ORCS!!!!

So, once again, I broke my own ambition. But who cares: Now I'm at it again.


Shieldwolf Mountain Orcs Infantry
Stan Nicholls "Orcs: Tales of Maras-Dantia"

My wife and I went on a small trip to London and I brought home a bit of orcy goodness, namely the Shieldwolf "Mountain Orc Infantry"-box. Now, I've heard of Shieldwolf Miniatures only briefly before, from Annie, over at Bad Squiddo Games, where she sells some Shield Maidens, which looks to be a great set. So I bought this box and decided to do a little review of it. Alot of people are afraid to buy from unknown companies, because they fear that the scale of the miniatures, or the level of detail or whatever, is off, compared to the rest of their collection and I thought, I'd help those people out, with this...

Now, as you can see, on the box, these orcs are pretty barbaric looking. They seem to fit well the savage orcs from Warhammer, in general appearance. Their weapons looks to be made from bone, judging from the cover art, as are the GW ones'.
I like this box art. I find it appealing that they used artwork, instead of just a picture of the regiment; to me it says that they are more about the story and the adventure, than they are about a strict gaming point of view.

Unfortunately the box was pretty badly made and literally fell apart, as soon as I opened the shrink wrap. The glue, that held it together was probably wrong: I can see, thay glued it, but there was absolutely no grip in it, whatsoever... But, Hell, as long as the minis are good, right?

There are two different sprues in the box: One for building regular soldier, and one for regulars and a command group. This gives you a selection of four different bodies, legs and heads and hair, and a LOT of weapons options, both single hand weapons and two hand weapons.

Jaw-droppingly terrific!

Here you can see the
parts the miniature has to be build from. I really like that the lower jaw is a seperate piece. It makes for some even more savage looking monsters, which is pretty much, what orcs are supposed to be. With the way they sculpted this jaw, it makes for some really, really monstrous orcs, which I like. These are not just funny-looking humans; they are downright terrifying! Off course it also helps that the teeth in the upper mouth is as protruding as the ones on the jaw...
As for the level of detail, I think it's pretty high. The moulding is done well, so you get a lot of details in the mini and you can clearly see the facial expression and tell things apart on the belt and armour. Very nice indeed!

One Savage M.F'er!

This is a finished model. It took very little cleaning: There are not many mould lines and the ones that are there, are in strategically good places; easy to scrape away or hide in the assembly.
Now, unfortunately the parts does not fit well together. Only some of the torsos will fit only some of the legs and the shoulder pads will seriously limit your choice in positioning the head. The arms also only fit on some torsos. And the head attaches in a way, that will make you look through the backside of the jaw and straight out into nothing. Fortunately I like playing with Greenstuff, so for me it won't be a problem, but I can see why some people would be turned off by it: It will take a lot of Green Stuffing to get these guys ready for painting!

Three guys ready to rumble!

As for using these for different game systems: That will be easy! They fall directly into the standard size of 28-32 milimeter miniatures, depending whether you like your orcs short or tall. They seem to be pretty much the same size as Rackhams Confrontation Orcs of Bran-o-kor:

From left to right: GW Orc Warrior, Shieldwolf Mountain Orc Infantryman, Rackham Orc Brute.

 Here is a comparison between all the different orc manufacturers, that I'm able to represent:

Left to right: GW, Rackham, Shieldwolf, Mantic, Old Citadel/Icon.

So, overall, this is my initial impression:

The box: beautiful artwork, crappy glueing.
The parts: Nicely varied, very well produced!
The models: Hard to fit, but outstanding details!
TOTAL: 5/6, a big B+.

If you like to put a bit of work into your minis, these can make for some fantastic, monstrous orcs. If you just want something quick and easy, I'd go with something else, probably the ones from Mantic. Shieldwold is NOT for beginners!

The other link at the top is for a book by Stan Nicholls, called "Orcs: Tales of Maras-Dantia". This is a prequal to his fabulous "Orcs: First Blood"-omnibus and I'm looking forwards to reading it. He is a great author, who puts a lot of thought into creating some nice, action packed novels. He makes them seem quite pulpy, yet not in a bad way. He is kind of doing high fantasy, but on the ground floor. This is gritty and dark, covered in blood, yet with a good tale to tell and a good message in the story. I hope the prequal is as good as the original and the graphic novel and I hope to soon get my hands on the sequal: "Orcs: Bad Blood".



So, again; sorry for the delay in posting, but at least it arrived!
Next time, I'll tell you how I liked painting one of these fellows!

Elemental Goodness!

So, once again we skip a whole month. So much for trying to keep up... But this time I think I have a pretty good foundation for a blog entry, which, as the header says, is Elementals.

I like elementals. They are sort of the force of nature personified, although for most RPG purposes, they are just conjured by some lame spellcaster, which makes them a lot less interesting. I like them as a manifestation of nature, that rises to fight back against some unnatural enemy...

I've kind of made this blog as a simple "how to build your own elemental".

_______________________________________


This is going to be an ice or snow elemental. The skeleton is made from some barbecue spears, glued together with PVA. I was careful not to make the pieces excactly the same length, as I wanted it to have weird, disproportionate look, as if it might be changing shape, as it went along.

I covered it in to layers a small gravel, to get a good, thick layer of sharp and pointy edges, to simulate ice shards. Now you can really see the shape of the creature.

 

At the same time, I found to old Grey Stuff bodies, I made. I think I was trying to make some golems, but gave up, which is good, since they came in so handy this time. I gave them a treatment of both small gravel, fine gravel and sand, starting by gluing on the biggest pieces first, then the medium ones and finishing of with the finist powder:

As you can see, I gave them a very rocky head, and this concen-tration of the larger gravel pieces goes down the back as well, and also on the hands. I did this to give them some kind of character, and to make them look not completely random; as if there is some kind of intelligence or at least meaning in their body structure.

 

 

Three types of gravel, all from a tennis court.

After attaching them to some bases, the painting began. The paint is mixed with both water and PVA glue, to make the gravel sit better on the skeleton.

 I actually started with just the regular paint, but a lot of the gravel fell off, and I had to re-attach it with superglue. But after a layer of PVA/water/paint, everything was solidly fixed and they can take quite a beating, without loosing anything. The Ice elemental was primed in white and the earth ones are painted with VMC Burnt Umber, which is always my go-to colour for earth.

The Ice Elemental was painted with a thick layer of The Army Painter Blue Tone Quickshade Ink, followed by overbrushing VMC Andrea Blue and then drybrushing on the Sky Blue and White. I didn't care about splashing paint onto the base, since most of that was going to be covered in snow anyway. as this was set to the side to dry completely, I turned my attention on the earthenware elementals.


Following the same method as the Ice Fellow, they were overbrushed with VMC Flat Earth, followed by drybrushing on Cork Bark and Buff. I concentrated on a zenital lighting effect, painting the lighter two tones only on the upwards facing areas on the figures.

After this, individual rocks were picked out with greyish colours, to give some variety and contrast to the browns, but still keeping them close to earthen colours. All of these were then highlighted again with Buff.

In the deepest recesses, right next to the feet, in the armpits and directly under the "chin" they were both given a wash of The Army Painter Military Shader, although that is kind of hard to see in the pictures.

Painting being done, I gave them a rest for about half an hour, to make sure the paint was completely dry, before commencing with the last, but perhaps most important step; flocking.

I have a large jar of home mixed flock, which is actually just a mix of three types of Static Grass, two types of sawdust flock and three types of regular flock. That was applied to various areas of the earth elementals and The Army Painter Snow was applied to the ice elemental.

Which brings us here:

I hope you enjoyed this simple walk-through and that you all will start making you own elementals, like these ones. I'm thinking about making a larger one, with tombstones and bone debris sticking out, but we will see, if I ever get there...
Be sure to comment and critique me in the comments!

Thanks for reading my ramblings and have a nice sunday!

Lets Talk About Bases!

So, it's time for a couple of bases!
I love making bases. It's really fun, to spatter various items around, with a lot of glue and just see what you can get out of it. I try to make my bases varied, both in height, type and general style, which gives me alot of possibilities for going creative. I like nature bases the most, but I do not frown upon some brickwork or the such...

Hare a couple of simple ones:

 These are 40mm round lipped bases. The two of them are made from pieces of cork bark and sand, while the third is just made from sand(brown part) and fine gravel(grey/green part). With a little care, you can get some really fine results from such simple means.


The next batch is 30mm bases, for a couple of wood elf dryads.

They are a bit more advanced than the rock bases above; build from pieces of copper cable, split, twisted and bend to resemble some skinny trees. The bottom end of the tree was bent at a right angle and glued onto the base and afterwards the sand was applied, so that there are two layers of glue holding the tree in place.


Notching up a step, these bases are both 30mm and 40mm.

 The Smaller one is just a standard base painted with P3 Coal Black and drybrushes i places with VMC Foam Green, covered in VMC crackle medium and finished off with some Army Painter modelling snow.
The other two are made by cutting out the bottom of the base, gluing a piece of blister pack underneath and filling the hole with water effect(I forget which brand I used) Lastly, a thick layer of VMC Crackle Medium was added and topped off again with tAP Modelling snow. THe one on the far left had some blue glaze applied, but that turned out badw, so I will not try that again...


Lastly we go indoors again:

 Back when Games Workshop made useful things, they did a Gothic Scenery pack, in which you could find this gargoyle nad pillar. The floor is just 0,7mm plastic card, fitted to the base in a regular pattern. Now I just hope that the miniature going on this base will not drown in the crass colours...



Enjoy! And I make a lot more bases than I have miniatures for, so if you need some homemade bases, throw me a message and I'll see what I can find...

Orcs Galore!

Here we go again!

Lat time I posted, I had just finished up a commisioned Skaven Standard Bearer. As he was drying, I had to fill a void, in which I painted two orc crossbowmen. Now, A while ago, I posted a picture of a whole bunch of ancient Citadel orcs, that I had bought from a guy in California. These are the first three of that bunch:

The two crossbowmen have very similar stances; so much so, that it is pretty obvious that one was sculpted and the differences between the two were just build on top of the original. 

On the more civilized looking fellow, I added a fur vest; before he was just bare chested. Combined with his' legs being painted as if wearing pants, the two minis all of a sudden becomes very different!
The vest is just a bunch of greenstuff, pitted and shaped with the tip of a retractable pencil. It's such a simple way to do conversion, yet it works so well! At least, I am quite happy with the result.
The other guy is more of a barbarian looking fellow, only clad in loincloth and footwear. He has a lot of character, I think, for such a simple mini and this is one of the reasons I so like these old guys.

Now, the crossbows are some plastic ones I found in the bits box. One of them (with the hooded orc) is from a Mordheim sprue, and the other one is a cut down version of a rather larger crossbow, that I'm not sure of how I got my hansds on. But it works, so who am I to complain!

The last guy in the top pic is a rather more burly fellow, with a quite brutal appearance, who I finished up a while ago. I enjoyed painting him a lot; The variety of clothing, the whole outlaw feel to the mini is just outstanding! He really looks as if he just stole all of his' equipment from a bunch of other people.

Those are the first three finished ones from the California lot, I received and here is a warning of what is to come. Off course, one of these is not an old guy, but he fits well, so he will be part of this group. I'm off course referring to the Diehard Miniatures Orc, on the front right.

 

Thanks for reading and keep on happy painting. I hope to write to you all agian soon...

Commisioning!

Okay, so my idea of publishing once a month went south really fast. At my new job, it seems that the busy periods are VERY busy and the quiet periods are very quiet, so it's alot of up-and-down, stress-wise. However, this means that I, all of a sudden, was working an average of 65 hours pr. week, for three weeks, which left very little time for painting and writing. But then I just have to adapt to that, in here as well, and maybe posting a few extras, when I actually do have the time...

Enough of that!

I took on a commision, some weeks back, from a local guy, who loves his Skaven. He just got his' dream job and celebrated that by buying an old Standard Bearer, that he had been wanting for some time and getting someone else to paint it, since he doesn't think too much of his' own painting abilities. 

I saw his' work and he definitely has the skill, but perhaps not the patience, for what he wanted with this one. But he gave it to me and gave me free reigns. So I took it and ran. Above you can see the original miniature. I chose to paint it as two parts, since the banner would be giving me some difficult angles and the fit was so close, that I could easily glue it on afterwards, without ruining anything.

After the first painting session, he looked like this:

I opted out of the NMM, that I initially started, since I wanted to do some black areas, which I tend to find hard. When having to paint both black and metal, I think it is too easy to just get the two areas jumbled together, and I thought that this one would look better with true metals. Besides that would fit better with the commisioners army.

After another session he was looking much better, although hardly finished:

Here you can see what I wanted to do with the blacks. I tried playing around a bit with varying greens; the armour, the skirt and the banner pole and I actually think it went quite well. You can easily see the difference in material, that I went for, and the monochromity that I feared for was held at bay. The skin is pretty much my standard way of doing caucasian skin tones, only with a bit of extra red and purple on the tail...

So after six weeks of waiting, the commisioner can finally pick it up. I am writing this, as I am waiting for him to come, so I didn't get his' reaction yet.
But here is a collage of the finished model, with banner, base and everything showing. I just hope my friend will like it(although he did see the WIP pictures, so I think he will):

 

Again, I'm sorry forthe delay in posting, but that's how it goes. I hope you enjoyed this fellow and I will try to get a few more posts up, in a short time, to compensate for the delay. I have an almost finished Cthulu temple, that just needs a touch-up, and some orcs that are very far in the working, so perhaps there will be an easter egg on monday, or so. But I'm not promising anything!

Have a nice springtime and feel free to comment and critisize!

Building a Temple!

So we are deeply into february and since I promised to try and make a post every month this year, here we go!

I have been to Florida with my wife(we live in Denmark, so that was quite a change of climate), for a vacation, before starting a new job, so I've had my plate full. That also resulted in my not really getting any hobby stuff done, before this morning, where I started building a bit.

First off: I think this will become one of those projects, that I work on a bit, then do something completely different, then come back to it. Then I will probably leave it for a year or so and then finish it off in two days, or such. That is how it often goes with my larger, a bit more ambitious projects.
So don't count on my finishing this anytime soon!

So, Here we have the ground plan:

 I did a drawing of it first, while planning everything, but I'm not gonna show you that before everything is finished. The board will be cut to fit the five walls, when all the initial building is done, but before I start painting.
 As you can see, it will be a five-sided chamber and one of the walls will be twice as thick as the others, due to the entryway, which will be a 2 inch wide gate...


And these are the different fundamentals for the room:

Five walls, cut from simple flamingo, bevelled roughly at the ends, to make placement easier; the floor plate, which will eventually be covered in flamingo too; and the sigil which will be the lid of a well, put at the opposite end to the entrance.

Here you can see the rough placement of the things. It might change when I get further, but you get the general idea.
 

As for the entrance, I have begun a bit of the construction.
I made an extra wall piece and cut an open doorway in both of them. Laying them together, I sanded the inner sides a bit, to make them match a bit better, not thinking about the fact, that it won't matter in the end, since I will put in a closed door. I cut out a thin(half a milimeter) slice of the area around the doorway, to make room for a piece of cardboard, that will be the foundation for the actual door.

So here we are now. Hopefully I will get back to you soon, either with more updates on this or with something completely new, perhaps the painting of this fellow, who I bought in Florida:

See you soon!

2017

Hell-o Everybody!
Once again, I have been forced to leave well alone and focus on everything but this blog. But now we have a new year and I would like to begin again, but perhaps set the bar a bit lower: Instead of trying to post every week, I will try to post once a month(at least). We will see how it goes.

So, 2016 is over and I must say, it has been a good year for my hobby: I have broken my PYFM for 2015 and as an addition I have made a ton of scenery. PYFM is short for Paint Your Fucking Models and it is simply the number of models you finish in a year. If it's a larger model, it can count two or three points, at your own discretion.
For 2014, I had a PYFM of 7, for 2015 I raised it to 11 and for 2016 I have an astonishing finishing rate of 19 models and twenty or so pieces of scratch build terrain, not including 6 smaller trees on decorative bases and a full gameboard(shown in earlier post).

Here is a picture of the last three minis I finished, the last of which saw the shelf in the beginning of december:

They are the first three soldiers of a band of tundra barbarians and they are, of course, from the awesome line of Rackham's Confrontation Miniatures.


And just to show the kind of terrain I make, here are pictures of the last three pieces I finished:

A Stonehengy thing-a-ma-jig:

A burial mound that has seen a bit too much of the rain. This is a bit large; the square room in the middle is four inches to a side, so the overall piece is maybe 8 inches wide and 12 inches long:

And finally a stone setting, that can be used both as a large obstacle and three lesser obstacles:

As you can see, they are rather detailed and I am really trying to make these as varied and interesting as possible, using a lot of different flock, static grass, foliage and shrubbery. I really enjoy building and painting these, but it takes a lot of time, which invariably takes time away form actual miniature painting. But what can you do...


That will be all for this time. I less than a week I'm off to visit Florida with my wife, and as soon as I get home, I am starting at a new job. After ten years at the same company, I am moving on to become the warehouse manager in a new company. The biggest plus to this change might be that I have two hours of transportation less, EVERY DAY, so maybe, just maybe, I will get some more time in the basement, from now on...

Happy new year, have a nice January and check in next month, for an update!