Hooves from hell 💀

Periodically I keep some distance from the blog, probably because it needs some time to be properly managed and even when I would have some contents I struggle in create a post about that. I still have in draft two posts from our ongoing Mordheim Campaign, and we played two more scenarios. However, they shall know no fear: the blog is still here and we're past its fourth birthday in January 2025.

Just a little note to share: I finally built my Chaos Knights. Ready to ravage the Old World!

I was struggling on how to use both the wonderful maces in the kit and still have a musician. Then I realised I was dealing with some potentially mutated Chaos Knights...

Orctober 2023 - A New Hope

Here we are! October 1st, first day of the greener, nastier, “mushroommer” month of the year. Furthermore, this is my first Orctober as a dad of a not-so-green little Snotling 💚

As always, my bench is full of unfinished projects, but I want to concentrate on something Greenskin-related in the next few weeks.

“Hey, an unpainted Orc Warrior! Shoot’em!”

Well, just a simple list of the first tasks that come to my mind:

• Build my 40 Savage Orcs
• Build the Orc Warboss I bought on Christmas some years ago (the one with the Skaven)
• Magnetise some of my Greenskins
• Finish painting two siege weapons I started and never completed
• Reorganise my Orc Warband for Mordheim

Just one or two of these would be enough. Let’s roll and I’ll keep track of my progresses on the blog… hopefully!

Hobby musings about Fantasy Crusade campaign

The Crusade has begun!

We're gathering the armies and the models we need, and we're starting to plan our hobby schedule for the months to come. For me, the Crusade is the opportunity to inventory my collection and decide what to build and paint by setting some affordable goals for the near future. Actually I already have an ongoing inventory file which I update with all my purchases, my thoughts and my plans. In addition, I'm a hoarder, and so I constantly (and with pleasure) buy new minis. However, given the fact that I paint very little, and most of my collection is unpainted (when not unbuilt!), I find myself with loads of miniatures still in boxes or anyhow not painted, and we always play with lots of proxy models or directly dies or empty bases on the battlefield.

Golden Demon, help us!

This isn't really a tragedy for us: we've always been more gamers than painters, and only in recent years we started enjoying more the hobby side of Warhammer. These days we want to bring our hobby a step up, and we already gave it a try by starting a little escalation league between us during 2020 (you can find my last deed about that here). We followed the rules for WHFB 7th Ed. Warbands, wanting to build and paint an entire 500 pts force of Dwarves (for Grimbeorn) and Skaven (for me), plus some scenery each. It went... well, quite bad, actually, or rather we played very little and only him managed to paint everything on the list. I'm still stuck on my damned Warp Lightning Cannon and its crew. Bloody rat-things...

After this experiment, we never tried anything new of the kind until now. We didn't paint almost anything from our Warhammer range (however I painted other things, such as DBA or my beloved Mordheim tokens), and we had in mind this Crusade idea since last Christmas. It's now time to give it a go.

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So, I know I'm not a fast or constant painter. Even so, I want to build a Crusade army (or various Crusade armies) which gives me the will and the motivation of being painted, a little at a time, with no rush and a lot of fun. I decided to concentrate of this three upon my WHFB armies:

• Orcs & Goblins
• The Empire
• Warriors of Chaos

I built a 1000 pts list each, and gather all the models I need in a specific box.

As you can see, most of it is unpainted, and something still needs to be built. There will be a lot of work behind the Crusade, and I'm ready for it. Just some general thoughts about my selections:

• My collection is absolutely not bad (at least for my goals). For The Empire and Orcs & Goblins I have at least up to 3000 pts of stuff each, whilst for Warriors of Chaos I can reach around 1600 pts in total. The Crusade starting list, with its 1000 pts, is just one third of my big armies, and I have a lot of miniatures still in storage. However, when choosing 1000 pts I still find myself with a very little portion painted, when none at all

• Related to this, all these years of hobby I bought loads of minis but I always play using the same old ones. Obviously, if I barely build and paint will be so. I honestly realized that during the arranging of my Crusader armies, and it was the most interesting thought about this project. So the first step of the Crusade will be the hobby phase in which I prepare my minis for battle, at least building it all
• In fact, in general, lots of my miniatures are still on sprue or in box. Even if unpainted, the Crusade is a nice chance to build and reorganize my miniatures for these three armies, create some useful trays and prepare to deploy everything on the battlefield ready when needed
• Anyway, I voluntarily chose for my Crusader armies some miniatures I still haven't got. Just few models each, but so I can buy something new I will use or need to complete my existing units. A leopard can't change its spots...

Just some random thoughts I realized while managing my Crusader armies, but I want them to become the ground rules in this new adventure.

So, for starter, I reorganized the Crusade box:

More about the specific armies in next posts!

A little hobby update #1

This is the first post entirely written and posted from my smartphone. Not exactly an exciting news, but definitely an update for me 😂

However, just a little update from the Lair’s workbench! In this days I finally picked up my brushes from lethargy and prepared from new stuff for various project. I’m planning on concentrate on something new very soon… maybe some Warbands for Warhammer Fantasy to smash Grimbeorn on the battlefield. In the meantime, here it goes.

I made some tokens for the national Mordheim campaign we’re attending. With these we can mark the dead models which return on the battlefield as Undead… we hope to use them the least possibile!

A couple models I built for my Empire Army and obviously for Mordheim purposes too. These are Luthor, a special miniature designed by Tuomas Pirinen, the author of Mordheim game, representing a lone mercenary from the ruins of the City of the Damned, and a Mage from the Lore of the Beasts, or alternatively a Priest of Taal, made from the bits of the Imperial Griffon kit.

My newest project is building my first ever 3D printed miniatures! I purchased an STL file from the manufacturer Reptilian Overlords, Priests and Penitents, and with the first batch printed I will have two Warriors Priests of Sigmar on foot and ten Flagellants. Perfect miniatures for my Empire Army (and for an upcoming Witch Hunters Mordheim Warband too…)

“I smell some hereeeeeetiiiiics!” 😈

Technical update: Blogger is not exactly optimised for smartphone, at least not for my iPhone. I’m currently using Google Chrome as browser (I though that with Safari would have been even worst, but I still have to try that out). Writing and pic posting went well, but all format options are hard to pick due to bad viewing on screen… not the best. I couldn’t modify the font of the captions under the photos. However, it worked and I can now post even without my computer.