• It's time once again to ferret out those murderous vampires in a new VAU - Vampires Amongst Us. A cross between Cluedo and a roleplay, sometimes gory and often hilarious! Find out more and sign-up! here.

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
@Borgnine Cheers man, nice tips about the chaos warriors - I'll have to play around with those ideas when the time comes.

Really nice conversions once again - I'm having a hard time choosing a favourite as they're all brilliant in their own way. Love the idea of converting each according to their upgrade too, it's worked really well and created a one-of-a-kind team. :thumbsup:
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@Farmer7574 thanks man! Glad you like them, Chaos and mutations make such conversions really easy and characteful!

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Now, back to some undead!

Finally, I managed to paint my rather unpractical unit of Cairn Wraiths, made out of converted Grimghast Reapers. I built them like this because I always wanted a unit of them, but I couldn't find the right models - and those wraiths were a perfect converting opportunity for that. They required very careful positioning, basing, additional weight underneath and can stand in only one configuration - but they do work! Good to see that it was possible to squeeze an AoS unit into such a tight WFB formation.

Unfortunately, the converting process wasn't the hard part, painting all the ghostly bits was. Maybe it was just me, but I really struggled to cover it all without missing anything in a reasonable amount of time. I guess the new Nighthaunt aren't really for me! Still, I am quite happy with how they turned out and must admit that it was all worth it! Also, I finally found a good model to try out verdigris and etheral effects at the same time - something that people have been suggesting to me for a long time. Now I have to consider making more minis like this.

Wanting to represent the 'Chill Grasp' rule from the 8th Edition WFB I also painted some frost on their scythe handles, just like I did years ago on my first Cairn Wraith.

The whole conversion process and problems related to it are shown in the WIP post HERE.

The background story:
In the ages past, when Daremnych was waging a difficult war with another ancient tribe, he came to the village of Siekerno, asking for help. He wanted to ask their well-known and fearsome axemen warriors to sneak through the forest and attack his enemy’s flank during an upcoming battle. The men agreed, but when the time came, they didn't intervene, favoring the chances of the Great Priest’s opponents. Unfortunately for them, Daremnych prevailed through the bloody battle even without them - and came to confront the warriors after that. Already knowing his methods, the axemen of Siekierno fell to their knees, asking for another chance, willing to help and serve. The Priest gave them exactly that - killed them all and bound their spirits to his will, telling them that he will call upon them in the future - only then the axemen will get their second chance and opportunity to serve. Then he captured all the remaining villagers, divided them into small groups and forcibly integrated them into various tribes he had under his command. Now Daremnych, needing an edge against his vampire enemies, came to the forgotten ruins of Siekerno and called the axemen back - to finally serve him as they wanted so many years ago.

First, the whole tightly packed unit of wraiths:



And all of them separated:

 

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
Those wraiths are great - I love the cold palette that builds up to a concentration of warm colours at the centre of the minis where you're looking to draw viewers' attention. Excellent work as always - a nice vibrant unit of wraiths :thumbsup:
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@brr-icy thanks! I'm glad you appreciate it ;)

@Farmer7574 Thanks too! I was just following my already estabilished color schemes, so this effect of cold and warm was quite accidental - well spotted on your part and good luck on my part xD

@Saikological @Shadespyre Cheers! :)

------------------------------------------------------------------

Even more undead, three odd necromancers today :)

For the last few months/years I have been slowly collecting miniatures to be used as additional necromances - because you can never have too many of them - and now I finally got around to finish converting/preparing them all and maybe actually get them painted. Seeing that I already have some standard Necromancers (and Liches), with those I decided to make them a little special, with some additional theme than just 'an evil old guy'.

The first one shown here is Alarich Schwering, the most converted one, one that studied Lore of the Beasts besides his standard necromancy. I envision him in my background stories as a crazy, wild survivalist and to give him an appropriate look I made him a sabretusk pelt - out of Ogre Ironblaster bits and some greenstuff.



As for the second one, Matthias Schwarzfeuer, I got inspired by THIS miniature to make him really fancy, rich and extravagant - a necromancer that wants to break with the 'dusty old man' stereotype. It's mostly about painting, so not very much of that idea is visible now but I could still give him a fancy Empire hat and some additional gems.



And the last one, Ignatyi Ognemet, the least converted but also the one that started the whole idea of 'odd necromancers' in my mind. Long time ago, when I was reading 9th Age rules, I saw that they allowed necromancers to take Lore of Fire, which instantly gave me the image of a crazed bright wizard, only using green flames. I liked the idea enough to buy a box of Empire Wizards and build such a guy - he uses a flagellant head and some long hair to make him look more dishevelled.

After that, I decided to add some theme to the two metal necromancers that were waiting in my drawer - which you can see above. Much later I saw that 9th Age got rid of the old WFB lores altogether, so even if I would play that system, he won't make much sense. No worries though, all three odd necromancers should be interesting to paint and that's all that matters.

 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@brr-icy thanks!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Almost exactly a year ago, on March the 25th 2018, after a crazy and difficult modelling journey, I posted the finished Zombie Legion. It seems fitting to post today the last of the zombie sub-batches, which I kept churning out during this year - and finally close this project. Here come the miscellaneous zombies, the ones that couldn't fit in any other group that I did, the dregs of the dregs, the last ones. This means that I won't be boring you with those old projects, now everything should be new and fresh ;)

Some background for them:
You could always find some sub-groups or themes in Constantin’s zombie legion, but at the end of the day, it’s still a chaotic, everchanging mass of reanimated bodies - some things just find themselves there without any great reason. Despite that, or maybe because of it, they fit with the rest just fine.

First is the filler with the Terrorgheist head, probably the most humorous part of the whole horde. The idea came to me when I got an additional TG head in a bought collection of bits - and where else could I excercise some non-seriousness if not with the zombies? Setting them up in this position was a bit challenging, but I think it all worked out rather good, considering those zombies have wonky anatomy either way.



And the remaining singular zombies. Some of them are more interesting than others, like the headless flagellant, the armless one or the only undead greenskin. The rest are just the most common zombies that can be built from the old set - but those are needed too for real diversity after all.



And that's it folks, the Legion is done. And for all the zombie fans, I'll be back with a giant and a dragon in the future - there are always more zombies to be built after all.
 

brr-icy

Skeleton
Jan 23, 2019
80
Ontario
I just picked up some cursed company for my army as well, get me some skeletons, have a converted skeleton skaven and daemon i should post sometime.
 

Theerteen

Cheerful Cranium
True Blood
Aug 20, 2012
1,503
Germany
Can't say this too often, your zombie horde is more than amazing. There is so much love in every model, and the whole impression is stunning no matter how often one looks at it. Atm I'm thinking about doing some more skeleton work, after all I can challenge you in mass if not in painting ;)
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@Saikological Many thanks! It's easy to be good with bits if you collect (and buy) so many of them ;)

@brr-icy I didn't know that demons have skeletons! Please do post ;)

@Theerteen Thanks man ;) And skellies? That is even better than zombies (but more difficult - at least IMHO) so please do some of them ;)

----------------------------------------

And I'm being tardy once again. So, here I go with updates from the last two weeks. First, Assassins for Blood Bowl:

The Assassins Astrys and Ezion are here - they are a part of the Dreadspear Dragons Blood Bowl team. Minis used are the official, unconverted Dark Elf Assassins from Forge World.

They took more time than the rest of the team because all the glazes on their cloaks took much more time than I expected. I wanted to do something extra on them, but adding fancy freehands would just clash with their rather 'stealthy' look - so, getting inspired by the Forge World paintjob I decided to paint a gradient there, only making it a bit smoother and more pronounced than theirs. Other than that, they try to keep the same scheme as the rest of the players.

Also - I know how bad reputation those poor Assassins have and how almost nobody likes to use them in the game, but the models are still good (especially the female one) and I considered them way too iconic for Dark Elves to just ignore them. We'll see how they'll fare on the pitch later!

Some backstory:
The usage of assassins has been steadily dropping during the last seasons, mostly thanks to coaches collectively deciding that they are just not that useful on the pitch. Still, some teams continue to use them - and one of them are the Dreadspear Dragons. Astrys and Ezion were brought from faraway lands (funny accents!) for two reasons - first, show the spectators some real, bloody Dark Elf play - and to secondly, actually stab some stubborn knuckleheads from time to time. Well, that and maybe throw a ball once a while. They might be rookies, but their acrobatics and incessant attempts at stabbing their opponents always bring eager spectators.

assassins_small.jpg


----------------------------------------------------

And now, my third warband for Warhammer Underworlds, converted Steelheart's Champions, the Faceless.

They are an effect of an idea I came up with maybe a year ago, to turn some of those golden champions into creepy and enigmatic knights in ornate, but neglected and faceless armor. The conversion process, both the design phase and the sculpting were the most taxing part of the whole project - you can see it all explained HERE, with all the inspirations, concepts and plans for the future.

The painting process was much simpler in comparison. I used this image as a direct example of what I wanted to recreate, inspired by all the miniatures and artwork that gave me this idea in the first place. I started with a dark metallic base, added several layers and colors of rust pigments, then applied some additional shades and bright silver highlights. More typical painting work was used on all the fabrics and leather - and then also covered in pigments and sprinkled with washes to get the dirty look. They turned out mostly how I envisioned them - the only problem that I noticed is that they are easy to mistake on the tabletop when standing near my Garrek's Reavers - they are both dark, muted and dirty! Well, I'll have just to deal with it, because I don't want to change the aesthetic concept just for gameplay convenience!

Some backstory:
It always starts the same. First, all the vampires, undead, chaos worshippers, heretics and similar become too much for the nobles to deal with. Not wanting to use their own warriors and troops, leaving them weaker in internal conflicts, they instead organize a ragtag militia of peasants and poor townspeople to hunt them in exchange for money, titles and land. Those bands soon become obsessed with their mission of ‘cleansing’ Vechernya of filth, heretics, undesirables and they start a cult around it. Not long after that, strange knights start joining their ranks - ones that believe their purpose so much that they forge a whole military order around it. Frighteningly effective in combat, they achieve great results in fighting the dangers lurking in the land. All is well until they run out vampires and ghouls - then they start turning on the folk of Vechernya - slaughtering villages and burning people on the slightest of offenses. Growing in numbers, they soon turn out of control, forcing the warring dukes and nobles into forging an alliance and destroying them, usually at a great cost. Then, many years later the whole cycle will start again, spun by the dreams of the Withered King.

This time the knights are known simply as the Faceless - they hide their faces and identities behind elaborate masks and helmets, believing their mission to be more important than their old personas. The fact that nobody ever saw their faces or heard them speaking and lived to tell the tale only strengthens their enigmatic and sinister reputation. Small, yet dangerous groups of those ominous warriors wander through Vechernya searching for any sign of corruption and heresy, no matter how slight or hidden.

First all three faceless as the whole warband. They are all different and turned out pretty characterful, so below this one, you will find much more pictures of them individually.



Now, all the members - first, the leader. I turned Severin Steelheart into the Crusader, an unrelenting champion fighting to purge Vechernya of all the undesirables. The piece of cloth (backskirt?) behind him was a perfect canvas to really try out some dirtying techniques, with pigments and washes.



The next one is Obryn the Bold, which is known in my warband as the Bull - a very diligent, but impatient warrior. He was interesting to paint thanks to the combination of flat and highly sculpted areas on his armor. Weirdly enough, when I was reading the Shadespire cards recently, I was surprised to see that Obryn is described as "bull-hearted". Now I don't know if it subconsciously inspired me a long time ago (and/or I forgot about it) or if it was just an interesting coincidence.



And the last one from the band is Angharad Brightshield, turned into the Vulture - a vicious warrior willing to prolong the fight if it means hurting and tormenting her enemy more. Her shield was a delight to paint (as wood usually is for me) and the freehands on the ribbons flowing behind her were a welcome variation from her freehand-less bandmates.



I would love to have a much larger force of Faceless, but seeing how taxing and difficult it is to convert every single one of them, I probably won't be doing that very soon!
 

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
More awesome conversions! I love 'The Faceless' - everything from the conversions to the paintj ob has made these guys just about as different as they could look from the Steelheart's warband.
 

Theerteen

Cheerful Cranium
True Blood
Aug 20, 2012
1,503
Germany
I really like those dark Sigmarinos. I'm not exactly sure how I will integrate them in one of my armies, but I definitely will. And for that, I'm always looking for inspiration ;)
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@Farmer7574 Thank you so much, that was the effect that I was going for ;)

@Theerteen Thanks! They would fit in just about anything DarkSouls-related, so there's a lot of possibilities on where to put them. I will look forward to your take on them ;)

-----------------------------------------------------

Once again, some Blood Bowl update.

Shortly after the Assassins come the Star Players - the last part of the Dreadspear DragonsBlood Bowl team - for now, at least. I have some inducements planned for the evil elves, but first I would like to actually finish the Nurgle team.

Their backstory:
The dragons may be a relatively fresh team, but they do employ star players from time to time. One of them is Roxanna Darknail, a big druichii star. She took a liking to the team’s pet dragon - and while she didn’t want to participate in the wreck that was the previous iteration of the group, she is eager to help now that the things are better.

The other one is much less known, but very important for the Dragons - Torles the Unlucky, the last living member of the previous team, still donning the old armor. Although talented and skilled, he couldn’t completely avoid the mismanagement of the past - and kept getting injured on the pitch, collecting more and more injuries. Because of budget cuts - and because people wanted to see him - he was forced to play, no matter his health. Not that he complained - he was skilled enough to be useful and passionate about the sport. Then he would get injured again, starting the whole cycle anew. Soon, he made a whole career out of it - showing up on various pitches - to score against all odds and get injured spectacularly. Commentators still argue if he’s really unlucky or actually very lucky - compared to other elves in his position, he gets mangled more often, while actually not dying in the process!

First one is Roxanna Darknail, an official and completely non-converted miniature from Forge World. She was a tough one - the most important part of her are her hair, the thing I often most struggle with. I tried to make them special with the white braids and some purple highlights, but I will leave it to you to decide if it worked well enough. Besides that, painting her was similar to the other Witch Elves.



And the second one, a 'star player' built by me, created to commemorate a particularly unlucky Dark Elf lineman that my wife had in her BB video game campaign. I kitbashed him out of various bits, greenstuff and other random objects that were laying around my workshop - you can see the WIP version HERE. Painting him was nice enough, but the most interesting part was easily the cast on his leg - I painted various signatures there, from his team-mates to famous Blood Bowl personas from the game lore.

I even came up with some stats for him:

Star Player 'Torles the Unlucky'
MV:6 ST:2 AG:3 AV:9
Skills: Loner, Stand Firm, Sprint, Tackle, Juggernaut, Horns (Wheelchair Momentum)
Cost: 120 000
Usable by Dark Elf and Elven Union teams.

 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
Time has come to finally get this project started, after years of slowly planning it and gathering bits: kitbashed wight bogatyrs (heroes), because those are always fun! Here they are all together, below I will explain every one of them and how they came to be.



Now, the singular heroes. The one that started it all is Yarema, the bodyguard giant.

The whole concept for him came from this cape - I saw it on an auction site long time ago and bought it to kitbash a wight, mostly because other undead heroes had similar capes, like Zlyshko or Kiril. Then, when it came, I realized how big are space marine capes! It barely fits on a 20x20mm base, but I didn't want to cut it or change too much, so I created a whole character around it - an imposing giant of a wight known for bodyguarding ancient kings and princes.

I wanted to use some other bits to build his body, but they were all too small, so I had to sculpt him mostly from scratch. His head is also made out of one of those older skulls, ones which were much bigger - I tried using a modern skull, but with that giant torso and cape, his proportions were becoming comical. Interestingly enough, his hands were taken from a TK charioteer, a miniature that was laying around in my drawer for more than 12 years now! It's good that his parts have found some purpose.



Next one is the fearless heroine, Dratitsa the Dragonslayer.

Similarly to Yarema above, her whole concept started with the cape - I bought several of those because of the potentially-useful dragonskin texture and those high collars. After getting them I came up with the idea of another wight hero who would drape themselves in the skin, to create some kind of monster-slayer - because it's both a good concept for a wargame character and because it's such a well-known trope for a fairy-tale hero of old. Her legs were taken from the same charioteer that gave his arms to Yarema.



Then, the standard bearer, Vekoslav.

I used here the single only Vampire Counts model ever released by Forge World, a Battle Standard Bearer. The model is nice, well made and I didn't want to convert it in any way, but the standard with sculpted vampiric iconography was a bit problematic - not fitting in any way with my other wights. The simplest solution would be to file it all smooth and cover it with freehands as I always do with those dusty skeletons, but I already had standards like that and this one should stand out as THE most important one in the whole army.

To achieve that, I decided to give it an additional dimension - instead of yellow markings on a black background, I will have a separate golden sigil hanging in front of a black flag. Wanting to push it even further, I dug up Nagash's unused hand, one with the ghost springing out of it and mounted it on top of the standard. This will be kind of a more reserved version of another Battle Standard Bearer I did in the past.



And the last one, Drazhan the Younger, the wight construct-architect.

This one will be my version of a Necrotect from the Tomb Kings armybook. Original GW miniature of him is equipped with a whip - and while I think it fits the image of ancient Egypt that TK had, it didn't fit in any way in my army. I wanted him to be a sculptor and a constructor, so I gave him a hammer, a fancy hat (inspired by the hat of the TK Necrotect) and a pointing hand - now he should look like the responsible, authoritative person on the construction site. The base for this kitbash was one of the skeletons that came with the Necrosphinx kit - both because the pose and proportions were good for this purpose and because it reflects his TK roots. He will be also a narrative excuse to build more constructs for this faction - I have a lot of ideas for those!

 

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
@Borgnine Your greenstuff work is brilliant - once again you've made yourself a range of beautifully and uniquely detailed characters. Your addition of the spirit and the emblem on the banner of the FW wight king BSB is awesome - I'm looking forward to seeing these guys completed. Great all round characters. Bravo!

The Blood Bowl minis are great too - I suppose my favourite detail has to be Roxanna's signature on Torles' cast, who himself as a whole is a well converted mini which begs sympathy and laughter :D
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@Farmer7574 Thanks man! I'm glad you like the wights and really appreciate actually reading the signatures on the cast ;)

@Sharkbelly Thanks! They do fit together pretty well :)

---------------------------------------------------

It seems I am late again! I'll try to fit it all in this single post.

First, some miniatures from the Dungeon Twister board game, painted as a (late) birthday gift for a friend.

The game is about two teams of diverse adventurers and creatures who got teleported by an evil wizard into a dungeon - after which they try to escape while fighting each other. Each team is composed of the same 8 types - each miniature is duplicated and only color makes them different. This proved to be a unique painting challenge - to paint 8 miniatures using yellow as the main color and then paint the same 8 miniatures using a blue scheme. You can see the comparison below, on the Mekanorc, my favorite miniature from the whole bunch:



The miniature themselves are somewhat hit-and-miss - some of them are very good, while others have weird proportions or anatomy. The quality differs a bit too, but it wasn't anything too noticeable. Still, the sculpts are clear and the detail is sharp, so the work on them was pleasant enough, especially seeing that I went through them relatively quickly. My wife also helped with the base colors, so that's something new too!

I also wanted to mention that I never encountered such hard-to-work resin ever in my life - paint was getting scraped off the miniatures after the slightest touch, worse than with metal minis! That's why I varnished them pretty thickly afterward, hopefully they'll be able to survive handling on the tabletop.

Here is the Blue Team:



And the Yellow Team:



And the picture of all of them together.



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Next, some Blood Bowl conversions.

After the Rotters for my Nurgle Blood Bowl team, it was time for some Pestigors, the scorers. Those available in the official box look good enough, but there's only two of them and it's the same sculpt - and I wanted four different ones. Thankfully, GW released a chaos team earlier, with four different beastman sculpts - so I got those and converted them to look the part. This basis let me achieve a similar look to the one from the video game - where they are bloated and sick, but still agile and fast. Just like the small guys, they have all leveled once and I had a lot of fun applying various skills, upgrades and mutations to them.

Here are they all together:



And the close-ups.

Here is the one with Sprint and one with Extra Hands skills. To show Sprint, I wanted to convey some sense of speed - and the most obvious way to do that with Nurgle was to just leave some random intestine trailing behind him, as he's risking running that one extra step. The second one has a plaguebearer hand grafted on his back - also an idea taken from the video game. Besides that, they both got some smaller conversions, like bloated bellies, lesions, corroded armor plates and other such typical Nurgle pleasantries.



And the second pair, one with +Strength and one with Two Heads. The strong one was easy and enjoyable - I just piled lots and lots of greenstuff on him, kinda like a fatsuit, to add more bulk and power to his rather slender build. Everything textured with grandfather's blessings of course. The second one follows the idea from the video game - the additional head hangs close to the first one, a mutated and malformed one, screaming in pain. The last picture shows it the best of all the possible angles - it should be much clearer once they are all painted.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

And the third post - continuing with the Nurgle theme, here is my (somewhat) non-Nurgle take on the Putrid Blightkings. From the narrative standpoint, they are supposed to be botched clones of Haralamb Gudvanger and just like he, they are bloated and distorted servants of the Lady of the Bog, not Nurgle worshippers - so they keep the bodies and mutations, but all the chaos iconography is filed off. You can see the unpainted, converted minis together with some design principles HERE.

I had a lot of fun building them and painting was the same - it was really enjoyable to paint all the different hues, reddened, mutated flesh, discolorations, boils and lesions. The basecoat was wetblended to achieve a mix of various colors from the beginning, which were then brought together with shades, glazes and highlights.

The bases saw my second use of two-ingredient water effects and I'm pretty satisfied with the results. The resin actually seeped into the sand that I used as the first layer, creating a pretty interesting, muddy impression. I also stuck those thin, long strands into some of the tufts to imitate lone strands of long grass that I noticed in the wetlands during my last vacation - and I think they help to sell the 'bog' effect a little better - what do you think about them?

Their backstory:
The horrific Flesh-stitcher Haralamb Gudvanger may be known best for his lumbering monsters, but he considers himself his best handiwork. For countless years he has been building replacement body puppets, which continuously replace him after each death. It all started when he was still learning the secrets of anatomy by himself, fruitlessly looking for a way to cheat death and achieve immortality. Only when he started to study under the Lady of the Bog he discovered that while he can’t stop his own body from eventual deterioration in any acceptable way, he could build a puppet, a duplicate of himself - one so perfect, it could replace him without any loss at all. Since then, every time his body died, a puppet woke in its place, identical to the original, with the same memory and intellect, continuing his work as if nothing happened - everything a secret he keeps from everyone but the Lady herself. Still, the process is difficult and some results are… botched. They are unusable as replacements but those flesh automatons have their use - Gudvanger arms them and commands them to patrol and guard his domain. Thus they lumber tirelessly through the mists around the Black Bog, attacking anyone they stumble upon. To some extent, they believe to be the Flesh-stitcher too, that’s why sometimes they will hack away the hands of their victims, or try to build gruesome compositions out of their victims’ bodies. Terrifyingly strong, resilient and unrelenting in following their creator’s (their own?) commands, they are almost as dangerous as Gudvanger himself.

First, the whole group of six fleshy automatons - a little from above to make the bases easier to see:



And some close-ups of the individual creatures, the first three:



The second three:

 

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
@Borgnine A shed load more of beautiful work - the pace at which you get minis done and to the high standard you achieve is amazing.

Those Dungeon Twister teams are interesting - two exactly the same teams yet they look so different from each other. Awesome choice of colours for the teams choosing one cold and one warm colour.

Nice to see more Blood Bowl - and Nurgle to boot! You've got a knack for conversions and these don't dissapoint. I've never played BB myself but have been playing some Underworlds these days... with the final releases for season two on the shelves I'm hoping to see what season three brings. With any luck GW will give us some Beastmen and Nurgle. Maybe, just maybe... they'll take a page out of your book and give us some Nurgle Beasties? :) Anyway, great looking team!

You've saved the best 'til last once again - incredible use of the Blight King kit. They're impeccable conversions. I love that dude holding the poor fleeing peasant guy.

Keep at it, excellent stuff as always!
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@Farmer7574 Well, I keep up that pace mostly by not sleeping that much and discarding all other forms of entertainment ;) I'm glad that you like the choice of colors on the twisters, but that was already given on the box and the tokens from the game - I just followed suit - thankfully it was a good choice ;) As for the Nurgles, I would love to get some of those for Underworlds - while I cannot really get into the game, all the warbands are the perfect amount of minis to try out a scheme or an idea, without diving into the whole army - and Nurgles are always welcome ;) Thanks!

---------------------------------------------

Some time ago I showed you my necromancer conversions - to be seen HERE - and now it's time finally start posting the painted ones. First comes Alarich, who I imagined as a crazy survivalist necromancer, one that has some Lore of the Beasts theme to him.

He is the most converted one from the whole group, but also the most straightforward one when it came to painting - just some more of my standard dirty, green color scheme. Well, that and a tiger on his back - those freehands were some added value - gems too, I haven't painted those for a long time now.

When Hautfell met Constantin von Greifen, he was the most powerful magic user in the band and enjoyed great influence thanks to it. Yet, his position was getting weaker and weaker with every new vampire coming to aid von Greifens and with wights becoming more independent than ever. And while his apprentice Krebs was easily manipulated - that means “reliable” - he lacked a true talent that would be needed when all local tensions will finally burst. That’s why he needed someone capable to help him in this fight for Varsavia, so full of undead to be controlled. With the help of the mysterious Haughr found the right person in Alarich Schwering - an old Necromancer residing deep in the Troll Country. Even though he got a little strange after all the years spent alone in the wilderness and was almost blind, he was surely skilled enough to survive in the land full of skaven and monsters - a quality that Hautfell was looking for. After some creative convincing, Schwering moved to Varsavia, ready to push vampires and wights out of it and rule over the undead there with other necromancers.

 

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
Superb work as always - I love this guy, he has a bit of a pre-liche Kel’Thuzad look to him from Warcraft. Top job!
 

Borgnine

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Jun 15, 2013
2,036
Pruszkow, Poland
@Farmer7574 Now that you say it, he does indeed looks like him a bit! Thanks!

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And of course, I am late again with the stuff... Time to catch up!

First, I bring you the positionals for my existing Orc Blood Bowl team, the Badlands Badbuttz - namely, two Black Orc Blockers and two Blitzers. The 2016 box comes with two of each, while the rules allow for four of each - and using all of them really helps to make the most out of the greenskin team. I used WFB miniatures, Black Orcs and Savage Orcs respectively, converted a bit to fit both the game and the other members of the team.

Their backstory:
After initial successes in the new season, the head coach of Badlands Badbuttz decided to expand and recruit some new players, especially some ever-useful blockers and blitzers. Sadly, he got to it a little late in the season - most players were already taken, leaving only broken, mangled and/or useless rejects. Not discouraged, he sent his headhunter Tugtig deep into the world to look for promising players in their local leagues. The industrious goblin returned many weeks later with some rather, "exotic" greenskins. First were the black orcs from the Dark Lands league, used to heavy armor, prone to aggressive bursts and hardened after playing countless seasons with the hated Chaos Dwarfs teams. Second were the savage orc Blitzers from the scorched southern Badlands, completely crazy and frenzied from all the sun and using magical warpaint instead of armor. Getting them to play with the rest of the team will be even more difficult than usual, but well, the Badbuttz are nothing if not known for their diversity and some internal rivalries!




The painting of the Blockers was rather straightforward - it was the same thing as with the original team, lots of red, black, white markings. The one holding a human head in his hand has a red-white shield on his other hand - referencing the icon for the 'Guard' skill that's used in the video game - now it should be clear who has it! It was also the first time when I used a sponge to add weathering on their armor - and I must say, I am pretty satisfied with the effects.



Savage Orc Blitzers were much more interesting in comparison - there was no metal, lots of bone and lines, with the skin coming forward as the most important area. It was the first time since many, many years when I had to paint so much of orc skin - and a good opportunity to get the right hue of green for them. I was so happy with the result that I kinda didn't want to cover it with warpaint - but it was important for their theme and to somehow represent their high Armor Value - and it also turned out rather ok.



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Next, I had a big converting project to share, some Sylvaneth Dryads.

Years ago I came up with the idea of introducing some visceral, flesh-horror themes (think John Carpenter's "The Thing") in my collection - mostly in the 'Dwellers of the Bog' faction - and the first example of that were the Flying Horrors. Now I am going back to this topic, bringing you some progress on the Lady's Gardeners - Dryads 'blessed' by the Lady of the Bog.

I always liked this kit and wanted to do something with it, especially when I decided to make my army forest-themed - but they didn't work in my undead army at all. Only later when my painting became less about creating a valid army and more about creating my own themes I have found a place for those tree ladies. I thought of them as foul parodies of real Dryads, pieces of wood which the Lady forces into movement through flesh-bending magic and uses them as horrifying guardians in her realm.

Thanks to that I had a lot of possibilities when converting them, adding various fleshy and bony bits that I found in my box and sculpting tentacles and other fleshy appendages. For the faces they have just the Lady's sigil carved into them. The only irritating part of the kit were the mold lines - removing them from all the branches were worse than scraping them off ribcages!

Here are them all together. Only one picture because unpainted and in those numbers, they are quite a mess:



And the close-ups on the singular Gardeners:



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Recently I thought that I could make those WIP posts a little more interesting by actually showing the sculpting progress and the techniques that I used.

Here I decided to show how I made the one on the bony 'stilts', probably my favorite from the bunch. I started with cutting the limbs at the knees and elbows, drilling holes inside them, gluing thin brass rods inside and securing them at the connection with small amounts of milliput - mostly because those rods tend to rotate inside their holes after fiddling with them too much and milliput helps to prevent that.



After that, I create a mixture of greenstuff and milliput (ratio 1:2) to sculpt the bony horns. In 'reality' They are supposed to be hard, bony material, so using milliput-heavy mix makes the sculpting more convincing and also much easier to sand afterward.



Using that much milliput made it more difficult to sculpt it properly, so I sanded it to smooth, sharp finish - exactly how I envision bony protrusions on creatures such as this one.



And finally, I used pure greenstuff to sculpt some fleshy connection between the spikes and the wooden body of the Dryad. I was making thin pieces of putty, which I was then 'draping' them over the joints, adding additional ridges or stretching them with the sculpting tool as needed.



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And then, some actual undead!

Recently I kitbashed a bunch of wight heroes - and today I am finally bringing you the first one of them painted - Yarema the Giant, the legendary Bodyguard of Kings.

Just as with Alarich who started the collection of Necromancers, Yarema was also the most straightforward of them when it came to painting. Verdigris on the armor, reddish fur, dry bones and a black cape with yellow freehands - just like Zlyshko for example. Still, his size makes him extra imposing and the patterns on the back are always fun to do, so I'm quite happy with him too.

His backstory:
Yarema didn’t kill a dragon on a lone mountain, he also didn’t change the fate of any battle by himself, but he was so good at his job that he got buried with all the ceremonies befitting a hero. Yarema was a bodyguard to Varsavian Kings - a giant so imposing and intimidating, his mere presence was enough to deter most attackers - and others got quickly pulverized by his monstrous mace. He was also surprisingly perceptive and clever, able to uncover assassinations plots before they could come to fruition and dismantle them quickly. Thanks to that, Yarema managed to outlive three different kings, who all died because of natural circumstances. After his raising, Zlyshko is more than happy to have him as his personal bodyguard, practically eliminating the danger of assassination.



I also made a small comparison of Yarema and Zlyshko to show just how big a wight built around a space marine cape really is.

 

Farmer7574

Vampire Count
True Blood
Dec 10, 2013
1,587
England
@Borgnine Brilliant work as always - those dryad conversions are really impressive - very John Carpenter's 'The Thing'-y. I'm looking forward to seeing these painted up as I imagine them an abomination of tree and fleshy bits - a royal mess, but in an awesome way of course :D Excellent WIP shots too - I think the amount of work that goes into some minis is overlooked by anyone that doesn't have to do it, so these shots make me appreciate the minis more.

Lovely work on those orcs too, by the way - nicely painted and named. Do you play BB much at all?

And top job as usual on the Wight, it's nice to see quite colourful undead whilst still retaining their aged & decomposed appearance.
 

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