BOYL 2019....I finally made it! (Pic Heavy)

(Note: this is in no way a comprehensive description of the events going on at Foundry and Warhammer World over the weekend...If I failed to mention you or your wonderful game I apologize...no slight intended...you know I love you all!!! :) )

Well...Its a festivus Miracle!!  I've finally found a way to attend a Bring Out Your Lead (BOYL) event!!  BOYL was the first and is largest of the purely Oldhammer events that happens every year.  It was first held in 2012....and every year since then I have been dissapointed to NOT be able to attend.

...But that all changed this year!  Due to some unexpected life changes in the Blue household the opportunity presented it self and I jumped at the option to attend.  This decision was made rather last minute (2 weeks before the event) but I was able to get a reasonably priced ticket and impose upon my friends Airborne Grove and Bulldog Lopez for transportation and a place to crash.

My BOYL experience actually started at Warhammer World were I joined a number of other Oldhammer compatriots for fantastic Rogue trader Realms of Chaos Warband Rumble...hosted by Colin.

Ewal Dvergar Boar Riders...Part III

Another quick post today...

...And another of Clam's fantastic Ewal Dvergar Boar Riders.  This one is another mix match...the body and Boar are from the Boar Rider release...but the helmet for this one comes from the earlier Ewal Dvergar warrior release, and it is one that I'm particularly fond of.

I've been meaning to try one of my chaos figures with black armor...but honestly I've been hesitant too until now.  Long time readers of this blog may remember a post I wrote about a system I had learned for painting black from a few years ago (LINK)...I have only used it sparingly since this initial attempt and never on a subject with this much area to cover...but this seemed like the perfect chance to give it a try on a more challenging subject.

...but before I reveal the final piece I want to take another opportunity to heap high praise on John Pickford for the sculpting on the boars he produced for this range and for Clam...They are superb and this one was another joy to paint.  Take a look!

Ewal Dvergar Boar Riders...Part II

Here I am back with with a quick post about some more Ewal Dvergar Boar riders that I have completed.  I had some time so cranked out two more of these lovelies.

Once again I opted to use a selection of different bits.  The red guy pulling the classic Jess Goodwin YMCA pose actually has a head that was supplied with the amazing "Ass Cannon" crew...also sculpted by John Pickford and sold by Oldschool Miniatures.  He is also mounted on a Marauder Boar.

The Yellow rider is made of straight Ewal Dvergar bits provided by Clam with this set of troops and he is mounted on another of the excellent Pickford boars.  Once again I can't say how much I like these boars...they are simply superb!

Here are the individual shots of the two...

Ewal Dvergar Boar Riders

Hi all,

Once again it has been a long delay since I have had a substantive blog post...but I'm trying something new today.  One of the big issues I've been having with blogging is computer related.  My laptop has been on the fritz for weeks now and that is where most of my pictures are stored...so in order to get something up I've decided to write a post on my phone with the pictures I have stored there.  So if the formatting is a bit weird...I blame the phone and blogger app...:)

Anyway...today I would like to talk to you about chaos dwarfs...or more specifically boar mounted Ewal Dvergar!!  My hook-up for all things stunty and Chaotic...Clam... sent me a batch of his newly released Boar riders a month or two ago and I've finally had a chance to get to work on them.

BTW...When you decide to get some of these...and you will...hit up Clam's Blog to order here:

http://claminiatures.blogspot.dk/

One of the fun things about these figures is that any of the chaotic dwarfy heads that John Pickford has sculpted for Clam (and others) fit perfectly on these bodies.  So this allowed me to have some fun mixing and matching bits and pieces from a variety of sets to make unique boar riders for my army.  as I started to play with the options I laid out all my bits...

Johann Complete!

As promised here is a quick post to show you the final results of the painting I was finishing up on Johann...the fantastic Chaos Dwarf Sculpt by John Pickford...and in fact this figure was painted for John himself! (I hope he likes it!)  I think I have said all the wonderful things that need to be said about this great model...it really is something special...particularly the shield which inspires me to try something new each time I look at it.

Anyway...blah blah...here are the pictures...and below I will include pictures of my personal version to which I have added a Green stuff beard.

I believe that these are still available through Clam's Ewal Dvergar Range of figures...so contact him and get you one....and some of his other wonderful figures as well.

Here is John's Johann...

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

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.

...and a Special Surprise!!!! I mean it this time!

So in the post I did last week on the fantastic Ewal Dvergar Xbows that have been recently released by Clam I hinted at something special in the title...

...and then forgot to mention that "something" in the post!  DOH!!!

Sorry about that.

A Touch of the Chaos...

So...if you follow the blog you will have noticed a rather dramatic drop off in posts about painting.  There is a very obvious reason for this...my painting mojo has left the building!  I have  been extremely short on time this summer and when I have had a few minutes I just can't bring myself to paint for some reason.

...that is until this last week!  After seeing all the wonderful pictures from the BOYL event I've started to get really excited about the Oldahmmer in the NewWorld event coming up this fall.  So I've been back in the saddle for a few nights and it feels good to be waving the hairy wand again!

The first thing on my plate was to finish up a couple of commissions ...pieces of which you have seen pop up on this blog and in various forum over the last year or more.  Well...I've completed two of them and managed to get some decent pictures before shipping them back to their rightful owners.

The first commission was a group of five chaos figures for my most patient client Hashut's Lil Helper (HlH).  You may remember that I have been painting a series of Chaos warriors for HlH that match his already painted MM90s.  Well in the last batch of figures he included 5 additional figures for me to paint as well.  These included one more Chaos Warrior and four Citadel chaos dwarfs.

Lets take a look at the group first and then each of them individually.

Ewal Dvergar Crossbows ....and a Special Surprise

One of the great things about the current state of the "Oldhammer" Community are the number of small companies...and in some cases individuals...who are designing and producing figures that have that "Old School" vibe.  One of my absolute favorite ranges of this sort are the Ewal Dvergar being produced by Clam.  The Ewal Dvergar range takes its inspiration from the classic Chaos Dwarf models produced by citadel and Marauder during the heady days of the 2nd and 3rd editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  Clam's figures allow a general to build a sizable force of evil stunties without having to collect innumerable duplicate copies of very hard to find and expensive classic figures

LPL Round 4: Chaos Comes to Town...

Howdy all,

Time for the weekly update on the LPL.  The last weeks "competition" has been the closest contest I have ever been involved in....and is perhaps the closest in recent LPL history.  When I last checked nearly 500 votes had been cast and the two teams were still within 3 votes of each other.  As of Friday ...midday...we were tied!  My team was up against that of Professor Witchheimer...who I consider one of the best painters and photographers in the LPL...his entries are consistently of VERY high quality....so I'm quite happy that my team is even holding its own against such talent.

Anyway...on with the show.  This was a un-themed round...so I dug into some work that I've been meaning to do for many months...some more Chaos figures for my CDO compatriot Hashuts Little Helper (HlH).  The three chaos warriors in this team are a continuation of some painting I did for HlH more than a year ago ...where he sent me some painted Marauder MM90 Chaos dwarfs and I painted the Chaos Warriors that inspired them...in colors similar to his MM90 color choices.  The two citadel chaos dwarfs on this team are a part of a small batch of a few other figures I agreed to paint for HlH.

Anyway...here they are as a team...

Now let's look at the three warriors and their corresponding MM90s...

First up are the copper twins...

Here I stuck very close to the "source material" that HlH sent to me...even down to shield selection.  Luckily this is a CW that can pull off the smaller shield....which comes from the Marauder chaos/undead sprue.

Next we have the Blue meanies...

Again I tried to mimic the color of the CD fairly closely....and again I turned to my stash of marauder shields to give this guy a bit of protection.  I picked this particular shield because I felt that the bull skull motif mirrored the shape of the horns on the warrior helmet...also this CW can handle a much larger shield than the copper one.

Finally we have the Pinks...

As you can see HlH used metallic pink for his CD...and I did some experimenting with making my own pink metallic paint....and those experiments didn't go well.   

So after consulting with HlH I went for a non metallic finish for the armor.  Still I was quite nervous about trying to pull off this much pink as it was not a color I have used much in the past.  And right up till the final layer I was convinced that I was going to have to start over...but something about that final highlight pulled the whole paint job together.  Now I can't wait to try this color again on a few of my own figures!

The two citadel chaos dwarfs on this team also deserve some mention as they are both great figures in their own right.  

This guy just looks like a loony!

And this guy just looks....well...awesome....the leather thigh high leggings and the big glaive thingie make him one of my new favorite chaos dwarf sculpts.

So they they are....Team four....they've done me right this week no matter who finally comes out with the most votes.

Cheers for now!

Ewal Dvergar "Unit Shots"

Building on my last post which featured the Ewal Dvergar that I painted up for Round one of the LPL... here are a few pictures of all the Ewal Dvergar that I have painted up to now.  In total I have 9 of these fantastic figures painted (though a few are still missing shields)...in order to round out the unit to two nice ranks of 5 I have also included the MM90/WK conversion that I refer to as the "Green Knight"...though I've stuck him in the back rank.

While this isn't a huge unit its starting to look pretty good!  I had orginally thought that I would mix in Clam's sculpts with my MM90s to make a big unit...now after seeing these guys all together...I'm thinking I need two units :)  One of MM90s and one of Ewal Dvergar!

Anyway...here are the pics.

LPL Round 1: Ewal Dvergar

Well...the time has finally come!  Round 1 of the Lead Painters League has closed for voting and Round 2 has begun....therefore I'm allowed to post up my first round entry for public consumption.

The entry requirements for this year's LPL have changed from previous iterations of the contest.  This year you are allowed to only enter one picture of your team...with no composite images allowed.  In the past I had the option of using a combination of images to best illustrate the details of my figures....this year one picture only.  So this was picture that I submitted...

Chaos Dwarf Comparison shots...

About a week ago Four A Miniatures released the Chaos Dwarf/beastmen that I covered in earlier posts.  These wonderful figures were sculpted by John Pickford...as were the Ewal Dvergar that Clam is sharing with the world.  When I put up the post about the Four A minis several people asked for some size comparisons...I promised to do some shots...and never did.

...Well today is the day!  I had the camera set up to take my first three rounds of LPL photos...so while I was at it I grabbed a few other Evil dwarfs and put them all together for some Glamor shots.

Four A Miniatures... Chaos Dwarfs II: "Thats 'Mister Tower Head' to You!"

Hello all!

Another of the fantastic miniatures that John P. asked me to paint for him is the other Chaos Dwarf that Four A Minaitures will be releasing in the future...a figure that John and I have been referring to as "Tower Head" (though I understand that another name may be forth coming...).

Four A Miniatures...Chaos Dwarfs I

Hi all,

Over the previous summer I was contacted by the sculptor John Pickford who was interested in having me paint a couple of pieces for him that he had recently sculpted for Four A miniatures.  I was obviously very humbled to have a man of his talent ask me to "pretty up" his sculpts for him so I gladly accepted. (it had nothing to do with the other lead he offered me as payment...I swear!) :)

A couple of weeks after our initial discussions a box full of goodies arrived from John in my mail box.  Amongst the assorted treasures therein were three brand new Chaos Dwarf sculpts... Though these aren't you normal chaos dwarfs...more of a kind of blend of Chaos Dwarf and Beastman/Werewolf.  Suffice to say they looked fantastic and I couldn't wait to get down to work on them.  But as you know the last summer was a rough one for old Blue....that whole broken ankle thing threw a monkey wrench into many of my plans.  So they weren't really finished until well into the fall.  As the release date for these figures is now drawing nigh (they should be out toward the end of February) I thought it would be a good time to post up some detailed pictures of them.

First up lets look at them as a group and then we can talk about them each in more detail....

Warhammer Skirmish Homebrew fun game

Howdy all,

Last night I managed to convince a couple of my buddies to have a game of Oldhammer...and we opted to do something a little different....we played a total skirmish game.  I home brewed a set of rules using 3ed as the base with some input from Rogue Trader and Realms of Chaos as well as other ideas that randomly popped into my head.  The idea was to have a fairly fast flexible game with smallish units (8 max).  I think we succeeded...and most importantly we had a lot of fun doing it.

The forces engaged consisted of Dwarfs and Humans (my 5th ed Brets) on the side of light...commanded by Brian....and Chaos Dwarfs and Orcs and Goblins on the side of Chaos...commanded by Tom.

Here are a few pictures of the nights activities...sorry for the quality...they are all done with my iPhone and under the crappy florescent lights in my garage.

Here is an overview of the table with Tom starting to move his forces of Chaos (chaos dwarfs and O&Gs) onto the table...

No smart ass comments about the exercise bike in the background...

As you can see we had a fairly dense set of ruins in the center of the table representing a burned out village...this is composed of card building from Dave Graffam.

Bret Halberds Complete...and something Chaosy this way comes

Howdy all...well the heart of the summer is upon us....my ankle is healing well and my work load has gone off the charts...seems no one did anything at work while I was laying on the couch for a month...lazy sods!  So my hobby time has been quite restricted but I do have a couple of updates to share with you.

First of all I finished off the last of the infantry units for my Bretonnian warband....these are the halberdiers I was working on for the Monthly Unit Painting Challenge over on the Oldhammer Forum.  They still need a banner and few shields but they are done enough for now.  This unit didn't inspire me the way the others did but I'm glad they are finished and I'm fairly happy with the way they turned out.....take a look for yourself.  Sorry about the crappy wooden movement tray...its a WIP

This shot shows the 3 R&F sculpts...nice but a little more variety would have been great!

Shields detail...these guys look better from the back!

With the completion of these guys I'm getting fairly close to being finished with this small army.  On my painting table right now are a unit of 10 knights as well as a general and army standard bearer.  The only other thing I have to add are more mounted yeomen....I'm still hunting a couple of the sculpts down but that unit can grow slowly.

On a completely different note....last weekend my painting mojo completely vanished so I found some time to clean a prep models for future efforts.  Recently my boy Clam sent along a set of his new Ewal Dvergar sculpts for me to play around with.  So I spread them out with a batch of the first release castings that were still patiently waiting assembly and I went to work....here is what I started with.

As you can see there are a LOT of options here....so I spent the better part of night just fiddling around and trying different head and weapons options on the various bodies.  By the end of the evening here is what I had come up with....a group of 4 with pole arms...

I particularly like the guy second from the left...

 ...a couple with two hand weapons

here I used weapons from both 1st and 2nd releases

....and a sizable group of hand weapon and shield warriors

A right evil looking bunch eh?

Additonally I built this guy on the left with the two handed sword and started on a couple of conversions with some of the extra bits...which are sill very much WIP.

Bonus points if you can ID the base bodies on the two models on the right...

I hope to get these guys primed up in the next few days so they can join the great unpainted masses awaiting my attention on the painting table.

Of course if you want some of these babies for yourself you should check out Clam's Blog HERE

...tell him Blue sent ya...

Cheers for now!

Blue

New Recruits for the Oldhammer Gods!

Last Thursday saw me hosting another 3rd ed game at my house which pitted several of my work friends and associated against one another.  After being quite loud during our last game we had been relocated to the garage for this one.  This battle consisted of a combined force of humans and dwarfs commanded by Alex and Cher (with help from Black lab Shelby) squaring off against a Chaos and Greenskin force under the control of Tom, Samantha, and Paul.  The mission was to search a small farmstead located in the middle of the table for an undefined "target of priority."  Once again I didn't take enough pictures or notes to try and produce a real AAR but I thought I would share some pictures just for fun...

Chaos Hound Shelby hopes that little lead men are edible!

Alex and Cher Position their troops...

Watch Out! Paul has a Funny look in his eye! Sam doesn't seem too impressed with her first game...but she loved it by the end.

Cher Advances the Dwarfs on the Goodies left flank...hey girl your chaos attribute is showing! That's some pink hair!

Alex moves some of the human troops into the farmstead...

...out of the cabin run two dwarf treasure hunters carrying a dragon egg!  After them!

The Dragon Company prepares to receive a charge from Goblin Wold Riders (check out my new movement trays!)

The battle was a real defensive struggle...no one had hot dice hands when it came to combat and everyone did when it came to Ld tests...so not much of significance happened for most of the night...until we were all bleary eyed and ready to throw in the towel.  Tom talked us into one more turn...I think this was turn 9 or 10...and then practically the whole left flank of the Good Guys gave way when the three remaining Chaos Marauders broke a unit of Dwarf thunderers...this led too...

...sad Cher.  We all bagged it and went home. It had been a long night!

We could have certainly played a few more turns...we had units that hadn't even gotten into combat yet...and the egg was still escaping off the table...but we were all crispy and ready to call.  It was a fun night and I have recruit a few more minions for my 3rd ed games!

Cheers,

Blue