Hordes of the Things - Spears

Work is going well on the undead Elf spears in my force - their theme is that once the Elven army defeated the Grand Necromancer and his vile creations, they interred him within an ancient burial mound and set a coterie of the finest Elven spearmen to watch over this tomb. Unfortunately, the dead do not always stay dead - the Grand Necromancer made a pact with the God of Undeath and was able to reach out to one of his former Acolytes, granting him just enough power to resurrect him. The Grand Necromancer's first act upon resurrection was to shrive the souls of the Elf Coterie from their bodies, giving him the strength he required and turning them into his perfect slaves.

The Elf spearmen command. I changed this from the original mini - it had another swordsman, who I swapped for 2 spearmen to blend the command into my spears.

One of the strips of spears - I  have 8 of these.

I'm very happy with how these are turning out - I'll be adding skull transfers to the shields and toning down the green on the bases to match the bat swarms. Comments, questions? 

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 - Treemen

I previewed these Treemen on the Vapnartak post - they're from Kallistra Miniatures' Hordes and Heroes range.

Ideally I'd have liked a set of three of these (they sell a set of 3 in their 28mm range) but they only had the blisters of two so I'm going to build and sculpt another Ent in a matching style, but based on a silver birch design (influenced by the different types of Ents in The Lord of the Rings).

The Pendraken treeman is pretty rubbish.

These were bought to replace the couple of dodgy looking treemen already in the force...

I think they look great going up against the Giants from my Dwarf army!

Hordes of the Things - Dwarf-allied Giants (Behemoths)

These are the first figures for my Hordes of the Things Dwarf army, mocked up on their new bases. They're the mercenary Devil Dogs from Warmachine, bought from a friend a good few years back and intended for the post-apoc. 

I'm a recent convert to cork for scenic bases...

I like that their armour gives them slightly different proportions (or at least the feeling of this) - perfect for use as Giants (Behemoths) allied to my Dwarfs. I also bought the sheep shown yesterday to add to their bases as snacks/plunder. 

They'll have a few dwarf minders directing them in battle

This gent is armed with a large chain-net - in Warmachine they use them to entangle Warjacks. I like the idea of him entangling whole units with it in 10mm!

The rest of the army is currently taking a bath in some Fairy Power Spray. They're all Warmaster dwarfs - I'm particularly looking forward to splitting up the strips of Troll Slayers and making some interesting bases! 

Vapnartak 2014 - Spoils of Wargaming

Well, Vapnartak was fun! It was bigger than I was expecting, with a lot of stuff that I'd have liked to buy (I'm looking at you, Lead Adventure/Empire of the Dead/Misc. Foundry) but I managed to keep my purchases to a minimum. I didn't exactly have much in my monthly budget for miniatures...

The spoils.

Treemen! I really wanted to replace the dodgy ones in my fledgling Wood Elf Hordes of the Things  force. The current ones are a) too puny to be a behemoth and b) striking a ridiculous Travolta-esque pose...

Previous Treeman...

The new ones are from Kallistra Miniatures and are nice and bulky - I'm going to sculpt another in a similar style, but with a silver birch feel (it'll be a bit skinnier/taller).

Sheep! As suggested by Spacejacker (of Tiny Solitary Soldiers) for the bases of the giants (Behemoths) allied to my dwarf army.

My housemate wants me to build him a Harry Potter "Forces of Voldemort"  Hordes of the Things force - I'm a fan of the books and films and I really like the idea! Obviously I'd need a "Good" army to pit against them - the stag was purchased to paint up as a Patronus...

I also picked up a skeleton (54mm? Maybes.) and a lion (10mm), just because. All of these misc. metals are from Irregular Miniatures. The skeleton might become a Behemoth for my undead Hordes of the Things, or an objective (I'm sure my necromancer would like to get his hands on the remains of a titan giant...).

A busted up Celtos figure from the tabletop sale. This is as a gift for a gaming friend - it'll be his God for his Hordes of the Things barbarian army. He'll get a nice sword and a cork-base..
Finally, I picked up a new pair of clippers, some Citadel Bloodletter glaze and some round MDF bases. My current clippers were looking shabby, I fancied the glaze for use with the Hordes of the Things undead (and I got some use out of it straight away on the beards of the Forgeworld Chaos Dwarf unit I completed last night). As for the MDF bases, they always come in handy - I also have some pine cone/cocktail stick creations that I've wanted to make some better bases for for a while (they're currently on normal 40k bases) that were to be used as spiker plants in the jungle terrain. The smaller bases are perfect for this. The larger ones will be for objective markers.

Did anyone else attend?

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!

Hordes of the Things: General and Hero

Continuing the theme of a look at the build-up of my Hordes of the Things Undead army, we come to the start of my heroes for the force:

I was amazed to find these brilliant Warmaster figures amongst the various bits and pieces from the forces I've purchased - they're a Dark Emissary and a Truthsayer from the Dark Shadows/Albion campaign that Games Workshop ran! I actually really enjoyed that campaign/background and I loved these miniatures! I needed a Grand Necromancer for my Undead and the Dark Emissary fit the bill perfectly - the Truthsayer will be set aside to join the dwarves and elves when I get round to starting them! 

I also found a Tomb King Lord on throne amongst the odds and ends - his throne was atop this mound of skeletons and broken weapons. The pieces were glued, so I took them apart and cut away the base tab on the Dark Emissary - that was quite a fiddly job! I was very glad for the purchase of a new hobby saw! A bit of chopping here and there and he was added to the base, which I built up with some cork. Perfect lord for the army now! 

I discovered this chap yesterday in some bags of 10mm historicals that were part of the collection I've acquired - I'd guess that he's a priest of Sigmar or something like that, another Warmaster figure - I'm over the moon with him, such a lovely characterful sculpt! He'll be an apprentice Necromancer for a second Hero choice for my undead when used at 48pts!

Hordes of the Things: The Rise of the Undead

As mentioned in the last post, I have recently started to play Hordes of the Things with some friends - I've also acquired a bunch of different armies for it and a decent box of misc figures to use with the game. Eventually I will strip and repaint each of the armies I've bought, but to begin with I've decided to raid the box of spares and start an Undead force - here's how I've started:

Undead horsemen - these were what first led me to think of an undead force for the game. They're Warmaster figures. I've built bases for the army from plasticard.

All 5 bases of undead knights ranked up.

Spearmen - when I first saw these in the box, I thought they were Saxons or something along those lines - I actually think they're elves... My concept for these is that they were assigned to guard the barrow tomb of my Necromancer Lord upon his defeat. Upon his return to this plane of existence, he drained the souls from them and cast them into his servitude. His gaolers became his servants.

Once I'd finished the first base of them, I set about cleaning up the rest of them - they were originally on base strips of 5 men, but I think four to a base suits it well. I'm not sure where the figures are actually from - maybes Pendraken? 

Spearmen arrayed for battle! 

Swarms of giant bats! I think these might be Pendraken too, anyone know? Lovely figures - I built them some nice bases from cork and plasticard and pinned them for added support. Obviously these will be Flyers in game. 

Forces so far, with my leader in the middle - my favourite so far! More on him tomorrow...

Hordes of the Things!

Just a quick post to show some of the stuff I've been upto games-wise in 2014: Hordes of the Things! The first four pictures are from our introductory battle (with 48pt forces each, 2 players each side - Elves and Human alliance vs Beastmen and Sumerians (basically Chaos mortals!). It was great!

Opening Moves

My Aerial Hero in the rear ranks of the Beastmen

The Gyrocopter assault on the enemy Stronghold

My Aerial Hero having some nice pork chops

2nd Game - Gyrocopters attack the Elven Spearmen

The field clears up a bit with the loss of my Aerial Hero...bugger.

Loving this game so far - I'm currently working on an Undead army and I've bought elves, humans, dwarves and demons (mostly Warmaster figures - the elves and humans are massive armies and the dwarves will be the next project after the undead. I'm having fun raking through my lead mountain to find interesting things from my 28mm miniatures to add to them!) from a friend...so expect lots more HotT in 2014!