This Way Madness Lies...

Starting the Wood Elves

Wood Elves the first army I seriously attempted but which got derailed early on after only a few beast handlers and a couple of cavalry were painted. Probably by WH40K which took over from fantasy for a good many years.

 And while I have thought about doing a wood elf army I have never gone back to it seriously  until now. Inspired at the time (and now)  like many by Gary Chalk's excellent elf drawings. 

White Dwarf 41, Artist Gary Chalk,
© Games Workshop

One of the key features is that I want this  to be primarily a  metal army. So this does limit the figures choices and I would really like this army to be centred around Skarloc's Wood elves, but they are just too expensive these days. 

So I have decided to use other Nineties designed figures instead. So will be basing this army around the ex-Grenadier figures (Now Fornlorn Hope or Battlezone), Celtos (Now Brigade Miniatures) and probably Ral Partha Europe.  With a few vintage Citadel miniatures thrown in for good measure. 

Does that make them still Oldhammer?

I also plan to buy and prep the army before getting started on some serious painting. Something I don't normally do. It is usually buy a few figures, paint a few figures and repeat. This means the army does grow in an organic way but sometimes I get distracted before I complete the main units.  I have drafted out a 1000pt WFB 3rd Edition army with 500pts of stretch goals.

Rather than the traditional greens and browns, I plan to continue with the greys and muted colours I used for the elves in the Fae army. Best typified by Prince Nuada from Hellboy 2. Elves which aren't really just Wood, High or Dark elves. 

For some weird reason,  I would like to mount them all on a slotta style base but Ex-Grenadier elves all come with a wide integral base. Now I am not bothered about mounting them on a 25mm base (instead of the standard 20mm WFB 3rd edition base) because most of the games I play put elves on a 25mm base anyway. But it does mean I need to decide how I want to do this as I don't want to mount the integral straight on top of a slottabase. As it makes them just a bit too tall and the integral base generally sticks out a bit around the edges. 

So I could either cut base off, but for now I will try making a Milliput base and fitting the existing base inside. Although some of the bases will have to be reduced by cutting a section out of the middle. 

The left figure's Integral base has been reduced by
cutting the central section by a few mm

Once set, the bases can be tided up. 

Rob 

Oathmark Light Dwarves & Goblins - First Impressions Plus the Mighty Atom

Oathmark Dwarf Engineers & Rangers 

 

I ordered three sprues of these dwarves off of eBay in order to make my unit of dwarves for the Thistlewood  scenario. But I also thought they could be used as the Engineers from Orcs Drift. And finally would make a interesting allied contingent for the halflings if put them together as rangers and miners.  I also decided to do a quick review of the dwarves plus the Oathmark goblins I got for Christmas. 

The first five put together. 

Each sprue has enough parts to create five dwarves equipped with either bows, mining equipment or two handed weapons. Plus a few extras such as a spear. Also fifteen heads also keeps the variety up (So each one of my dwarves in my unit can have a different head).  As I found out when I put the first five together, not every part goes with all of the bodies. So a bit of dry fitting is needed before splashing the glue about. But overall they went together ok. I really like all of the little extras on the sprue (top of the picture) which include things like pipes, tankards and horns. Which will be really useful for all kinds of scene setting and making them into individuals.

Dwarf rangers kitted out for the wilds.

I am equipping five of the dwarves with bows and add backpacks etc. from the bits box to turn them into rangers similar to my halfling ones.  Just need to add the green stuff straps etc. 

The halfling rangers are soon to be joined. 

They would also be a decent  alternative for the company of Thorin Oakenshield. Overall I am pleased with these guys and makes a nice change from all of the heavily armoured dwarf kits already available. In summary a great sprue of miniatures with plenty of character, choice of weapons and a nice little set of extra parts. But can be a bit fiddley to put the right arms on the right bodies. 

NOTE: I have also ordered the dwarven Warchief from Fornlorn Hope (ex-Grenadier) as the unit commander and will use a couple of EM4 dwarves has his personal bodyguard. You may ask why I am mentioning this minor detail. Its a great miniature but I don't even have it yet!

But whilst looking for the picture of this figure, I found someone selling one on eBay for £15. So I guess it always pays to look around before you buy! FYI - Its £2.30 on the Fornlorn Hope website. This figure has been around since the Nineties so maybe the eBay one is vintage...

Oathmark Goblin Raiders

I got a box goblins from Oathmark for Christmas to use with Thistlewood. Now I was originally planning on using my LotR goblins but sometimes my projects spin off in sideways directions. As I would quite to paint them up some goblins as Black Sun goblins(as mentioned in the scenario). With banners and shields, etc, to match the scenario description. Now I haven't decided on a  design for the Black Suns but would quite like to make some shields especially for them if I can come up with a suitable design. 

Where as the dwarf sprue felt like a character set, the goblin sprue feels very much like an army set. With five similar goblin bodies and heads and all five can be equipped with hand weapons, spears or bows. So a very flexible choice of builds like the dwarves. But no extra items to customise your goblins. Although it does come with a banner pole and what I assume is  a small set of boss weapons  and a special character head. So you can add a unit commander. 

First five put together at random

Unlike the dwarves,  I just put all of the goblin parts together at random and didn't have any real difficulty. So I think building all thirty shouldn't be too difficult. 

So overall a simple little set which should build up a unit double quick. 

The Mighty Atom*

"Nice to See You, To see you nice"

Bruce NOT Rift Cragg

While inspecting my new Trolls from Oakbound, I couldn't help noticing that one (Listed as Rift Cragg)  of them reminds me of a famous British TV personality Bruce Forsyth from all of my childhood and most of my adulthood. Who was famous for hosting game shows and his catchphrases. One of those all round entertainers from the good old days.  And even the troll seems to impersonating his famous pose. 

So from now on this troll will be known as Bruce. 

"Give Us a Twirl"

*Bruce Forsyth was known as the Mighty Atom back in the 1930's !! when he made his TV debut. 

And Finally Enough of this Madness & Back to the Oldhammer

As we turn to 2022, time to start think about what projects I want to finish and one of them I want to finish is painting my classic Citadel LotR collection. Which sort of got me back into wargaming. Anyway I painted Gollum back 2018 but was never really happy with the finish. So he is first up for a make over and then onto the other characters from this little set. 

Rob 

Thistlewood - The Kings Champion

The Imperial Guard Take Shape

The King's  champion is the commander of the Imperial Guard. I had six Grenadier knights (from the nineties)  already painted  and recently ended up with an extra one. I still need another three and I think I will get them from Fornlorn Hope to match in. I have decided to keep the original base colours as they are contemporary with the miniatures. 

I wanted him to stand out and so he could be used as a hero in other future games. So I painted him using a bronze colour scheme rather than the classic steel colour scheme. This was done using a Citadel Warplock Bronze base coat followed by a light brown wash. Then dry brushed the highlight mix of 50/50 of Warplock bronze / Hashut Copper. With these fully armoured miniatures it is fairly quick to get a finished figures painted to a reasonable standard. 

The Warhammer Stats  for Imperial Guard reflects the different approach  the Warhammer 1st edition takes with not creating unstoppable killing machines that occur in later editions. These elite knights only have a toughness B and strength 2. In the 1st edition toughness was marked with a letter not a number but it is broadly similar 2nd edition numbers by replacing the letter  with a number in increasing order A=1, B=2 etc. So with most miniatures with higher weapon skill and lower strength/toughness it will be interesting see how this plays out on the table. 

Imperial Knight Stats

Rob

Paint An Orc for Orctober

 A 300% Improvement

Beware the mighty Orctober Horde

As it is Orctober, I have managed to paint some orcs, three to be precise which as the mathematically three times as many as one. Which is how many I painted last year (hence the subtitle above). Last year I managed to finish Ugezod and this year it was the turn of his banner bearer and musician (ex-Grenadier Nick Lund Orcs via Fornlorn Hope).  As expected these sculpts fit in very well as the Ugezod's Death Commandos and are a fraction of the price of alternative Citadel ones.  I also managed an odd orc trooper from 1984 Regiment of Renown - Harboth's Black Mountain Boys.

Rob