More slayers and miners in progress

After a couple of weeks having a good flow of painting and posting on the blog weekly, I skipped last week. Of course there was miniaturemonday last monday, but no related post. Was painting a little less as well last week therefore no real progress but now the finished product in detail. It is always good to have more slayers so here are another 2 of the guys.

We have greybrow greenpants to the left and his mate to the right. Been painting with more highlights now, so the texture becomes more explicit. Hairs and skin becomes more crisp, more comic-y.


And the miners are in progress. Been painting these old miniatures and they are fun. They have comic all over them, big nose, big head and big hands! I have 9 of the guys so my 10 miners regiment will be expanded to 19 in a while!

What you see in the middle is my miners unit filler. A great way to expand regiments quickly and give character to your army at the same time.

WIP iso the finished product

Well well well, it's been a week. I've been posting a lot of finished products lately. Just a matter of a flow in painting them mini's. Eventually you end up with a lot of WIP's again because the rest is all finished. This is now the case. And in keeping with the weekly posting on this blog I'm bringing you all up to scratch.

First up is 2 dwarf slayers. Started with the black undercoat and skin. Skin is pretty much done, but I'm not really happy with it. Tried some stuff with my own washes (very thinned down paints). The end result is not really what I had in mind, but I'm continuing anyway with the hair for now. Maybe the finished product will look better. On the other hand it's just painting more slayers in order to get a decent size group on the battle field. Here I don't need prize winning mini's although I strive to of course.



Ahhh, the miners. Old school metal ones that is. They are great. Got me 3 sets of 3 miners to let the set of 10 grow bigger for my dwarf army. These guys have the big comic heads and large noses with the oversize candle on their helmet. These will be cool! Just base coat black and first dry brush of metal.


Hey this is no dwarf! Sneaked right into this post. Just to keep you up to date: dark elf assassin primed and ready for more paint. THinking about a color scheme here. Probably blues as the sorceress or greens in keeping with the magical theme. COme to think of it, I might do red here since it is an assassin!


Unit filler! First real unit filler I'm making. I have lots of small sets of goodies painted on small bases but this one is with mining theme in mind. It can count for 4 miners. Good stuff these miners plastic sprues have truckloads of extra mining goodies. My metal miners will also get an extra lantern, spring charge or whatnot on their base!


COLD ONE! watch it there! :) Can't resist, painting cold ones. THis one is getting a dark elf knight with the small dragon on its shoulder. The model is so cool! I haven't decided what arm to give him yet. If you have any idea's they are welcome!




Finally the last update is about the dwarf warriors. Primed them a while ago when they were put together. These guys are really slow going. 16 guys is a mountain to paint :) They provide the best distraction in between painting all other projects. I got 6 dwarf warriors the first metal highlight (10 more to go). Still when metal and skin is done, all is left is some small strips of cloth and brass and gold details. Should be easy going from there on.

Expanding the dwarf army

My last battle really showed the lack of a big cannon. My army list contained only a gyrocopter as a warmachine. This was very effective against low toughness troops and warhounds. Swiftly striking at the soft spots of your enemy. The army list lacked a long rang big damage do-er. The first thing after painting the thunderers was getting a cannon.
The status now is that it is put together and the first layers of metal paint are present. The crew is also in progress as well all the cool accessories.
End of the week new battle with the dwarfs. Small battle it will be, but a good test for the cannon hopefully.

WIP: dwarf gyrocopter

After going through hell to get all the parts glued, the dwarf gyrocopter was sprayed black. I let the gyro rest for a couple of days to see if nothing came off. Everything was glued with huge amounts of superglue, but still it could come off.
This did not seem the case and I've started to paint the gyro and the rotor separately. For the progress pics i put the two together, but they are not yet glued in place.



Color scheme wise, I went for the beige and red I also used on my dwarf warriors. Whit the base coat on the gyro, the color scheme is starting to work out very well. I randomly selected patches that became red, and the tips of the rotor were to be red. The metal is painted boltgun, washed badab black and then highlighted boltgun and chain mail. I also painted the exhausts brass and some tubing and runes as well. The steamgun is also a big brass pipe in my scheme.

WIP: dwarf ironbreakers, thunderers

In between Mordheim battles there is progress to made on the dwarf painting front. I just recently finished the first set of dwarf warriors. Pictures will be here soon of course, but I went on painting more dwarfs and started on 10 ironbreakers. They are maybe not the best unit to choose for WHFB but they are fluffy and the models are cool. Nice little sturdy tanks.
The paint scheme is simple here. Metal (boltgun, black wash, highlight chainmail, highlight mithril silver) is the base and then gold and copper detailing, oh and painting some beard ends sticking out of some helmets at odd angles.
I already painted one full fledge as a trial run (and as a figure for my Mordheim warband) and the shields will be blue with gold axe and metal edge.
Of course they will get the stone bases as the entire army will get. They start to look good in their metal base colors here. Already painted to with the full set of copper details. They are a pain to paint. The models are stuffed with bolts (that are copper/gold in my scheme). So three down seven to go.


Since the ironbreakers are progressing rapidly and needed to dry in between drybrush sessions, I started to clean up the thunderers and give them their chaos black spray treatment. Here they are lined up as they will be in battle. Here two of the thunderers are already painted since they were needed in the Mordheim warband. Only 8 to go here, but they have a lot of detail and equipment to paint individually. The total paintscheme will be a lot of leather clothing and the equipment carried by the thunderers that is mostly tools for loading their handguns, metal and copper. The shells they are carrying will be bright red and the handguns metal with gold ornaments.

Painting dwarfs WIP

Painting the dwarf warriors is taking me forever. I'm doing too much detail apparantly and too much side projects I think. Now I got distracted by painting a dwarf thunderer for my dwarf warband for Mordheim. I hired a new gunman and this has to be represented by a painted fellow of course. Well here is the marksman almost ready. When my dwarf warriors finish I'll do a good photo report with proper lighting and whatnot.




So painting dwarf warriors eh...yep...well...it's progressing...slowly. I took some pics on various stages during the process. Maybe it's taking a lot of time because I'm painting all 16 at once. Usually I paint up to 5 figures at the same time.

The advantage for painting the dwarf warriors is that they are very coherent. When I paint flesh, it's the same for all since I don't have to remember what color combo's I used for the previous 5 for example.

The entire colorscheme is done for all dwarf warriors and you get to see directly how colors work on the group. On the offside, painting 16 faces, 4 or five highlights after each other is getting a bit tedious after a while.

What is the plan for the dwarfs? I chose to paint 3 different beard styles: yellow, brown/orange and black grey. For the coats I took beige and red. 8 guys have the red coats and 8 the beige ones. Metal is metal and will be done with brass and gold accents and the leather pouches and boots will be done the same for all.
I'll leave you with the final pic of my WIP and hopefully can make you guys happy with a final photo session very soon.

Another productive day

It's that time of year again, days off, holidays and whatnot. In no time these days fly by and what did you do? We decided to fill at least one of those days with again some scenery building. More Hirst Arts bricks were cast and the table was set for a day enjoying the hobby!

Arjan and Mr. Flibble turned up for this hobby day and we dove in. Lots of creativity was flying around and the concentration and dedication to work was of a high level straigh away!

Lot's of designs were tried and tested before glueing the stuff together. Here a wizards tower is taking shape bfore our eyes. I believe the current status is that it is painted and all ready to go on the battleground. Good stuff!

My own goal was getting the field plates for my arena painted and painting some roads for our city. Buildings we have but some more roads will add to the playability of the scenery.

I also started with building a sort of balcony tower like structure for the arena and built a small shrine. Also started on a long street as well in the days after this one. These are all the works in progress and will see their finished pictures here very soon!

A productive day

It was the day in december. The air was cold outside. A perfect day for...painting and scenery building! The last week I was casting a lot of bricks with our hirst arts molds. Starting the day it was sorting out the pile of bricks.

The table was set up for scenery building, bricks and everything were flying around and creative was flowing freely. The result is some 2 buildings and the arena tiles have now 4 more parts. Only an other half of the arena needs building and it is done. Even painting the stuff we were able to do before the end of the day. Here some snapshots on the setting of the day. The buildings and more details will follow when all painting has been done.

Arena part 2

A quick update on the arena front. One arena half has been built and now it's been painted as well. Details need to be added as some moss and dirt and such, but the basics are done. This part can already be used in a game of Mordheim. Of course for squig hopper racing this arena needs to be built further and details need to be added. Barrels are being painted, maybe add a discarded food cart for selling rats on a stick? Who knows what will be added. For now the second stage of the arena:

WIP: Arena, squig hopper racing

I'v been busy with the arena concept for some time. It's been done in multiple settings, where the chariot racing arena is the most famous piece of terrain. Mine will of course be a lot different! :) The arena must be modular for transportation and storage and serve multiple functions:
- it must be an arena, circular for use in Mordheim
- it must be an arena for chariot racing (3 chariots abreast should be able to race the length of the arena)
- it must be an arena for squig hopper racing! New rules coming up for this game, and this is the terrain for it.

First stage is done. One half of the arena is now built. following are 4 more tiles that act as the straight part and 2 more tiles with the other half of the arena. That half will be more ruined. The flooring will be part tiles, part sand with tracks in them.
The arena seeting will be filled with all kinds of rubbish left behind, empty cascs of beer, that kind of stuff.

This is my stack of bricks ready for building the rest of the arena tiles. it will be something. Painting is straight forward, black undercoat, with dark gray heavy drybrush and then a light grey drybrush as the other buildings I've done also have. Then add details in with the barrels and the sandy flock grounds.