painting Mournfang

As mentioned in the previous battle report my mournfang are finished painting. It took me a while but they are done. I tend to like to start up multiple paint projects with models I like, ending up with 4 projects progressing very slowly. Plan to paint is good thing here and I put away 3 other projects in a shoebox (literaly so you can't see them near the paintstation) and focussed on the mournfang. This proved good tactics since they were done in 2 weeks (just painting half hours here and there).

The base of the mournfang was done by airbrush. Great stuff to paint the hide and add cool highlights. Finished of with a wash and a final highlight with the airbrush. This was done in say 2 hours. I also undercoated the riders and the saddles separately. In total 6 parts to paint separately (2 riders, 2 saddles and 2 mournfang). The mournfang itself finished quickly after the airbrush session. The saddles as well since only leather painting needed to be done. I did the tusks and bones on the saddles with a colorflow from brown to red to yellow to white. They are more magical creatures and this gives them that look I had in mind.

With the mournfang ready I started work on the bases as well. I wanted these simple and snowy to focus attention to the model. Simple layers of snow were added with watered down pva glue. I also added clumps of snow and put drops of watered down pva glow on them so it could soak through. It gave nice patches of thick and thin snow. With some added rocks covered in snow, for now it's done.

Meanwhile the ogre riders were started. Mainly your basic ogre although I wanted to give a nice print to the pants. It became a cloud pattern that works well. The troop is now called the cloudriders and the entire ogre force named: skytitans of null. Always nice to see this naming following from the models and paintschemes themselves, works more organically that way.

A lot of work went into weathering the armour and waponry. The first order to make it less 'clean' and further more to give more color to the model that has a lot of reds and browns. Green-blue oxidation on brass is great here.

Fianlly assembly of each model with the 3 parts finished and then all comes together. A quick layer of matt varnash and the models are done. Good to see how focussing the work leads to quick and good results here. Next up is the stonehorn but maybe I'll do 1 leadbelcher in between to do something different then furry brown beasts.

The watchtower

A game of my Ogres vs the Nurgle warriors of chaos. For the first time my army list contained the mournfang cavalry! Yesterday I actually finished painting them but they were good to go on Friday. The rest of my army was a set of 7 Ogres, 5 ironfists a bruiser (BSB) and a butcher (lvl2). I added a scraplauncher, 3 maneaters with pistols (and swiftstride and poison attacks) and 3 leadbelchers for some shootyness and 2 sabretusks to harass where needed.
What was I up against: a hellcanon (of course), some low level spawn, a block of warriors of chaos (not to mess with), a chariot, a wizard, a hero with palanquin and it was topped off with some 3 dragon ogres.

The scenario I rolled was the watchtower and Chaos was assigned to guard it. Of course the warriors were put in the tower (maybe the single most difficult unit to defeat without any charge bonuses). The game for me started of with my first mistake: not charging the tower directly with the strongest unit I had. For some reason I sought out the my chaos opponents first to ensure a safe battle for the watch tower. This is somewhat odd since I had more troops than the chaos ones. An immediate charge and fight for the tower would have been a better plan. Start the conquest of the tower as soon as possible is a lesson learnt here.

My Chaos opponent did will by putting his warriors inside the tower. They are a tough nut to crack. I charged with my ironfists eventually but even with my big block of attacks it was not enough. The one time I won combat, the warriors stayed inside the tower and I had to start all over again. Subsequent attacks proved some losses on my side as well and in the end I couldn’t swing it before the game was ended.

While this should have been the centrepoint of the battle, I put my focus first on the dragon ogres and the chariot for I thought they would mess with my plans. Of course my chaos opponent manoeuvred in such a way charges in turn 3 were only succesfull. I had to charge the spawns in the end with my mournfang (completely wiping them out, mournfang are gooodd!!) before I could get to grips with more interesting units. The maneaters got to grips with dragon ogres (which should have been my mournfang with their impact hits) and got stuck the rest of the game. Luckily the hellcanon played no major part in the game as well as the magic users. I would have gotten stuck in sooner with some charges but it was not to be.

The watchtower scenario with Warriors of chaos inside was too tough a nut to crack with the mistakes I made. Fun game, good mournfangs, better luck next time!

Like I had nothing left to paint ....

Sometimes you don't see a single miniature for over a month, and then all of a sudden they start to appear out of nowhere. I had that same experience today.

This morning I bought a standard ogre box to create the maneater mordheim warband. Some greenstuff required but that will be all fine. I already assembled parts of them today, removing a little of the points where the ogre's where attached on the sprue. Also they all have their slippers on and are ready for combat.

So what happened when I emailed Arjan to check if the Open Fire box was already in? Indeed, "it's on my desk a.t.m.".

That's even MORE to paint :D . I made a deal with arjan where I could have the rulebook and the US troops (though they are mostly Brits in the box), along with some counters and dice, where Arjan would have the rest. We split the cost and all was well.

I am a bit dissapointed with the build quality of the tanks though. The entire left side, top and bottom are great, but the right side is completely out of shape, for all the tanks (did not assemble the FireFly yet). Have to do a lot of shaving there. Also a lot of greenstuff required, but ah well.

All in all.... painting and assembly time!