Goblins WIP

It's the May Day bank holiday in the UK and so predictably it's cold and rainy and feeling more like February. The perfect excuse to avoid any gardening and stay wrapped up nice and warm inside, just a pair of cutters, a sharp knife and some plastic glue to keep up the spirits. And lots of little gobliny bits.

I want my goblins to look a bit sneaky of course, but also a downtrodden, vicious-if-cornered mob. Here's a sneak peak of progress to date, I have most of this unit of forty goblins constructed now. I have also built a general and his bodyguard, to be speed painted next weekend. Waaaargh!

Feeling Green

Recently, after a short break from the game, I have been playing Warhammer again. There are plenty of things I don't like about 8th edition, but I still love the setting and the world (the fluff) and just can't stop liking the figures. It's the mass carnage that turns me off the game, it just doesn't seem right to me that, for example, a unit of 25 dwarf warriors can be reduced to nothing in a turn or two. So after playing a couple of games with the bearded ones, and not really enjoying them too much, I decided to look for something else.

Theoretically I should have turned to the Vampire Counts. It doesn't matter if I have to remove handfuls of zombies and skeletons each turn, because a) they will probably come back to life in the magic phase and b) they are already dead! I flicked through the army book a couple of times, but the old magic that it used to have for me, just seems to have drained away. For the time being at least.

In the end I turned to the army that I had originally started to build purely because I had a few models from the Battle for Skull Pass set. The Orcs and Goblins were always intended as a "spare" army, to be collected cheaply from ebay and to give me an opponent for my Dwarfs. Somehow they have slowly evolved into my biggest army, there are about 2000 points painted with at least that much again in boxes waiting for assembly/paint. Whenever I play them, I don't mind if I lose them in droves and I generally have fun, especially since the new book removed the frustration of the old animosity rule (there's still animosity of course, but it's not as likely to completely cripple your battle plan like the old system did).

Reading the army book I was drawn to the sneaky side, the filthy little goblinses. I need to boost my night goblin regiment a little, from 30 to about 40. And I also should really finish the Goblin Gizmos I started around this time last year. But in true hobbyist fashion, I decided to start a completely new regiment. One thing led to another and the whole thing has ballooned into an idea for an all goblin army. More details in the next few posts.

Dwarf Engineer painted

I finished the Dwarf Engineer. I am quite happy with the metals and the leather apron, but there are a few niggling problems with the rest of it. The cloth bits are a bit glossy and no matter how much matte varnish I use it seems to make no difference. The hair is blonder than I wanted, I had it a nice pale colour but then glazed it with too much yellow. The skin is okay, but I had a lot of problems with the eyes, which were virtually non-existent on the model. In fact, the quality of the cast overall was quite low, with a few areas miscast and the model in general being "soft" on detail. I hope Avatars of War eventually make the move to resin, as long as it's not finecast resin. Blimey, all this exposure to the dwarf has turned me into an old grumbler!

Monthly Mini Porn Issue 4

Each month I spend far too much time browsing minis on the web, most of which I will never have the time or money required to buy and paint them. But that doesn't stop me from compiling them into a kind of wish list.

Let's start at the bottom, or rather the bases. Here are some excellent scenic bits that could be used on unit filler bases, on terrain pieces, or as decorative bases for a single figure painting project. These dwarf bits from Scibor miniatures are really tempting, I would love to integrate these into my dwarf army.

More dwarf goodness from Black Scorpion miniatures, of the "fantasy football " variety. They have a good selection of pirate skirmish figures too, these are just a couple of examples from that range. 

  

Perry Miniatures have finally released plastic mounted men at arms for medieval forces, though Warhammer Empire players might be interested too. 

Another company well worth checking out is Historic Art miniatures. As well as a very fine range of historical figures, they produce some excellent fantasy figures, such as this Alice and Merlin. 

 

Here's another wizard that would grace any glass cabinet, a Gandalf from Knight Models. 

Finally, an absolutely beautiful piece of terrain, a blacksmith's forge from Tabletop World. If you have never visited their website, click the link and prepare to be amazed!

Dwarf Engineer paint in progress again

And the dwarf's back. I know, that's so punny!

Another little update to show more progress on the engineer. Quite often I get asked how I paint my figures, so hopefully this will be of interest to some. This shows the cloak not quite complete. I started with a mid green base, then I gave it a wash with the same green with a little black added, or rather I painted this into the creases. I did this a couple of times, adding a little more black each time, and painting deeper into the crease. That's the shading done.

For the highlighting I took the original mid green colour and painted just the raised areas. Then I added a little yellow and painted a slightly smaller raised area. I did this a couple of times. Finally I used pure yellow and a finer brush for the final highlights. That's the very pronounced bit at the top of the cloak. It looks a bit stark, a green glaze will blend it in a bit more.

Dwarf Engineer in Progress

Just a very short update to show the work in progress on the Dwarf Engineer. Progress is pretty slow as I have had little spare time recently, but I am hoping to get him finished for the coming weekend. Still a lot to be done on the little chappy!