TFOG Slann colour scheme and my first sculpt

Trying to get some Slann painted for the Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers project is like wading through treacle! I'm really struggling with these little frogs. It's partly me being indecisive about a colour scheme, partly I'm finding it difficult to paint detail on the frog skin, and finally it's just a case of committing to a painting project and then finding I want to paint anything but that project!

So in the interests of trying to write at least one blog post per month on my progress, here's a side-by-side of two different colour schemes I'm contemplating:

"Traditional northern European" green vs "Amazonian tree frog" blue and orange. So what do you think? Any preference?

I've managed to get this blog post in on the very last day of the month. This is due in part to much of my hobby time this month being spent on a new pursuit - sculpting. I enjoyed converting my Odo figure last month so much I figured I would try to sculpt a complete figure, and here he is:

He's based on a painting that can be found on the rear cover of the Lost and the Damned Chaos book. I'm pretty pleased with him as a first sculpt, although I acknowledge of course that there's a lot of improvement needed! But the main thing is I really enjoyed doing this, and I hope to do a lot more next year.

I wish you all a happy, healthy and hobby-filled 2016!

Odo the Melange-addicted mutant space pirate

The Oldhammer Forum has been running a painting challenge organised by Jon Boyce (aka axiom) as part of their Oldhammer Legacy Warband theme. The premise is simple - contributors paint a themed model (this year's theme is "space pirates"), all contributors enter a draw and the winner gets to keep the entire warband. Due to the disparate nature of entries, a spot colour of turquoise has been chosen, and the eventual winner will do the basing, to tie the warband together.

My contribution was originally intended to be an "alien bounty hunter". I had the idea of converting an old Citadel Fiend Factory figure, but somewhere along the way I lost it! It was while I was looking for the figure that I hit upon a different idea after discovering the body of an old Citadel AD&D Umber Hulk and the head of an old Citadel C Series giant in my bits boxes. Odo was born:

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: giant spider painted

In my last post I assembled this brute and applied a small amount of greenstuff to mould the legs into a striking pose and fashion a pair of mandibles. I've now finished painting it:

I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, particularly given that when I started to paint it it felt like it was all going wrong. One of the things that's really helped to turn it around is a good bit of drybrushing.

I'll be basing it at some point of course, but I haven't settle on a base design yet so I'll leave this for the time being.

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: giant spider

When I revisited the Slann army list in the Warhammer 3rd edition Armies book prior to starting this project, I was pleasantly surprised to read that Slann animal handlers can take giant spiders. I'd been looking for an excuse to paint up one of these guys for a while, so this was the ideal opportunity. The figure I had in mind was this handsome chap:

I was keen to try to construct the figure in a bit more of an "attacking pose", which was slightly daunting given that I've never converted a figure before. So armed with greestuff, a fair amount of patience, and Google results of "tarantula attacking", I came up with this:

I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. The figure is unbalanced (hence the support in the images) but I will compensate for this when I base it.

I started painting it last night. So far I'm not massively happy with how it's turning out, but I hope I'm just going through the "it gets a bit crap before it gets better" stage of the painting process!

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: flogging a dead mojo

This month I bring you the gift of scantily-clad eunuchs, and I dedicate the post to my three fellow Oldhammerers Chico, James, and Paul. Simply because they are a great bunch of lads. Why, what do you think I meant?

So here we have them (the eunuchs that is):

From left to right we have: Nolg, Zolg, Lolg, Dolg, Folg, Molg, Tolg, Solg, Holg, and Clarence.

I heavily borrowed the painting scheme for these guys that can be seen in an advert from White Dwarf 96:

I used Foundry paints and I particularly like their Sky Blue triad, which you can see on the warpaint and shields, and goes on like a dream. It's going to be the spot colour for my army.

I need to tidy up the bases but every time I enter a painting challenge my painting mojo just shrivels up and dies!

I'm also a few points short this month. According to da roolz these guys come in at just 45 points. Ah well, Paul's excess points on his wraith rider this month restores the balance!

Happy Halloween from Wargames Foundry!

The sculpting genius that is Kev Adams has turned an inspirational piece of design by Maria Ansell into this little "beauty" in time for Halloween:

This fantastic chap – dubbed Ozzy the Bateater – will be sent out FREE with online orders placed with the Wargames Foundry, Warmonger Miniatures and Casting Room Miniatures websites for the rest of October. Foundry request that you put a note in the comments box when you place your order to let them know that you would like him included.

They will also be giving him away free to any visitors to their shop in the village of East Stoke until Saturday 31st October. They are open 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 4pm on Saturdays. There's free tea and coffee as well!

Ozzy is also available free with orders placed via the Casting Room Miniatures website. If you haven’t had a chance to look at this site yet it’s well worth it – there’s a lot of figures on there that can be used in an Oldhammer setting.

Unreleased female Space Marine (1993): the Bryan Ansell collection

During the time I've spent trawling through Bryan Ansell's collection of Citadel Miniatures castings, looking for unusual and unreleased figures, I've uncovered a few gems. The feature of today's post is certainly one of them!

From 1993 I present to you an unreleased female Space Marine: