Month: February 2021

In the World That Was, I was involved in a Necromunda campaign where I unlocked the Slave Guild as allies to my gang. Aside from a few perks and pitfalls, the Guild and Criminal Organisation alliances also grant you a small mini-gang to deploy along with your regular gang. You get 3-5 extra characters (using pre-built statlines and equipment) and only take the place of a single ganger, so they’re something you want to convert up and get to the tabletop quickly!

At the time, there were no miniatures announced or released for any of the ~10 different Guilds and Criminal Organisations. Inevitably, the only thing that has ever been released since then has been the “official” Slaver Guild Entourage on Forgeworld, so my enthusiasm for painting them after I’d assembled them diminished.

I got involved in a painting competition earlier this year with my local FLGS Asgard Wargames and it was a good excuse to bust out the old minis and slap a coat of paint on them.

Bits box only

When I decided to build the Entourage, I wanted to only use bits from the bits box. It’s getting dangerously full and I didn’t want to spend any (more) money on something that might never see the tabletop, so this little creative exercise was perfect.

There are four characters in an Entourage – the Chain Lord, the Shakleman, and two Pit Fighters. Their equipment was set apart from the Chain Lord, who had the option of chain glaive or whip and chain axe. I can’t resist a good sword-on-a-stick, so chain glaive it was.

I’ll try to identify all the bits as we go, but some are so eclectic even I can’t place them!

Chain lord WIP

The big boss man, described as bloated and hedonistic, but also juiced up to the eyeballs on combat drugs. The head from Neferata had this wonderful Pharoah vibe that I couldn’t turn down, and the little pointy goatee had to come with it. The head is from Anvil’s Bionic Heads collection, shaved down a bit to fit the new headress.

The body is from three generations of Chaos Warriors – the breastplate from a Khorne Knight, the cloak from a previous generation Chaos Warrior, and the legs from the classic plastic Chaos Warriors from the 20th century.

The arms and staff came from a Nurgle plague lord(?) left over from my Jackal Mask conversion with the chainsword blade from a Khorne Berserker. I wanted to pick a kind of chainsword I had three of so I could duplicate the look across the whole Entourage. The pommel(?) of the chain glaive came from a Tau Battlesuit, some kind of radar gubbins or something.

The rest of him was adorned with various chains from the Empire Flagellant kit and my personal favourite bits, some vials from a Dark Eldar Talos Engine to represent his combat drugs.

Everything was blended together with green stuff, there were some gaps where the body halfs met each other and some damage around the fur on the cloak. Nothing fancy, just rough and ready.

Pit Fighters

I had a lot of classic plastic Marauders in my box from an old ebay lot I acquired a million years ago, and with their hilariously buff physique, scant clothing and two-handed weapon grip, they were the perfect base for some chain glaive-wielding pit fighters.

The heads are from the plastic Blood Angels Honour Guard, a set of heads I’d kept for a while for their creepy cult death-mask vibe, and they’re a perfect fit for this! They needed something to represent all their combat drug injectors, but I didn’t want to use all my good Talos vials for these scrubs.

Super-conveniently I had a bunch of smoke launchers from various tank kits I’d owned over the years, and angled correctly (and with the right paintjob) they could look like a little peacock fan of injectors, and make the models’ silhuoettes more interesting.

Shakleman

I’m a dummy and didn’t get a closeup of the Shakleman’s WIP but you can scroll down for the finished photos and piece it together with the power of imagination.

This guy was the hardest to figure out – he had a lot of weird equipment and seemingly not enough hands – a cult icon, a shock stave and a harpoon gun. Two of those have been modelled as two-handed weapons, so unless I could come up with a very convincing argument why this five-armed guy wasn’t a genestealer cultist, I’d have to get pretty creative.

I went for a hunched Ork body to make him more distinct from the other ‘fighters’ – he’s described as a weasly character who preys on the weak, and I couldn’t shake the image of the cackling jailer from Life of Brian.

I found an old skaven back banner that would work for the cult icon (I had no idea what I’d paint on it, but that was a problem for Future Me) and a cool Ork Nob arm with a built-in harpoon gun thing, so that was a definite. The head came from a classic plastic cultist who’d been decapitated for another project.

I take umbrage with weapons that are described as having a 2″ reach and then being the same size as the regular zap-stick on the official models, so I wanted something long and archaic-looking. Something you could really stick between the bars of a jail cell or use to keep the Talent at a safe distance.

I had loads of Khorne Knight lances lying around, and I’d sequestered the blade on another project, so this was begging for some kind of zappy bit on the end. A skitarii electro-prod fit the bill, and it was finished off with some chain heraldry from the Bretonnian Men At Arms kit.

A small pauldren crest helped hide the join between the knight arm and ork body and I can punish myself with more freehand later. More skulls and chains and the Shakleman was finished!

Painting the entourage

As part of the competition I was in these guys needed to be painted in under a week, so naturally I decided to try a new painting technique and a colour palette I rarely use. Why not make things harder for myself?

I wanted a dark purple/scarlet colour scheme, and wanted to experiment with coloured washes over metallics. I went through a different variations, but settled on Ironbreaker silver with Carroburg Crimson splashed over the top. This was then weathered with chips done in Rhinox Hide and Ironbreaker and a healthy dollop of Blood for the Blood God.

I’ve got an enthusiasm for banners and heraldry (directly in contradiction with my disdain for painting banners and heraldry) so I wanted to tie these guys into my larger universe. Some chrono-gladiators have appeared in other games I’ve run, including Inquisitor, so I wanted to build on that.

In that warband, ‘Aries’ is a callsign for an old Chrono-gladiator, and I picked Leo (or ‘Lio’ to High Gothicify it a bit) as the symbol for this group, with a two-tone banner and the Deathclocks guild logo appears on the Shakleman’s banner.

Chain Lord

Everything was done with a base colour with a wash, very little was highlighted afterwards – quick ‘n’ dirty. There are a few exceptions here – the fur lining on the cloak was picked out and the flesh was blended up from its original colour, but I didn’t waste any time trying to highlight the metal or armour.

The themes of purple and dark grey were the unifying colours across the Entourage, represented in his armour and both sides of his cloak. His ‘Lio’ symbol was painted a few times on his shoulderpads and kneepad, although they didn’t come out very well and just look like dicks, but the one on his cloak I’m quite proud of.

The vials were painted with this classic Duncan tutorial, and the green is a good spot colour that contrasts nicely with the dark red/purple of the rest of the model.

Shakleman

This fella took the most re-working out of the four. It took me several attempts before I was happy with the exact combination of light grey/dark grey/purple for his various straps, belts, and bits of clothing.

I tried not to go overboard with the freehand, as despite hating it, I can get very carried away once I start.

He has the most heraldry, and is the only one sporting Deathclocks colours too, rather than just the purple and grey Lio colours. I figure he’s Geoff from Corporate, here to keep an eye on things down in Lio branch.

Pit fighters

My favourite boys! I enjoyed painting these guys the most, I think because they were the most dynamic of the four and the ones I’m most likely to get use of outside of Necromunda.

Similar techniques were used as above, except there was a lot more flesh on show, which gave me an opportunity to do some Bane-like green veins pulging through the skin to help integrate the combat drug design a bit more.

Side note, these guys had their trousers repainted three times, and they’re back at the colour I originally decided for them. It was a surprisingly hard colour scheme to work with, Ikept changing my mind on how to implement the limited palette. I only mention this as I forgot to wash one of their trousers after painting them back to original purple, which I’m not only noticing in editing… It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Dreadquill Towers!

Conclusion

All in all I’m very happy with how they came out. I could easily have spent more time on them and had them on my bench for a month, but getting them finished in under a week was a very satisfying experience. I’d got to experiment with some new techniques and generate some content for the ol’ blogaroo too.

I’m so happy with them in fact, I’ve been eyeing up other sidelined projects due for a lick of paint…

WIP Chrono-gladiators anyone?

This is a rarity – I buy something, I build it from the box, and it gets painted. No conversions, no elaborate paint jobs, no carving it up for bits… What’s got into me?

When the Ambots were released in the World That Was almost two years ago, I fell in love with them. Multi-part plastic robot alien kit? Sign me the heck up. I split the box with a friend and took home my very own am-bot.

The ambot was introduced before the Ambull miniature from Blackstone Fortress (sadly discontinued already), and the first in-game mention of Ambulls since the Dark Heresy RPG reintroduced them in the Creatures’ Anathema monster manual back in the noughties.

We’d just had Ambulls rock up in our Rogue Trader campaign and I’d used some DnD miniatures to build my very own Ambulls so I was stoked to see them returning in an official capacity!

The model went together very pleasingly, with lots of little odds and ends that make it so great for conversions.

I didn’t realise that each sprue comes with two sets of legs, so I assumed one of the sets of legs I had belonged to my friend, so I soldiered on with the goofy set. Had I known, I would have likely picked the other set to avoid the slightly awkward tick-tocking stance.

It’s not the end of the world, and it does mean I have another set of cool heavy industrial legs for use in other projects.

Sadly it sat on the shelf for another two years. My Necromunda campaign at the time never had an ambot crop up in it (there were lots of converted Ogryns though!) and without it having a “purpose” it never found its way to the top of my to-do list. Then of course 2020 rolled round and everything ground to a halt.

Aside from all the awfulness of 2020 (and 2021 aka 2020 2: Electric Boogaloo) it has helped give me some breathing room and perspective on my hobby. Previously I’d been creating and painting for a purpose – deadlines to meet, games to run, villains to put on the board for regularly scheduled RPG nights. I’d never painted anything solely for display or fun – having a competition run at my local FLGS Asgard Wargames helped kick me in the pants and start painting things for the hell of it again.

And it’s been a hoot!

I wanted a “normal” paint job for this guy, which meant no elaborate backstories or freehanding iconography or trying to tie it into an existing gang colour scheme. I also wanted to try using colours I don’t normally paint with – namely blue.

It was undercoated Army Painter Tan Leather and all the metallic bits were roughly drybrushed with Ironbreaker. Block colours went on next – Cantor Blue for the panels, Brass Scorpion for the tubes and cables, Iyanden Yellow for the hazard panels, a cheeky bit of Mephiston Red for the eyes and buttons. Black stripes are painted onto the hazard panels just before washing.

Everything then gets washed! Agrax Earthshade for the metals and hazard panels, Nuln Oil for the other areas.

Once dry, the panels get wet-blended back up to their original colour with the help of my new love, Lahmiam Medium. I used to use water for wet blending, but this stuff makes it so much simpler. The blue edges get highlighted with a lighter blue and the hazard stripes get touched up with their original colour. I never claimed my process was fancy!

Then my favourite part – weathering! I kept it dead simple this time – tear off a bit of sponge about the size of a fingernail and dip it in Typhus Corrosion with a pair of tweezers. Wipe a bit off, then gently dab dab dab on corners and edges.

When that’s dry, I touched up any edgees with Ironbreaker again to look like exposed metal, and the job was done!

I finished off the base to match my other Necromunda minis – a variety of metals and greys, washed black, then brown/orange/pale flesh stippled over the top to look like corrosion.

It took me about 2-3 evenings, including drying time, and I’m very happy with the outcome. It’s not something I spent ages on, I didn’t go the extra mile to painstakingly convert it to something unique, and I didn’t agonise over the paint job.

And you know what? I loved every second of it.

My local FLGS Asgard Wargames is running a competition on its Facebook group to get a new unit painted every week for a month. Motivated by the prospect of material reward, I figured it was also an excuse to clear my grey mountain and splash some colour on miniatures I’d otherwise never get around to painting.

The loose theme I went for was Necromunda, and first on the chopping block was my group of kitbashed “civilians” that I put together a while ago.

Since their creation, they’ve been incredibly versatile for not only being civilians in games of Necromunda, but also as hired guns, NPCS, and stand-ins for RPG characters.

The brief

They needed to be painted up in just over a week, which meant no dilly-dallying and lots of easy techniques, but I also wanted them to be vibrantly coloured. It would be easy to do another Beast House of grey and brown, but I didn’t want any two to look the same.

So, just come up with a dozen different easy-to-paint colour schemes in a week… sure…

The preacher

First on the table was this religious-looking chap (although the least nutty of the religious bunch) because his character spoke to me the most.

I hate painting yellow, and the thought crossed my mind to attempt some OSL from the lamp but quickly remembered my brief – I coudn’t spend all week on this guy.

His clothes were a technique I’d use on 90% of the rest of the gang – drybrush a colour over the brown undercoat, wash it, then roughly highlight. I went for a Jedi Robes colour scheme to get that itchy hessian sack kinda feel.

Headwound guy

This guy was popular on the internet when his WIP photo did the rounds. His truths seemed to resonate with people.

Another simple colour scheme, but with a splash of Blood For The Blood God on his headband as a spot colour. The real pull was his crazed sandwhich board message, for which there were too many great options to choose from.

A close third place was “Heresy is stored in the balls – change my mind”, and was rejected solely because it was too long to squeeze onto the tiny sandwhich board.

The Water Carrier

I liked making minis that looked like they were out on an errand and got caught short. This one in particular has some nice movement to it, and I tried to tell a bit of a story with the colours.

He’s wearing Orthesian colours and has a faded ‘7-B’ on his back, implying he’s a docker or rating working on a ship somewhere and had just popped out to grab a can of something before it all kicked off.

The off-duty guardsman

As detached as Mercy is from the rest of the universe, it’s fun to sprinkle in some mainstream bits from time to time. News of Cadia’s demise would have reached Mercy eventually, along with numerous refugees, AWOL soldiers or old veterans who find themselves without a home.

This was also my first Cadian I’d ever actually painted(!) and only realised halfway through that I didn’t have the correct colours for the armour. I tried mixing my own but I’m not super happy with how it came out.

I still like the overall mini, I like the little touches like the helmet on his belt and tattoo on his arm, and his attitude of “Oh I guess we’re fighting today huh”.

The hammer priest

Although I initially envisioned her as a kind of blacksmith, the idea of making her another member of the cloth was more enticing.

A neatly painted hassock with some rough Aquila freehand was enough to sell the idea of her being a low-ranking priest of some kind, and a touch of blood effect paint on the hammer, robes and face gave her added menace. It changed the body language from “Over there!” to “You’re next!”

Technical support

I wanted at least one mini in hazmat colours, and this chap’s metal arm and waistcoat was a good opportunity to try out a new recipe for yellow – using an orange wash instead of a brown or black one. I wanted his bionic arm to have the same yellow as his clothes, as though his arm is company-owned.

I tried to turn his waist sash into something like a ticker tape, or somewhere he wrote things down, but it ended up looking like a religious garment.

The prospector

You couldn’t have some citizens of a mining space port without some old retired prospectors, and I’m getting real Stinky Pete vibes from this guy. His arms were from the Genestealer Cult Neophytes, so have very mutant vibes to them. I wanted to make them as human-coloured as possible, as making them purple or green would give them a GSC/hidden alien flavour that I didn’t want.

Some of these minis were so fast to do, many of them didn’t even get a highlight stage. I’m following my 2019 mantra of ‘finished, not perfect’, and I think it really works when painting up minis like this!

The miner

I definitely wanted one mini in an orange jump suit, as I really like the aesthetic that many GSC colour schemes have. Unfortunately the minis I used didn’t lend themselves to jump suits, they are all leathers, pelts, tunics etc, so I had to improvise.

Double-unfortunately I didn’t have all the orange paints I wanted either, so I had to make do with a drab foundation orange. It gets the message across, but it wasn’t the vibrant jumpsuit colour I was looking for. I painted a few lines on to try and make it look more like a uniform, but I don’t think it worked very well. It’s a good proof of concept for future miner endeavours.

The old captain

One of my favourite of the bunch – he’s got a lot of character and I wanted to give him a mysterious past too. Painting his tattered clothes in noble, luxurious colours implies he’s come from wealth and privilege, so how did he get here?

Lots of opportunities to use him as a fallen Noble or old Captain, missing plenty of bits of himself but could still take your head off with that spade if you pushed in line at the bar.

The pressganger

This was a simple guy with a club and a sack, perhaps he’s out clubbing vermin for dinner or something, you can’t judge him. His only tell is a pistol on his hip, which implies he’s in a dangerous line of work. Perhaps he’s a pressganger?

As I was splashing some basic colours on him, my mind wandered to a hitherto unmentioned project involving circus clowns, and I couldn’t shake the image of having him in classic circus attire.

A quick red and yellow quartered pattern and he looked much more interesting. Why is he dressed like that? Is he moonlighting as a pressganger? Perhaps it’s a guild of pressgangers that have adopted a strange uniform? So many narrative threads from a simple change in colour scheme.

The youth

The closest to a ‘normal’ citizen I made, this one had an air of youthful energy around them – they bring a gun and a knife on their errand runs.

It was probably the simplest colour scheme too, and I was in danger of falling down a classic grey-and-brown hole with my colour palette, so I threw a dark green in there to visually distinguish them from the rest of the citizens.

I assumed the head had some kind of headband or braid running around the crown, but when I was painting it I realised it was a kind of beanie hat. This gave them a pleasing old fisherman vibe which helped tie them to the theme of ports and docks.

The troublemaker

I like painting red, what can I say.

I wanted to do a kilt pattern on a miniature, this semed to be the best bet. I used my own family’s tartan as a pattern, which got a bit lost under the wash. A matching red face covering and arm band gave her strong anarchist vibes, so naturally she needed the black leather jacket to match.

Bright hair really set off the look, and I think she is one of the more striking miniatures in the bunch.

The gang’s all here

Overall I’m very happy with how they came out. Without an arbitrary deadline I don’t think I’d ever have gotten round to painting them, and for them to have come out so well in such a short time gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

With my rough goal for this year to complete more projects than I start, I think I’m off on the right steps.