The Crimson Court - Warhammer Underworlds

When my good friend Lewis of The Die is Cast! suggested us both painting up the gorgeous Crimson Court warband from Warhammer Underworld as a mini-challenge around 10 days ago I was initially apprehensive - I'm out of the painting groove currently, with no real reason as to my lack of enthusiasm for it! I picked up the boxed set when I was in Leeds for a work conference and ultimately decided that I'd give it a go!

Here they are - they're somewhat lacking the "Crimson" aspect, maybe more of a Puce Court? It doesn't quite have the same ring does it?! I had the colours of House Bolton in mind for these and I'm pleased with how they turned out! I may return to them some day to add some further definition to the greyish white hair and maybe some additional shading on the armour, but overall I am very happy. The figures are honestly gorgeous, with weirdo batboy being my favourite, followed by the hulking mace/polearm wielder! I wish I'd kept some elements separate for painting, so if you find yourself with these guys mid-assembly, DEFINITELY keep the cloak on the big guy separate!

Let me know what you think, and be sure to check out Lewis's brilliant blog for his painted version!

Cursed City: The Blood-Born

So, I was one of the folks that was lucky enough to get my hands on Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - I pre-ordered it through those lovely chaps at Mighty Lancer Games. I literally can not remember the last thing I pre-ordered from Games Workshop, so that should give you an indication of how much I loved the look of the box. Here are my first finished miniatures from it!

When it came to putting the box together I decided to create scenic bases for all of the figures - breaking up small model bricks into more interesting shapes, gluing them to the bases (to fit with whatever scenic parts the miniatures incorporated) and then carefully chipping the edges. I then followed this with fine gravel and sand to finish them off.

I generally love the contents of the box, I love the lore, the atmosphere, the heroes and the villains. That being said, my least favourite miniatures in there are these three - the Vyrkos Blood-Born, young vampire servants of Radukar the Wolf.

As for why, It’s hard to pin down. I like the concept - freshly created vampires, still slightly feral (note the wolf-paws for feet!), graceful and lithe, the turned youngsters of the noble houses of Ulfenkarn. Is it the hair? I know it’s over the top but I like that it adds a sort of anarchic/punk aspect to them. The weapons? No, they’re very nice swords. The clothing?

Nope.

Oh well! Despite not being my favourites, they were still a pleasure to paint! 

I’m very pleased with the red vines crawling up the ruins - I imagine that these are an effect of the city's domination by the vampiric overlord - the death magics that he wields corrupting even the plant life of the once fair city, roots and tendrils from the plants seeking freshly spilt blood and gore. That’s my excuse to paint them such a vivid red - that, and my love of the red weed from War of the Worlds.

Finally, I also painted one of my favourite parts of the box - the unlucky zombified kitty! I painted him orange to match my lovely ginger tom Leon. In hindsight, the orange blends a bit too much with the bloody bones that are on display - I’ll go for a paler colour for the other one from the box to add a bit of a contrast.

So where does that leave me on the ol' Hobby Bingo board? Only with my first bloody line! Huzzah! By my reckoning I'm at 140 points - probably less than I'd have wanted to have been at this point in the year but probably more than I finished in all of last year! Here's to many more squares crossed off!

Ghoulish

I've got quite a large warband of various Undead figures to complete for Song of Blades and Heroes and my RPG project - here's the first bunch, some ghouls...

The two adult male ghouls are Warhammer, the last metal edition of ghouls produced by Games Workshop, sculpted by Paul Muller.

The mother ghoul (with baby...is it hers? Is it...a snack?) and child ghoul are from the fantastic Heresy Miniatures (and are available as part of Andy's current Kickstarter, check it out!) and are also sculpted by Paul Muller!

Both the GW and Heresy figures are great - the mother and child certainly edge it due to the "ick" factor, but due to the shared sculptor they fit extremely well together!

 

On an off-topic note, I bloody love the Blogsy app for the iPad! The integration of Blogger, Instagram and Picasa is perfect!

More HotT Undead...

I've been very busy adding more to my Hordes of the Things Undead recently - this is a bit of an image dump from Instagram...

The Necromancer's Acolyte - a Magician in HotT. The Acolyte is the guy on the rocky spire, whilst there's a brilliant dwarf jester and some death cultists backing him up. These are all Warmaster figures.

Spiders - these are Beasts in HotT. I found these in the art shop in my town, in the jewellery section. The tree stumps are the stalks from some squashes...

Once I made the above, I remembered that I had the small spiders from the Warhammer Arachnarok giant spider kit kicking around somewhere. I decided to add another base and mix them in - so happy with how these turned out, they're now one of my favourite units!

I'm having four behemoths in my army - all skeletal giants. He's the first, with morning star and mace. Mantic legs and the rest is Warhammer Fantasy plastics.

Undead Wight Champion - a Hero in HotT. This figure is a classic Warhammer Familiar. I love the pose! I gave him his faithful undead uni-hound. A one-horned canine. Because I can. The dog is from Mantic.

The second Behemoth - another mix of plastics again and impossible to photograph well - he has a double-handed spiked mace. Oh, and the skellie of a large humanoid for company.

Finally, everything based up (wood filler to level out the bases with the inbuilt tabs, a few rocks here and there and then fine sand applied with watered down PVA) and awaiting spray-undercoat. They've now been done and are in the painting queue! 

More to come shortly!

Hordes of the Things - Giant Bat Swarms

I finished these bat swarms at the weekend - my first painted 10mm figures! These are obviously "Flyers" in my Hordes of the Things Undead.

The basing is inspired by the lovely retro figures being painted over at Kings Minis and the force in general is inspired by the amazing work of Gardens of Hecate, which is one of the most wonderful blogs I've read in a good while! Check it out - lovely, creepy, disturbing figures! I'll be adding the white dots to the toadstools eventually...

Hordes of the Things: The God of Undeath

I recently bought a batch of Warmachine and Hordes figures and bits from eBay - it was a really good deal and lots of the figures looked like they'd fit in my various skirmish warbands really well. Amongst the batch of miscellaneous figures was this Cryx Bane Thrall - I knew straight away when starting the Hordes of the Things project that he'd fit perfectly for as a "God" in the Undead force I was going to build! 

The first thing I did was get rid of the ridiculous shoulder pads, leaving the part that the pads mounted to as a smaller, more reasonably-sized shoulder pad. I also chopped off the crudely sculpted axe and replaced it with the nice plastic scythe from the GW zombie regiment.

There's still more to sort out - gaps to fill and some moldlines to finish smoothing, but I'm really happy with him! I added a couple of his undead servants to his base - an undead hero of some sort and a standard bearer. This will probably be the last miniature that I complete for the project!

Comments most welcome!

Retro Skeletons

I've been on a bit of a retro kick recently, thanks to various blogs and various purchases - I put a low bid in on some metal skeletons caked in paint a few months back when starting to spitball about my Fantasy Warbands project and then found the ones above on a eBay bits site for the princely sum of £2, buy it now. I couldn't click that button fast enough!

Nothing says 1980's retro fantasy like a skeleton with a mohawk!

I now have 9 retro skeletons, the current Vlad von Carstein and the plastic necromancer from the corpse cart - a rather solid start to my classic Undead warband. I also have some metal ghouls to add to the warband eventually. I have misplaced Vlad - I definitely have him somewhere around here...