The Path of the Lost and the Damned (a picture story)

Count von Brockinmeir, wielding his warhammer and riding his trusty steed

 

Fighting against Nurgle's many minions to protect his town

But soon to be felled by a foul plaguebearer of Nurgle!

The Count on his knees and missing a limb. Papa Nurgle shows an interest in our hero and pays a personal visit

"Embrace us" (with your one arm).

And then... ok it's a swift path to Damnation

Out of his stump grows a tentacle and a swift transition to one of the Lost and the Damned is complete

A Chaotic shield face - he's made it

The first member of his retinue is an angry Nurgling

 

A Plague Knight of Nurgle in the bright sunlight

And here are some shots of the conversions I created to make this happen:

The wind blows....



A Great Unclean One (and some gloss varnish)

Papa Nurgle showing benevolence in taking lepers under his care to unleash further contagion amongst humanity.

When I was a nipper, I coveted one of these gorgeous, Nurgly, lumps of lead to paint up but it was a bit too expensive for my pocket money income at the time. They're still not cheap on eBay but certainly more affordable, so I bid and won!

A fair few months later and he jumped to the front of the paint queue, mainly because I had an idea to add some followers to his base, in this case a couple of old Citadel Mummies that I had in my lead pile. I wanted to create a feeling of Papa Nurgle showing his misunderstood benevolence to his followers with leprosy. 

So here's what I came up with:

A bastard to photograph well with two depths of focus.

You can see some of the extra modelling I've added around the neck so that his head is in a more upright position. The boils etc are bits of rice, seed and bead embedded into the still wet greenstuff

So for this fine fellow I tried some experiments. I undercoated white and then applied that old Chestnut Ink to the model (with a touch of washing up liquid). I then highlighted up with some white. So far so good.

When I tried to apply more washes over the Chestnut Ink I had forgotten that the old inks were not designed to be re-wetted and certainly not with a modern wash that has some washing up liquid added. So the yellow in the recesses is actually where the Chestnut Ink was wiped away with the application of the next layer, leaving white and then the yellow wash settled there. Now I was tempted to start again, but realised that with some further details I could make it work and I'm actually quite pleased with the result, the yellow in the recesses and folds of his skin helps add to the putrescent feel of the model. 

A few more glazes of purples, reds, blues and greens followed by some layering work in the wound areas created a model I am pretty happy with, especially as it did not take too long to paint. It was the individual Nurglings that took the most time.

Similar washes of colour were applied to the Mummies, the only difference is that there was some drybrushing with Bleached Bone up to white to pick out the details of the bandages. 

And here's a poor shot of the model pre-painted. You can see some of the dried seeds I also used embedded in the greenstuff to create boils etc. The end of the tongue is a cut up plastic goblin mouth.

The only other problem I had during the painting of this model (which includes the difficulty of painting behind another model already attached to the base) was that the because of the Chestnut Ink base layer, the paint was susceptible to wearing off quite easily when being held during painting, this meant I had to add some gloss varnish to keep it intact. I don't have any matt varnish to dull it down, but I quite like the shiny, sweaty putrescent skin. And the gloss finish reminds me of the painting style of the Realm of Chaos era anyway. 

Thoughts on gloss varnishing in the modern era?

Family Heroquest ("Save your brother")

So my daughters really do seem to enjoy playing Heroquest with their Dad, the game is so simple to play yet is engrossing enough (with some inventive GMing) to keep their interest going for a decent dungeon crawl.

This is the second game (the first is here and I used the same house rules) which I recently played with them, they controlled their own character and one of their parents too (I still can't get the wife to play..) and started with the following scenario:

A glorious spring day and our family were enjoying a long walk, following old trails through the dense heather. The little ones occasionally ran ahead to hide behind a twisted tree and then jump out at their parents. This eventually led to a game of hide and seek, young against old. It was the kids turn and they searched out a small trough in the landscape, hiding behind a fallen tree; the parents keeping a beady eye open behind their hands, just checking yet partly spoiling the game. After some exaggerated pretend searching the kids could no longer contain their silence and the parents made a big play of finding the children. But one was missing! The youngest....

In a very short time the search became serious and frantic, where could he be, why was he not responding to the desperate shouts? Moments later the two daughters discovered a small hole, a hole that he must have fallen down and with some extra digging the family jumped down in search of the young brother....

At the bottom of the hole is a dungeon and this is their adventure...

Upon opening the door, the sorceress discovers a thug and a two-headed mongrel

Not wanting to use her spells, the sorceress went into battle and with her first roll came up with double skulls! Nice hitting. 

The parents wander off leaving their daughters to fend for themselves. Dad quickly dispatches the zebra minotaur with his broadsword and discovers a jewel (jelly bean) on the body of the beast

After slaying the hound and opening the chest, she finds a chain mail and some holy water. Bring on the undead!

The family regroups to take on some Chaos Dwarfs and a lone goblin. Note another jewel ready to be picked up by our adventurers

You sure you want to open that door? Two goblins and a Chaos Warrior protect the hordes of treasures in here.

Mum's here though to help her daughter. No sign of the youngest yet...

A troll in the library! Disturbed from reading his novel in front of the roaring fire place, he is approached by the Daddy Barbarian.

The action hots up as another door is opened in the center room. There are lots of monsters guarding something or someone...

Yep there he is, the young brother. Guarded by an Ogre, two orcs, a plaguebearer and two goblins! Daughter keeps her arms folded and shows real attitude in the face of danger. The dungeon monsters are unsure of how to treat this intruder.

Help is on it's way as all the other adventurers dispatch their foes and charge towards the melee to rescue the little one. (Daughter has a wee sulk that she can't finish off the Orc and rescue her brother before her sister gets there..)

Rescue my brother, kill the orc, or turn my back on the threat and pick up the jewel. Only one choice here....

And the game draws to a close as all the monsters are slain and the family are re-united with their youngest member. Time to escape from the pit...

Why did you have to rescue me Dad, I'd made some new friends down here? The family discuss the days events, not blaming anyone and return to their walk home, holding onto the little one's hand.

The end of this episode, time for tea.

Speed Painted Elf no.2

I couldn't resist on two counts. One, this speed painting malarky really focuses me to paint and more importantly complete a miniature and secondly, I only have two of these Jes Goodwin wardancers (such great sculpts) and felt that I had to paint up the second one too before he got separated and potentially lost in the great, relatively static, painting queue.

So here's the finished miniatures:

Matching Hobgoblin Orange garments

And this is how I got there in under an hour:

Under a minute to apply a wash of Asurman Blue with some added washing up liquid to help keep a smooth drying

A couple more washes after the first one dries under the hot lamp.

Highlighted the skin by progressively adding some white to the Asurman Blue in the raised areas

Added some glazes of Druchii Violet to the eye sockets and the cheeks to give a bit of warmth and glow to his now quite pale face. 

Blocked in some areas of colour using Balor Brown for the basecoat of yellow, Titilating Pink on the stockings, Boltgun Metal on the metal and Warplock Bronze on the bronze.

Highlighted up the hair by adding progressively larger quantities of Sunburst Yellow to the mix. Eventually adding some white to the final layer. Highlighted the pink stockings too. 

Washing in some Chestnut Ink and Badab Black mix onto metal areas.

I had to stop here for the night, as I had to help put the kids to bed and after that, really didn't feel like carrying on (I was lured onto the couch to watch tv with the missus). But I did the following night. So where was I at 22.49...: 

Highlighting up the bronze with Vallejo Bronze and gold mixes. Hobgoblin Orange onto the gloves, highlighted with white added and applied two layers of green to his towel.

In the last 6 minutes I added eyes, gems and highlighted up the brown and black shoes.

And even painted the back side too. Happy with 51.57 on the trusty old 80's Casio!

 And here's the pair of them, pre-basing:

And both finished and looking quite hostile.

So obviously I made these fellas look like Drow with their blue skin; they'll eventually be part of my Lost and the Damned retinue table challenge, when I get around to painting the other 4 elves that will accompany them.

Thanks for reading.