Orctober 2016!

Orctober 2016! Woooohoooo! *Ahem* I mean Waaaaaaggghhh! ...obviously.

Firstly and most importantly, big shout out to Erny, the Oldhammer blogging legend behind Orctober, for this year's banner! And to his brother Snickit for poking him with a stick encouraging him!

This was supposed to be a post detailing my Orctober pledge. Sadly it has been another busy month of REAL LIFE and even my week off, planned to be full of nerdly goodness, was hijacked both being poorly and looking after poorly family members. Booooo!

So, it is a post detailing my meagre efforts for Orctober 2016 retrospectively. However, without the motivation of the monthly painting theme I'm not sure I would have got much if anything finished this month. At least I managed to get the bulk of what I had planned done. And that was...

28 Night Goblin Archers from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle 4th Edition box set!

Here they are lined up in black undercoat behind a test piece to get the colour scheme right

I have to say I have a real soft spot for these guys, and to a slightly lesser extent their spear wielding brethren from the same set (I have 28 of those coming up too, but they were never part of the Orctober plan, as I have to press mould a ton more shields before I can do that). It's a cheap and cheerful plastic monopose sculpt, and many people lament the rise of such miniatures in the history of GW, but their cheeky yet malevolent faces still manage to convey something of what was the quintessential Warhammer (dare I say Oldhammer? I do think this was lost in later editions) Goblin vibe.

'Da Yellaz' ranked up in front of the set of hills Dave the Scenery Savant made for me

I've painted these to match my existing greenskin army - i.e. as if they had been done by a young teen aged me with just three pots of paint and one brush with only two hairs left on it - and I think I have achieved that aim admirably! I've gone for what AVP Shaun would euphemistically refer to as 'Tournament Ready' (meaning they are fully covered in paint and have at least three colours on them, but not much more than that), making full use of a healthy coat of black under coat in the finished model.

They are a sister unit to one that was already painted, which was itself just carrying on the black and red paint job that the previous owner had started.

Here you can see Da Redz as the yarrived in the post. I decided to just upcycle them rather than satrting again. They were pretty close to the colour scheme I had in mind anyway.

I wanted these to fit with that look but be distinct as a separate unit so after the same super quick Snot Green/Orc Flesh Wash treatment, I went for yellow as the unit theme colour, using Bubonic Brown on everything that wasn't going to be green or black (I find it gives fantastic coverage over dark colours and lets you work up to some really vibrant yellows), and then either flesh wash for the leather parts or yellow wash for the arrow fletchings and bow tips. And that was it.

See, they are just as terrible from the back as they are from the front

Here you can see Da Yellaz next to Da Redz. I'm slightly annoyed I forgot to do one unit leader with the colours on the bow reversed as Da Redz have, but then I plan to add proper champions, standards and musicians to both units before sorting out movement trays once final numbers are known, so Da Yellaz unit leader can also be sorted out in time.

Both units badly need command. Large mobs of gobbos going around without any direction like this is why the yare so easily bullied into things they'd rather not do. Of course having command doesn't help that much either, but...

Hopefully you get the sense of them being two distinct units, but from the same tribe or army

I'd hoped to be able to finish a few other choice pieces for Orctober, and to a much higher standard than the Gobbo archers, including a Blood Bowl to Rogue Trader conversion for my ongoing Rogue Quest project that would have been a nod to the 40K theme suggested by Erny's awesome banner. Sadly this was not to be. The only other piece I got finished this month (today in fact) that qualifies for Orctober is a Bugbear from the Citadel AD&D Dungeon Monsters set.

I wanted for a different look for the eyes, not just red like I tend to for my Warhammer greenskins. I thought they should be beady so I went for dark blue with a very light grey fleck, I think it has worked OK.

More Bubonic Brown and Flesh Wash here, as well as Bestial Brown and Back Ink for the skin and fur of the Bugbear. Fairly classic colouration and in keeping with the description in the AD&D Monstrous Manual. He's due to make an appearance in my D&D game this coming weekend, so another great example of monthly painting challenges fuelling productivity for actual gaming.

I really, really need to get a better camera/lighting set up.

Scenery September Update!

 

I've also finished the 'Hut in the Swamp' I started as part of the Middlehammer group's Scenery September challenge, adding a mushroom garden around the two slime pools, and some seasonal pumpkin heads around the entrance. Ultimately, it still looks like a box turned upside down and painted brown, but I'm only aiming for producing usable pieces that add something to our gaming at the moment, so I think it will do the job nicely.

The Hut in the Swamp is going to feature in a future D&D session, but was made very much with longer term use for Warhammer in mind.

Assorted mushrooms and toadstools made from Milliput and lentils. Snake made from left over green stuff.

The slime pools were made with a hot glue gun. The photos don't show the colour variation, but there was still a lot that could have been done to improve them.

The pumpkin lanterns are press moulded from the head of The Carver from Malifaux

Thanks for stopping by, and if you've been working on any of your own Orctober projects please leave links in the comments. I'd love to see them!

Where did the summer go?: Prince August and Scenery September painting challenge updates

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a post complaining about the British weather and our lack of sunshine. In fact I'm writing this and pootling about taking photos of models in the garden whilst enjoying beautiful early autumn weather.

No, this is one of those posts where the author realises they haven't posted for months and really should do something about it. But that is because I have been busy, see!

On top of all sorts of family birthdays and weddings and stuff, and a new role at work that has me seriously considering how to invent time travel, or one of those time twister things from Harry Potter and the Over Committed Academic Timetable (my personal favourite), I've also visited the special Childrens TV Exhibition at Bristol's M Shed Museum where I saw these absolute diamonds of yester year!

The original Tracy Island made by Anthea Turner on Blue Peter! If anyone else is late with their Scenery September Challenge, then there are some good tips from Anthea in the video ;)

And even better than that...

One of the original Eye - Shields from Knightmare!!! I fucking loved that show. My mate Alex 'The living legend' Corrigan was on it. Season 3 Epsiodes 15-16. (Video here - Their bit starts at about 18.20 and carries over to the next episode)

Alex is also behind the awesome Mr Thunderwing Youtube channel which brings you all sorts gaming inspired delights, and has a Deviant Art page featuring all sorts of Transformers related stuff that is well worth a look at if you are a fan.

Anyway, I've also been involved with two monthly painting challenges/themes - Middlehammer's 'Prince August' (paint a noble of any description) and 'Scenery September' - and although I've managed the odd post with terrible mobile pics on the fb group, I've not managed a blog post about either during the relevant months. So this is by way of a catch up:

Firstly, for the 'Prince August' theme I chose two 'High Elf' nobles. Yeah, yeah I know they are actually Wood Elves. Plus, they are probably more Oldhammer than Middlehammer, but I painted them up for use in my WHFB4 High Elf Army, so I think they just about count on both fronts. I also posted pics on the Middlehammer fb group of a 'Nubian Prince' from Prince August themselves, that I'd only very recently finished as a general D&D/Fantasy noble NPC or whatever. So not painted up specially for the theme, or even during August... I think I'm giving myself about 5/10 for fit to brief this time. Anyway, here are the same awful pictures I posted on fb:

Terrible quality moblie WIP shots

My High Elf Lord and his loyal Bodyguard, Jon bon Jovelf

This was my second ever Prince August mini - the casts can be a bit soft it seems, but this was a lovely scultp to paint.

I've used the same red and blue colour scheme on some other generic NPC types so they can come together under Prince August's leadership to form a rival Adventuring Party if needed.

Secondly, for Scenery September I decided to do a combination of very simple scatter terrain and a couple of renovation projects for my desert set up, as not only this is getting a fair bit of use at the moment due to where we are at in our D&D campaign, but the set up needs a bit of work to be able to field a decent Fantasy or 40K battle, so this would help.

This ruined wall section really should have gone in the bin, but it has defied the odds to have survived over 20 years, so I gave it a new lick of paint and the best flocking it has ever had. Still looks like low grade polysyrene badly polyfillered to some floor tile. Because it is.

My 4 year old son helped paint this. I was very chhuffed. Sadly the aquarium plants I used turned out not to be artificial and started to die once sealed with milliput. You can actually see the white mold growingon some of it. So immediately after this photo was taken I cut them off and it is now a tree stump, or possibly a termite mound.

I've included this piece (which I made months ago so not part of the monthly theme), based on idea which I saw replicated on both the Oldhammer and Frostgrave pages, because I think it is a great idea and because it had a starring role in our most recent D&D game where it was guarded by these two Middlehammer era Bloodletters who were masquerading as Fire Salamanders. It's just a slice of coloured agate you can pick up in those crystal stalls in markets, set on its edge in some milliput and flocked with some sand and painted up to match my desert scenery, but when I put that down and told my players they were faced with a mystic portal to the elemental plane of fire, it certainly gave them a focal point. Sometimes scenery is just there to be scenery, or to be functional providing cover or an obstacle, but sometimes it can drive the narrative.

Strangely, that is what I think this piece might do. It is the simplest piece I did, absolutely nothing more than flocking with sand and painting in various shades of brown, but the underlying shape of the flimsy plastic watch packaging, which is what it is, now looks like an ancient piece of mechanical stonework, where if you put enough weight on the cross shaped button, the stone recess shifts and the treasure is revealed! I'm planning on working that in to both my D&D game and when playing 'Heroquest' with my 4 year old.

The strange lichen pile/camp fire looking thing is one of the renovation jobs I was talking about, bits salvaged from a larger piece beyond saving. I need more scatter terrain!

I also decided to do a very simple 'hut-in-a-swamp' in anticipation of a future scene/location in D&D. The basic paintjob is finished and shown below, but it is still WIP really as I'm now working on a mushroom garden around the two slime pools at the side.

As always, the themes have helped keep momentum going on projects that might otherwise stall. I'm planning on doing two, yes two!, projects for Orctober - a unit of 30 Night Goblin Archers (WHFB4 Plastics from the original box) and a Bloodbowl 'conversion' (not really converting much, possibly nothing in fact) for my Rogue Quest project. I've also got a back log of half finished blog posts that I plan to put up as soon as I can, so I hope you pop back to see those too. Thanks for reading :)