Wayne England...RIP

While I sat at my desk this morning plugging away at some inane project for work I was interrupted by a Facebook notification that hit me right in the hobby.  The notification was a post from Wayne England's wife Victoria informing the community that Wayne had passed away. 

Though I never had the pleasure of meeting Wayne in person he, and his art, have helped shape my vision of the Warhammer World since my childhood.  As many of you know Wayne's art has graced the pages of countless publications over the last four decades and given us all a window into the vast an mysteriously opaque world in which our hobby takes place.

But it was not only Wayne's amazing works of art that helped shape my vision of our hobby, but also his iconic dwarf army that he shared through several articles in White Dwarf.  I think it is fair to say that Waynes masterfully painted dwarf army inspired many youth like myself to collect and game with the wonderful dwarf figures being sold by Citadel and Marauder at the time.

As a tribute I would like to share with you some of the pages from White Dwarf that illustrate his fantastic army.

And here are few shots of this army in action...also from the pages of White Dwarf

It was these article and pictures that encouraged me to collect an entire army of metal miniatures from my dwarf army...even the color scheme I've chosen for some of them is directly inspired by Wayne's amazing work.

RIP Wayne England...you will be sorely missed.

Blue in VT

Jenkins!? Where the Hell is Jenkins?!?!

After many failed attempts my local gaming crew was finally able to get together to play a game of Rogue Trader 40K last weekend...and we had a ton of fun.  I had four players and acted as GM myself and it was about the perfect sized group for the game I had in mind.

For a scenario I fell back on the one that Dustin and I played at OHNW 2015 which was a blast to participate in and turned out to be just as much fun to GM.

Lets get into it!

Background
After several months of fighting aboard the large Space Station (Excon Valderz) that orbits the planet Putney Prime in the Outer Rim Territories, Imperial Forces were finally able to force Ork Radiers led by Narblaz the Nasty to retreat to the planet surface.  Here Narblaz regrouped and attempted to salvage something out of his failed mission by exerting control over the planets surface.  However, Imperial forces followed him planetside in hopes of eliminating this Ork scourge once and for all.

Excon Valderz

The Severe Maiming of a White Whale...

The amazing week I just spent down in the DC area, which included a weekend full of Oldhammer, could only be capped off with in one way...with the slaying of a collecting White Whale.

...and while I was unable to completely slay my longest lasting collecting "White Whale"... I was able to severely main the SOB...and I'm now closer than ever to finishing that bastard off!

Which white whale you say?  Why the Marauder Wolf Rider white whale of course!!

Any long time reader of my blatherings here on the blog, or in forums, or on Facebook, or in various bathroom stalls across a tri-state area...will know that I have had a long and frustrating search to complete an entire set of Marauder MM32 and MM34 Goblin Wolf Riders.

Blue's Year End Re-Cap. 2015...what a long strange trip it's been!

As with many Oldhammer Bloggers this seems to be the right time to review the last twelve months and take a look at what I was able to accomplish and perhaps look to set some goals for the coming year.

I'll look at things in fairly broad categories:

• Painting
• Gaming
• 2016 Goals

Imperial Dwarf Unit....Complete!

Hi all,

Well...the Thanksgiving holiday cut into my painting time considerably this last week but it was a nice break from the daily grind.  I returned to the painting station on Saturday night and managed to put the final touches on the unit of dwarfs I've been working on which is created from a mix of classic Citadel Imperial Dwarfs and Bood-Wargames Dwarfs.  The final push included finishing the shields, basing, varnishing and painting the inside of a few shields that show them prominently. 

I'm quite happy with the way this unit has turned out.  The Imperial dwarfs are some of the greatest Citadel sculpts of all time IMO.  The Bood-Wargames Miniatures fit in with this style perfectly and help to fill out the unit nicely.  With the addition of the Bood miniatures to my collection I was able to expand my one unit of imperial dwarfs to two nice blocks of classic looking infantry...they really fit together that well.

So here is the completed Unit

Frostgrave Fishmen! Krackatoans for the frozen city

Hi all,

Just a quick note to mention that Joe over at Dragon Bait miniatures has just posted a new sculpt to join his latest release...the Kracatoans.  At this point there are 12 sculpted and cast members of this warband including the fantastic Mage.  And now...in an effort to make this force a bit more Frostgrave friendly Joe has asked Tim Prow to sculpt a second magic user to join the Fishmen...in this case a witch.  Now with the ability to use the witch as an apprentice this group of fantastic figures becomes much more viable as a frostgrave force.  Check out his excellent sculpt!

I love the fishing net as a shawl...perfect.

Also if you haven't seen the giant crab and riders that are available through the indiegogo campaign here are a few pics

Please go check out the campaign and support if you can here is a link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/28mm-krackatoan-warband-by-dragon-bait-miniatures#/story

Cheers,

Blue

Attack of the Krackatoans! The Fishmen Cometh...

Howdy all,

As I mentioned in my last post I've been working hard to try to clear the many half finished projects that have occupied my painting desk for months.  One of the long lingering projects has been a group of figures from Dragon Bait Miniatures called the Krackatoans.  These are wonderful fishmen that would fit right in to pretty much any fantasy setting...and like most of the DB miniature figure line they are infused with some of that tongue-in-cheek humor that we all love about "Oldhammer" figures.  I'm really considering using this group as a Frostgrave warband as well....:)

Joe at Dragon Bait is one of the nicest guys you can deal with in our community and he was nice enough to send me a set of these miniatures before they were released.  They are now available through a crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo.  What I love about Joe's campaigns is that he has the figures in hand and ready to go...when the campaign ends he sends your figures to you...no long waits.  Joe does it right. Please go take a look at his offerings...I find that supporting small figure producers like DB is very rewarding and can add some very unique minis to your collection that look great on the table.

Lets take a look at the whole batch and then we will look to closeups of each individual.