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..

3 little Marauder Goblins by Trish Carden

Over on the Oldhammer Facebook page, Trish Carden from Marauder Miniatures fame has been posting the original green sculpts of many of her models. To celebrate her work and contribution, JB has suggested we all paint up some of her miniatures from back in the day, under the hashtag, #makeatrish.

 I already have a unit of those Marauder Goblins (only missing one for the entire collection of sculpts) and saw this as a perfect opportunity to paint a few of them up for this celebration. It's always nice to have an additional reason to paint up some of my collection.

These are 3 of my favourite sculpts from the series and I chose 3 because I wanted to make sure I got them completed in time and anything more than that would have led me down the path of tedious batch painting. (I'll leave that for a future painting session).

So here they are, showing a bit of courage  in numbers...

 They were painted in one evening and based in another. Pretty quick to work on as there was only a limited palette and once the skin and metal are done, there's very little left to paint!

 This is a classic pose with raised weapon and shield, but I like how he's hiding behind his shield and how his chainmail hood pretty much covers his eyes. Of course it's great that he's armed with an old hammer.

 This one has a less obvious pose, a goblin with an additional weapon! Brave not to be hiding behind a shield!. He's also got a sly intelligence to his face which I think is typical of a Goblin.

 Finally my favourite of the three. He's got a great dynamic pose with the sword resting on the shield ready to attack and he has the most evil looking face of the three with those pointy ears and nose. A little snarl in the right side of his mouth is perfect.

So if you weren't aware of Trish's sculpting you are now and of course there's many other classic Marauder and GW sculpts that she's created for us to paint. I have about another 20 odd to go from this range! 

Goblinoid Combat Cards: Ulg Bonechewer

Ulg Bonechewer; not quite an Orc for the end of Orctober, but a Goblinoid none-the-less. 

He really will need all that WS 9 to be able to wield that massive flail

As I work my way through recreating the Goblinoid Combat Cards, I decided it was time to do a little converting (it's been a while) and so I hunted down a Grom's Bodyguard Goblin (which seems to have been the base model for the original conversion) and with the addition of a few plastic bits and some greenstuff I put together this fella.

He seems suitably armoured for a Goblin Chieftan and more importantly has that wicked, sneering grin that I associate with the early Goblin sculpts. I used my normal Goblinoid skin recipe, even though I was very tempted to go Goblin Green for the shield head as a throwback to the original model and rushed through a pretty swift paint job. Done! Enjoy!

Retinue table challenge - 4 Harpies

Another one finished for my Lost and the Damned Retinue Table Challenge - D4 Harpies. Only the Minotaurs and Skaven to go now before I'm done.

I've been enjoying getting back into my converting, rather than just painting old miniatures and this was no exception. The Goblins from the LotR range are nicely mutated with some interesting shapes, textures and poses to play with. I simply removed all the weapons to go for a more feral appearance and substitute them with some bones and heads to show their primitive and evil ways. The wings are from a variety of sources (all bitzbox) as I'm trying not to buy any new models for a while and work on the backlog. The curved wings on models 1 and 3 are from some Reaper Bones female statue/angels that I had knocking around and model 2's I believe are from a Dark Angels sprue and the model 4 from an old dwarven banner top.

I had previously considered a range of different models to create the Harpy look, but none of them really fitted too well with the Nurgle theme of my growing collection. I nearly went down the more feminine/avian look, with sculpted boobs and claw feet from plaguebearers, but realised quite quickly that this was a lot of extra work for very little return. Who says Harpies have to be female? A small compromise (and to add some gender ambiguity) I sculpted some longer hair!

This is my first attempt at basing flying models, I only briefly contemplated using the transparent, plastic flying stands before thinking along more creative lines. Initially I was thinking of having them perched in trees, or about to fly from a branch, but the prospect of making four trees from wire was a bit daunting and could easily look shit. A much easier solution was to create rocky outcrops from some extruded foam off-cuts from my dungeon tile project. With a pva/sand coating they were quickly textured to look like rock faces. Easy. I just had to delve into my diminishing pile of skulls for the final decoration to the bases.

WIP - you can see the small conversions and the extruded foam/sand combo for rock form and texture

The image that inspired my idea - apologies for not being able to give credit to the creator, but my these are awesome.

Citadel Combat Cards: Goblinoids

It was always going to happen; constructing a Warhammer 3rd Edition Orc and Goblin Army, similar to the one I collected as a teenager in the 80's and sold as an adult in the 2000's. Upon my re-introduction to the hobby, I'd started to collect the odd Goblinoid model for my Lost and the Damned Retinue project (Orcs and Goblins) and then this slowly grew to more of a warband and now the next step is to grow it into a full scale army using the same classic models that I once owned.


But to make the collecting aspect more interesting (and more difficult) I recently purchased the Citadel Combat Cards, Goblinoid edition with the aim of collecting those specific greenskins first to add some additional models to the growing horde. Now I'm not one to do things on a total whim, a fair bit of research is always conducted first. An initial scour of eBay gave me hope in that there are a lot of O&G classic models being sold there and for decent prices too. A secondary search for others who may have undertaken a similar task bought me to Fimms BlogSpot where he had actually completed the task in it's entirety (although I'm unsure whether he's painted them all yet). Using his own research I have discovered that some of the Snotlings are very rare, that one Goblin has been heavily converted by Kev Adams and that some of the models have been mirrored when photographed to provide a better fit within the combat card composition.


So rather than collect them all first as he has, I'm going to collect and paint along the way, which will hopefully give me ample time to complete the project (it took him 3 years just to source the minis!). I already have a few of the required models painted up (my rule here is: the model must be the same, but painted and based in my own style to fit in with the previously painted greenskins). So the first three completed models:

And then with their respective cards:

To end this post I should say that I've now got this additional idea that I'll eventually combine my photos with the same combat card template (any suggestions on how to do this easily?) to create my own card system (as the amazing Nico has here for Frostgrave) and finally, if anyone has any of the models from the set, I'd be very interested in buying or trading (especially these pesky, rare Snotlings:



My blog anniversary winner(s)!

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed in some way to my blog, and in particular those who have commented on what I am doing - it acts as a huge stimulus for me to complete my many projects. My aim over the coming months is to make sure I comment on other's blogs more frequently as there is so much inspirational work across the web and it always deserves recognition (sometimes I'm guilty of going "oh wow, I love that idea" and then thinking about how I can be influenced by it rather than typing and showing recognition of said great work).

With regards to the offer of painting a miniature to my contributors as an anniversary thank you present, I realised that I prefer to be inclusive, so I've decided to paint a mini for each of the following contributors who took the time to feedback on my blog; many thanks to you all!:

Leif “Laffe” Eriksson

Jean-Baptiste Garidel (leadplague)

Timothy Edwards

 

Gentlemen, I'll email you with my address and if you have a mini that you'd like painted (perhaps one that has long been languishing in your collection) then I would happily paint it for you. Pass on any details, colour schemes etc that you'd like me to work with and I'll put these to the top of my painting queue and return the completed mini to you when completed.

Many thanks again for your contributions, it's very much appreciated and this is my way of saying thanks!

Oh and because I can't bring myself to have a post without a picture, here's an old diorama that I made a while ago of a dwarf and goblin in a dungeon, ready to fight over a key for the chest:

Retinue Table: D6 Goblins (Blag's Unnamed and Rusty)

As usual I seem to jump between several projects and even though it is Orctober (and I still have 3 unifinshed Orcs for the warband that need to be completed) I couldn't resist the allure of finishing some of my favourite Marauder Goblins to add to my Lost and The Damned Retinue table challenge.

Here's the leader of the group, Blag the Sure, threatening all with his might and courage, in the hope that one may step forward and challenge him - even if he only a level 5. (He has yet to be in a challenge, but he feels ready).

Oozit the Tricksta (quite possibly one of my favourite ever Goblin sculpts - he looks so menacing and grumpy) is an Illlusionist Goblin Shaman, seen here getting angry as one of his comrades interrupts his preparation to cast Illusion of Foe:

 And the rest of the warband, the Unnamed and Rusty. They know how to try and intimidate their foes (it's all bravado) and they only half believe in strength of numbers:

And a group shot of the 6 Goblins of Blag's The Unnamed and the Rusty, ready to be called into action by any self-respecting Nurgle Champion for his retinue or Orc General for part of his mercenary contingent:



When I've finished the other 3 Orcs (maybe this weekend) I'll post a group shot of the completed Orctober Orc & Goblin Warband....