Painted Troll Basher

This is a Troll Basher, a light Warbeast for my neglected Trollbloods army in Hordes. I will admit that I only picked up the Basher as it happened to be exactly the right number of points to fit in the army list I was using at the time, so it’s quite funny that I’ve only now painted it since I’m even really playing Trollbloods at the moment. It turned out to be quite handy in the game, generally being somewhat cost-ineffective to kill and handy for contesting scenario elements. Since I generally had low expectations for damage output from the Basher I often ended up quite pleased if it could swat a couple of infantry and delay my opponent from scoring a zone for a turn before inevitably being smashed by a strong counterpunch.

The art for the Basher uses a strong ice and winter theme but I decided that I wanted to retain the overall blue and red colours common to the rest of my Trollbloods. Hence the flowing beard (which I think is uniquely hairy compared to, for example, Mulg’s rocky growths) got a bright red colouring rather than the white and pale blue palette used by PP’s studio paint team. Instead, I tried to give the idea of a frozen background by making the pelt he’s wearing have white fur so it looks like it comes from a polar bear or something. I feel that this helped to break up the overall blue-and-red-ness of the Warbeasts as a whole.

The sculpt has one oddity in that he has a necklace of rune-y, stone-y things.  But because the lower part rather merges with the beard, especially when viewed somewhat from above as is usual when gaming, it looks like it’s a strap for a fake beard.

Next on the painting table: Swamp Horror (again)

Painted Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor

Here is Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor. He’s part of my Hordes Minions army (strictly speaking he’s actually a Mercenary and not a Minion but there is some cross-pollination), so apologies to any Warhammer 40K fans who expected either a Rogue Trader or an Inquisitor from that setting. I’ve tended to use Orin as sort of magical defense near my Warlock as he starts with some magic tokens that can be discarded to nullify spells cast at targets close to him. Otherwise he has a fairly standard lightning zap attack from his magical stick; most often I end of shooting my own Warbeasts in the back and letting the Electroleaps take care of any jamming infantry. Orin is one of the biggest victims of my inability to correctly judge enemy threat ranges as frequently ends up getting killed by something that he would have avoided by being millimetres further back from.

I loved painting Orin as he’s such a classic fantasy wizard trope with his flowing robes and fancy stick. He’d be quite nice in non-WarmaHordes settings as he would fit in almost any D&D game as a baddy (or a goody, I suppose, but he’s definitely a baddy in WarmaHordes).

Next on the painting table: Troll Basher.

Painted Kwaak Slickspine & Gub, Croak Sorcerers

Here are Kwaak Slickspine & Gub, Croak Sorcerers for my Hordes Minions army. They’re a support solo whose main draw is being able to case Enliven twice in a turn (because they’re both Sorcerers, I suppose). In theory I really like this ability, but in practice I have always found that I’m just not experienced enough to make get good value from this small positional change. I feel that in the hands of a competent player this could be the difference between victory and defeat. I also have a bit of tendency to play them too far forward, resulting in their untimely death to all sorts of avoidable threats.

I wanted to keep the painting simple here and stuck with a straightforward green for the frogs. I contrasted that with a nice bright hood; apologies to any readers who are fully red/green colourblind. All in all, a quick and easy paintjob; the perfect palette-cleanser after Horticulous Slimux.

As a bonus, here is a close of up of Gub’s cute little froggy face. At least, I assume that the little one is Gub; I’ve never seen it confirmed anywhere.

Next on the painting table: Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor.

Painted Horticulous Slimux

Here is Horticulous Slimux, a leader for my slowly growing Chaos Daemons project in Warhammer 40,000. So far I haven’t actually tried him on the table so no comments on performance this time. Partly this is because we’re playing small games of 40K at the moment and there isn’t much room for extra characters if I want to actually achieve objectives. It is also relevant that Horticulous Slimux’s special rules mainly affect Beasts of Nurgle, of which I have none so far; perhaps eventually I’ll get round to picking some of them up and he can lead a little contingent of them across the tabletop. On the other hand, I am quite a fan of his story in the books; he’s basically a classical grumpy gardener of the sort you’d find complaining to Poirot about the damage that some unfortunate murder victim had done to his lovingly tended petunias.

I painted the miniature in two separate parts; first the rider (who I assume is actually Horticulous Slimux) and then the snail-beastie (uncredited, tragically). The rider was treated pretty much like my Plaguebearers, although I took a little more care with the skin tones than with the infantry. The snail got a bit more attention, as befits it’s greater stature; however the majority of the time was not on the shell or body but rather on the various bits of bling hanging off it at all angles. All in all a very enjoyable process; easy to assemble and to paint.

A close-up of the snail’s face; kind of cute in its own way.

The Nurgling used as a carrot to entice the snail forward.  I get the impression that the GW sculptors love to put in silly touches like that.

The main character, Horticulous Slimux.  I guess that is meant to be a pipe he’s smoking, though it looks more like he’s just chewing on a bone.  I’m not really sure what the devil-carrot thing is supposed to be either.

Next on the painting table: Kwaak Slickspine & Gub, Croak Sorcerers.

Painted Swamp Horror (part one)

Here is a Swamp Horror, a heavy Warbeast to go in my Hordes Minions force. I really enjoy playing with Swamp Horror in the Will Work For Food theme force, as the combination of Pull on the (many) tentacle attacks and Overtake (from the theme force) allows some hilarious moves on the table, sometimes including pulling a Warcaster clear of their screen and into range of something else that they believed they were safe from. Even just clearing infantry they can get a lot of work done because it is so hard to stay safe from the Swamp Horror’s huge reach. I’ve been playing two of these under Jaga Jaga, along with a Blackhide Wrastler – the addition of Signs and Portents plus Rage means that some serious work can get done. Of course, the pitiful initial threat range is a bit of a concern so I often lose one of the Swamp Horrors before it even makes a single attack.

I kept a very simple paint scheme for the Swamp Horror, trying to stick with the idea that this is could actually be an animal out in the wilds of the Iron Kingdoms. The colours chosen are (somewhat) naturalistic without anything too bright. As a result it was quite simple to paint, with only two colours covering most of the miniature. Assembling the Swamp Horror was a different matter; they’re made of metal and have loads of fiddly tentacles that need to be pinned. I can only assume that the ‘Horror’ part of the name refers to the experience of putting the miniature together.

Next on the painting table: Horticulous Slimux.

Painted Plague Drones (part 1)

This lot are Plague Drones, which as you probably have guessed from the ‘Plague’ in the name are part of the Nurgle contingent of my Chaos Daemon army for Warhammer 40,000. Like the rest of the Nurgle forces their main draw is being inefficient to kill with almost any weapon in the game, but this unit is slightly unusual in being quite mobile to boot. I’ve had a bit of success throwing them down the other army’s throat as soon as possible to buy a bit of time while the Plaguebearers slog across the board and clog up objectives. One almost downside to the Plague Drones is that they have several wounds. This might not seem like a problem but in an army that gets such a benefit from resilience, it seems like a waste to give the big guns on the other side of the board something to shoot at. Or, to put it another way, I love it when the giant death cannon facing me is forced to ‘waste’ it’s shot by doing nothing more than vapourising a single Plaguebearer (and sometimes not even that considering the invulnerable save and Disgustingly Resilient rule).

I’ve mixed up the two skin colours from the other Nurgle Daemons here, with the mounts in green and the riders in brown. I agonised for a while about how to do the carapace and wings and eventually decided to keep them a bit duller to better contrast with the green of the flies’ bodies. I’m still not completely happy with that look but the rest of them are pretty much right where I was aiming so I’ll consider that a good outcome. Transporting these is proving to be a bit tricky as they’re covered in spiky, sticky-out bits; luckily half the games they’ve played in have been at my house.

Next on the painting table: Swamp Horror.

Painted Nurglings (part 1)

These glorious, cute little piles of goo are Nurglings, part of my ongoing Chaos Daemons project. As befits tiny creatures on a battlefield filled with tanks, superhumans and wizards, Nurglings are quite easy to kill and don’t do much damage. However they are quite cheap, very un-threatening, fairly inefficient to kill and can sit on objectives like champions while the rest of my army goes about the business of fighting.

Despite how amusing I find Nurglings, I decided to keep it as simple as possible when painting them. So it was a simple green wash over white undercoat, then pick out the mankiest bits in pink. I did consider giving a couple of the individual Nurglings a different colour just to liven them up a bit but getting into their backs with the paintbrush looked to be a bit awkward. Overall I’m pleased with how they look considering the effort needed to complete them.

Next on the painting table: Plague Drones

Painted Plaguebearers (part 1)

Here are the first ten Plaguebearers for my Chaos Daemon army. They fulfil my troops choice and appear to be fairly effective so I guess I’ll eventually end up with quite a few of them. In particular, the main benefit that Plaguebearers bring is being really inefficient to kill so I want to maximise that by taking the full-size unit of 30 so that they can maintain the benefit of their -1 to hit ability for as long as possible. When it comes to actually killing stuff, Plaguebearers are not my first choice. But they excel at sitting on objectives and not dying very fast, so usually I punt them onto an objective and / or ram them down the throat of something that specialises in massive single target damage and just let them grind it out over a few turns.

In contrast to the Poxbringer, I wanted this (first, perhaps of several) unit of Plaguebearers to sport green skin. As with the Poxbringer, I did this by applying two layers of Biel-Tan Green wash over a white undercoat. I deliberately kept to a minimal approach for detailing the miniatures since I expect to end up with 30, 60 or even more of these in my army, so most of the smaller spots / boils / etc on their bodies were not specifically picked out. I like the way that the green skin and bone weapons work together.

Next on the painting table: Nurglings.

Painted Poxbringer

This is a Poxbringer, the first miniature in a fledgling Chaos Daemon army for Warhammer 40,000 (and Age of Sigmar, at least in theory). In the time since I last played the game, all the Heralds have been renamed into something more silly and copyright-able; in this case the Poxbringer would previously have been a Herald of Nurgle. It’s a pretty cheap HQ choice and mainly benefits me by increasing the strength of other nearby Nurgle units and occasionally contributing some damage or similar with a psychic power. The few times I’ve been desperate enough to commit the Poxbringer to close combat have gone pretty poorly so I generally aim to keep it behind a big blob of Plaguebearers.

Furycat and I got the itch to play GW games again after a rather long break so we’ve been dipping in with 500 and 1000 point games between combination of my Daemons, his Space Marines and Gary’s Space Wolves. You can read a bit about his initial thoughts here: link. So far 8th edition has been quite entertaining, being fairly smooth on rules interactions and at least tolerably balanced (by GW standards). The missions are the main let down as we’re playing with the scenarios from the main rule book but I understand that there are alternative options available for us to research.

I’m splitting the skin tone of the Nurgle units between green and brown; as can clearly be seen the Poxbringer got brown. I’ve been trying a new approach of working mainly with washes for the bulk of the miniature, so in this case I started from a white undercoat and went straight in with two washes of Seraphim Sepia. Everything else is done in the ‘normal’ way; i.e. with paint first. I like the way that the purple guts contrast with the skin, but the bone of the weapon and tree / antler (?) thing sticking out of the Poxbringer’s back is probably a bit too close in tone. I couldn’t think of a clever way to fix that since I want to keep those bony colours consistent even for when I get to the units with green skin and so it needs to be something both slightly naturalistic and contrasting with green. Even with that, I like the result and feel that the Poxbringer will be a good start to my Chaos Daemons. One down, potentially hundreds still to go!

Next on the painting table: Plaguebearers.

Painted Satyxis Blood Witches

These ladies are Satyxis Blood Witches, part of my slowly-expanding Cryx force for Warmachine. In these days of ‘theme for everything’ they fit in the Scourge of the Broken Coast, a theme that is basically limited to Warjacks and things with the Satyxis tag. These particular ones are specialised as ambushers, so I often try to leave them off the board at the start in the hope that the other player will leave a soft solo somewhere they can get to easily. Otherwise they just end up swarming on from the side of the board and gumming things up as best they can. The Blood Witches are mostly useful for taking down other lightly armoured foes, so if I’m facing a really heavy-weight foe then I just have to use them for body blocking. Like all Satyxis, they are lightly armoured but have high defense. As a result they really hate it when someone has an attack that automatically hits, or if anyone can fire template weapons.

I really love the sculpts of the Satyxis range but I find them incredibly fiddly to assemble. The arms are separate on most of them which is manageable with a bit of pinning, but worse, the horns are most separate pieces. Needless to say I just trusted in superglue for the horns. I also think I may have received a minor mispack as I don’t actually have a proper set of horn-pairs – if you look closely a couple of them have mis-matched horns. Painting started off well but I gradually got bogged down in all the belts, straps, necklaces etc and I have to admit that I was quite glad to finally call the unit done.

This one is the unit leader (at least until I get round to dealing with the unit attachment, in which case she’ll be outranked). I had all sorts of plans to make her multi-layered skirt look cool with all it’s trimmings but I decided in the end to leave it simple. From table top distance, of course, the difference is barely perceptible.

I wanted red clothing but also stuck with pink as the spot colour for my Cryx force. Unfortunately I think that it doesn’t really work quite as well as I had hoped.

I spent a while at the start trying to keep skin colour, hair colour and sculpt separate. In particular, I think that I’ve managed to keep those with duplicate sculpts to have different skin tones so they don’t look like twins! To the best extent I could manage, I avoided repeating the same combination of hair colour and skin colour across the unit.

Keen observers will note the battle heels again. Why do sculptors insist on these for female miniatures? The rest of the clothing isn’t too silly, at least taken in the context of the genre

Next on the painting table: Poxbringer.