jollyork

The Pied Piper It's been a while since my last episode, but the painting and the chilling has been prolific. In this episode I've got a selection of Skaven done up for Blood Bowl. With the new Season 2 edition being released in a couple weeks, I needed to make updates for the revised rosters and finish up some Star Players that will be more commonly used in the new rules. First up are some Underworld Snotlings. These are a brand new player type in Season 2 and not only is there an entire new team of Snotlings, but Underworld get to have up to 6 of them. I've already played a test game with them and they're awesome because they're dirt cheap and when they get smashed into the dirt, it's no big deal. They can be fielded in addition to the 11 players already on the pitch, causing all sorts of entanglements-under-foot for your opponent, just the way Snotlings should be! Since they're Snotlings on a mixed team with Skaven, I wanted the models to be mixed up, too. The first three are new crew models from the new Snotling Pump Wagon riding Giant Rats, and then a "normal" Snotling and two "normal" Giant Rats. Next up are a couple of genuine Skaven. On the left is Glart Smashrip, Jr., a great star player who adds some much-needed brutal strength to rat lineups. He has a penchant for eating everything (and everyone), which his prodigious model reflects. Next to him is a converted Gutter Runner. Originally I was going to use this model as Skitter Stab-Stab, another fantastic star player for Skaven, but I have already replaced this model with another one I liked better. Contrast being Contrast, I decided to paint this model up anyway because doing it alongside Glart only added a handful of extra minutes to the project. Contrast makes extras like this so easy! The rust on Glart's armour is, of course, not Contrast, but also very easy to do. Dabbing some Rust Texture paint of your choice, followed by stippling bright orange makes this effect about as easy as Contrast and just as visually impressive. I'll have another whole episode devoted to this effect as part of a Necromunda/Kill Team project I have going on now. The last model for this episode is the Skaven Doomwheel. I got this in a trade sometime ago and never had a use for it since it's far too large for the Blood Bowl pitch... or is it? Challenge Accepted! By trimming off some of the extra-pokey doodads (Skaven models are full of those), I managed to condense the overall footprint to just the wheel and the pumper guy on the back. By tilting the entire model forward, it raised the pumper platform high enough to be taller than most other models, so now the Doomwheel not only fit onto a 32mm base (yes, it really is!), but also made it feasible to fit onto the pitch while surrounded by other models. Even with all that cleverness, the model does suffer from the same problem as other large Blood Bowl models in that being knocked over and laying prone would create an epic clusterjam on the pitch. However, that problem is solved by using it as Kreek Rustgouger, a star player wielding a Ball & Chain. The B&C is a devastating secret weapon that causes just as much harm to the bearer when he gets knocked over and automatically removes him from the pitch. I love it when a plan comes together! There's a lot of metal on this model, but we count those as honorary Contrast colors since they're just as quick to use, especially when shaded with Basilicanum Grey. There's also a lot of wood, which I used all of the darker Contrast browns for variation. That was followed by a drybrush with Ushabti Bone, and that's all it takes for really gorgeous wood effects. The glowy parts, something Skaven also have a lot of, are all Warp Lightning and then some light drybrushes of Warpstone Glow and Moot Green (both Layer paints). For the record, we also count drybrush colors as Contrast because they're quick and effective! I kept the banner plain red as I haven't had any inspiration for what to paint on it yet. Maybe after a few games something will appear, as is wont to do in Blood Bowl. That's it for this episode, thanks for reading! Next time will be some more Blood Bowl (and even more after that) as we rush headlong into the new edition and new season.

I've got a bunch I can trade away. They are from the 40K grots collection, and I've also got some of the squiggly beasts they hung out with (on the left side of the photo). These are the original ammo runts, grot orderlies, etc. For trade, I'd be really keen to figure out a 3-way trade with Ish as there are 2 snots in his photo I am very interested in for Blood Bowl (screencap below). If you guys are open to figuring something out, we can go to PMs and make this happen!

Looking for these specific heads, hoping you DE players assembled your kits with the other heads.

I believe this is because Ish is right about CoS being the dumping ground for all WFB models that didn't make it into redone factions in AoS. Since HE have recently turned into Lumineth, I expect Warcry faction cards for them soon, just like Idoneth have. (sorry if that's already obvious and you're just pining for the old HEs... they are dead-dead-dead now). I do like that CoS has so many has so many unit entries so they can proxy just about anything, and I like that nothing in the list is overpowered, which would make opponents feel like you're proxying just to WAAC. They are pretty ho-hum compared to the stronger Warcry factions.

Doesn't look like this campaign was able to get rolling due to COVID, but if anyone is interested in playing (with masks and safe social distancing), please post here. The new White Dwarf has rules for warbands from the Cities of Sigmar, which is the closest roster I've seen to proxy my Mordheim Witch Hunters with, so I'm throwing my capotain into the ring (of 8 Points)!

@Ish I put a bag of 12 heads in locker 7 for you.

Okay, I've got 18 heads, though 9 of them are the dragon head in the bottom row of your pic. I'll drop them off at WOW next time I'm in that area and DM you.

I got a bunch of these, collected for a now-defunct Bretonnian BB team. You looking for a variety, or mostly 1-2 styles?

Aw, shucks, I just pushed some buttons. Glad you like it. Here are some blog posts from Invision that explains the impetus for the refreshed design. Version 4.5.0 of Invision Community is now available We are pleased to announce that Invision Community 4.5 is now available and packed with new features, enhancements, and even a new look! Major New Features / Enhancements - New Front-End Design - AdminCP Dark Mode - Site Statistics, Search Insights, and Club Statistics - Marketplace now built into the AdminCP - Mobile App for iOS and Android (Beta) - Zapier Integration for Invision Cloud Communities In addition to these new enhancements, there are countless other additions and improvements. Check out our product blog to see what we have been up to.

Bizarre. I'm looking at it right now and it says unavailable.

Thanks! Currently unavailable so I'll put it on my Xmas list... 🎅

@Koyote what brand of display case is that? The big one, not the book one. It's lovely, and your minis are excellent!

Minions, Part 3 - Return of the Jolly Ogre(oid)! As I teased in the last post, my final addition to the warband is a classic from the original Mordheim range: the mercenary ogre. Warhammer has come a long way since Mordheim - well, come and gone and come back again - and now they are ogroids running around with gnoblars, so I decided to update the model with modern trappings (or trappers, get it?). Hold your breath from his own foul meat-drenched halitosis, as here comes Horkdor, the Wandering Beast of Mordheim. The original miniature came with a wicker backpack full of loot and victims. I swapped that for a banner topping from the ogre range featuring a crow's nest for a gnoblar. While this was an excellent opportunity for conversion and enhancing the story of Horkdor, the truth is I had also lost the original backpack at some point over the last 20 years (a hole in me bitz box!). Since he was losing his backpack full of loot, but still being a wandering, looting ogre..oid, I knew I would have to replace that to represent his pillaging through the streets of the city of the damned. I continued my own looting of the contemporary ogre sprues for a beer keg, some meat hooks, and a sidekick - another gnoblar to carry all the rest of the booty. (the gnoblars have names, too, but Horkdor can't be bothered to remember them). All these additions, plus the model's original appearance of scrappy rags of other people's uniforms stitched together whenever they were needed and found (usually still being worn by those other people), gave me the opportunity to continue my Contrast color exploration that began with Meegan the Fragrant. I knew I would need to use the now-familiar browns for the various wood pieces on the model, so I banned myself from using any browns on the rest of the model. The result is a colorful panoply that successfully draws attention to Horkdor as a separate entity (nay, force) from the rest of the Witch Hunters warband. All the Minions together, ready to supplement the Witch Hunters or future warbands... In the mix with the Witch Hunters. The whole gang together and ready for rampaging! Here you can really see Meegan and Horkdor stand out. That's a wrap for the Witch Hunters warband. My next few models recovered from bitz box purgatory are picked out for exploring more advanced techniques. As Contrast has proliferated, all those fancy pro painters on the interwebs have posted ways to (quickly) use them to replicate techniques like NMM, so I think I'll give them a whirl. Stay tuned!

😀

I did her flesh first, then I made a drop of Aethermatic Blue and a drop of Contrast Medium on a palette (just a piece of plastic). I made a mixing line between them so at one end was 100% of each and in between were different combos, like 25/75 50/50 75/25. I started applying the 75% Medium and worked my way towards the 25%, being sure not to cover the sheerest parts as I worked outward. Hopefully that sounds as simple as it was. 😄

Thanks!!

Minions, Part 2 - though this is probably more in the Mercenaries category. I decided to add a model completely out of context with the dark and dirty Mordheim range. Looks like the Witch Hunters have brought along a bit of sorcery to help them purge heretics. Granted, Witch Hunters aren't particularly keen on witchcraft, but I figure there's at least a few who operate like Radical Inquisitors, using the enemies' own sorcerous weapons against them. Besides, who could turn down the company of a fair Bretonnian damsel when you're normally surrounded by smelly, grimey dudes, mostly-insane sycophants, and the occasional bear? Besides that flimsy backstory, adding Meegan the Fragrant gave me the opportunity to break out of the grays and browns of the Contrast range and use some more colors like the blues. It was also the first time I used the Contrast Medium to thin some of the colors, notably on Meegan's dress to create a sheer effect. I've seen this technique on a lot of pro-painted minis, which involves many ultra-thin coats of blended colors, and I figured Contrast would be a simple way to try it out, given the thin nature of the paints to begin with. Turned out pretty good, considering this represents about 5 minutes of work. The horse caparison is the sort of large, flat areas not ideal for Contrast. I did a little bit of extra work to smooth out the blue as it settled into the folds, but not much. As tempting as it was to tweak and try with the Medium, I made myself stick to the first objective of this Adventure, which is putting as little time as possible into each model and gauging the results. I think Meegan the Fragrant, and her fair horse, turned out pretty good for under an hour of effort. Here are some pics of them with the rest of the warband. Coming up next time: a classic Mordheim Mercenary updated to the modern version of his tribe!

Out until I get my new supercomputer for crunching pixels.

Minions - Part 1 As promised, it's time to flesh out the Witch Hunters warband with some new faces. While it may seem like I'm simply adding random models from my collection, rather than following the prescribed rules from Mordheim, that's because... I am. What the heck, we're all waiting for the next official edition to come out someday and who knows what will be in it. My real plan is to use all these models for Warcry in the interim, and since they're all proxies, they can be whatever I say they are. So there. First up, Johan the Dim and his loyal bear Wojtek. Who doesn't love a bear model? I figure they can represent an ogre (or ogroid now) and bite and claw some heads. It won't be surprising when I say this dual model took almost no time at all. Johan is pretty simple in detail, and Wojtek even more so. I mean, he's a walking carpet! Next to them is a loot cart, also painted during this session. It's a morbid bit of fun, full of bones and stitched dolls. This model is from the old Rackham range... I think. A long time ago I put together a Malifaux crew full of scarecrows and puppet-themed models and picked this up as part of that scouring. I think it went with an awesome scarecrow model from Rackham, but I can't find an image of it. In any case, it fits the Mordheim aesthetic perfectly. Here they are hanging out with other models from my Witch Hunters warband. It's like they were painted the same day (or decade)! Coming up next: Even More New Minions!

I played Frostgrave a couple times back when it first came out and enjoyed it. Good game, and it looks like it's grown substantially since then.

All rightey, after that dalliance with a few random miniatures to test out colors and textures, I'm back into quest mode. This adventure: filling out my old (very old - recognize the theme in these posts?) Mordheim Witch Hunters warband. Back in the day, Mordheim was da bomb - the only way to play Fantasy without painting up blocks of 20 or 30 troops (or 50 goblins). I loved the game and we had a pretty regular campaign going until two things happened. One, I found out my vampire with a spear (always strike first) was pretty much unbeatable in melee, and thus made everyone else cry. Two, @Burk armed his entire warband (Reiklanders, I think?) with crossbows, and pretty much eliminated melee from being a factor in his games, and thus made me cry. Ahh, those were the halcyon days. So it's been a while since I took these chaps out of their figure case (side note: I realized that instead of playing games with these minis, I've transferred them from figure case to shiny new figure case dozens of times over the past two decades - anyone else find themselves doing that on boring Saturday afternoons?). As with the minotaur, I wanted to test using Contrast to match up new figures to my old paint jobs. Here's a pic of just the witch hunters, can you tell who I added? Of course you can! It's Van Hatling, the striking fella with the feathered cap and... the round base - clearly not a 90s WFB choice! He also happens to be a special edition Empire model that was released long after Mordheim disappeared from shelves, so if you used your Oldhammer knowledge, kudos to you, my aged brethren. But guess what? I'm really a tricksy hobbit when it comes to this game. There's another Contrast-painted witch hunter who is from the original line AND on a square base! Can you figure out which one it is if I narrow it down? The guy on the left or the right of Van Hatling? Times up! It's the dude on the left... just kidding. I said I was tricksy. It's the dude on the right, Gregor Greatsword. But it's damn hard to tell, isn't it?? Here's another group shot of all the witch hunter models together. Gregor Greatsword was always a burr under my saddle, sitting in my bitz box all unpainted and pewter-y. As I recall, the Mordheim rules only allowed me to field 4 of them, but they made 5 models, so it was a painful choice to leave him out for 20 years. Now in the Age of Contrast, it goes to show that if it only took another hour to paint him up, I would have done it and saved myself the emotional trauma of an incomplete collection all these years! (BTW, it might have been 5 witch hunters, but I used the Warhammer Quest Witch Hunter as my 5th - I just realized I forgot to include him in this photo). I didn't track my painting time as closely as the squigs, but I am confident each of these guys took less than an hour, which is crazy. It helps that they are mostly black and three shades of brown, but that's the advantage of a tight color scheme for a warband. Funny side note: remember what I said about Burk's crossbows? All of my old witch hunters have crossbows added to them. You can't tell from the photo above, so I'll include some closeups. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, you gotta join 'em. Coming up next time: More Minions for the Warband. I found some cool old minis (surprise) to breath some new life into the warband, and using Contrast, I've been adding them with almost no effort.

Heads up, there's only 39 hours left to pledge on this KS.

A bit of a palate cleanser from the stench of Beasts. I've got another warband update project in the works, so this is a quickie before posting those. It's an Endless Spell from the Gloomspite Gitz. I just wanted to paint a giant mushroom, but also wanted to see how Contrast looks on large, smooth surfaces - which it is not recommended for. But what the heck, it's so fast to paint up a model, there's no reason not to try. The only non-Contrast I did on this was drybrushing the magic steam to lighten it up after Aethermatic Blue. Overall, I'm very pleased with the results: big, bright colors with almost no effort, as in no second coats of anything. I applied the Blood Angels Red in a deliberately swirly pattern to get some visual design. It didn't turn out very distinctive (even in meatspace), but the red is a pleasing rich tone.

Next up, a Minotaur hiding in the bitz box. The Beasts of Chaos army mentioned above was actually a Minotaur army, that's why I didn't originally have the chariots. I only had blocks of Minos, some Trolls, Dragon Ogres, and a Shaggoth. It was one of the few Big Stompy armies available back then. Anyway, the army won a Best Painted at the Warhammer Grand Tournament and was featured in the Citadel Catalog 2006-7 edition. In the photo below, one of the Minos is from that army, the other is the new one I added using Contrast Paints in - and I'm not exaggerating - less than 30 minutes. Can you guess which is which? Well, the cheaty way to know is that the Mino on the round base is, of course, the new one, since WFB used to be all square bases. I hope I don't regret trying out a round base when the new version of Fantasy comes out in a couple years. Hopefully they will cleverly bring back formations and ranks without needing squares.

I love Scale75, too, and backed that Kickstarter the moment it launched. If you're reading this and wondering if you should try Contrast or Instant Colors, here's a second vote for both!