The Relief of Plavigorica - Araby Contingent - January Rank & File

 I, Snorri Ibn Gudruk, scribe to the house of the mighty and beneficent Alkadi Nasreen, Sultan of All He Surveys, and Scimitar of the Great Caliph, am tasked with making  account of our expedition to break the siege of Plavigorica in the Border Princes, in the far North. 

On the command of our great Sultan, our caravan was led by Emir Suleiman, who alone of our company had once set foot upon the Old World.  There in his youth, he rode horses* with the chevaliers of Bretonnia until a debt of honour was repaid.

For nine days we followed our familiar paths, skirting the edge of the Sea of Sands. From Erachti a guide led us on the northward route between oases. Nolg Al-Akar led us twelve days – alert to the stirrings of the undead and the dread mirages. Without him we would surely have succumbed, after all, to the wonder wall at Urmi.  Onwards we trekked, following the north star, shielding our faces against the sandstorms, until we sighted the first shrubs, cacti and rough grasses: the edge of the Badlands.  Here we leave behind everything most of us have ever known. We press forwards for honour, hoping to return.

*Indeed, it is often the manner of the people of the Old World to favour horses over camels even for their most noble lords.

Well here we go! This month I started with a core unit: 10 Arabyan Guard.  These were some of the first miniatures I picked up for this effort - mostly Perry Muslim Militia Spearmen.

Two very minor conversions: to create a standard bearer, and to give Chauncey from the Dogs of War range more suitably baggy trousers. He's a little Ottoman in comparison to his comrades but Warhammer's a pastiche, and he was one of the first miniatures I identified for this force.  The badly painted freehand Arabic on the shields and banner is supposed to be words like "truth", "honour", "hope" etc. Any readers of Arabic will see how mangled it is...  Those words remind me of the old Law slogans that used to be on the Arcane Armorial shield transfers that were widely used in the photos in the 3rd ed rule book.  

From left: Gripping Beast Moorish command musician,  Citadel Dogs of War, Citadel Talisman Saracen, Perry Muslim Militia, Midlam Arabian Nights Adventurer.

All Perry Muslim Militia. 

Every unit has a little orange in it (for "the Arabs": mid-table strugglers Dundee United FC)

One model that took me a while to get at a decent price, was the Talisman Saracen.  I was keen to buy one as a suitably armed leader for this spear unit, and to illustrate how Araby characters have been depicted over the years.  The original Talisman character card for the Saracen (Talisman Dungeon 1987) depicts him as an evil slaver, (with red eyes by the looks of it), while the 2016 digital edition upgrades him to neutral with a more politely phrased ability to “recruit” supporters to his cause… I’m normally squarely for the Oldhammer way, but maybe not this time.  Still, I tried to give mine the classic colour scheme:

1987

2016

Meanwhile, hidden in the ranks is a deadly hashishin:

 This one is from Citadel's C04 Thieves range, which has several classic if stereotyped Arabyan models (no doubt an Alibaba reference). 

Assassins are interesting in 3rd ed - with a flat 25 point supplementary cost, they become more cost effective the higher the level of hero - but I opted for a level 5 hero so as not to outshine the unit leader. 

My take on the Border Princes is they are the Warhammer equivalent of the Balkans. I don't think that's universally accepted. "Plavigorica" is an amalgam of the Montenegrin capital Podgorica and town of Plav, and means 'small blue mountain'.

Finally a tribute to the Spear of All Araby, Jaako the Magnificent. 

This fellow, Tom Thyksson from Bugman's Rangers is on his way to Finland, all being well.

Jings, the lack of painting daylight in January in Scotland is brutal!  See you in February!

The contingent so far:

9 Arabyan Guard with spears, shields, musician and standard bearer, led by level 5 hero 109 pts

Level 5 hashishin with throwing knives  56 pts

Total: 165 pts.

Tom's Goblins and Orcs: Rank and File #1

Aaand, we're off!

Only just though... I had a terrible time gathering up motivations for these troublesome goblins, but they're finally done - the last lick of paint being the 28th of Jan. I have managed to paint my leader, but he's in the back pocket ready for another month (I was worried about not having anything to post, and one leader mini trumps 10 rank and file minis!)

Anyhow, here are ten of the LegBiter goblins (pic from the awesome Stuff of Legends site: link). These were sold to me cheap a few years ago, on the provision they're painted for the OWAC, so it's lovely to have finally painted them!

In the run up to Christmas, I painted my first boxed game (the 1995 Warhammer Quest) and I've carried on a process from there. 

Basically, rather than shading each colour with a separate colour I've washed them all over with the Army Painter GrimDark Shadow, and then highlighted up. It's saved a lot of time! Here's a goblin from the Warhammer Quest set (which is currently displayed at the Warhammer World shop in Nottingham!👇

And a random goblin from this month 👇

You can see that I left a load of flash on the belt around the spikes. I'd run out of good times,...

The tunic is Contrast Dark Angels Green, with white added for the trim.

And all the boys together

Here's a bonus! A goblin fanatic very generously given to me by the OWAC very own Jaakko (instagram). Many thanks!

I've not counted him as model, as he had some basecoat on him from OWAC8 🙂

And, I thought well - 10 goblins might not cut the mustard for this month. I painted up one of the ogres as a reward for pushing through the terrible rank and file!

On a side note, I had the most disastrous disaster. Whilst painting the goblins, the DA contrast paint unknowingly spilled, and dripped into my sock... I then proceeded to GO UPSTAIRS and retrieve a model and I only noticed on the way down that I'd left green toeprints everywhere.

Fortunately, it all came out ok but I really did a big fear! Thank the gods for whoever varnished the floor 🙏

And finaly, I did neglect to post a pic of my OWAC tribute model - so here it is with my goblins in the background as a timestamp. He's currently winging his way over to Overloard Byron in the States. Full colour pics next month!

 

Hopefully now I can push on through and paint the other sticking unit - the unit of wolfboys... That's the plan for next month anyway!

See you then 👊

....

Intro: link

January: Rank and File #1

30...    10 x Goblins with slings (counts as short bows)

40...    1 x Ogre

Total: 70 points

Oreo inspects the very first issue of the oldhammer zine Lead Rot ✨ Link for online PDF

via instagram accounts North of Sleet and Koltti

The Legion rises - Valtteri's Undead - January Rank & File

First month of my first OWAC done! And it went great!

I managed to avoid getting sick (not a mean feat with little kids in daycare and school during winter), painted all the models I intended to and a few extras to boot.

My plan was to paint a nice block of Skeleton Warriors with a hand painted banner, a Wight to lead them and my first leader model, a Necromancer. I knew this wasn't going to be too difficult, because I had already painted two units of skeletons as a test, so I had the process down.

Behold! The start of my legion:

(These skellies were painted before OWAC9 but the Ogre is brand new)

Dr. Kemmler's painting clinic

I don't have a narrative for my army yet, though I might get inspired later on. So I'll focus on painting.

January goals.

These skeletons are 3D prints from Celtic Miniatures. Like I wrote in my first blog post, I didn't feel like hunting down dozens of old plastic skellies. I really dislike stripping plastic models of old paint jobs, not to mention cleaning mould lines from already assembled minis. These prints were really easy and fast to clean and assemble and they have a perfect old school aesthetic. And great shields to boot!

My painting method is dead simple:
First I spray them with a white primer.
Then I do the bases: dark brown followed by drybrushing of lighter browns and greys.
I then paint everything that isn't bone: swords, banner pole etc. I only paint a base color and maybe a single highlight.
Then I clean up the bone with white, correcting any mistakes I did previously.

Base colours. Ha. Ha.

After the skeletons are basecoated I moved onto the shields:

These were primed black.

I painted the red patterns first, because it required multiple layers and was messy. Then the dark grey parts, tidying up the red borders. 

The skulls were first painted brown, then layered with a bone colour. They were further highlighted by a light beige and pure white.

Metal parts were painted last, no highlights.

Shields progress.

I glued the shields on in preparation for the final part - cracking open a bottle of liquid talent.

Ready to rise from the grave.

Some of you might have guessed it already. I'm of course talking about enamel washes, namely the hobby sensation that is Streaking Grime.

In case you're not familiar with this method I'm going to give a quick breakdown.

You need:
Thinned enamel paint aka wash.
Thinner/white spirit. I highly recommend an odourless one!
Old crappy brushes (these paints will ruin your brushes).
Q-tips or make-up sponges.
A metal pallette.
A pipette/dropper makes using the thinner easier and less messy.

Tools of the trade.

Enamel painting couldn't be simpler.
You drown the model in the wash, wipe most of it off with a Q-tip dipped in thinner (remember to change the Q-tips after a few models, they will not last long) and then wait for a day or two until the paint has dried.

Below is an example of this. The third pic is after the paint has just been wiped off, the fourth pic is what it looks like after a day.
You will end with a nice, moderately dirty model with a nice matte finish. Remember to use bright basecoat colors, otherwise you will end up with a drab model.
I used a few different tones for colour variation (Mig & AK Streaking Grime and AK Dark Streaking Grime).

It might be a good idea to varnish the model before using enamels and thinner, if you brush them too hard you might dissolve some of the previous paint job. I don't bother with plastic models but do it with metals, just to be safe.

Rise my minion!

Painting the banner probably took me as long as the whole unit of skeletons. It's an old-school printed paper banner from the 4th ed. Army Book which I then painted with acrylics and a brush. The hardest part is the black lining at the end. Thin paint, a good brush and a prayer to the old gods does the trick!
As a kid I thought the idea of painting the black&white banners to look like the ones in the Army Books was a cruel joke. No mortal could do it. Well, turns out you can!

Childhood ambitions: Unlocked.

The Wight was painted just like the skeletons, only with more colours. With the Wight I did some preliminary highlights on the bone, cloak and the winged helm and a used varnish to protect him.

I feel like a new man after that bath!

All of my Wights will be painted in the colour scheme of the Army Book, though with more muted colours.

Twins!

You might remember that the Wight on the cover of the Army Book has a menacing green blade. When I started this project I decided that I wanted to give all my wights weapons like that. And because I like to challenge myself now and then I settled on doing them with a NMM-like technique. 

Now, I can't actually paint NMM. My brain just doesn't understand how light reflects and bounces off different surfaces. So I just look at reference pictures and copy them. This works just fine with simple surfaces like swords but with this battle axe I just had to guess. Turned out pretty good though!

Spooky.

The Necromancer was painted with a traditional GW style of basecoat, wash and highlights. No enamel shenanigans here. I needed a change to keep things interesting, And I also wanted to make sure he has more vibrant colours than his dead companions. A pink magical sword just seemed appropriate.                                                                     

He's looks fabulous in pink.

Now wait a minute, why did I paint a Leader when it's a rank&file month? Well, that's because I've never really played Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Sure, I tried it as a kid but it just didn't take off, like I wrote in my intro post.
I really want to play now that I'm building a proper army for the game. With the test units from before OWAC9 I've got a nice starter force but no leader. Hence the Necromancer. Don't worry, he will be surpassed by a more powerful ruler when the time comes. Mwahahaa.

I actually have a game of 4th/5th edition WHFB lined up with a friend next month! Hopefully I'll get to do a little battle report for February's post.

At this point I still had a bit over a week left of January, so naturally I decided to paint some more models! Who needs rest, eh? I painted two Skeleton Ogres (available from Ral Partha) which will act as unit fillers. They count as 2 models a piece for the challenge but since they represent 4 skeletons I'm using that as their point cost. I also painted a few more skeletons to round up my previous unit to a nice 30 models and some test models for Mummies and Zombies. I finished an old skeleton drummer as well after taking pics of the skeleton unit, he will replace the horn blower.

Ogres, pre-shading before the enamels.

Extras.

Participation fee and gifts

Somewhere around this time I remembered that I needed to paint a model for the organizers. I managed to pick up this old spindly Wraith, gave it a quick paint job and shipped it off to Jaakko. I decided to paint him more corporeal than ethereal, I felt it suited this model better. Hope you like it!

Stab, stab, stabbety stab.

To top this month of I bought a bunch of reinforcements from around the globe. 
The sweetest part was these two models, gifted to me from Tom - free of charge! Thanks mate, greatly appreciated!

Best.

Stats

So here's what my painting looks like after the first month:

25 Skeletons w. Swords&Shields, including Command Group	214 points	25 models
Wight	37 points	1 model
Necromancer Champion	163 points	1 model
2 Skeleton Ogres	72 points	4 models
2 Mummies	90 points	2 models
Total	576 points	33 models

With my previous units I already have close to a 1000 points painted, enough to play my first game!

Phew! That was a long post. Respect if you managed to read through it.
For December I'm trying to paint an unit of Zombies and maybe some extras too. See you then!

Filippo's Bretonnia: Rank and File 1 - 176 points

"The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math..."

Okay, we may have a huge problem here. Bretonnia's Knights are waaaaaaay harder to paint as I thought.

"Only five models! It will be such an easy task!" 

I wish I could punch me in the face

Anyway, here are my first knights since the last millenium!

Five Knight Errant (176 points) ready to charge my enemy and HOPEFULLY obtain glory to their King and the Lady!

Now let's go back to some good old infantry..

See you next month!

Frank's Great Task, Building a Daemonic Legion of Slaanesh - January (Rank & File)

As I explained in this my intro post, I am taking a much more paced and measured approach to this year's OWAC, with the specific goal of maxing out the traditional Daemonic portion of the army. My efforts will therefore be applied to the gaps in my existing collection between what I have painted and what the Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness army list allows. This meant Fiends, a dozen more Fiends. So, that is where I began, with five Fiends for the month of January. 

For the paint schemes I continued with my method designed to call back to the classic daemonic legion art in Slaves to Darkness, using wild clashing color schemes which lean towards pastel shades or bright colors. However, this time I tried a new technique, for me at least, contrast paints. I chose to give contrasts a try in hopes to have slightly different results on the second batch of a dozen fiends, than the first batch. I watched a few videos and fiddled with contrast on a few bits and shields. Then I gave it a shot on the old lead. 

I have to say the result of the contrast painting was functional, but I didn't love it. I found the shading effect that contrast provides often felt too understated for my purposes. I ended up in most cases giving a drybrush and highlight on them to get the effects I wanted. In several cases I still needed to do dark lining to provide shading in the deepest areas as well. So, my verdict on contrasts is, they are 'fine', but nothing amazing. It's basically a thick ink that requires you prime in a light tone instead of a dark tone. I found the time saved in this process was essentially paid back by having to line or shade due to having to use a light primer color. I think contrasts will let you achieve functional results in a bit less time and with less prior skill than before, but experienced painters probably can do better or will treat them as just another ink pot.

All that said, the first five came out pretty well. The pastel colors let me get some different looks that my first batch. Fiends scuttle about quite a bit, but I did get them to sit still for some close ups...

Five Fiends is not a full unit. One more Fiend is required before they are a complete unit, but five is a good start, nonetheless. In terms of points, five Fiends weigh in at 200 points, and this is where I stand at the end of January.