The Tribe Grows...

"Boss! Boss! You gotta come see this!" shouted Zograt. The Big Boss was always wary of disturbing Skarnak for fear of being fed to the tribe's squig herd, but he felt he had good enough reason to keep the Warboss happy this time.


"Eugh, what is it Zograt? This 'ad better be good," bellowed Skarnak as he emerged from his tent at the centre of the tribe's camp to all sorts of bickering and commotion from the goblins trying to get a look at the newcomers. Skarnak shoved his subordinates aside as he moved to the edge of the camp where he spied the first of the new arrivals; a small band of Night Goblins from a rival tribe.


"We'z 'eard the Spleenstabbas iz the strongest tribe in the Black Mountains and we wanna fight with the best!" shouted one of the goblins. Skarnak resisted the urge to gut the goblin for speaking out of turn. Like all good goblin leaders, Skarnak was cunning. He knew he needed numbers if he was to terrorise the Old World in an all-consuming Waaagh!. Besides, if these new additions proved to be less than useful, they can always keep the squigs well fed.


Skarnak's keen hearing alerted him to movement in the forest. Turning his gaze toward the tree line, he was greeted by hundreds of eyes shining in the darkness. As the other goblins noticed, they frantically ran to grab spears and all manner of sharp objects to meet this new threat. Suddenly the many eyes within the forest started to move forward with unnerving speed, revealing a horde of spiders from deep within the forest. Luckily for the tribe, these spiders were being ridden by Forest Goblins, with the sole purpose of joining the growing Waaagh! Skarnak was not about to turn them down, the inclusion of Forest Goblins paving the way to include all manner of beasts in his forces.


The Warboss retreated toward his tent, a wicked grin forming as he strolled past the ramshackle artillery that his tribe had built. Two Spear Chukkas had been finished along with Skarnak's favourite creation, a Doom Diver Catapult. He was certain he could find plenty of volunteers to test it out. Just as he pulled the cover of his tent aside, the din of the camp was interrupted by an almighty crash. He turned around to witness the carnage occurring and let out a laugh. 


"Looks like the boyz had a good hunt!" he shouted to Zograt, who was more concerned with trying to keep the camp in one piece. A group of goblins had been sent into the nearby caves to find more squigs for the army more than two weeks ago. These hunts are often less than successful and not many make it back. This was clearly not the case in this instance as a handful of goblins were dragged into the camp, holding onto massive chains for dear life as two massive Mangler Squigs burst from the tree line. It took almost the entire camp to lure them into their holding cages, and a lot of food to get them to calm down enough to not break their way out.


Skarnak turned back to his tent, content that his tribe could only grow bigger as stories of their victories travelled to other tribes. Little did he know that his growing infamy could be his undoing...




So with my first 500 points coming along nicely (ok slowly, but there's just under 2 months to go) I've decided to plan ahead for my 1000 point army. As the story above indicates, I've decided to add a few heavy hitters to my Goblin force. I'm not going to add anything Orc-related until the next threshold to keep the theme and story behind the army going. So without further ado, here is the planned list for 1000 points!

Warboss Skarnak - 55
Shield - 3
Great Cave Squig - 40

Big Boss Zograt - 35
Battle Standard Bearer - 25

Zorg, Night Goblin Shaman - 50

50 Night Goblins - 150
Full Command - 30
3 Fanatics - 75

15 Forest Goblin Spider Riders - 195
Full Command - 30

8 Squig Hoppers - 96

2 Spear Chukkas - 70

Doom Diver Catapult - 80

Mangler Squigs - 65

Total: 999

Hopefully the extra Night Goblins should bolster my already established unit (getting them closer to a unit of 100 *maniacal laughter*) and the Spider Riders should provide some much needed flank support for charges or taking out annoying war machines. The Spear Chukkas are cheap & unreliable but potentially lethal and the Doom Diver is just far too fun not to take! As for the Mangler Squigs, they'll be doing what they do best: crushing anything in their path!

Our First Guest Poster: Rosco!

Lady (you know which one you are) and Gentlemen. I present to you the work of a good friend of mine from ages past, currently residing in the misty swamp of the west country: Mr Rosco Packman!
Dude is an immaculate painter and premier modeller/converter/scratch builder. He has given me a selection of pictures of his current projects, which should hopefully stimulate and inspire some creativity and ideas.


I think I speak for all of us when I say, Ross mate you need to give us your terrain pieces! :P


WARNING: THIS IS A LONG POST WITH LOTS OF PICTURES!!


Ross:
WIP Scratch-built watchtower - Built using scavenged snack tubes, cardboard and plasticard, as well as textured plasticard, leaf flock and resin doors from Antenociti's Workshop (www.antenocitisworkshop.com). GW parts used include various elements from the Watchtower kit, Dreadstone Blight, the Vampire Counts zombie sprue and old Empire state troops kit.
Detachable base and some other detailing still to come, hence why the ivy doesn't reach the ground yet.

 
WIP GW Watchtower and completed stone walls - Basecoated using Humbrol 'Sea Grey' spray acrylic, Highlights achieved through progressive drybrushing using GW Fortress Grey and Bleached Bone, before a liberal drowning with GW Devlan Mud. Pre-varnish detailing on walls involved GW Scorched Grass static and Woodland Scenics 'Light Green Bushes' clump foliage.

 
Chaos Warhounds - The only completed-to-tabletop-standard unit actually finished for my Chaos mortals army. My aim here was to create two cohesive units from the various generations of Chaos Warhound miniatures available. Included here are the current, ever-so-slightly dreadful plastics, the previous white metal incarnations, a fairly old scorpion-tailed hound from 4th/5th Ed. WFB, and the 1995 version of the Scyla Anfingrimm miniature (I stole the idea of including this critter as a hound-proxy after seeing it used as such in an issue of WD in the mid-200s). 
In terms of the colour-scheme for these hellhounds, I was looking for a quick, cohesive and naturalistic look, with spot colours provided courtesy of the brighter tones used for the numerous mutations and gribbly bits. As with many other painters I'm sure, Devlan Mud wash holds a special place close to my heart as a foolproof way of supplying natural shading to most colours, and it was no different here. 
A number of minor conversions are present on the plastics, predominantly stemming from the fact that the models are not great. 
While I'm aware the capricious Dark Gods are capable of moulding the living flesh of their servants as they see fit, I think that horns or secondary mouths coming out of hound's ear canals look dumb, so I took steps to either reposition or remove any appendages that might disrupt their hearing


Ross Packman

Boing boing boing...

Following the appearance of a fungus horde in a rival tribe, Skarnak's Goblins reckoned they could go one better. Squigs are ferocious beasts at the best of times, so what better way to the make them more irate and dangerous than by clambering aboard one and holding on for dear life?


So after finishing 5 normal Night Goblins, I entertained myself with something a little different in my force by doing a tester for one of my Squig Hoppers. The highlighting on the Goblin isn't quite finished but I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out.

The squig looks to be having lots of fun!

The same can't be said for the rider...

I'm quite happy with how the red has turned out on the squig. It's nice and bright on the raised areas with plenty of definition in the muscles. Now I just need to replicate that through a whole unit but before that there are more Night Goblins to paint!

Fungus Amongus!

Aside from the fanatics, squigs are possibly my best models that only have 1 wound in the orc and goblin army. What is essentially a ball of fungus stuck on some legs, with a head full of teeth and unpredictable movement. Not only is their weapon skill far superior to a lowly goblin (4 as opposed to 2); they have a strength of 5 (-2 to armour saves, nearly always wounding on 2’s or 3’s) and 2 attacks standard. Plus, when they go mad they cause D6 strength 5 hits on nearby units and for every 5 squigs remaining, add plus 1 to that. 8 points a model for something that’s an erratic killing machine. Of course, under my command, they wouldn’t probably attack my own unit, then flee through another unit and be destroyed.

I don’t nearly have enough of these dudes – think at a rough count it was 18 or 20 (mix of old, new and really old Gorkamorka ones that have Mohawks which Brett gave me). I think a massive unit of 50 would be good. Might have to work on a unit filler or something.

They’re also great fun to paint – why have cotton when you can paint them really stupid colours? Here are the newest additions. Note the big 'un and the little guy are from this set. I don't even know what this is but it's funny. Might use the goblin as a hero or something. Will probably do an army list or something soon. 

BOUNCE POGO POGO POGO POGO

Freedom!

Well, sort of.

Yesterday was the final day of the hobby challenge I've been taking part in down at the Oxford Games Workshop. It was good fun, with some great games played and it's really got my interest in Fantasy going again. Unfortunately I didn't quite finish painting the Ogres but to be honest it didn't matter all that much. However I have very much enjoyed painting and using them in games, so will undoubtedly add to the army as time goes by. This won't impact on my Orcs & Goblins as I'll be painting the Ogres on a 'one box at a time' basis. If anything, it should give me a break now and then from painting green. So much green! Plus it gives me a chance to use my Slaughtermaster again!

Not sure he's a messy enough eater...

So while some of the Ogres will be painted here and there, for now it's back to my goblins! My painting strategy for these guys is pretty simple. Paint 5 standard Night Goblins and then do something a bit more fun, like a character or a couple of Squig Hoppers. This is the progress on the first 5 so far:

The two on the left are done for the most part, although a bit of extra highlighting might be done at some point. Hopefully I'll get these 5 done early this week and then I can move on to a character. I've already started a bit of progress on my Battle Standard Bearer. His banner isn't overly impressive (at least not by Orc standards) but it'll do the job until his banner inevitably gets dwarfed by the one I have for my Orcs and his gets assimilated into a unit of Night Goblins. Until then, he will hold his banner high and proud before running away at the first sign of trouble in true Goblin fashion!

Drawing inspiration from Fed's (Kenti) story of his army, I will also attempt a brief story about my own at some point. How impressive it'll be I don't know, but it'll still be fun to write a story in Goblin speak!

In the Midnight Hour.

So, spurred on by last weeks productive Thursday paint session i headed over to Bedfordshire to Marc's gaff under the premise of a weekend of gaming and painting. What actually happened was a whole load of painting and not much gaming. I continued raiding my bits box for inspiration for my converted Maneater squad after having accepted the fact that £23 for one 'official' Maneater model was just beyond the realms of affordability considering I anticipated having 6 of the buggers. 

The new plan also afforded me the chance to mess with new skin tones and some stupid/mental equipment for my Maneaters. After all, these guys are supposed to have wandered the world over and experienced cultures far and beyond the Mountains of Mourn and so a deviation from my usual army colour scheme was called for. I also experimented with some tattoos which given how they came out I will definitely start to spread to the rest of the army.

Without further ado I present Papa Midnight and his 2 cohorts. (The musician, standard bearer and extra Maneater are coming soon)

Voodoo master Papa Midnight with his magic 8 ball and beat stick. Don't forget his trusty makeshift gutplate Petey either. (Check the greenstuff intestines underneath him, dead chuffed with how that turned out)

I intend to deck the squad out with Ogre pistols but this guy appears to have taken an upgrade along the way! (Still counts as a pistol)

This guy was the loose end of the squad and i just ended up giving him all the plate-y armour i had, and  two 2 handed weapons. Kinda went for a gladiator look. 

Again, shading isn't my strong point so i generally just don't do it. If i can get away with drybrushing for something that doesn't look 'too' bad then i call that a win :p Blocky cell shading ftw!

Hey look, MORE brown!

So I've been slacking of late, what with a mega busy week last week, which has meant I've done very little in the way painting and nothing in the way of blogging, However I aim to make some amends today!

Firstly for those who didn't know Me, Oly, Deke and the mysterious new kid, known only as 'Luke', got together for a support group style painting session/excuse for pizza. This was really good with a lot of painting progress made and lots of learnding done (especially by Luke, who I'm hoping wasn't to overwhelmed by the wall of info that was thrown at him :-S). Seems like this is a good format, as it gets people to actually set aside time to get some painting done and helps the speed up the process as we share tips and hints etc, so we may be looking to do something like this semi regularly, depending on other peoples interest of course.

Any way back to the Skaven....

My painting exploits at this painting session are shown below:

As you can see I'm still in the basecoat/first highlight phase, so hopefully they won't be looking too bad when  they are done. I also need to work out how to highlight brass with silver effectively to give a decent weathered looks :S

As for my army itself I think I finally have a 500 point list ready:

Vektal Cheiftain w/ Great Weapon = 50

30 clanrats - w/ Spear and Shields and Ful Command =170

12 Skaven Slaves = 24 points

2 Rat Ogres w/ Packmaster = 88

20 Plague Monks w/ Full Command = 165

TOTAL = 497

Hopefully this should provide me with enough variety of troop types to make games interesting while at the same time giving some durability in terms of numbers. The only thing that concerns me is the lack of any magic or ranged support. I may have to swap out the Rat Ogres for a plague priest, but I will definitely give this list a go first before changing it.

Well that should be all from me for now.

Laters

-Rion

My First Painted Skeleton :)

It has officially begun! I am now in the wonderful world of Warhammer, I have brought glue and everything no backing out now!

Any who here is the little happy chappy still needs a touch up here and there but its coming along.

Luke M

Make it stop!

Tonight I get to paint Goblins! This is actually pretty exciting for me as the past few days have been spent slaving over a battalion of Ogres that I have to get painted by February 7th. Sucker for punishment obviously! So while the following pictures aren't of greenskins, they do show my painting effort of late. They're not finished but oh well!

First up is the standard bearer! For this challenge, any magic items must be represented on the model, but can only be made from parts contained in the battalion. Fun times! So I decided to carve the scales in for the Dragonhide Banner and highlight the scales to give a stylised 3D appearance. WIP so far!

This guy is quite the looker! He's my converted Slaughtermaster! The apron was made from a spare banner so as to represent a Slaughtermaster while still using parts from the box, and he's holding out a Hellheart (one of the Ogre magic items) which was made from a spare Ogre arm! For aesthetics, I then used green stuff to make a chef hat and also gave him a slightly more rotund appearance by adding some extra large cheeks and a huge double chin. He looks pretty vile!

So hopefully tonight I'll get some pictures of greenskins up after the painting session! Looking forward to getting a pretty huge portion of Goblins done! (I'll probably finish 2 max *sigh*)