Slowing... up!

The blog has been dead silent for a few months, and this time the hobby front was kinda silent too. We ended our Mordheim campaign as a club, and we're going to start another one early October. A part from that, nothing to be seen on my workbench and on the wargaming table: 2025 was a very busy year until now!

Today I took the brushes for the first time since forever, so it was the time for a post! Hope to retake on the blog soon.

May your Choppa be sharp,

Amarok

The first guys for my Mordheim Warband for the upcoming campaign. This time I went for a black primer paint. Some ragout on the background

Look out for Xerxes's scouts!

Quick update: I finally completed 4 elements for my DBA 3.0 1/72 army of Early Achaemenid Persians I/60c, the army from the Persian Wars.

It was an odyssey. I don't know why, but I needed an unnecessary long time to finish these miniatures, and they're just 1/3 of the whole army! The God King wouldn't be pleased...

However I'm really glad of the final result. When I'll put my hands on the other elements I'll complete the army and show them all, but I wanted to mark this initial step since it was so hard to achieve.

These are 3 elements of 8Bw, the Immortals in the middle with the standard and other two sparabara infantry elements. The light infantry on the left is 3Ax, representing Armenians fighters

The sparabara were the biggest elements I’ve ever painted for DBA, since I only confronted 8Bw against Michele’s Byzantines. I chose the colour pattern to better distinguish the units, although in reality they would have been more mixed

The base is a really simple work: Citadel Agrellan Earth with this nice cracked finish, brown wash, Bonewhite drybrush and some flock. I think it’s right for the Greek landscape in which they fought

And looking at a pic of the plain of Marathon, I think I can go with it!

My Rangers of Shadow Deep

A couple of months ago I started my journey in the world of Rangers of Shadow Deep by reading the rulebook and starting to prep my A-Team. Various things happened in between, but I finally have my squad ready to play!

Here they are. First, Hagen, my Ranger, ready to face the horrors of the Shadow Deep.

#sporktober part III - The making of

It's time! #sporktober is almost over and I completed my entry for our little challenge.

In this painting report I'll show the very simple way in which I painted the Orc my pals chose to be painted during this amazing Orctober. The winner was the classic monopose Orc Warrior Boy from the 6th edition of WFB.

Here he is in all his greyness

#sporktober part II - Vox populi

I'm now ready to get on prepping and painting my models for our #sporktober challenge. However, I've got some models to choose between, and I want my fellows to decide which I will paint. Since Michele is my opponent and Grimbeorn is the jury, it may be biased to ask them to choose my miniature. But this is a friendly challenge, and I'm sure they'll choose the miniature they sincerely like the most to see finished by the end of the month.

After my brief report on the models from the past editions of Warhammer, these are my miniatures I currently possess which could compete in the challenge. Let the people decide!

Getting (Grimbeorn) ready for #sporktober

A few days ago, my pal Michele (Frontlineminiaturist) sent to Grimbeorn and me a YouTube video which launched a challenge for the month, calling that #sporktober. It's a mix between spooktober and orctober which challenges people on social media to paint an Orc or Undead miniature, and the youtuber chooses a 90s style of painting on one of the Skeletons from the Cursed City range. I leave here the link for the video 👉 YOUTUBE 📺

Michele challenged us to do the same. This isn't exactly part of my Orctober goals, but I wanted to join the ride so I said yes (maybe it will be a chance for me to revamp my painting desire). Grimbeorn said he didn't want to participate, but he'll be our judge. However, he asked if we could send him some info about this 90s style of painting. I was thinking about the info to send to him, but the fact is that I'm kinda nerdy when talking about the history of various Warhammer editions (I'm nerdy just about that, as you can imagine), and so I thought that my info for Grimbeorn could became a whole post.

And so, my dear Grimbeorn... this is for you!

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.

***

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.

Ambush in the City of the Damned

Yesterday Grimbeorn, Frontlineminiaturist and I played a Mordheim match. Since December we decided that every new game is part of our new Sword of the Herald campaign, even if it is not totally defined yet. This scenario was Ambush from Annual 2002.

My Orcs, Grimbeorn's Dwarves and Frontlineminiaturist's Cult of Possessed clash in the street of Mordheim, where the Greenskins found a giant stash of Wyrdstone and try to flee with it...

The battlefield was just nice, but at the end we decided that in similar occasions the centre of the board must be more protected, or the defender will be simply taken out in few turns

"I see some Goblins up there"

Here they are! My boyz are set around the house, and my Heroes carry some Wyrdstone. We need to flee of the field in order to win

The Possessed look from behind the gates and think of an obscure plan

The only possible outcome for the first turn: I try to run, they try to catch!

My Troll is protecting my Boss from the enemy's quarrels. I already lost some of my boyz, and both Dwarves and Possessed are still strong

On the left, I try to escape. The Dwarves are too slow to catch me, but they try to stop the Orcs by shooting at them. On the upper side of the board, the Possessed are trying to intercept the fleeing Greenskins and collect every Wyrdston shard they have

Right moment for a truce: my Hero drops his Wyrdstone to save his life. The Possessed agree...

One of the most epic moments: a single Goblin take out a Dwarf Quarreler and a Trollslayer! A true hero! At the end of the game, the Dwarves result in permanent dead... Grimbeorn will not forget this

The closing act of the game: my Boss is almost out of the battlefield, when Von Pfalz, Frontlineminiaturist commander, a dreadful Magister, possesses him with his magic. There's nothing to do against the power of Chaos...

... and my Boss turns and charges my Troll! Gork please help!

The game ended with my warband almost entirely out of action, every Wyrdstone shard in the hand of the Cult of the Possessed and some underdog Dwarves exhausted from running around... not the best, except for Frontlineminiaturist who collected a lot of gold. Fortunately, I permanently lost just a couple Squigs. In the future we need to train better to confront the forces of Chaos that haunt this streets...

As always, after the battle I feel particularly inspired... so I created a Wyrdstone token! I found a simple and nice way to do it rapidly, so I'm going to paint some of them for every occasion.

"That's mine!" "Come take it if you can!"

My precious...

Speed painting in 10mm... more or less

After our last battle with my Celtiberians, my friend Alexander and I planned a Hordes of the Things game with the same armies (at least for me). Some time ago I purchased some elements from Pendraken to deploy in fantasy games played with historical armies: the figures derive as much as possible from the mythological background of Celtic and Iberian populations, merged with what I thought could result cool on the battlefield.

I seized the opportunity to try some speed painting with my 10mm figures. After all, this is one of the reasons why I like this particular scale, but my last deeds - almost two years to paint an army - weren't really coherent with this thought. So, I gave it a try.

The models I bought from Pendraken: there is an assortment of giants, trolls, centaurs and other creatures I found right for the setting of my Celtiberians and Celtic armies

Some prepping to polish the metal figures

The seven elements I chose for this particular venture: Behemot (giants and trolls), Magician (the druids with the menhir in the background), Beasts (deers on the right) and Lurkers (the treemen)

Firstly, black undercoat on every miniature

Then I proceed with my usual recipe: heavy Wraithbone drybrush and Contrast Skeleton Horde on the models. Then, one element at time, I go nuts with Contrasts and drybrush. Always very simple, speed is the key

After an evening, here's the result! Five elements are completed, apart from the bases, one Behemot element is still to complete and I left out the Magician element

Well, here my speed painting attempt encountered a problem, because I couldn't go on with the hobby for a couple days. Never mind, the experiment was still a success, even if not 100% complete. When I finished the two remaining elements, here's the result

As per the Celtiberians, first thing on the base is a layer of Agrellan Earth

Time to battle! I wanted to finish the bases but I had not quite the time. So, we packed up with our nice metal box (every element is magnetized) and went to crush the enemy

First HotT game for my enhanced Celtiberians! We were up against Alexander's Lizardmen (superb models from Eureka), but it was a nasty battle... battle report here!

Just a first view of the battlefield!

Back home, I completed the bases and call it done. It was an useful experiment, I learned that 10mm are just right for speed painting like this! Next time I need to paint some Celts...

This shamans are deployed as Magician, and the deers as Beasts (even if they're not carnivores as depicted in the HotT core book)

Behemots

Lurkers. Some more grass and tufts for them, obviously!

They match just right with their human kin. Pretty happy with the result!