Monday 27 October 2014

On the Painting Table... Beastmen Shaman and Malagor the Dark Omen


I thought I would show off some of the most recent painting endeavours.
 
I wanted to add a few more heroes to my Beastmen army, so I painted up a Eureka Miniatures Beastmen Shaman and a GW Albion Dark Shadows miniature.
 
 
 
 

A close up of the Eureka minis Shaman.



The GW Albion Dark Shadows campaign has an mini that with some subtle additions makes a nice proxy for Malagor The Dark Omen. I drilled two small holes in its back and glued in some wings from a Eureka mini's Pegasus Rider's Pegasus mount.





The Chaos Hound will be joining the Beastlord Chariot as the Beastlords own pet. This will be a future post, so stay tuned.


Thursday 23 October 2014

Nazgul on a Fell Beast

Every evil army needs a Nazgul. I've had this project sitting around for some time now and wanted to finish it. The Fell Beast is an Iron Wind Metal's Wyvern miniature.



The wings that came with this mini are too small for any self respecting Nazgul, so I replaced them with the wings from an old Spartan Games Uncharted Seas dragon model. I added greenstuff to cover the gaps and to texture in some of the scales around the base of the wings.



The Nazgul itself was cut from the Copplestone Castings nazgul like figure from his 10mm evil characters range.


In order to make the figure sit upright, I added more green stuff to make its cloak look like its flowing more. This also helps to anchor the figure in place.


 
Now all I need is to paint this sucker!

Sunday 19 October 2014

Warmaster Mortis Engine

With the sad demise of the GW Specialist Games series, and the loss of Warmaster....sob :( , there is a need I feel to update a number of Old World armies to reflect the new models that have been released recently for their larger Warhammer cousins. One such model is the Vampire Counts Mortis Engine.

Looking at the GW Dreadfleet product, I noticed that the Shadewraith has a passing resemblance to the Mortis Engine's main platform. It's the right size too! With a little creativity, and the selective cutting and repositioning of the bow, the removal of the rudder and some of the sides of the Shadewraith, I came up with this for the Engine's platform.



I added a Pendraken pedestal behind the repositioned bow.


I then cut the base and back legs off a Vampire Counts Black Knight and positioned it at the "bow" of the Mortis Engine.




I then flanked this Knight with another Knight on each side. These were set back slightly in imitation of the full sized Mortis Engine.





Some clipping of the legs was required in order to remove the base enough to give the legs of the Knights both an in-motion feel and to fit them properly on either side of the main Knight.


Next I used two GW Spirit Host spirits to hover around the Mortis Engine.








I used a Splintered Light 15mm Spectres mini as the cloaked Corpsemaster.




So how does it look on the battlefield?






Now to work out what colours to pain this.

Saturday 18 October 2014

Uncharted Seas and the Corsairs of Umbar

I've been interested in using Spartan Games Uncharted Seas rule system for naval battles set in Middle-earth.

The Uncharted Seas Imperial Humans look great for Gondor White Ships of Dol Amroth. The older Elven ship models work well for Middle-earth elf ships, and the newer elven models work well for games set in the Old World of Warhammer. The Dwarven, Orc and Bone Griffin ships also work rely well for the Warhammer Old World.

But for the Middle-earth setting, I need something that looks like the Corsairs of Umbar.


The Dragon Lords vessels look the closest to this. The Shadow Cruiser works the best for a Corsair cruiser. I've been able to get a bunch from eBay recently, one of which was painted in a rudimentary colour scheme.


To make something that looks like a Corsair ship the sail configuration needed to be rearranged. Using sails from the Invoker Cruiser and the Moonbeam Destroyer, I started with cutting and reorienting the small sail on the bow of the Shadow Cruiser to make the bow rake.


I added the mainsail from the Moonbeam Destroyer. Then followed that by the mainsail from the Shadow Cruiser.



With the foresail from the Invoker Cruiser added, and some basic base painting, it starts to look like the Corsair ships from the Return of the King.


Here's the final paint job. I'm not convinced with this paint scheme, but this is the prototype.






Giving it a wash with Brown Ink also blends the colours in to each other.




I added a sail to the Invoker model as well, making it the command vessel for the fleet.