Dwarf Army Progress Shots...Almost There!!

Hi all,

As most of you probably know I have spent the past six months painting frantically for the second Old World Army Challenge.  It was, once again, a grueling effort but I did manage to finish and add a significant new contingent to my Puff and Slash Dwarf Army...which is my oldest army and one of the largest.

As I was finishing the challenge and and preparing to take some shots of the entire 1000 point force that I had managed to paint...I thought it would also be a good idea to combine them with all my other Empire Dwarf figures to show the current status of the entire army.

This proved to be a lot of fun and, though the set up and prep work took some time I think it was worth the effort.  Now this army is NOT complete...several of the units will be further expanded....several have a few partially painted figures....almost all units are still lacking banners...and there is one entire unit not represented at all in these pics.  Despite these deficiencies I find this kind of photography to be very inspiring and feel that it really gives me a feel for where the army as going as well as indicating what needs to be finished up.

For this photo shoot I used two of my modular terrain tiles and a number of the houses and walls that I scratch built in the last two years...as well as a portion of the Might Fortress.  I'm still having trouble with the backdrop situation, but for the time being I used a sheet of green foam board as my backdrop...less than ideal but sufficient for now.

Anyway...lets take a look...

Here is the Dwarf line of battle for the Grand Army of Salsburg.

...Somewhere in a Fly-Over State....MONOLITH!!!

Hi all,

Well here is the second of my Photo-Dump posts.  Last time we looked at some of the excellent gaming that happened at Oldhammer in the Jerz...

...this time lets look at some pics from a slightly smaller event.

Just one week after the "Jerz Incident" I found my self on a plane flying across the country...past major Metro areas...

But ending my trip in the middle of some random Fly-Over state whose name I forget...

Here I met up with the rest of the Monolith boys (minus K) and and we quickly sequestered ourselves in the basement for the entire weekend...

...it was Glorious!!!

...it was like I was 14 again...except with much better terrain and completely painted armies!

There were games of Rogue Trader, Warhammer Fantasy 3rd ed, Rogue Ops,....we attempted to capture Ambulls and to free Frogs frozen in Carbonite.  We fought Zombies, Orks, A horde of Chaos...Squat operators...the Emperors finest, Space Pirates, exploding Dogs and all manner of other combatants.

Hell...we even played Heroquest!!!

As I said...

...it was Glorious.

Luckily my compatriots were much better at taking pictures and documenting the battles for future Blogging...to get the real story check out the following Blog posts of those more talented than myself.

Ambull Hunting
Beach Landing RT Style
HeroQuest
Chaos Vs. Dwarfs
Rogue Ops
Rogue Ops 2

I contented myself with just gaming as much as possible and having a great time doing it...

#winning

Anyway...Like I did with the Jerz event...here is a photo dump of some of my favorite pics from a really amazing weekend of Oldhammering...

Sad...

the Emperor's forces hit the beach!

Ork, Dumpster Diving

Some of the Ugly citizens of GraveSkul

Genestealers Attack!

MONOLITH!!!

Renegades Advance!

Knock Knock!

Air lifting Slann Solo to safety!

The Tiger is BURNING!!!

And on the Fantasy side...

Dwarf Main Line

PIKES!!!

Dwarf Warriors emerge from the mine

Vasken Kills my General...sigh

Classic Warhammer Armies Pose by Grove

HellHouonds

IMPACT!!

The Meatgrinder

Overhead at the start

Cav Goes in

Slayers

Snarf Snarf

STAMPEDE!

Zweihanders

 Cheers for now!!

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 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.

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.

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.

Incoming!!!

While I still slave away in my giant batch of figures... (they are starting to look pretty good...but they ain't done yet...sigh)... I want to take a moment to show some pictures of a really cool figure I just received.  I think that many of you have seen examples around on the internet of Crooked Claw Miniatures Goblins...if you haven't then go check them out HERE ...When they showed off a new Goblin catapult a few weeks ago I knew I had to have it.  Plus the price was very reasonable.

Crooked Claw Goblin Stone Thrower

 I think that Crooked Claw is one of a small number of miniatures figure companies that are making new figures with the "oldhammer flavor"...and a nod to the Golden era of Citadel miniatures...much like White Knight's excellent Dwarfs/Goblins/Halflings (HERE).  The fact that Kevin Adam's is sculpting this range makes the quality of the work undeniably great...and this piece certainly lives up to that expectation

As you can see the set comes with a good sized stone thrower that is fronted by an wonderfully detailed and characterful "face plate" ...and three crew members as well as a small wind indicating flag.  The face plate certainly harkens back to the wonderful sculpting on classic Citadel war machines like the Lead Belcher and the Man Mangler both of which also sported excellent "face plates"

That's gonna be fun to paint.

 The wooden structure of the weapon is also covered with excellent little details.  Many of these details are reminiscent of the other classic greenskin war machine the "Skull Crusher" which was covered with similar faces.

As you can see here mine is held together with poster tack for now

Even the business end of the throwing arm has been given the "Kev Adams Treatment"  Check out this face?

 
I don't often say that I'm excited to paint a warmachine...they are usually rather dull to paint...but this one is going to be a blast!  The hard part is going to be trying to decide what approach to take for painting all the faces on this wonderful sculpt.

The crew is also very characterful...particularly the commander...he is fantastic.

 Anyway...if you need another piece of machinery for your Greenskin Horde...and you want a new take on the stone thrower that has a classic feel with new embellishment ...you should check out Crooked Claw.

Cheers,

Blue

Building Some Units...

My painting "mojo" seems to have escaped me this week...I just can't seem to find the time or energy to finish up the few projects that are lingering on my table.  So, this week, I did what all hobbyists in such a situation do....I started a bunch of new projects!  haha

I recently ordered a batch of 100 20mm square bases with the "horizontal" slot...and upon their arrival I've had the urge to get some of my many units based up and ready for priming.  I'm really making a push to get as many units as possible in a game ready condition...even if they are not painted...so that I am more likely to actually use them in games...which I hope are going to be a more common occurrence this winter.  One of the major impediments to that task was the lack of straight slot bases in my collection.  This shipment makes this work possible.

Here are the units that I managed to get set up over the last couple of days...as you will see I have been focusing on getting some missle troops ready to rumble.

1. Dwarf Crossbows

This unit is composed mostly of Marauder Dwarf sculpts (MM15s) and includes some wonderfully characterful pieces.  The shooters in the front rank are all "plug-in" figures that could be armed with a spear or Crossbow...sadly I only have 4 of the six crossbows that I need....but I'm fairly confident that the ones produced by White Knight for his dwarfs will fit these guys pretty well.  You may also notice that the musician for this force is actually the piper that came with the Marauder Pike Dwarf Unit (MB1) and that the Standard is from the MM11 dwarfs.  (The Pike unit will be built with the MM15 Drummer).  Fellow dwarf fanatic, Hitmonkey, on Bugman's has recently started painting a unit of these and his work has been a great inspiration for me to do something with mine.

2. Empire Handgunners

Here we have a unit of the excellent Puff and Slash Empire handgunners that came out towards the end of the 3rd edition.  I'm a big fan of the Empire forces that were released at this time...and these handgunners fought many a battle on my table back in the day.  I could have wished for one more variant on the shooter poses but I'll work with what was produced....though I've been considering a head swap or two...

As you can see I need to convert that slightly damaged halberdier into a standard bearer.

3.  Empire Archers

Continuing with the Empire theme I also got this unit of archers based....more lovely sculpts though a little more difficult to rank up.  I have yet to find a musician I like for this unit...so they may have to survive without one.

4. Empire Crossbows

Closing out the Empire branch of my army for this post is a unit of Crossbowmen...again dating from the end of the 3rd edition.  With a command section of Marauder Figures from the MM61 range.  Sadly the drummer causes a lot of problems with ranking these figures so I might have to figure something else out for command models...but these look good for now and are painted...so YAY!

I've never been a fan of the big black plastic crossbows that game with these, and many other 3rd ed shooty types, so I'm exploring weapons from other manufacturers.  If you have suggestion please leave a comment.

5. Bretonian Armored Bowmen

These are the figures that have sent me down the rabbit hole of chasing 4th and 5th edition Brets for a small army...I've owned a number of these sculpts since they were released in the mid-90's but only got around to painting some for the last LPL contest on the Lead Adventure Forum.  In the process I realized that they are just great figures and that I needed to own them all!  You will notice two plastic figures in this group...despite my nearly unviersal contempt for plastic figures these ones are not too terrible and blend in well with their metal counterparts...well enough for the back rank anyway...:-).

Well there you have it...five new units for me to work on...that should keep me busy for the next lifetime!  Sadly this is but a fraction of the units I need to build up and paint...sigh...and YAY!

So what have I learned during this exercise?  A few things have come to mind.

1. I've often said that I like to collect "units" rather than "figures" and I think that mindset shows through with this selection.  This thought probably really places me outside what most Oldhammer folks would call the "classic" period of citadel figures...but I am starting to feel that the figures from the end of the 3rd and the early years of the 4th editons make the best, most cohesive looking , units.  I still appreciate the earlier models tremendously, particularly the RoR, but for much of my army I prefer this slightly later style of troops.  (please don't throw rocks at me...)

2. I have way too much painting ahead of me!  I'm going to have to work on some systems for speeding up my process with these units.  I would love to spend unlimited amount of time on each figure...but at the rate I'm going these guys will never make it to the table top in a painted form.  Comprimises must be made in the hopes of having completed armies before I die!

3. I seem to like units of 18 for shooty types....but now that I look at them...maybe 22 would be better...hehehe

4. As I finish these units up and get all the final little fiddly bits for them I can see my collecting focus really shifting to quality over quantity.  In almost all my units I'm looking for just a few pieces to make them complete...hopefully a reduction in the amount of time spent on ebay will allow me to make more progress on getting table ready units in a game.

5.  100 straight slot bases was not enough! I see another order in my future...

Anyway...enough rambling for today...got to get back to work!

Cheers,

Blue

CDO 6-hour Painting Marathon and Miniature Exchange...part 2

Well...things are finally settling out here in VT after a hectic Thanksgiving holiday that saw me out of town and not getting any hobby work done.  But over the last few nights I've managed to fulfill my 6-hour time allotment and I was able to finish both figures that I previewed in the last post....(we're not going to talk about how depressed I am to have only finished two figures in 6 hours...sigh) 

First off is the converted Chaos Dwarf drummer that I completed for the miniature exchange...still not overly happy with the drum head design but I will let the receiver of this figure decide if he wants to change it or not.  I actually think that this version looks quite a bit better than my original...the red just works better with this figure.

He put down the Crossbow and picked up a drum!

Secondly is the White Knight Zweihander that I was finishing up for the monthly Bugman's Painting challenge...I quite happy with how he turned out.  As mentioned before this is a figure that really spoke to me...I feel it is the best of the Zweihander set....but that is my personal opinion of course...there are a number of great figures from this set.

"None shall PASS!"

...and while I had the camera set up I went ahead and snapped a couple shots of the complete unit with this bloke and the drunken sergeant added.

I'm hoping to add just two more figures to this unit to bring it up to a respectable 3rd edition size of 14 figures...not bad for an elite unit...I will be running these guys with Hammerer stats so they will be doing some serious slicing and dicing of their opponents.

Next up....Blue actually plays a game!!! (Ok...I just GMed but still!!!)

Cheers,

Blue