Warhammer Quest Critters

Boy, did summer get away from me there!

I finally got around to the penultimate (second to last) batch of Classic Warhammer Quest minis, the critters!

The splotchy grey bat on the far left is my son Kieran's first painted mini! Welcome to the hobby, little buddy. :) Knowing I was getting burnt out and that hobby time is at a premium these days, I went the quick route and sprayed them black, then went to town with the drybrushing.

I may still put a glaze or gloss varnish over the black eyes on the spiders to give them some shine, before the matt varnish they looked more "alive."

Now it's just the four classic WHQ heroes to do and my set will be fully painted! Last step will be to put them all on clear acrylic bases, since I got my order in from Sally 4th the other day. They'll allow me to use the minis in a dungeon quest, skirmish, or army battle and still have the bases match the terrain.

The chiropterologists (bat scientists) among you will recognize that some of my bats seem to be suffering from white nose syndrome, because what's more horrifying in a dungeon full of nasty creepy-crawlies more than injecting some depressing real-world diseases?

I couldn't have gotten to this point without the inspiration provided by Warseer and the Tale of Painters blog! Even though I've used more jokers than I have painted, it was still a great push to get this set completed.

'UUUGE... Tracts of Land

Sometimes, just sometimes... the perfect bitz show themselves at the perfect time. This is one of those times.

The head is going to need some reshaping, especially in the hair and moustache. But it's a start. I finally know what I'm going to do with that Wight King that has been sitting in the blister pack for a good long while. I'm excited to get started on him!

 The furry shoulders are what got me started on this path. They may need some fluffing up with green stuff to get just right. The head is from the Empire Militia kit, if I'm not mistaken.

Themed Chaos Grave Guard, Malus Darkblade

I was stuck on the idea of doing paintjobs for my warriors themed after the four chaos gods. A day of painting later here they are! From left to right, they are: Slaanesh, pink and purple (the most FABULOUSLY frightening!); Nurgle, green and yellow and particularly rusty and corroded; "undivided," with the least alteration, just some rust and brighter silver armor; Khorne, all bronze and red and looking particularly happy about it; and finally Tzeentch, with his particularly bright blue and yellow highlights. I had a lot fun doing these, not least because it let me get out of the "undead drought" of bone and black I find myself doing so much of.

 Click for bigger pics!

I really wanted to try and expand my horizons as far as rust was concerned with these guys so it would stand up to the scrutiny of Carpe Noctem's painting challenge. To that end I tried to layer lots of different colors in the rust including green, purple, white, bone, and finally some blazing orange to top it all off and unify the rust. It was a lot of fun!

I also managed to get some pics of Malus Darkblade, headed for the girlfriend's Dark Elf army. He was originally going to be a Christmas present, but he got pushed back a bit with the trip to Virgina to see my sister. I tried to emulate the color scheme Caitlin is going for with bright red and yellow armor, but the Cold One he's riding was a scheme of my own invention.

 Since he's got such bright armor, I decided to make his sword plain ol' silver to balance him out a bit.

First time painting scales, and more detail than I think I've ever put into a face before. Hopefully the time spent shows! Truly a labor of love. Caitlin says she liked the "lava" bases, so that's the plan for now..

Finally, I cheated on a couple of "army shots" since I didn't feel like digging all my magnetized models out of the storage bin, but wanted to give readers a quick update since the last ones are so out of date at this point.

Krell's Children: Grave Guard Chaos Warriors!

Astute readers might recognize some of the half-finished an totally-not-game-legal conversions I attempted several years back with the 5th edition (?) hunchbacked plastic chaos warriors. Carpe Noctem happens to be doing a "Krell's Children" challenge this month, where the goal is to convert some chaos warriors (presumably the CURRENT ones!) into the undead. I thought it'd be the perfect time to revisit my old abortions I MEAN VALIANT ATTEMPTS AT CONVERSION

The originals were quite honestly a bit of a mess... I tried just mixing up the 5th edition skeleton and chaos warrior sprues to varying effect, but didn't get much in the way of working models. The parts seemed too disparate to blend together well. I also didn't do a particularly good job of figuring out how the parts were supposed to work together, as evinced by the bevor (neck protection) being used as a crotch guard on one of 'em... thank goodness for googling these days. I wanted to make sure the new guys fit onto the game-legal 20mm bases and also roughly matched proportions with the current skeletons, so I've got my 10 most recently finished sword-and-board skellies here to help with sizing. Here's the pile in progress. You can see I sanded the torsos down significantly, which helps to narrow the frame. Hopefully this will also make it possible for them to carry shields and still rank up.

I went even further with the mix-and-match approach this time, making sure I broke off legs and arms and attaching skeleton bones between, so that it actually looks like there's a skeleton inside the armor. Hopefully the results seem a bit more like skellies in chaos warrior garb, and less like a mix-n-match.

 I wanted to get in a few shots with some of the other varied undead models than I plan to put in the grave guard unit. I really want it to have a mix-n-match look, so you'll see a couple reaper models and one very cool undead dwarf with twin hammers from Stonehaven Miniature's kickstarter hiding in the background.

I may or may not decide to do a bit more with the colors and give them a "4 gods and 1 undivided" color scheme... the silver drybrushing over black was simple and fast but I feel like it's a bit much for an entire unit.

In completely unrelated news, I finally finished those Forge World Skaven Wolf Rats that have been on my painting table for about a year... I went for a quick-n-dirty grey palette that will let 'em join my units of Battle Masters wolves as dire wolves. Now I've got about twenty for the glory of the undead! I'm particularly fond of the dirty, bloody bandage look that I think came out pretty well.

Since I was going for quick 'n dirty, I basically drybrushed the entire model in progressively lightening shades of gray. I picked out the leather with a light coat of brown, and since it was already shaded from the gray drybrushing, the highlighting was already there. I picked out the bandages with some off-white and then did some gooey reddish black splotches all over 'em. (I figured anyone willing to bandage up a bunch of ravenous wolf rats only wanted 'em to live long enough to fight a battle and wouldn't do a great job of it!) The whole thing was pretty fun, but then, I'm a drybrushing addict. The level of detail on the forgeworld stuff is amazing.

BattleMasters, HeroQuest, Warhammer Quest Projects

Just a quick post to show off some of my latest projects... these BattleMasters goblin wolves will find their way into my Vampire Counts army as spare dire wolves. In keeping with my "quick and dirty" painting strategy for getting all my BattleMasters stuff finished, I didn't bother trying to remove the saddles.

Next up are some greenskins and fimir I'm going to be trying out a couple new and different techniques on... for as long as I can remember I've been a drybrushing addict, but I'm attempting to move away from that. I'm hoping to get my ForgeWorld fimir painted soon but I wanted to see whether I could get some new techniques under my belt before doing so. I'm testing out white vs. black undercoating, and painting highlights rather than drybrushing. I'll also be trying out Army Painter "Dip" washing with their strong tone. I've heard mixed reviews but it'll be a boon to painting all my Battle Masters, that's for sure.

...and here's my HeroQuest wizard, finally out of the box and getting some color on! I think that when I painted his compatriots I basically chickened out on his "moon and stars" tunic because it seemed so fiddly so he never got the attention he deserved. I finally braved it out and after taking a stab at it I'd say it's pretty passable. Glad he can soon join his companions.

Lastly, here's the progress I've made with the Battle Masters chaos knights. They'll join the Blood Dragon in my Blood Knights unit once they're finished. I'm not too proud of the admittedly very simple paint scheme, but as far as getting things quickly I'd say they're a success.

As an added bonus, here's a few shots of my current painting workspace, complete with box covers for inspiration. Having the tackle box right in front of me keeps all my bitz handy, as well as raising my work surface up high enough to keep my back from hurting too badly.