A Halloween Night Horror

I've had this mini in my collection for a very long time and decided, on the eve of Halloween to paint it up (there's also a competition on the Night Horror and Gothic Horror Facebook page which helped motivate me). 

I've tried out a black background for my photographs for the first time too, for added spooky darkness.

This old Night Horror wraith came to me broken, the scythe was missing and so a suitable old, rusty replacement sword was located (I think this is from the Mantic skeleton sprue) and I placed the sword where the hands would be, trying to make it look like it was being held by the unseen, supernatural force of the wraith. 

The paint job was so easy. Primed black, zenithal through grey and a touch of white from above and then several washes of nuln oil to make the zenithal blend together. Then quote simply a few highlights of grey/blue on the robes and a final glaze of a black. Gloss varnish applied inside the jood. The rusty sword was boltgun metal washed with bestial brown and then part bestial brown and part ryza rust. Edge highlights with chainmail. Perhaps 30minutes all in including the base. 

Makes me want to gather all my other undead and see if there is a start of a quick army there....

Orctober 2020

 This month I've been busy painting a selection of Greenskins from my collection of Orcs and Goblins. I've chosen to work on the models that relate to the Citadel Combat Card system to try and work towards completing one of my many ongoing projects! So here they are together as a group, my Orctober offering:

I've stuck with my normal greenskin recipe, a brown wash over white primer and then a build up of layers from baneblade brown highlighted up with increasing amounts of pallid Wych flesh to the brown. A final glaze of dilute waywatcher green and then the facial extremities and knuckles have a glaze of Kislev flesh to add some warmth.

This one had a few arrows added, simply paperclips through a hole in the shield and then some plastic arrow feathers on the back end. 

You can see here that my versions are just a pastiche of the originals. I wanted to add some checkers to his hood, but not the entire hood! Also I've generally gone for more drab colours than the quite gaudy originals.  

Here you can see that I've made my own shields, sculpted with greenstuff and again loosely based on the original designs.

Never quite work out why they flipped this image! 

This one was a conversion, I didn't have the right head but found a close approximation. I don't quite have the right body or sword either!

And the boss of the warband to finish with. Hopefully next year's Orctober will see me complete the set..

2 Chaos Spawn (50pts)

From the largest pointed unit (1200 for the Plaguebearers) to the smallest, a couple of Spawn at 25pts each. In the LatD these are described more as a pack as can (and probably should) be led by a Champion of Chaos, so eventually I'd like to do a converted spawn made up of lots of bits from my box and add him to these two and add a leader to marshall them around the battlefield.

Obviously these two are both classic Citadel miniatures, the left model being an old Plague Elemental and the right one being a Spawn of Nurgle, the latter having a slight conversion in removing the funny legs that came with it and sculpting some tentacles there instead. Both these old models though suffer from the perpendicular restraints of sculpting from that time, so when faced from the front both models look quite flat and symmetrical (although with the slug spawn you can reposition the tentacles on it's head to create more dynamic movement) and hence why I've photographed them both on the angle.

For this Beast of Nurgle I did a little research on slugs to get the correct colour scheme and used a little gloss varnish to capture the slimy nature of it's body. You will notice the basing on both models is slightly different from the rest of the army, in that there are a collection of organic shapes molded into the landscape, the idea behind this is based on the premise that:

 "the very proximity of a Beast is sufficient to kill small animals and plant.... or may age and decay perceptibly in their presence" (LatD p.20)

So a collection of small bitz from the box were impressed into some milliput and sculpted into the base to give the appearance of a dying, organic mass surrounding the model as it moves forward.

With the Plague Elemental I also experimented further with some skin painting techniques. Over a white undercoat I painted all the pinks with Contrast paints and highlights. Over this I then mixed some crackle medium into the pale green colouring of the skin and dabbed this onto areas where I wanted to create a peeling, cracking skin effect over the pink, exposed areas.

And to finish here's a group shot of the army including the most recent units for a cumulative total of 4405pts

Next up are some kitbashed Nurgle Beastmen, using mostly plastic kits...

7 Chaos Warhounds(160pts)

I think these are some cracking sculpts, but having now completed them, I wish I’d thrown in some more conversions to make each one a bit more unique and Nurglesque. Anyway, here’s the unit of 7 on their display tray.

I tried doing a lot of Contrast paint work on these and then highlighing up on the raised areas. These first two are relatively straight forward:

These two I went a bit darker and tried adding a bit of pattern to them as well (again, this is something which I should have explored further)

The warhound on the left here is the most converted model based on the warhound sculpt. I received it incomplete and so added an extra head, a troll’s back leg and a tyrannid’s arm at the front. The dog on the right was painted using Typhus corrosion, which gave a really interesting effect as the colours separated (I didn’t shake it enough) and then I highlighted up from that base.

The leader of the pack is a conversion I had started years ago, based on a metal cold one and with a wolfs head, horns and horses tail added. The base colour for this was also Typhus Corrosion which adds a bit of texture to the model and highlighted up. It’s not a good paint for this technique as it’s quite thick and certainly isn’t great for your brushes.

So that brings the tally up to 3155 points. I’ve got some spawn and plaguebearers on the painting table at the moment. More of that next. 

Level 15 Sorcerer (205pts)

So I felt that my collection of models (an 

So I felt that my collection of models (an army?) needed a leader, so I dusted of this converted sorcerer on a Palanquin raised by Nurglings. I've jumped between Warhammer Armies and the Lost and the Damned here, choosing a Level 15 sorcerer profile (155)  from the former and giving him the palanquin (50) a free (ridiculously) Staff of Nurgle from the latter. 

The main part of the model, the palanquin, is of course the classic Citadel version, unadulterated, but I didn't really like any of the riders that came with it (I have him going spare) so created my own from some plastic zombie and chaos bits and greenstuff for the cloth. 

The staff of Nurgle uses one of those Beastmen heads from the sprue on a plastic spear. Here's more on what appears to be quite a potent staff:

The wormpile model I shared in my warband post is perfect to represent the remains of the failed magic test model. 

So with this sorcerer leading the masses the total now equates to a current total of 2995pts which seems like a good opportunity to take a group shot of a 3000pt army:

 

Much more to come though.... 

14 Chaos Warriors of Nurgle (1120pts)

You may have seen these before, as a previous blog post showed how I had finished painting all 11 of the original Citadel Nurgle Warriors well there's now another 3 models added to make it up to the magical number 14, in two ranks, with a standard. That's a hefty 1120points right there in 3rd Edition Lost and the Damned numbers.

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As you can see, I’ve re-set up my attic scenery space, as I had to pack it all away when the builders were here. It’s so much better for taking decent photographs of wide units.

So these and the Beastmen give me a grand total of 1270pts thus far, I think this army is going to be a lot of points!