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

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

Let us start with Warhammer 40.000. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Age of Sigmar I have the following armies:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making scenery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

General update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 I feel I've had quite a productive weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

Ogryns with ripperguns - 1st unit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What now?

I managed to finish my 3000 points painting pledge with Games Workshop Oslo. I had planned to have lots of infantry in those points, but saw that if I wanted to complete in time I needed units that gave more points so I skipped normal infantry and painted up an Ogryn bodyguard and a unit of Ogryns with ripperguns. That means I still have plenty of Infantry to paint up, but I also have lots of tanks. 

I don't think I've shown off the Ogryns with ripperguns here yet, but I will in just a few days.

Just a few days ago I got two boxes of Ogryns from Necromunda, they are called a Slave Ogryn Gang and each box contain 6 Ogryns. They have equipment made for working, like welding gloves, power lifter gloves, other welders tools and wrenches.  So I plan to use them in my Imperial Guard army as Ogryn mechanics. I would love to build and paint these as soon as possible to get them in to my army.

One other thing that I really want to paint up are my Necron army, and I have started on them  and found the paint scheme that I would like to use. I am making my own Dynasty so it is my own paintscheme.

So far I am working to paint up a Canoptek Wraith to the look I want. Most of it is done, but I am working on the details. When I am satisfied with it I will transfer that look to the rest of the painted minis and to the ones not built or not primed yet.

One of the minis I am working on now is Illuminator Szeras from the new Necron range.