Sing To The Gods

The Dark Master calls! The Winds of Chaos blow strong! The Cult of the Possessed has arrived with the completion of the Magistrix:

The strange fleshy creature on the stave was originally going to be blue

A very regency-era silhouette here with the enormous bum

Not hugely pleased with the horn, but it works at a distance and she is, most importantly, complete

I really like the graven demonic faces on her pauldrons

Tomorrow I'm going to pivot back to the 41st Millenium and do some Angels of Redemption Dreadnoughts for my Deathwing army. But for now, I'm celebrating the completion of the Cult of the Possessed!

The completed cult, at least until I get some Beastmen

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 6
2025: 164

Blessed And Possessed

As Powerwolf sing. Today I finished the Mutants and I also cracked on with the Possessed and finished those too! Excellent stuff. Back on track? I hope so; I've rather missed painting actually. Anyway you're not here for the rambling, have some photos of the Blessed:

L-R: Mutant with tentacle blackblood, axe, and sword; Mutant with great claw and axe; Mutant with tentacle, hideous, and sword

I really enjoyed painting the eyes on the Hideous Mutant, even though I'm not sure he'll see the field. He wields a sword taken from the old Empire State Troops kit that came out in the late 1990s

The Warhammer weapons really seamlessly go with the 40K minis; it's almost like they were made to be turned into fantasy cultists

The fleshy tube underneath the middle mutant's left arm is actually originally some kind of future-gubbins, but painted up properly it looks like a herniated organ of some sort

And the Possessed:

L-R: Possessed with daemon soul and tentacles; Possessed with daemon soul and great claw

I had no choice but to paint the tentacles like some kind of octopus is forcing its way out of her

The other poor sod with the hideous raw bloody clawing monstrosity emerging from him is much more "classically" possessed

I dunno about you but I wouldn't want to meet either of these two in a dark alleyway

And with that the Cult of the Possessed is nearly done - just the Magistrix to do now. I'd like to add some Beastmen at some point but I don't have any suitable minis that I can think of at the moment, so they'll have to wait until my purchasing moratorium has ended.

Painting Points:
Today: 5
This Week: 5
2025: 163

 

Where Did I Go

Hail and well met, fellow perusers of miniature figure blogs, etc etc. Apologies for the 11 day absence - a variety of things happened, such as "not painting anything", going to Gritlands 4 LARP as crew (I got to be a hologram King Arthur!), and contracting norovirus which led to a very unpleasant couple of days. Anyway I finally sat down and did the tiniest bit of painting today, which has got my Cult of the Possessed Mutants to this point:

Which is to say about half done or thereabouts. I have to sort out the black areas, do the wood and leather, highlight the skin and do details like hair, horns, and hideous mutations as well as, of course, touching up any mistakes.

I'd like to say I can probably get these done tomorrow, and while I almost certainly could the question remains if I will actually spend the time painting that I need to. We'll see.

Brethren Assemble!

I finally did it. I finished off the last Brethren - the group with swords and daggers and the group with bows and clubs. That just leaves the Magistrix, the Possessed, and the Mutants. I'll probably try and get the Mutants done next, but that's for tomorrow. For now, have some photos:

The skintones look quite nice, if possibly a little too healthy. Ah well, must be the blessings of the Dark Powers

The hand swaps and arm swaps are almost unnoticable - you wouldn't necessarily know these have been converted which is always a good thing I think

The red and yellow cloth on the woman on the right could probably have done with a bit of green stuff or something to join the two parts, but it just looks like a ragged bit of banner so it turned out ok in the end

The reason for the amputated hands and the red cloth is, of course, to cover up areas where the original mini had holes or gaps left over after removal of the grenade launcher

For some reason the models I decided to use for the archers are the most scarred and injured!

I didn't actually mean to make the side plate on the centre archer have gold trim; none of the others do

If you can't hit them with an arrow, hit them with a club

The purple and black is really striking! I tried to make the hair colours different, so there's a redhead and a brunette in this trio

 It feels good to have finally finished some minis again. I'm quite busy this month so I'm hoping to get more done than February but it's unlikely I'll hit the heights of January until April. My aim is to get at least the Mutants done this week.

Painting Points:
Today: 6
This Week: 6
2025: 158

 

Are They Indeed Accursed?

They should have been done today, really, but I started painting too late in the day and had other things to do which meant that now the Brethren are really almost very nearly done. I "just" need to do the gold, some minor detailing, and some touch-ups and they'll be there. Tomorrow - I swear by the eight sacred paths!

They'll be nice when they're done, but in the meantime they aren't half annoying now.

March-ing On

 See what I did there? I've been slowly geeing myself back up over the last couple of days, and today I actually sat down and did some painting. Not a lot, but it's a (re)start. I did the first highlight to the skin of the six remaining Brethren, gave the base edges a coat of XV-88 - mainly just so I could say I'd lifted a paintbrush - and filled in the empty slotta gaps with blu-tac.

I'd like to be able to say I could get these done tomorrow - I mean, I could, but I'm not likely to. We'll see.

Henchmen Available For Hire In Your Area

I ground on a bit further with the Brethren, doing the washes and basecoat on the leather sections as well as highlighting the black areas on the two remaining groups - the swords and daggers lot as well as the bows and clubs gang:

Tomorrow I'm going to hopefully finish them - I need to highlight the skin, leather, and cloth wraps, and then do the details and touch up the metal areas. Oh, and base. I think I need a new pot of XV-88 (which I still think of as Snakebite Leather). Ideally I'll be onto the Mutants and Possessed by the weekend.

Walking The Mean Streets Of Mordheim

Today I spent a little time finishing off the first Brethren group. These three are armed with shields and clubs to start with, and the models also have helmets and light armour should that ever become available. I'm particularly pleased with the way the shields came out - transfers from the Chaos Knight kit turned out to be perfect quite honestly.

Because these are all 40K figures originally, the hand that most easily took a shield turned out to be the one that used to have a pistol - so this group are all left-handers!

The purple looks really nice and silken, which is interesting

The simple colour scheme really makes them feel like a cohesive group despite the different clothes

The chap in the middle seems to be developing some kind of stomach-mouth, poor fellow

I'm glad to have finished these figures after over a week of no progress on the Pile of Opportunity. Next up are the Brethren with swords and daggers.

Painting Points:
Today: 3
This Week: 3
2025: 152

Oops

 Well, I haven't done any painting at all for a few days - the most extended break all year so far - but today I decided to get back into it, and so I did.

 

They're not quite finished, but they will be soon. I just need to highlight the gold, touch up the metals, and add some decals to the shields (or some freehand designs, I'm not sure which yet). An easy hour or so's work tomorrow will get this little henchperson group done, and then I can move onto the sword and dagger trio.

I'm quite pleased with the way the horns have turned out; though they do need a bit more work the basic finish is there.

Progress!

Today I focussed on just the two Darksouls in the Cult of the Possessed warband - the two heavily robed chaps with big double-handed swords - and got them done. I also did a little work on the Brethren with shields and clubs, and they're probably about half done. Some more painting tomorrow should see them done too.

 The purple turned out really nicely, and I think I might leave out the idea of white as an accent on the black robes - I think the black and purple scheme is nice all by itself. We'll see - I might go back in and add some white chequers or something later.

Anyway, I'm pleased I got these fellows done and it makes me feel a little better now that I've got some more of the Pile of Opportunity done.

Painting Points:
Today: 2
This Week: 2
2025: 149

The Slowdown Is Official

Despite enjoying the process of painting these cultists, I'm finding it slow going. I think the frenetic pace of December and January has sort of fried my painting desire for a bit, so I'm going to take it slow and steady for a while. In that vein, I did almost all the skin on almost all the warband, so what I'll probably do from tomorrow is focus on a group at a time - the Darksouls, then the shield-equipped Brethren, and so on.

The slower pace should, I hope, mean I at least finish a couple of these minis this week.

Donning The Purple

It may have been an indicator of power and imperial privilege, but in the cursed city of Mordheim it's worn by all sorts - from Ostermarker soldiery to members of the Cult of the Sixfold Path:

 Today I highlighted the purple to completion - the recipe's quite simple: Genestealer Purple, wash with Magos Purple Contrast, highlight with Genestealer Purple and then Kakophoni Purple. After I did that I went in and based a chunk of the wrappings some of them wear on their ankles and wrists (or even around the hafts of some of the weapons) with Steel Legion Drab, based the wood with XV-88, and then started the process of painting the skin with Kislev Flesh. All these areas - wrappings, wood, and flesh - as well as some other sections will get a wash of Agrax Earthshade or similar followed by a couple of highlights. After that I'll go in and do the leather sections, touch up the black areas, and then focus on detailing with golds, creams, white, and the like. I hope to get these figures done at some point in the next few days, but some of them - particularly the Mutants and Possessed - might take a bit longer due to their skin needing some different work.

Return To The Cursed City

Today I painted the names onto the unit champions in the Daughters of Khaine army, and put them into "storage" (a drawer in a cabinet). I really want to put them on display but I just don't have the shelf space for it in my Detolfs!

The army - three Regiments and the Endless Spells. It comes to something in the region of 1,500 points

I'm really pleased with the end result and think that the final overall effect is very striking. The red hair and silver armour ties them all together while the varied snake morphs give the units individuality too. 

Having done that, I turned to my Pile of Opportunity and had a rummage. Quite quickly I settled on painting up the Chaos Cult that I built a while ago for Mordheim. These are made from the 40K Chaos Cultists with a ton of bits from my Warhammer bits boxes - mostly parts from the Free Company / Mordheim Mercenaries sprues with some spare shields and other random parts to turn them into fantasy cultists rather than science fantasy cultists. I want to hint at the cult leaning towards Slaanesh more in their worship so have opted for a black and purple scheme with white detailing on the clothes. To that end I have done all the main metalwork and the base coat and wash for the purple elements:

 I really like these minis and have a bunch of them for my Iron Warriors army as well. The whole warband here consists of:

Magister
2 Possessed
3 Mutants (I only need two but I had three minis, so... options!)
2 Darksouls
3 Cultists with shields and clubs
3 Cultists with swords and daggers
3 Cultists with bows and clubs

I could - and probably should - look to add a couple of Beastmen, but for those I really want some of the Mordheim Beastmen that were released for the Empire In Flames supplement back in the early 2000s. So that'll be something for the future!