Merry Christmas to all! And to all another night...

...the fire from the wasteland nomads slackened for the first time in what seemed like days...there was a loud series of explosions and gunshots from their lines and then a few moments of relative peace.  The siege of Old MacDonough's farm had lasted for days and moments of peace had been few and far between since it began.  

Skeezics took the moment to slap one of his last two magazines into his smoking auto gun and then peered over the top of the baracade again to see if he could discern the source of this moments respite.  But in the chemical and shell blasted remains of the crop fields he could see nothing.  In the small clump of battered woods beyond he heard another series of explosions and cries from wounded nomads.  Skeezics couldn't see who....but some one was giving the nomads hell.  This brought a breif smile to his face...the first of those in many long days as well.  Frankly he didn't care who was killing nomads...he was just happy they were dying.

Suddenly from the billowing clouds of smoke and fire that now filled the woods beyond emerged a strange figure.  He was trotting nonchalantly across the blasted wasteland toward the defenders baracade.  Skeezics drew a bead on the man...but realized that he wasn't armed and didn't seem to be a threat.

"Hold fire" he shouted to the few remaining defenders of the baracade and glanced to either side to ensure that no one blasted this stranger before they determined his intentions.

Suddenly several lines of tracers emerged from the woods directed toward the stranger.  He increased his pace and sprinted nimbly toward the baracade.  Skeezics could now see that he was dressed in a red coat and hat and seemed to be carrying a large sack of some sort over his shoulder...his face covered by a gas mask...a reasonable precaution when traversing the chemical wastelands.

The defenders stared in shocked silence as this strage figue approached and then hopped over the baracade...bringing his heavy load with him.  As the defenders gathered around, the stranger said nothing but reached into his sack and handed each a package. Some received boxes of ammo others med kits and some were given MREs.  They all muttered their surprised thanks at this unexpected, and much needed, resupply but received no response in return.

Once each defender had received their packaged the strange man gathered up his sack and hopped over the baracade once again and disappeared into the fog of war...he hadn't said a word...but as his silhouette faded into the mist they heard:

"Merry Christmas to all and to all another night!"

The defenders all stared at each other in stunned silence...not sure what to make of this unexpected experience.  But the moment of peace was suddenly shattered as several mortar rounds exploded near the barn and nomad fire once again began to shred the baracade behind which they sheltered.

Skeezics checked his weapons load...racked a round into the chamber and peered back over the baracade looking for a target, the surprised smile still on his lips a new found feeling of confidence that they might actually survive to see another night...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my Oldhammer friends...I hope you all enjoy whatever time off you have and get a lot of painting done!

Cheers,

Blue

Dragon Bait Miniatures Executioner and helper...WIP

After I finished up working on Johann (pic forthcoming once I finish his base) I turned my attention to working on some of the Dragon Bait Miniatures from their ongoing indiegogo campaign.  https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dragon-baits-second-28mm-fantasy-campaign

In particular I've been slapping paint on the executioner figure and his halfling helper. I'm really loving these Tim Prow sculpts.  

So before I left for my Christmas holiday back in Ohio with my parents I managed to get the flesh and black cloth areas finalized.  I'm not sure how well the shading on the black will show up on these iPhone pics but here is the current status of these two figures.

Work will resume in these as soon as I am back in VT after Christmas.

Be sure to stop by the Dragon Bait miniatures indiegogo campaign page and offer your support if you want some character figure to use in you Dungeoun adventures.

Cheers,

Blue

Johann II...Update 2...Nearly there!

Just a quick update to show how Johann is coming along.

• I added a couple more highlights to the armor to make it stand out a bit more.
• I painted his chest plate Bronze
• Wood grained the axe handle
• painted the chain mail and axehead with my typical metal system
• highlighted up the shoulder pads and gave them red eyes. 

All that is really left to do are a couple of touch ups and the base.

Johann II ...Update 1...Shield Work

Howdy all,

I've been plugging along with the variety of models that I previewed in my last post.  My main effort has been focused on finishing up a copy of Johann from the Ewal Dvergar Range that Clam has graced us with.

I've had this miniature for way too long...mostly because I've had a hard time figuring out what color to paint him.  Obviously I painted my copy Blue...but I couldn't decide what would look good on this copy.  Finally I decided to go with Dark Green armor with Copper/Gold and Grey accents.  To this end I set in on Johann's armor first and then got to the base coats on the wood, metallic, and grey areas....

Here is how he looks right now...

Not looking particularly stellar yet...but once I start to highlight everything else up it will improve greatly....

...However...I really put a lot of work into his shield.  As I mentioned when I painted my own version of this figure the Shield is one of the best parts...John Pickford really seems to have enjoyed making this fantastic face.  With looking at the design of the shield ...and the fairly tame colors of the armor that I chose for Johann... I decided to go a little wild with the shield colors.  In really staring at the shield for quite awhile I really started to see how it looked like flame...

...perhaps this is a demonic piece of armor containing a fire daemon of some sort? ...forced by one of the Chaos Lords to protect Johann from harm....

...thats right...FLAME SHIELD!!! :)

This turned out to be a lot of fun to paint...and it took a TON of layers to make it look convincing.  Having never really attempted to paint flame before I'm pretty happy with the results.  The main portion of the shield is orange flame while the eyes and tongue are meant to look like blue flame.

Here is a quick look at the final product....followed by a short movie showing the steps of the process.

Yes...he has a Gold tooth...my daughter suggested it...who am I to deny her...?

For those who are curious about such things...here are the paints that I used to achieve the flame effect...

I'm not really sure what the Orange paint is...some old citadel color...?  Blood Angel perhaps?

And here is a shot of my wet pallet showing all the different layers that I created with these paints and their sequence (ignore the green...that's from the armor).

I think that is going to look pretty sweet on that green armored model...so...

I better get back to it!

Cheers,

Blue

What's on Blue's table now?

Still nothing finished to show off yet...so I wanted to give you an idea of what will be coming in the near future.  I'm pretty excited about the figures I have in my painting queue right now. For once it's a rather eclectic mix of different races and types of figures which I hope will help with keeping my motivation up.

The first thing I have to finish up is another copy of the fantastic Johann sculpt that is available from Clam's Ewal Dvergar Range.  This one is going to a long-suffering client and I'm anxious to get it back to its rightful owner.

I have also been asked to paint a few figures for the Dragon Bait miniatures Indiegogo campaign. This is the second campaign by Dragon Bait miniatures and once again will be offering a lot of interesting and humorously old school style sculpts.  

I have agreed to paint the dwarf inquisitor... who definitely has that van Helsing feel to him.

Then there is the halfling scout...who has a great country bumpkin thing going on.

I will be also working on the small vignette of a executioner and his halfling compatriot who is luring the next victim to their death with a tasty doughnut.  I am particularly excited about these figures from the campaign...I just love the sculpts...which I believe are by Tim Prow.

This set comes complete with a block and a basket with a couple of heads already in it.  Just genius!

Next I have my entry for the Oldhammer forum's community war band. This is a very old-school citadel sculpt that makes me laugh because this archers quite pudgy!  I forgot to check his name before I glued him in...I think this is Edwin...?

Another odd duck figure I have ready to go is one of the really early citadel slotta Elfs...Gildor?  Who I will be painting up for thebinman's Averland warband.  You've got to love his Elvis style hair do.

Next up is the one remaining 5th edition Bretonian Squire with bow that I need to complete my unit.  The group has been languishing at 17 for the last year...it took me awhile to acquire another copy of this specific sculpt...so it will be nice to actually finish this unit off.

Finally I also have these fantastic mid 90 Perry sculpts of Bertrand and his compatriots. Obviously styled after Errol Flynn's Robin Hood movies and just loaded with bags of character even for relatively "newhammer" figures. These will obviously be becoming character models for my Bretonian army.  I've had them for a while now and I'm very excited to finally get them painted.

So you can expect to see all of these figures again in future posts hopefully in various stages of progress.

Of course I still have the Knights to finish that I showed earlier as well as half a squad of Orks that need their final coats of paint too!!.  My work schedule should finally be opening up a little bit as we approach Christmas and I hope to be quite productive during my downtime.

Cheers for now,

Blue

Game On! A Rogue Trader Game happening tonight!

Just a quick post to show you the basic setup I've put together of my Battle Systems Sci-Fi terrain.  I've had this stuff for months now and have just not had the opportunity to put it together and start enjoying it.  This week I forced myself to spend several evening focused on producing at least a basic board to play on.  With the help of a couple of committed friends we produced this set up.

I will try to get a few more room items put together before things kick off but either way this will be a fun little set to get some experience adapting the RT rules to interior spaces.  I see running a number of quick scenarios tonight...snatch and grab, meeting engagement, sabotage the reactor, Get to the Chopper!, etc.  With only 2 1/2 squads of figures painted up they will obviously be limited in scale but should allow for fairly fast games that we will learn a lot from.

Here are some more pics of some of my troops trying out the terrain.  Please forgive the iPhone pics.

hmm...looks like I need to adjust those Struts in the background!

 

I'll post up some pics and breakdown of the nights events over the weekend!

Cheers,

Blue

Joining the "Horsey Set"

Despite the lack of obvious evidence in the form of Blog posts...I have been plugging away at a number of hobby projects but have failed to finish anything of late that is worth writing a post about....

...So I'll do a quick post about my continued efforts to find decent horses for my 3rd ed Brets....and show that I actually have been painting.

I've never been a big fan of Citadel's plastic horses...They vary drastically in proportion depending on release date and the number of variants possible is usually quite low.  For this reason I've been searching high and low for some decent metal horses that I could mount my knights on.  After a detailed discussion of this topic on the Oldhammer Forum...and encouragement by fellow Oldhammerers who have trod a similar path I've placed a sizable order for 20 metal, barded horses in a number of poses from Front Rank Miniatures...


...and they showed up while I was away for Turkey day!  here is what I received.

100,000 Page Views!!! Thanks Everone!

Wow...I'm humbled and excited to announce that I have crossed over the 100,000 page views mark for Blue's Marauding Miniatures!  I would never have guessed that this little blog of mine would reach 10,000 views when I started it let alone 100,000.  It has been great to be a part of the still growing Oldhammer community and I thank you all for allowing me to come along on this ride with you.  A few of you I have now met in person...and I hope to meet more of you in the future...but until that time I'll see you here, on the forum, or on FaceBook.

Cheers for now,

Blue

Experimenting with new Strippers...uummm...Paint strippers that is!

As I have mentioned in the past I have been using Simple Green HD for the past couple of years to strip paint from minis that I buy on line for my collection or for resale.  This product does an adequate job though I found that I needed to soak figures for up to a week before I was able to easily remove most of the paint...and even then I often followed the Simple Green soak with a quick dip in Acetone to remove paint from the hard to clean areas.

So when I started to hear about a product called Dawn Power Dissolver, and how great it was for stripping old paint, I decided to hunt some down and give it a try.  Sadly it is apparently already OOP...sigh.  Luckily I was able to find a few bottles from an online seller who still had stock...so I ordered 4 bottles and decided to run some tests.  Below are the results.

For this test I decided to use a group of 10 Marauder and Citadel dwarfs that I won from an ebay auction as my test subjects.  Now... I was out of Simple Green HD so decided to compare the Power Dissolver against the much more prevalent "regular" Simple Green.

Here are our test subjects...5 dwarfs for each stripper....

...man that sounds terrible! 

...anyway...the pics

Sometimes it the little things in life...

As I progress through my "career" of figure collecting I've noticed that some times the finds that make me the happiest are the little ones. This has certainly been the case with the recent acquisition from the old Bretonian range. As you know, starting with my painting of fifth edition models I have really fallen in love with the old Bretonian range. Lately the third edition figures have been one of my collecting goals.  Thanks to a couple of large overseas purchases I have been able to knock out most of this range fairly quickly. However there are some portions of this range that are extremely hard to find and if you do see them they sell for crazy money.  This is particularly true of some of the more rare war machines that Citadel made for the third edition Bretonian's.  

This Saturday though I received a little package from a fellow Bretonian collector here in the states that really made my day.  Amongst some other gems it contained a Bretonian swivel gun!  Based on its size this is not an impressive figure but it's rarity has made its acquisition a special moment in my collecting.  I've never even seen one of these on eBay...so being able to trade for it and not even having to pay for international shipping is just fantastic.  Anyway here it is in all it "glory!"

Massive thanks to Warhammster for making this possible!

Cheers,

Blue

Retained Knights...completed Not-Space Marine Squad

In the run up to OHNW one of the units I really worked to get complete were my squad of Retained Knights from Alternative Armies.  I finished the first half of this squad as an entry for the Lead Painters League earlier this spring...but I had hoped to get a game of RT in Baltimore this October so I pushed the rest of the squad through the painting queue.

....sadly the game failed to happen this time (Next time Bulldog!) but I'm still glad to have a finished squad to deploy on my sci-fi terrain...assuming I ever get it put together.

Anyway...here is the squad as a whole...below are individual shots of the new ones.

Whats for Second Breakfast??? ....BRAINS! White Knight Zombie Halflings

Its been awhile since I had a straight painting post...so its about damn time!

I had finished these figures about a month ago but I was keeping them in my "back pocket" as a potential entry in the painting contest in conjunction with OHNW...and I did end up using one of them for that purpose.  Now that that is out of the way its time to share them with the rest of you.

As many of you know I'm a huge fan of White Knight and his miniature range (LINK).  WK and I share an affection for Puff and Slash figures and he has had his cadre of sculptors producing some truly wonderful Renaissance figures for a number of years now.  One of the more more "fun" releases that WK has put out recently are the Zombie Halflings. 

Typically I'm no great fan of undead figures...they just don't do "it" for me most of the time....but the quality of the sculpting, the implied humor, and the puff and slash dress convinced me with these guys....plus they're HALFLINGS...thats awesome. 

Anyway...on with the pics!

Here they are as a group

And here are some individual close-ups.

First up the pointer!

Shifty!

Nibbler!

"Split" personality!

And last but not least...the Thriller!

As you can see these guys just ooze character (amongst other things...!) and were really a lot of fun to paint.  I know that WK has some other zombies in the pipeline and I look forward to adding a few more to this collection.

Cheers for now!

Blue

The Slaughter at the Salient!

I'm encouraging everyone who will listen to head over to Airborngrove's Blog to read the battle report he has put together covering our battle (chaos v dwarfs) that we fought on day 2 of OHNW.

Link: http://givemlead.blogspot.com/2014/11/another-exciting-issue-of-oldhammer.html?m=1

Teaser pic:

I think you'll agree the comic book style is pure genius!

Cheers,

Blue

Oldhammer in the New World: Blue's View...Day 2

Sunday found me up and ready to go by 830...despite a running battle with the rabid bacon thieves who were raiding my hotels breakfast bar all morning...ggggrrrr friggin kids!!!

Anyway...I arrived at DropZone shortly after 9am and found things just getting rolling.  About a half a dozen folks were already there...including a much refreshed Blake after a good nights sleep.

After having kind of floated around chatting and what not for day one I was ready to dive right into a game...luckily for me Tom was obliging and we quickly pulled together a moderate sized pick up battle (2k-ish points) that we set up on one end of Rusty's warband table.  Tom brought out his very impressive chaos army and I was finally able to get my dwarfs on table!

So I don't want to spill all the beans on the battle itself as I'm sure there will be future posts in which to tell that story.  Suffice to say that Tom and I had a blast and I was overjoyed to get my lads on the table against such a well painted and led opponent.  There were laughs... there were tears... and the dice gods were fickle at times but ...thats Oldhammer for ya!

I loved every minute of it!

Here are a couple of teaser pics...you'll have to wait for the rest.

Oldhammer in the New World: Blue's View...Day 1

Well, its Wednesday night and I finally feel ready to review the weekends events in detail....the drive home sucked and I'm only now feeling human again.

As previously mentioned I arrived in Baltimore around 7:30 ion Friday and met up with Tom (AirborneGrove) and Don (Thefan) at DropZone Games to help set-up.  Soon Rusty and Richard (OrcLord) showed up with the main tables and we had our hands full bringing in the supplies for the RoC Warbands and Siege Games.  But we could only get so far before DropZone closed for the night.

As I understand it the crew staying at the Days Inn (You know who you are!) might have had a bit to drink and stayed up half the night talking.  I on the other hand was back in my hotel room by 10 and finished up a few things on my army then sacked out...the 9 hour drive had caught up to me.

Saturday morning I loaded up and was at DropZone by 9am.  Caught up with the same crew from the previous night and also finally got to meet Blake and Kyle in person as well.  We all got busy setting up tables...Don set up his 3D Space Hulk table...We all Chipped in helping Richard with the enormous mass of troops for his spectacular siege game...and the rest of the terrain was added to the Warbands table.

As the morning wore on more and more folks arrived and soon the place had more than 20 Oldhammerers shooting the shit...trading lead...ogling the siege game and other tables and generally having a good old time. During this time Chris (Darrin Stephens) Showed up and set up his RT Demo game and soon the dice were flying.

Richard, Don, Andy, Gary and anyone who could be persuaded to roll some dice stopped by the Siege game that pitted a truly epic Greenskin horde attempting the clear the heavily defended Empire earthworks in front of the city wall they hopped to take.   The number and quality of miniatures on this table was truly mind blowing.  Lets look at some pictures!

Oldhammer in the NW prep...part 5

Well the big day is finally here, we'll be pushing around little lead man on a table in a few hours!  I got into Baltimore around 730 last night and set up with some of the boys at the drop zone. It was great to finally meet a few of my online chums in person.

When I got back to my hotel room I had a little bit of prep to do myself still ...I managed to complete some movement trays for my army and get the whole thing laid out on the table in the room.

These are iPhone photos so please forgive me for their quality.

And here are a couple quick shots of the table that Rusty made for the big RoC War bands game.

Cheers for now...back with a report on the day's activities later!

Blue

Oldhammer in the NW Prep....part 4

Work progresses...basing done for now I'll add static grass if I have time.  Shields for Bugmans also compete and being attached.  I may add the classic Bugman B at a later date. Standards for The Brewers and Pikes have been rehabbed. Next: complete standard bearer for the clansmen!

Cheers,

Blue

Oldhammer in the NW prep...part 3

Time for another quick update on my preparations for this weekends event in Baltimore. I have completed the basing on the Warhammer regiments dwarves and I'm about halfway done with the remainder of the figures in need.  Here is a picture of them made process.

I have also started to get some paint on the bugman's shields, and the clansmen standardbearer is about halfway done as well.

I'm still feeling very stuck for time to get all of these tasks accomplished but as Erny recommended I'll just get as many done as I can and hope for the best.

Oh well better get back to it!

Cheers,

Blue

Oldhammer in the NW Prep...Part 2 Progress

Howdy all,

Just a quick note to post some progress on my goal of bringing my old units up to snuff for the coming weekend.

I've started with the biggest task which is rebasing about 50 figures.  To that end I replaced all the old green or otherwise painted bases and got busy getting sand glued to each and every one of them.  That happened last night.  Along with the bases I also chose the shields I will use for the Bugman's unit and the few I need for my Warhammer Regiments dwarfs.  These have now been primed...as has the standard bearer for the Clansmen unit.

Here is the group getting rebased and you can see the many shields I have mounted to a painting "handle"

I have also carefully removed the banners from the Pike Regiment and the Rangers Unit and I will try to do a little clean up and repair on those before reattaching them.

So all in all progress is good...but the bases are still very intimdating to finish in time.  I will put in a couple more long evenings on them tonight and tomorrow...but it wouldn't suprise me if I was still putting static grass on these on Friday night in the hotel room!

Cheers for now,

Chris

Oldhammer in the New World Prep...Part I

Howdy all!

When the Oldhammer in the New World event was beginning to be discussed seriously last spring I had visions of arriving at the, yet far off, event with armies of newly painted and pimped out units.

...As the day has grown closer I had reset my expectations to having a few new units for the table top....

...an now reality has set in...there is less than a week to go before I have to hop in the car for an 8 hour trip to Maryland and I have no coherent fantasy force to bring for the table...sigh.

This summer has sucked for hobby time.

...so with little time to spare, today was the day to asses what I actually do have and what can be done to bring things together into a table ready force.

...So keeping mind that the GAME is the principal goal here I have decided to bring a couple of my classic units off the bench and give them a quick make over and get them on the table.  Now several of these units sport authentic late 80's-early 90's paint jobs....these do not measure up to their more recently painted brethren...but remember...the GAME is the goal.

Ok. It's official...I have a serious problem!

I was cleaning out my hobby closet this afternoon.  When I receive a package of minis I usually take out the goods and throw the box in this closet in case I want to use it to ship somethjng out in the future.  Well.... when the closet got too

full to use for anything else I decided to purge some boxes...this is the pile

Of broken down boxes....holy shit!  I have a serious issue here! :)

...and this doesn't include padded envelops!  Or boxes that I did reuse...this is crazy...

"Hello!  My name is Blue and I have a lead addiction"

Cheers,

Blue

Happiness is...

...afresh wet pallete and new brushes!

Cheers,

Blue

Unit Building....adding Command sections to my Old Brets

As Mentioned in my previous Post about building new units for my classic Brettonian army I mentioned that I had several units without command sections.  This is due to the fact that the, somewhat obscure, range of Brettonian figures that was released during the 3rd edition didn't contain any command sections.  This has forced me to look outside the Citadel catalog for some suitable models.

I've been looking at some of the sculpts sold by Black Tree Designs and when they had their summer sale I took the plunge and ordered a couple of blisters that I thought would work nicely.  I purchased figures from their fantasy range Men of  Averaign (all of which make great Bret alternatives) as well as some from their Hundred Years War Range.  Lets take a look at how they worked out.

The Rest of Averland...Part VI...the end....finally

In my last post I alluded to another commission that I was finally able to finish up...lets take a look... 

This one was a really joy to work on because it included so many really fantastic classic figures.  I am of course speaking of the group of Averlander's that I have been working on for thebinman for far too long.

I've discussed this group in some detail elsewhere so lets just get into the pictures.

First off is the group that has been completed the longest...a wonderful combination of races that makes for a very evocative little group.