Call Forth The Honoured Dead!

After a couple of days of light painting (blog updates scuppered by technical issues), I have completed the Ork Lobba and started the process of changing the red on the chaos cultists' clothes to yellow. I also did some of the other bits on the cultists. That was Wednesday's work, anyway, and Thursday saw P and I go to the little Empire Cinema in Caergybi to watch Wicked For Good which was a decent film, but didn't quite stick the landing.
 

A very unassuming little artillery piece, but it was fun to do and nice and simple as well

 

Not the best of photos, but you can see the yellow on the cultists at the back, and if you look at the wrists on some of them you can see the cloth wraps have been blocked out

 

Tomorrow I have my first game of Warhammer Fantasy: The Old World arranged, with a chap called N at the university of Bangor's wargames club. Some of you may remember my Tomb Kings army which, it turns out, is pretty much spot on 2,000 points even without magic items. I'm going to take it over to Bangor tomorrow morning and watch it get stamped into bone dust by Chaos Warriors, but I'll have fun and maybe even remember some of the rules (I won't)!

On the Tomb King front, I also still have the bone dragon from the starter set that I picked up when The Old World was released, and although I can't find the base for it at the moment (no idea where it's gone) I did put it together and kitbash a Tomb King to sit on top of it from parts of the Tomb King, High Priest, and a piece off a random Vampire Counts sprue I had floating around in my bits box:

Not the best photo, but you can see the Tomb King sitting on his saddle and the sheer size of the dragon's skeletal form

I envisage this particular mummified corpse-regent to be the consort of the Queen of the Red City, who goes off and performs various heroic acts to gain her favour while she stands with her Scarab Guard in the centre of the army. He needs a sensible name, but the dragon will probably end up called something like "Biscuit" but in ancient Egyptian. That's "𓇋𓀁𓅡𓏤𓈙𓏏𓅱𓈀" ("jbšt") or "𓊪𓅮𓄿𓈎𓆁𓈀" ("p3q")if you're interested. Anyway, once I find (or get) a base for Biscuit and his rider, I'll get them and the Casket of Souls painted up.

Painting Points: Today: 0 This Week: 1 2025: 499

The Dark Powers Call Once Again

I have a small selection of stuff inside the house that's in the painting queue, and having finished the Firestarters and the grots the other day I had to have a think about what I felt like picking up today. In the end I decided to get moving on the Chaos Undivided cultists for my Iron Warriors force. Made up of the quite recent GW Chaos Cultist models (which are, I think, inspired by the late 1990s metal cultists sculpted by Paul Muller which were only for sale for a very short period of time), this group of 20 has a leader, a flamer, and a heavy stubber. It basically has two units within itself - a group of 10 with close quarters weapons, and a group of 10 with longer ranged weapons - enabling it to either sit on an objective or move up and get slaughtered by the opponent so that the actual Iron Warriors can do something more useful.

They may look like not much has been done, but there's four colours on those models at the moment!

Colour wise, tonight I just added the brown for their leather - belts, straps, and boots - and tomorrow if I have time (P and I are going to the cinema) I'll do some work on their various cloth wraps and pick out any other metalwork that's been missed previously. I'm not completely sold on the red and black colours, as it seems a bit Khornate rather than Undivided. I might swap the red for another colour - grey perhaps, or maybe yellow. I should quite quickly be at the point where I can slap a wash over them and move towards completion, but I'm torn between an overall Agrax wash or a mix of Agrax on the fabrics and Nuln Oil on the metalwork. 

Oh, and I also popped a Nuln Oil wash on the Ork Lobba that I have kicking around which can stand in for a Kannon in a pinch, theoretically giving me four Kannons (or two Kannons and two Lobbas, if I use the Kannon without a gunshield as a Lobba...) for the Ork Waagh. Again, that should be dry enough tomorrow for me to finish off with a Leadbelcher drybrush and some black, white, and red detailing. 

I was meant to have a game of Necromunda tonight at the inaugural meeting of the LUNAR* Club, but alas, I didn't feel well enough to go, so a quiet night in was had instead. I still have the Old World game at the weekend and next week I'll definitely be off to LUNAR on Tuesday, if I can find someone to have a game with.

* Llangefni United Nerds And Roleplayers **

** I'm the only one who calls it that... so far.  

The Arsonists

For my own little Battletech mercenary company, MacLeod's Light Horse, I gave each lance a name. So for example the 3rd (Striker) Lance of the First (Heavy) Battlemech Company is called the Stormbringers. It only seemed right to name the 3rd Lance of the Third (Light) Battlemech Company, comprised entirely of Firestarter FS9-S variants The Arsonists. It helps that the callsigns for the pilots are also fire related:

Still trying to figure out the colour balance for the photos, but this is better than the unedited image

L-R: FS9-S or -S2, FS9-S1 or -S3, FS9-S or -S2; FS9-S1 or -S3 (depending on time period)

Jump jets are big, clever, and funny

I did want to do some more freehand on the mechs but I couldn't find any good places for teeth or eyes

As well as finishing the Firestarter lance, I also finished the Gretchin, and dug out the rest of my Ork army's grots. Or most of them, at least. I miscounted, or misremembered, how many grots I actually had, and I think I'm still one short of a full group of 30. But I do now have a full battery of three Kannons:

Four grot krew, and a kannon - nothing special, but great sculpts full of character

The kannon itself has a lot of detail on it which works really well with drybrushing

Da Big Gunz - three kannons and krew. I actually had another grot that works for krew, so there's three grots per kannon, which should help keep them firing a little longer

 
Quite a productive day, really. I also dug out my Necromunda stuff, because I have a game booked for this coming Tuesday at the Llangefni wargames club's inaugural club night - Enforcers versus my Redemptionists! That should be interesting - I have a lot of stuff to set people on fire with, and a little bit of ranged punch, but the Enforcers have a lot of gucci kit... like armour. Still, faith in the divine Emperor will see me through I'm sure.

Painting Points:
Today: 9
This Week: 9
2025: 498

Green, Green, Nothing But Green

Well, not quite. A fair bit of brown, and some gunmetal, and a bit of a sort of canvas or cream, too, but the title was too good to pass up. P has gone to Birmingham to see friends and play D&D, and T was supposed to be visiting this weekend but a signal failure at Stafford last night sank that plan sadly. So today I did a lot of various things around the house and then sat down after dinner to do some painting. 

It might not be only green, but it is quite a lot of green

The first thing I did was drybrush the Firestarters with Waaagh Flesh, before giving them all an overall wash of Biel-Tan Green. I think (I think) that the next step is another drybrush of Waagh Flesh and then a lighter drybrush of Loren Forest, but we'll see. While the Biel-Tan Green was drying, I got out the Gretchin gun crews and the two grots who, when done, will bring my battery of Big Gunz up to three Kannons and my mob of grots up to 30 grots. 31 if you include the Special Forces Grot from the new Kommandos box GW put out for Kill Team.

The grots are great - Brian Nelson sculpts, I think - and they ooze character. I particularly like the grot covering its ears while the other one yells at it. Their kannon is somewhere in one of the boxes of minis in the garage, unless I'm misremembering and they in fact came with a lobba. I'll have to check the picture from the sales post I bought them from.

I'm going to try and get the Firestarters and the grots all done tomorrow. There isn't really a great deal left to do on either, really, so once the washes (Biel-Tan and Agrax Earthshade) dry I should be able to get all of them sorted without too much issue.