The quick and the dead

Small update: Finished this little lady; Mary Fearless.

When I saw her rules: "you shoot her, she starts shooting back! Whomever has the most successes counts has having shot that turn." I knew I wanted to have her in my Ash & Oak list. She has 2 funds, so she can buy the protection of the Ogre bruiser. Again this miniature was a pleasure to paint, and it costs less time than I usually spend on my GW miniatures. It's the lack of cluttered details, I think. Or maybe I should paint something else than miniatures covered in boils, sores and skulls. :) Mary Fearless to me is a bit of a contradiction; a female gunslinger, but part of the aristocratic faction. I tried to show that in the coloring. I choose red, white and dark blue for the dress, hopefully that comes across as aristrocratic. The boots, coat and belt are done in browns, I thought that had a proper western feel to it. The studio model is a blond yet in the artwork she looks like Eva Mendes, so I made her a brunette. In the background are the D10 dice to be able to play IHMS.

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

New kid checking in: After joining the group and working on my Carnival of Chaos warband since April (personal record), I needed to work on something else for a bit. Having discovered steampunk on Beasts of war in their Wolsung video, I bought two of these Micro Art studio miniatures to see if I like working with their models. To me the Wolsung miniatures are oozing character, which is a nice break cause the carnival of chaos miniatures are mostly oozing pus. Being more of a builder/converter than a painter and it is so refreshing to be working on a miniature that is not covered in straps, boils, buckles, pouches and skulls. Lots of large surfaces, but for instance the clothing is nicely structured with creases and wrinkles so it has a nice texture to work with. So painting is easy and fast and you can try to freehand a bit, which is something I usually don't do. But that's because mostly I've been painting beastmen and things covered in rust, blood and guts. It's still WIP, I need to finish up the base and varnish the mini, but I'm quite happy with this first mini so I wanted to show it off. About the miniature this is one of my favourites from the Wolsung line.

It's an Ogre Bruiser from the Ash & Oak club, a henchman catering to the wishing of the rich and mighty with some brass knuckles. For some reason he reminds me of an Irish bar-brawler, so the vest needed to be green. Googling Victorian clothes, I found many plaid and striped pants so that was a nice challenge to try out. The other miniature I bought is Mary Fearless, a hot little aristocratic lady who can shoot the lights out. She has two funds, so she can pay for the services of the Ogre bruiser. She'll be the next project after I finish my nurgle warband, which is hopefully the next update. Another thing I've recently discovered thanks to Ludo and Tom is that these miniatures can double for both Wolsung and In her majesty's name. So I should get good mileage from them. :)

From the sewer with love

Every once in a while wargamers that keep their eyes open will stumble upon a bargain. I happen to have had that moment some days ago. While I say bargain, it was also a bit of a sad story. Without going into much detail, a lovely lady had some warhammer laying around and needed to get rid of it. Problem was: she did not know how much value there was in the box. So I drove by and helped her to determine the value for placing it on marktplaats (our national form of ebay).

We dug trough 3 big boxes of high elves, some of them not even out of the original box! She also had the island of blood starter set, a LOT of paint (mind you, a beginner with over 40 jars is pretty rare I'd say) and a number of other stuff.
Since I already had enough elves I was not interested in the HE, but the skaven did attract me somewhat. Apart from a very poor undercoat job on the general (much to thick!) and the poison wind team all the other skaven members where still in a sprue. I told her I was interested in the skaven, some never-user GW pliers and some paints. Because I helped her out so much I could take all that home for 30 euros! Not a bad deal at all, I'd say.

So, does that mean I will be playing skaven? Nope, at least it is not my intention to start a WHFB skaven army, but it is really nice to paint something else than ogre's and mantic elves every once in a while, and the skaven are just full of detail and fluff!
Furthermore, it is great to have some models to test new techniques and paints on, without having to worry about army composition and colour scheme's and whatnot.

So, that is exactly what I did, and the results can be seen below. Mind you, this is severe work in progress!

First up:
The leader of the bunch. A very striking model, but unfortunately undercoated with a gigantic layer of white. Like someone held a bottle of skull white upside down all over this guy. Fortunately I had my trustworthy sephia wash with me. In order to find all the details once again, I almost completely dipped the general in and miraculously some details became visible.














Next up:
 A warpfire thrower team. Already assembled but with a much nicer coat this time, so I could easily undercoat the mini black without loosing any detail.














After that:
Some small rats. There were some more, but these 2 stood out. The one on the right because he is actually armed with something to push rat ogre's forward which seemed very cool. The other armed with a simple spear. I tried some new colour combinations on these guys and am pretty please with the result so far.














Then:
Since we need something to actually push on, here's a rat ogre! There were 2 of these guys in the package and I don't know yet how to finish them, but I like where it's going so far.

Last:
But certainly not least! My personal favorite of the bunch, the Warplock engineer! Very nice model, striking pose and such a blast to paint!














Now, onto more painting! Perhaps we will seem these guys on the battlefield someday. Or ... lurking the streets of mordheim, that is only if I find a warband with Clan Skyre theme instead of those dreaded assassins!

 By the way: Pictures made with a lousy mobile phone camera, so excuse the quality!