Warhammer at the weekend

On Sunday my good friend Matt came over for a game of Warhammer. I've given up trying to beat him as every time I've played against him I've lost. He is a much more experienced general than me.
With this in mind I chose an army list that I wanted to get the models out for rather than something competitive. I chose 1596pts of Chaos Dwarfs with 904 points from the old Warriors of chaos list.
there was a big Troll unit with Throgg at the helm two death shrieker rockets, a hell cannon and K'daai fireborn.
We tried to play a more interesting battle with a unit of bretonian bowmen defending a watchtower with an artefact in it. The Chaos Dwarfs wanted to take the item and the Dwarfs were sworn to destroy it. The luckless bowmen were stuck in the village gate house with two armies looming down on them.

Set up

Repairing a Gyrocopter

Infernal Guard chasing a fleeing Gyrocopter

Checking LoS from a badly positioned Deathshrieker rocket launcher. This is a great use for a camera. I was able to get right down onto the table and we could agree without bias whether anything was visible. 

Dwarfs declare a flank charge on Infernal Guard. Infernal Guard get steamrollered

Trolls in turn charge into the dwarfs and vomit all over them. Dwarfs drown in puke.

Dwarfs chop down the giant

K'daai rout the bowmen from the building causing them to flee between dwarf command and the Infernal Guard. The dwarfs trample the bowmen then charge into the Infernal Guard without pausing to wipe their feet.

The dwarfs fail two charges against the deathshrieker before turn 6 rolls around

The Trolls pursued by the Gyrocopter fail to reach the remaining stone thrower before turn 6.

Great things I have learned from this battle.

1. Take bigger units
2. Don't worry about winning 
3. Use a camera for LoS, it works really well!
4. A 6'x4' board fits really well on a double bed and makes a great surface for a battle.

New old lead- Chaos dwarf big hats

I went over to see my friend James yesterday, we haven't seen him for ages and the last time we went over to his house was four years ago and my son gave him chicken pox.

At Salute 2012 James picked me up some of the '92 Big Hat chaos dwarfs with blunderbuss which he gave me yesterday. I've got 10 in total with 3 different designs. I plan to make some molds from them to make a few more figures to get a big unit. I'm really pleased with them. check out James' blog here

Reaper Bones

Having some spare funds sat in my pay-pal account I decided to treat myself to some of the Reaper Bones range from Tim at 

Miniature Heroes. 

I must say that I am really pleased with them. For £10.35 I got 6 miniatures. 

The cave troll I have had my eye on since it was released. I thought it would make a good base for a unit of trolls to add to a Throgg list. It matches the Bfsp troll hight wise quite well once it is mounted on a 40mm base

The Ogre cheiftan is a nice model with plenty of detail. It has been well moulded with an interesting design adaptation for the bones line. It uses a 3 part mould to get the depth of sculpt available from a 2 part silicone mould for white metal. Here it is stood next to a bfsp troll

The Dwarf warrior is a fantastic sculpt that I plan to use as a chaos dwarf hero. It is a touch larger than the bfsp dwarf but I plan to mount him on a rocky outcrop base to make him look more heroic. Hopefully it will make the size difference less noticeable.

The Bathalian I plan to turn into a Tzeentch sorcerer possibly on a disk. It matches the chaos warriors nicely for size and is very detailed. I am probably going to drill and pin the staff because it is a little floppy.

The young dragon and giant spider were bought without a plan in mind. I will probably just paint them up for fun although I might turn them into a mount and a drider

Here is a group shot with a true 28mm doctor I sculpted from an armature from ebob miniatures

I hope all of this proves useful to someone. I'm really pleased with the Reaper bones line and can't wait for all the miniatures they developed for the kickstarter to go on general sale. I was completely skint when they were running it but there looked to be some fantastic miniatures in there. In the mean time pop over to Miniature Heroes for all sorts of fantastic figures including their range of Pre Owned Citadel miniatures. 

Chaos Dwarfs and Ogres Vs Empire and Dwarfs

Yesterday Matt invited me to play Warhammer doubles with two friends who were visiting from Holland  Merlijn and Martin. 

I thought this would be a good opportunity to get my chaos dwarf army for the first time.

Finished K'daai Fireborn with big hats

I've finally got this unit finished. They've been lurking in the queue for far too long but I've not been doing a lot of painting or sculpting recently.

I may add more to the unit once I've tried them out on the field of battle, they are labour intensive to make.

I need to get a game using my chaos dwarves, they are as yet untested even though I've been working on them since January.

A gift for Blue in VT

In my post A gift from Bolg I mentioned that I was taking part in a miniature exchange on Chaos Dwarfs Online and here is the miniature I sculpted and painted for Blue in VT. Check out his work here Blue's Marauding Miniatures. He collects the old MM90's chaos dwarfs so I tried to sculpt something that would fit in with his collection. I started with a Battle for skull pass dwarf as a base then hacked off the arms, shield and head. My initial plan was to arm him with a great weapon but I changed my mind while sculpting to do a banner bearer as it would give me a greater chance for painting. The banner is Blue's Avatar on CDO. I've been waiting ages to show this miniature off but I didn't want to spoil the surprise.  

Painting K'daai Fireborn with big hats

This is my first real go at painting a lava effect. I started with an undercoat of Army Painter Desert Yellow Spray then a heavy dry brush with Macharius Solar Orange then I filled in the interior of the scales with thinned Dark Flesh and finally Charadon Granite to finish off. I did try adding a further coat of  chaos black but it didn't work so I went back to Charadon Granite.

Undercoat

Nearly finished

K'daai Fireborn with big hats

While Warhammer Forge make great K'daai Fireborn, I don't have £36.00 for 3 models. I do however have lots of hobby time to fill, grey stuff and troll molds which look like this when mixed together.

 Once I'd got the face so I was happy with it, I decided to save some effort with a spot of Instant Mold I've not tryed Instant Mold with Grey stuff which is why I've used Green stuff. I've not quite finished the one on the left, I'd left the grey stuff a little too long to get the flames to work last night so I stripped it off to try again later. 

Hobgoblins

I've not posted for a while because I've been trying to finish off this. It feels like i've painted nothing but hobgoblins for months. First up is a horde of hobgoblin archers. There's 40 of them with unit fillers

Then there is a unit of 35 hobgoblins with shields and axes. I've got more of these in the pipeline.

First steps in resin casting.

I've just made my first mold for casting resin miniatures. I used a battle for skull pass dwarf as a start for the conversion. I changed the shield design to the rune of Hashut and the face to a Cthulhuesqe mask.

I'll post about mold making when I make the next mold. It is surprisingly easy with the proper research. There was some major raiding of the toy box to make the mold; Lego, Marbles and Plasticine all went walkabout.

here are some pictures of the first cast and the first 5 undercoated.

This one suffered a little from air bubbles. I think the temperature was a little warm outside for casting.

Hellcannon finished

this was a fun model to paint. Lots of nice details.

Finished Tenderiser

Here are some pictures of the Tenderiser all painted up.

and here it is in motion

The motion isn't quite as smooth as I would like it to be, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out.