is a kind of army that would look weird if the colors were too different from unit to unit. There will be some differences in skintones as I have no intention of re-painting what already is done, but for my new models this is the way i intend to do it. The only thing I feel I might chnge is repinting squigs, as I want all of them to be red and I think I painted some blue back in the days. But that won't be a problem as those were squigs being herded so they do not have a rider.I think I also need to put them on new bases as I think they were made while bases was supposed to be square. One of the things I have done over time to break up the monotony of this army is to paint their hoods brown instead of black. Things I will do in the future is to add details on bases where there is room for that, like on the Squig hoppers and Boingrot Bounderz where I add a lot of plants that I plan to paint in bright colors and also details that is special for some characters. 

For this model I need to go over and do some touch-ups on some of the colors as I had some "accidents" when painting smaller areas. And there are a few more colors to add as well as making the base and doing some drybrushing.

The bottom mangler squig stands steady on his base with some smaller goblins trying to get out of the way. I need to decide on colors to use on the mushrooms on the base, that is one place where I can add some variation. Apart from that I have the colors pretty much decided. 

The top squig with the Loonboss riding on top of him will be glued in place when the painting is done. I still havent decided what color to use to paint the saliva from the tongue, I was thinking maybe nugle rot as that is sort of slimy, but I think I will need a ground color before I apply that.

I love the gobbo hanging on by his hands, as he is looking a bit like the Batman of the Goblins

As always when working on detailed projects things that is not supposed to happen, happens anyway. In this project a small goblin trying to jump away from the top mangler squig broke off. He looked really cool, so I plan to paint him up and then try to glue him back on somehow. Maybe I will have to try and add a pin to get him to stay on, but I'm not sure it will be possible to get a pin in to his thin leg. But i will see when he is painted up.

A separate post will be added for all the three projects I have shown here when they are done, showing them off with all their details. When it comes to the Mancrusher gargant I might show them off in pairs as I have quite a lot of them and they all have a lot of common details. And I work on many of them at the same time. I think I have 6 of them in various stages of painting not including the one in this post, and I have 7 more that is still only primed, making it 15 in total with the one who is finished. 

The end of another week

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

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

Today in Gargant news...

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

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

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

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

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

More update on the gargants

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Squats to Gargants

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update on the Squats

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

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

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

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

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

Space Dwarfs in the making

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leagues are here...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

there is still progress

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

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

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

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

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

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

One more unit assembled, COS#2

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

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

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

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

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

So, I am back again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what is going on now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sons of Behemats update

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sons of Behemat - first models finished

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.