'Dimitri' the River Troll

For the past month or so I've been running a Warhammer Fantasy Role Play campaign with our local group (including the Lady Sarah). For this past Friday's session I needed a River Troll to use for a planned ambush on the party while they were travelling by river barge. 

It was last Wednesday when I came up with the scenario, so I needed to source a troll model, or use something as proxy, which I really wished to avoid. Sure, I could have used one of my LotR trolls, but I find they are too gritty and 'realistic' for the Warhammer setting (if that makes any sense) and besides, they don't have an aquatic look to them. No, I wanted something a little more high fantasy if possible, so I looked to see if there was something suitable on MyMiniFactory.

Bingo! I found this chap digitally sculpted my Onmioji who fit the bill nicely, and, as an added bonus, it was offered as a free download. How sweet is that?! Big kudos to the sculptor! I've called him 'Dimitri'. :)

I quickly printed it off and managed to get him painted after work Friday, before our scheduled session in the evening. Again, Contrast paints came to the fore, with lots of wet blending using Contrast Medium. Super quick and sloppy, but it worked well for this guy. For his fish takeout I used some of the Colourshift paints from Greenstuff World to give its scales a bit of a shimmering quality.

He was duly chopped into bits in the game, but not after giving the party a nasty start, and even managed to vomit on a few characters for an extra bit of fun. It was like a good night out at the pub!

Thanks for popping in!

- Curt

Elven Squirrel Raider vs The Bell Sentries!

Hi All!

I'm back with a few more figures from the marvellously creative and quirky CobraMode. 

This time we have an elven female fighter, astride her giant battle squirrel, facing off against a quartet of enchanted bell sentries whose mist-like forms carry monstrous war hammers. 

I know, it's all completely mental, but I love 'em.

All of these figures were great fun to work on. The squirrel rider turned out to be quite a delicate model with lots of nooks and crannies to contend with, requiring me to paint most of the component parts before final assembly. 

Still, all the bits went together without a hitch. I decided to pin her mount's leg to the base as everything is balanced on that single limb. 

On the other spectrum, the Bell Sentries were one-piece models and a complete doodle to paint up. As I kept the colours pretty straightforward, they cracked off fairly quickly. I decided to do non-metalic metals for these as I found the anime style seems to work well for them.

Thanks for dropping in!

- Curt

Ottoman Laylar Fanatics at The Great Siege of Malta, 1565

For the past few Challenges I've tried to make an effort to add a new unit for my Great Siege of Malta project. This time round I thought I'd add some more fellas to the Ottoman mosh pit with some Iaylar fanatics.

From what I understand, the Iaylars were a large, irregular force of religious fanatics which the Ottomans used as expendable shock troops. They were typically thrown in the the initial assaults to soak up missile fire, disrupt defensive lines, and generally pave the way for the more high-value troops.

It's rumoured that the Iaylars regularly used hashish to help put themselves into a religious frenzy before flinging themselves into the assault. I like to think that perhaps their imams stoked them up by telling them that the defenders held vast stores of Cheetos and Mountain Dew behind the lines. I figure that after a good hookah pipe, there's nothing like the prospect of a big munchie run to get your blood up. :)

These 28mm models are from Old Glory and fit the Iaylar bill quite nicely. They actually didn't look like much when fresh out of the bag, but as with many OG models, they paint up wonderfully and look great in a mob. In order to give them a little more variation I bent a few limbs, drilled out some fists to add some banners, and played around with their skin tones to reflect the wide variety of ethnicities which would have made up the ranks.

I've been quite taken with Dux's wonderful 3,2,1 basing for his ECW Covenanters, so I thought I'd do something similar with these lads. This mob will give me two groups of 12 figures (plus one hanger-on) for any future 'Pikemans' Lament' scenarios. I hope to double the numbers for this contingent as I feel the Ottomans should have a schwack of cannon fodder, er, enthusiastic recruits willing to spread the word that Suleiman is rather Magnificent.

Thanks for dropping in for a look. Have a great week!

- Curt

The Death Knight Poses an Important Question, while his Mooks Look On

When I posted my fantasy Star Wars entries a few weeks ago I didn't have the files for the not-Stormtroopers, so I just ran with what I had ready at the time. Nevertheless, it somehow just felt wrong, not having the classic White Bucketheads mucking in with their nasty overlords, so when I managed to chase down the STL files, I quickly got them printed and painted-up to add to my collection of villains.

These are the crossbow-armed versions of the Troopers. For additional variation, the talented folks over at One Gold Piece also offer a sword and shield set, along with a polearm-equipped squad. As we're now on the clock for the end of the Challenge, I decided to stick to the missile armed flunkies as they seem to have that iconic, hapless mook-with-a-blaster look about them (yes, they will be re-rolling any hits in our future games).

I primed the Troopers black and then oversprayed them using Krylon Ivory, which I think gives the armour a nice, smooth, satin finish. I then used an assortment of Contrast paints to pick out their gear and weapons. I wanted to keep them fairly high-contrast, to trace back to the iconic source material, so I kept it all very stripped-down and simple. 

As to the Death Knight, again, I didn't see any reason to overthink him too much. I kept his paintjob fairly minimalist, just using some colourshift colours on his spooky enchanted blade and working up some contrasting highlights for his gloss black armour.

It was fun going back to painting renaissance style 'puff & slash' for the Rebel prisoner's uniform. Funny, working on him made me a little nostalgic for my Italian Wars stuff - I may need to do-up a few more Landsknechts to quash those silly romantic notions. :)

These guys being so high-contrast, photographing them was a bit of a nightmare (one of the inherent limitations of my older iPhone camera). Anyway, I hope you can get a sense of what they look like.

Thanks for dropping in for a look!

- Curt

10mm Wood Elves

I needed a change of pace from the Tomb Kings, so I thought I'd try something a little different by starting a force of 10mm Wood Elves.

These are all 3d prints from Forest Dragon. They're really lovely models and an absolute pleasure to work with.

First up, we have a elven General astride a Forest Dragon. At first I had it simply mounted on a base, but it seemed like it needed something a little more dramatic. So I carved out a piece of blue insulation and modelled it to represent a portion of an escarpment, or perhaps a hilltop. 

I had a bit of fun playing with Colourshift paints from Greenstuff World, especially with its wings.

Next we have a unit of spearmen, all arrayed for battle in their serried ranks. 

Ultimately, I'd like to get a two or three more of these done, along with scads of archers, but that will have to be for another time.

Here is a regiment of wood elf cavalry. 

Not very hard-hitting, but will be good for skirmish tactics and harrying the enemy's flanks.

Another unit of cavalry, but these chaps are mounted on elks (I really enjoyed working on these models).

Here's a moot of Tree Ents striding purposefully into the fray. 

One of the fun things with 3d printing is that you can play with the scale of the models and create mirror images of them. So I varied the size of the Ents to reflect their maturity and age. I also put in a few archers and some Dryads to help provide a sense of scale.

A massed unit of Forest Dryads on a double-depth base, with a few Tree Ents shepherding them along. Think Helm's Deep, or the Birnam Wood at Dunsinane.

I know it's sort of hard to discern which is what in the photos. It makes a bit more sense in person as you can clearly see the Ents keeping everything moving in one direction.

Thanks for dropping in to take a look.

- Curt