Saturday 31 October 2015

Perfunctory Stab At Zomtober (Part the Second)

Remember this fellow?


That's the Reaper Bones Lich I painted up for Frostgrave. Well, I tried my hand at a spot of snowy basing, and I think he's come up OK - just mixed equal volumes PVA Glue and Bicarbonate of Soda, and piled it on to the base. I waited for it to set, then gave it an undercoat of GW Ice Blue before dry-brushing layers of white over the top and finishing with a couple of layers of gloss varnish. I think the Christmas Lich (aka Father Lichmas, Santa Claws, etc) now looks suitably wintry, and yet somehow festive...

Obviously, in view of the season, he'll need some suitably necrotic minions to assist him in his nefarious activities, so at last, here's my first proper go for Zomtober (Ghouls don't count!); actual zombie figs. Pity I only got around to assembling them just today...


And yes, I did what I said I probably wouldn't do; I cut away the bases of three of Mantic's excellent Kings of War Zombies, and stuck them onto the Secret Weapon 'Corpse Field' themed resin bases. They were such nice figs, I thought I'd give them a suitably icky base. While excising them from their bases, I managed to keep the damage fairly low, only destroying one set of zombie legs in the process, but the ones above turned out OK, even if I say so myself. They're certainly much more animated than GW's take on the zombie, and I will hopefully slap some paint on these bad boys this weekend just to muck about with colour schemes and see what works.

Stay tuned!

Ev

Sunday 25 October 2015

THAT wasn't in the recruiting brochure!

There are many horrible things about Catachan. It's a Deathworld for starters. There's the jungle, there's the myriad things that want to eat you (often whole) and then there's the weather. Let's just say it's not a pleasant place.

Considering all that the Catachan military must be, of necessity, a fairly unpleasant experience as military organisations go. A hard life begets hard men and etc., etc., etc... But for all of that, they never, ever, ever mention this in the recruiting brochure...


Let's face it, it's not nice and probably not something to be discussed when you're trying to sign people up for (an invariably short) life as a grunt.

Bad jokes aside the above image is lots of drilling and pinning so I can permanently attach the gunners for my Catachan heavy weapon teams to their apparatus which appear below.


And when that's all done they can be painted up to look like the chaps below, now complete and awaiting basing once the heavy weapon teams are also painted.


And then? Well, the infantry of a 90% infantry based army are 100% done and dusted. Three Sentinels and Bob's your Auntie's live in lover. Phew!

Cheers,
Millsy

Perfunctory Stab At Zomtober, or "I Want A Ghoul Just Like The Ghoul That Harried Dear Old Dad..."

While it was still Zomtober, I thought I should make an effort and do my bit for the month's festivities. I decided to try my hand at some crypt creepers for Frostgrave.

Here are two sample Ghouls I'm working on;


Yes, I know they're not Zombies, or technically even Undead, but every Necromancer or Lich has to start somewhere, and it's so hard to reanimate good help these days...! I'm trying a couple of different manufacturers' figures, along with some different basing ideas to see which combo works best.

Our first ghoul is a Warhammer plastic. Although the fluff for these suggests that they are a degenerate sub-species of human, this guy has clearly fallen more than a few rungs down the evolutionary ladder before tumbling through the door marked 'Mutant' and tripping over the huge number of skulls and random spiky bits which litter the floor at GW HQ.

Wow, that's some... creative piercing...
He's on a resin 'Bone Fields' themed base from Secret Weapon. No, it wasn't because of the legal requirement for any GW product to be surrounded by a minimum number of Skullz (TM), it was because I think that a charnel house concept works so much better for necrophages than my usual heather tufts.

Honestly, I'm not sure that the whole design ethos of these late model GW ghouls really works for Frostgrave, as it looks like their designers have ramped everything up to 11 with a side of 'extra spiky'. What happened to the gaunt, club-wielding brutes we saw in the Mordheim range all those years ago?

I would have liked to have given a similar base to our next ghoul-in-progress, this fine fellow from Mantic Games (packaged with some skellies and zombies as part of the Frostgrave Undead Encounter pack), but alas, he comes with his feet already attached to a moulded base. I dare say that some deft work with a pair of clippers and a sharp knife could free him without doing too much damage, but I have a limited number of these fellows to experiment with and so decided to play it safe.

Anyone else getting a 'The Hills Have Eyes' vibe from this guy?
He's a lot more humanoid than his GW counterpart, and looks a bit more plausible as a member of a degenerate and inbred cannibal community trapped in an icebound city for centuries, assuming that a fantasy skirmish game needs to consider such things as 'plausibility'.

The only real problem encountered when assembling him was with the fingers; while the pieces are excellently sculpted and extremely detailed, the open hands and long fingers are quite fragile, so care is needed when clipping the arms away from the sprue. I actually had to replace his right hand with the closed weapon hand you see here thanks to my clumsiness.

The Renedra plastic base has been built up with Vallejo White Pumice and a spare Skull (TM). Snow will be piled around the bases of both figures once they've been painted and I'll decide then which style to go with.

Stay tuned!

Ev


Saturday 10 October 2015

Paint Table Saturday... Catachans! Again!


I've been slowly getting back to some serious painting this week and to ease into it I've been working on something I've painted plenty of to date (40K Catachans). Once these are done my eye will be well and truly back in and I can jump into commissions again.

This is the third and final platoon for the army, once again 25 men in 2 squads plus command. They're probably about 50% done now with the majority of the skin and uniforms done and really just equipment and weapons to go.


For those who can't remember or have never seen my work on these chaps before here's a sampler from an earlier platoon.


And to finish off here's a custom company standard bearer made from a lieutenant (bald chappie above) with a plastic head from the Fantasy Empire Knights of the White Wolf kit and with the right hand repositioned, drilled out and with a standard inserted. The standard head is also an Empire bit from the knights box. Simple stuff but a good result I think.


That's it from me for today. Next up will likely be these chaps all done. I hope...

Cheers,
Millsy

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Lucky 7! The Amnesiaversary Giveaway Winners Revealed!

Last week, we proclaimed our 7th Amnesiaversary Giveaway. Amid much scurrying about and hurried checking of our respective lead-and-plastic mountains, Millsy and I managed to find seven prizes to give away to mark the occasion. Seven Prizes for Seven Bloggers!

Of course, this meant that we needed to find seven lucky winners...



No, no, not seven wieners...

(And trust me, when you Google "seven lucky wieners", this is honestly the safest pic available)


After much to-ing and fro-ing attempting to track down the fortunate ones, at long last, here are the Lucky Seven!

First out of the box was Blaxkleric, of the Fantorical blog (and several others!), who takes away this lovely Undead Encounter Pack for Frostgrave. Welcome aboard! 


El Grego, another multi-blogger, of The Pewter-Pixel Wars (amongst others), wins the Frostgrave Necromancer and Apprentice pack, and 10 plastic Frostgrave Soldiers. It's always more fun to play the bad guys...!


Third place goes to The Angry Lurker himself, famed across the blogosphere! Fran, you've won the Frostgrave Summoner and Apprentice pack, and 10 plastic Frostgrave Soldiers. Enjoy!


Next is Paul O'G, who nominated the Warhammer Nurgle Chaos Lord for his lad's Blood Bowl team. We aim to please, Paul, and it'll be on its way to you soon!

Star Quarterback Glorg Puscrusher, Paul's latest signing!

Lasgunpacker is next, winning WH40K Warboss Ghazghkull and four Ork Boyz - we hope to see the biggest, baddest Warboss in the galaxy rampaging across your blog pages before too long!

Erm... Waaagh..?

That splendid chap JP Price, of the Herefordshire 1938 blog, has won the Secret Weapon 'Corpse Field' themed resin bases; granted, their applicability to VBCW might be limited, unless one is gaming the Great Home Counties Zombie Pandemic of 1938, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they might be just the ticket to entice him over to the Dark Side of fantasy skirmish gaming...

You know it makes sense...
And last, but far from least, that international man of mystery, the Knight of Infinite Resignation; WH40K Ork Freebooter Kaptin Badrukk will be winging his way to you just as soon as we get a postal address!

As stated previously, 'Waaagh'. I will continue to reiterate that sentiment as long as necessary.

Those of you who haven't been contacted by us for postal details, please use our contact form and send us your addresses. We're keen to get your winnings to you!

A big thank you to all those who have visited and entered our 7th Amnesiaversary Giveaway. I've said it before and I'll say it again, without you, we're nothing!

Now, what to do for the eighth anniversary...? Best get thinking...

Evan

Normal Service Will Be Resumed As Soon As Possible...


Hello, Readers! Well, we have drawn our winners for the C&G 7th Amnesiaversary Giveaway, but we are still contacting people to allocate prizes where any doubt exists as to preferences.

As soon as we have finalised the allocation of prizes and eliminated any ambiguities, we will publish the winners - stay tuned!

Evan

PS - those of you who have already been contacted, please hold off publishing any competition results on your own blogs until we post the list of winners here.

Thanks for supporting C&G!
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