They dwell in the dark places of the world...

Two posts in one weekend! I know, wild, isn't it? ;p

The beastmen warband is fully assembled. I just need to fill any gaps and do their bases.

Here's the chieftain and his elite warriors:

The lesser fighters of the clan:

 So, once I have the last remnants of my Undead warband painted (2 Skeleton leaders, 1 Dread Knight, 2 Wraiths, a Banshee, Necromancer and the Skeleton King himself. Hm, sounds like a lot still...) I should have the next evil warband primed and ready to go.

I also made a base for the Dwarf today:

And, as an extra, I assembled my Lurkers from Heresy miniatures:

Sadly, he doesn't seem to make these anymore. I believe they wore out their moulds too quickly.
The leaping ones are on 25mm bases only temporarily, in the end they will all get 30mm bases.
As I normally use 30mm bases for my major heroes, these will become rather dangerous critters....
I like the idea of fielding them as (lesser) Grue, just for the nerdy reference. Don't let your torches go out!

Now, time to mix up some greenstuff and start filling gaps...

See you next time!

Hoof and Horn

No painting this weekend (unless I change my mind tomorrow), but assembly in an attempt to redress the Hero-Villain balance.
What have I been assembling?
Have a look:

 That's the core of my Beastmen for the dungeoneering/chivalry/fantasy project. I've still to assemble two more of the greater beastmen, the lesser will remain at eight. I gave some of the lesser beatmen the large shields that the manufacturer (GW) intended for the greater beastmen, to make them look less uniform. Where the lesser beastmen are the rank and file (and dogsbodies) of the clan, the greater beastmen will be more individualistic, warriors of note. I hope to give each of them an individual and evocative  attitude and choice of wargear. An interesting challenge, as I'm using the older, and more limited GW Gor/Ungor combined kit. I'll take some pictures once all four greater beastmen are assembled, to see/show if I've succeeded in this.
There's also the leader of the warband to still  assemble, and at some point I'll need to get a shaman for spiritual guidance as well.
These won't go on dungeon bases, as they're creatures of the deep wilds. I think I'll base them similar to the Knight and his retinue.
If you look carefully at the back you'll see a hero sneaking in, a stour armoured dwarf. (a bit headless at the moment, as I want to reach his breastplate and crooks of his beard properly when painting him.)
And an other figure, whom I'm still deciding on if she'll be a force of good or evil (leaning towards evil right now, though).

I'm also slowly collecting ideas and bits of pieces of lore to assemble something resembling a setting out of. As far as beastmen go, I'm starting from this point:
Beastmen are an evil, a species without redeeming features. Vicious and cruel, they live only to destroy and defile. Favoured children of one of the old, inhuman gods, they are corruption and insanity made flesh.
Where a barbarian merely eschews civilization and it's trappings, the beastmen actively seek to destroy it. They see the spread of civilization as a plague, taking the danger and need for survival out of the land and allowing the weak to survive when they shouldn't. The world should be uncaring and cruel, only those who are brutal and strong enough to force life to give up what they need have the right to survive.The beastmen refer to themselves as the Tribes of the Thousand Young. It is a common belief among the beastmen that all of their tribes and clans descend from the original 1000 young of their deranged, goat-like deity. Dwelling in the wild and forbidden places of the world, they prey on anything and frequently raid the surrounding lands. They partly raid for food* and supplies, but mostly to cause havoc and tear down what others have built. To force their targets to prove their strength and right to survive, or otherwise punish them for being to weak to survive without the crutch of civilization.
*: Meat mostly, and strong drink. They'll eat any meat, dead or alive, of non-sentient or sentient species, but they prefer the latter options as it represent the greater atrocity.


There is a reason people feel ill at ease in the deep woods, and get shivers out on the moors, when the light is fading...
It's where the Tribes of the Thousand Young dwell.

A shrine and a short one.

I had the day to myself to do some painting today. As I still had a small roadside shrine to finish from last week's painting session, that came first:

 It's an old OOP GW Sisters of Battle Shrine/Objective marker. The lowest part is about the size of a 20mm square base. On the rear, someone has seen fit to nail a page from a manuscript to it:

GW being GW, it comes equipped with both a skull and a purity seal as standard....

With that out of the way, and most of the day still ahead of me, I grabbed another mini. I wanted to do something on my wife's Warhammer Quest set. After all, despite being the catalyst for me starting on this whole Dungeoneering/Chivalry/Fantasy project, it has languished a bit of late.
Today I had neither the time, nor the desire to start on another batch of monsters, plus, none of the heroes have seen any paint yet...
The Elf was not an option, as it had incurred some damage during storage I still need to fix. I didn't feel like painting lots of skin, so the Barbarian was out. Of the two left, the Dwarf caught my eye the most.
So, here he is, the shortest of the heroes in the WHQ box:

I kept close to the colours depicted in the Warhammer Quest artwork for the Dwarf, only deviating on the gloves. Instead of bright yellow, I opted to paint them in a buff leather colour. I figured the Dwarf would want his gloves sturdy, with good grip, but not too precious to discard if they became soiled or damaged.

As usual, I kept to my more subdued, realistic colours rather than 90's GW brightness, but still keeping to the spirit of the miniature and the game. I think I've managed to strike a happy medium.

And my wife is happy with him, which is the most important, I think. :D

Faith and Fury

Remember that WIP shield I showed when I finished my skeleton spearmen?
Well, it's done, and so is it's owner.

I present to you, Hieronymus Lightbringer, Paladin Solar:

Hieronymus, as a Paladin*, has dedicated himself to the concept of the Sun as representation and symbol of the Light Divine. Hence the sun in splendour on his shield.

The miniature was originally a Paladin of Menoth from Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms Miniature line. I filed away all his Menoth-specific details and removed his chimney-like helmet. The latter I replaced with the top half of a bare head from the GW plastic Bretonnian knights sprue.

To prevent confusion about what he is I wanted to stay clear from the tradional Menoth colours, but still get a sense of purity and faith. To achieve this I went for clean, shining metal, blue and (off)white as a contrast colour. 
The mini really demanded I took my time highlighting and shading his armour to prevent him just looking like a lump of metal, and to really emphasize his bulk and weight.
I'm quite pleased with how he turned out. Especially when sat next to the rest of my heroes. He looks like a tank, and then there is the ludicrously heavy/large sword. He's clearly got to have more than mere human muscle and determination driving him to be even moving around, let alone fight as vigorously as he looks to be doing!

Speaking of the rest of my heroes, here is a little shot of the collection as it stands now:

As you can see, the shelf is getting somewhat crowded... And I'm not nearly finished with this!
I'll need to re-arrange my display cabinet at some point, or find a way to add extra shelves to it...

*: A little background note: In my (as yet loosely defined) personal fantasy/chivalry setting Paladins are not really a religion or Order in the strictest sense. Paladins are holy, spiritual warriors who take one concept, often an abstract or esoteric one, from their religion or the chivalric ideals and dedicate their entire being to it. They are Knight-Mystics who channel the divine in their fighting skills. Most, if not all of them are wandering ascetics. They serve no lord but their own ideals and their otherworldly patrons/inspirations. As much apart from Knights as Knights stand apart from the peasantry, they are universally considered beings of awe and wonder.

The New Faith views them with some doubt and reservation as, while their ideals are pure and wholesome and they inspire piety and good in others, their practices and beliefs are often almost shamanic, at times borderline paganistic…

Experimental Subterranean Complex

Like I said in an earlier post, one of my goals for this year is to figure out how I want to do my dungeon terrain.
I've done a bit of a preliminary test today.
I have a set of mdf corridor/room sections from  a friend. I have for a long time discounted them for this project, as the sizes he chose didn't match what I had in mind for WHQ.

Today I decided to give them a new look. After all, seeing how WHQ measurement is square based, relative positions are more important than getting the measurements to line up, I reasoned.
I also thought about how to manage the different ways WHQ corridors and such can match up. What originally stumped me was how to deal with the various possible positions corridors can link up, in a visually pleasing fashion. I was stuck on the idea of needing swappable pieces in the walls itself to account for the fact that one end of a corridor can have an exit in three possible locations.
But looking purely at relative positions and letting go of the notion of reproducing the WHQ board sections one-for-one, I realised that the three possible configurations for a WHQ corridor boil down to it being, in essence, a short corridor with either an extra straight bit or a corner tacked onto the end. Likewise I could also chop up the other WHQ sections into their constituent parts...
Which could give me the ability to match the WHQ board sections, and keep maximal flexibility for non-WHQ dungeoneering, AND, maybe, find a use for my friend's terrain sections.

But first, some measuring and testing was in order:

 40mm squares, superimposed on the already existing terrain units. These two sections would be a single WHQ corridor.
As you can see the squares don't center or line up properly, there is a fair bit of dead space around them.
I'm a bit worried by the lack of room in the corner section and the width of the corridor to add much detail.

And a larger test: I prepared a WHQ exploration deck, as described in the rules, and set to. I didn't actually play the whole game, just the exploration phases. It was only afterwards that I concluded it would have been a good idea to also place miniatures, to get a feel for scale and proportions. :(
Anyway, here is what the completed dungeon looked like:

 (I left the cards in centre of the corresponding group of dungeon sections, to give an idea of what is what. Hopefully, they'll also give something of an idea of scale.)

And all the parts I used, placed into stacks:

In this test I used any suitable piece I could find, or combine. To make a proper WHQ suitable set, I'd need to build a number of additional segments. Including ALL of the rooms and objective rooms, which I would have to have fresh MDF sawn for. Plus the sheer amount of surface/segments I would need to detail is somewhat intimidating...
So, I'd like to have some input before I decide yea or nae on this approach:
What do you folks think about this?

A bone to pick...

Due to being awfully busy lately, these mini's took a long time to finish...
It even got close to the point that I feared frustration over my lack of progress would lead me to abandon them for the time being.

But here they are, my skeleton spearmen:

And from the rear:

This means that, apart from three skeletal beastmen (which aren't really part of my undead warband proper), all my rank and file undead are done!
What is left to do is two skeleton minor heroes, two major heroes (the Skeleton King and his Dread Knight), two Wraiths, a Banshee and a Necromancer. All individual or semi-individual models, with a lot less bone to paint...
I do want to add some zombies to them at some point, but I'm a having a hard time finding a way to neatly get the Mantic zombies I have onto the round 20mm bases I want to use.
I'm in no hurry for the zombies anyway, as they will be random restless dead/things to get summoned by any practitioner of the Dark Arts, and are not part of "The Court of the Skeleton King", like my skeletons are.

Oh, and here is a teaser for the next model on my painting table:

See you next year!

Warning, lots of words, no pictures...

Wow, has it been a month already?

So, what have I been up to? Not much really, at least not hobbywise.
I started a in new job/project last week, and with it comes an increase in hours and travel time, leaving me knackered when I get home, at least until I get used to it (and the high-speed barrage of new-job information/training slows down).
The weeks before that were mostly spent getting the job in first place. And organizing things so that those parts of the daily care for my son (he is, as they call it these days, a "special needs" kid) I normally care of are picked up by other folks when I am at work.

Less daylight also means less hobby time, as I need natural light to paint, somehow my eyes just don't adjust to artifical (day)light enough to properly discern shades of the same colour. Which causes rather ugly and abrupt highlights. Assembling and converting in the evening is no problem however, so evenings should go to waste by default.

Normally I, in situations like these I would have left the hobby by the wayside, for the time being. Often for months at a time. But I found this usually left me either feeling disconnected from the things I was working on, or having settled into a schedule/daily rhythm where there was no room left for hobby stuff. Which made it hard to get going again, so I put hobby off a bit longer, further raising the barrier, etc.
I didn't want that to happen again. So, the moment I started this job, I decided to consciously keep doing hobby stuff, and plan time for it.
All work and no play makes Modhail a dull boy and all that (not mention cranky and depressed...).

So, last Sunday and Monday evening I took the time to finish basing a few figures (the wife, kids and druid from two posts back). And today I reserved time for painting a second group of skeletons I was working on. They're far from finished (spent a lot of time waiting for washes to dry), but it's good to see progress.
Will I keep this up? Who knows... I have to be realistic here. My work hours won't magically shorten again, and December is a very busy month for our family (there's the usual holidays, and somehow about 3 friends/family celebrating their birthdays every week). There's also the lure of video games, I just got the Diablo III expansion, so that is drawing me in again, Warmachine Tactics has left the beta, and Darkest Dungeon is getting more of my attention as it draws nearer to early access.... A hiatus might still occur, but at least it won't be from me not even attempting to do something fun/hobby-related. :-)

But this is a hobby blog, not a Modhail's Real Life Stuff blog (thought the two often interact and/or intersect).  So I really should also add some hobby content to this post, beyond just quickly remarking what I've been painting today inside a wall of unrelated text.
Clearly I'm still mainly in the mood for my Dungeoneering/Generic Fantasy/Chivalry project, so we'll see where that goes.  I've been giving some thought on how to proceed with this:

-One thing that is increasingly bothering is me, is that currently my heroes are at risk of outnumbering the monsters and villains... So I really should be focusing on making and painting more opponents. It's just that heroes, being single, individual models, are more fun to paint!
Hence the slogging on with my skeletons, but also simultaneously working on a Paladin to keep my interest. Maybe this pairing up of a hero and a group of enemies as a joint painting project is the way forward. I will need to experiment. It does mean I can keep painting while paint or wash dries...

-This whole chimaera of a project has flowed from wanting to paint my wife's Warhammer Quest set for her. Guess what hasn't been on the painting table for quite some while? I really should show them some love too. It's just a shame that, as I'm exploring my own imaginary world, the Warhammer one is losing quite a bit of its appeal. GWs recent antics and pricing aren't helping my enthusiasm either.

-There is also the issue of terrain, if I want to go dungeoneering, I will need dungeons or caves. I feel I can't hide from this issue for much longer. I want to find a solution for this terrain that appeals to me, is achievable and that I'm happy with, and then stick with that choice.
This will require some thought. Especially as I will build it myself and it should ideally also serve for Warhammer Quest...
For the Generic Fantasy and Chivalry part of the project, I'll also need suitable terrain.
But before I build it, I need to find/make storage for it. I have the space reserved, but it's in an open rack in the garage, so I need to find storage boxes suited to my need. A need that also depends on the scenery I will be making. The standoff has somewhat of a Mexican flavour.

But for now, none of this need to be acted on immediately. I've still got plenty of minis to happily keep painting and fill the time until I've figured these things out.