Byron's invasion of Ulthuan - Seizing Tor Elithern (629 pts)

 Grom has need of another landing beach for the second wave of ships. He has sent his trusty lieutenant, the Black Gobbo, to take Tor Elithern. This is a watch tower built on a promontory that overlooks the coast that Grom has his eyes set upon. 

The elves are aware of Grom's armies and are on high alert.

The guard of Tor Elithern prepare the bolt thrower.

The Black Gobbo is a treacherous and sneaky goblin with a penchant for cunning tactics... at least as far as he is concerned. 

The chariots race across the field!

The Black Gobbo orders a frontal assault of the tower! He sends all of his forces at once to overwhelm the defenders. If Grom wanted fewer goblins dead, he would have sent fewer goblins on the mission.

The elves are steady and precise.

The Chariots careen forward trying to weave and dodge the repeating bolt thrower. The Wolfriders find themselves caught between them as stray bolts strike the lead riders. 

The spearmen take up position at the top of the stairs.

The riders approach the tower relying on the wait of their numbers. The black gobbo sneaks up the rear in the confusion of the assault.

Bravely, for goblins anyways, the wolves stumble up the stairs only to be met by stoic spears.

The black gobbo sneaks among the dead goblins and toppled chariots.

As the last wolf rider flees in fear, the trolls trudge through the carnage to meet the elves. 

The Black Gobbo sneaks into a blind spot of the arrow slits. 

The trolls lurch up the stairs to crumple the elven defenders. Archers in the tower down one of the brutes. 

Despite their brave defense, the spearmen are tossed aside. 

With the last of the defenders crunched or otherwise tossed off the cliff, the last Troll turns to batter the door. 

The loud thumping on the door is the perfect distraction for the Black Gobbo's plan.

The Black Gobbo sneaks up the tower and hacks the unware elves to pieces. Another cunning plan expertly done by the Black Gobbo. 

Grom will have his second beach.

Now for pics of the minis

The Black Gobbo, goblin big boss - 33 points

The black gobbo has been on my list of things to do for over 20 years. I remember when the black gobbo articles started appearing on the games workshop website and seeing the conversion instructions. Night goblins were my first warhammer army, the same army I sold a few years back and have replaced with the army I am making now. 

You can compare the original conversion guide to my work. I think I'm pretty close.

Two wolf chariots - 170 points

Four Trolls - 260 points

Ten wolf riders - 121 points

Part of my goal to reproduce the box art is to paint up each of the goblin banners too.

This isn't on the front of the 4th ed. box. It's inside the 4th ed rulebook. But, I like the wolf rider standard, so I made a rough approximation for mine. I took a plastic orc hand and sculpted it a middle finger and put it on top. 

Additional models, a command group and fanatic - 45 points

The yellow banner is also from the box art.

Total: 629 points

This month I was able to catch up to the "March" line on my shelf. Focusing on models with bigger bases made a big difference. Now I just have to slog through infantry for the next two months to finish on time.

Should be easy right?

Ian's Undead - Rank and File month 1 (456 points)

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

- Henry Miller

January was a good month. I painted everything I was aiming for except for 3 Vampire Bats. As usual, my iPhone 9 takes really bad pictures.

January Rank and File - 456 points

January

20 Skeletons with spear and shield – 200 points 

2 Undead chariots with scythed wheels, 1 crew with bow– 156 points 

10 Dire wolves - 100 points

Total : 456 points

February will bring minimally another unit of 20 Skeletons and a unit of 20 Ghouls.

Finally, here's the miniature I will paint for Nicolas Ouellet : a Dwarf Dragon Slayer. Nicolas is already and sadly in the field of bones but as he's sending me a miniature, I will too !

Shadespyre's Leader Month - The Kingdom of The Gnolls (An Orcs & Goblins Army) (1068 pts!!!)

OWAC V - Leaders - In the Kingdom of the Gnolls...*

May

Very tempted to make this Wild Card month and show you that stuff instead, but I guess we've all waited long enough for Royalty to show their face. Well, you'll have to wait a bit longer because there is a lot of other ground to cover here in Leader Month

Let's start here, with the return of a familar face, and his new friend, our Court Wizard. This is the FTG4 Gnoll Chieftain (which I think we saw in with the Clansmen previously) and the C12 Great Goblin Shaman from a couple of years later (still only 1984, mind). I'm not 100% certain, but I feel like the latter was resculpted from (or at least copied from) the former. What do you think?

Waaaaaaaay back in January, I think, I talked about how the Gnoll Gnights were one of the inspirations for the "Royal" aspect of this project. Well, here they are, in all their red and yellow glory:

Five identically posed models, of course. I really, really wanted to convert one into a standard bearer, and perhaps some lancers, but this is one model I couldn't find a broken example of! That said, they all come with horrible excess metal around their face, raised arm and shield (hence the slightly broken-nosed look). I sort of enjoyed the challenge of finding five different heraldic patterns and translating them onto the folds of the caparisons.

Sort of.

Now, I'm not entirely shy of conversions, as you know, so here's one which is big and bold and obvious. The Royal Standard bearer started life as just another Gnoll with (out) hand weapon. I reposed the arm and added the home made standard and pole. The shield is a press moulding of an old Bret (?) one. The grey highlighting of the black boar's head is a bit heavy handed and makes it look a bit wolflike, but still. His helmet is sculpted on with greenstuff (leading me to think that I could have converted more of the unhelmeted models, but it would have been a lot of work. And I'm very lazy.

Well, surely that's enough for one month? What's that? Isn't there a King and Queen to see? No pleasing some people is there...

Here we go then: His Royal Gnollness, King Waleran** (Wally to his friends)

This is King Wally in dismounted mode, showing off the original version of the shield carried by his standard bearer. He is defnitely NOT stood on a box in order to look Royally imposing, how dare you! His axe here is fixed to the base, not his hand, so that he can be moved to his proper place, his Royal Chariot.

This is the FTG13 Gnoll Chieftain's Chariot with just a couple of additions - wheel blades and the long, trailing banner. That's the same standard bearer as ended up in the Huscarls, by the way. The concealed crewman here also appears on the other chariot, so you can look at him (or his double) later.

King Wally is still NOT stood on a box, for those wondering.

Sigh. I suppose you want to see the Gnoll Queen, as well? 

Fine. Bit of a gamble this one - she's a MODERN, NON-CITADEL miniature, and heavily converted, at that. No, I don't know what I was thinking, either.

Please be upstanding for Her Royal Gnollness, Queen Boardica***

Bonus points for identifying the offending donor model. I've modified her weapon, armour, feet(!) and face - but the eyepatch is original.

Our Queen travelled from a distant tribe in order to capture King Waleran's heart, and thus a share in his kingdom. Rumours that she is stronger, tougher and smarter than her husband are plainly ridiculous (and continually quashed by The Aunts) though it is true that the army, and a lot of other things, are better organised since she took to the throne. And she definitely added those wheel blades to the chariots.

Speaking of which, the second Royal Chariot:

Some different alterations here. The standard bearer (lost to the Huscarls) is replaced with a plain archer. The Queen's lance pennants surfice to announce her presence (and help the King feel superior, for once.)  The original driver was missing, so I took the opportunity to further differentiate the chariots by using the driver from a later Goblin chariot. Finally, to accomodate the depth of the Queen's side on stance, I extended the chariot floor with a sheet of balsa wood.

In the second picture, you can see the 4th passenger (which is the same as in the other chariot). As they wear the hooded robes of Night Goblins, I painted them black - it also helps them stand out amidst all the browns. As the Grand Shaman is the only other example in the army, they could also be wizards? Or maybe they are mysterious Gninjas, acting as bodyguards for the Royal Couple? This has gone on long enough, so let's just leave them as Gnolls for gnow...

Scores for May:      1068 points (!)                    11 models

1 x Gnoll Court Shaman       (Level 20 Orc Wizard)                                       251 points

5 x Gnoll Gnights                  (Orc Snortas)                                                      235 points

1 x Royal Standard    (Level 15 Orc Hero, Lt Arm, Sh, Army Standard)          141 points

King Waleran                   (Level 20 Orc Hero, Lt Arm, Sh, 2 Hd Wpn)           121 points

Queen Boardica                (Level 25 Orc Hero, Hvy Arm, Lance)                    148 points

2 x Royal Chariots           (2x Bows, Scythed Wheels)                                       172 points

Running Total:             2779 points            192 models

I haven't checked, but I suspect I need to drop the levels of some of the characters to make the list "legal". I'll worry about that in the July wrap up post, I think

Coming Next: Wild Card month!

* ...the one eyed Gnoll is Queen? Doesn't quite work does it...

** named after the 1st Earl of Worcester. Remember him?

*** NO APOLOGIES!!!

Benjamin's Chariots 🛒 - THE IRON CLAWS - Wildcard Month (448pts)

You can hide, but you can't run!

Oh boy has this been a long time in the works! Scouring through my photos the initial stages go back to at least August last year - but the thought of an Iron Claw chariot with an Olley Beastmen was far earlier. This is probably the most overly worked bit of the army so far - and seeing it finished finally feels like a real gift!

The Beastmen Chariots

A true 20th Century Design Icon

The Iron Claw chariot feels like the purest Bob Olley experience. That intense dragon figurehead, and all those gaping square jaws. Like the beastmen he did for citadel, it really captures the spirit of classic warhammer, whilst also not entirely really fitting in. Like a glimpse into a parallel universe where he might have worked a bit more with them.

It took AGES to finally acquire one for myself - however that was only the beginning of the process really.

The Challenges...

I really wanted them to be pulled by boars to fit into the demake logic the army has. Despite sculpting for every company out there - to my knowledge Bob had never sculpted a boar. So I had to cheat and use ones sculpted by Kev Adams. He DID however sculpt a Boar Head for this guy

Don't let me boar you to death with all this

The chariot itself was also a bit short - so incorporating this into the Beastmen army required a bit of a boost. The proportions of the goblins were just too short - so I opted to create a lasercut replica, and allow for press moulded sections to replace the missing details.

An early photoshop mockup

Some cad designs for the laercutter

An eager prototype!

Much of the lasercut stuff got swapped and resculpted later on. I extended the winged panels a bit on the sides and the fronts were heavily altered. The initial plan to just do one kind of ballooned to four due to the availability of free press-moulded components.

To avoid too much repetition I needed to source various components for variation - this included some goat heads (Ral Partha Dwarf Cavalry) to replace the dragon figureheads, and various press moulded bits on the fronts. A happy accident of extending it's height was to sculpt jaws onto the skull fronts.

The Riders were initially going to be from the Midlam Miniatures goatmen range - but they just seemed too skinny in such a bulky chariot. So they were swapped out for very heavily converted Gargantua orcs from Ral Partha. This decision alone really added a few weeks to the whole project.

Cool points if you can guess the donor model for the whip guys.

Painting...

Aside from needing a magic brush to access some of the crevices in the riders - painting was fairly straightforward - although I was a little stumped with how to paint the chariots. Each model is pretty much it's own unit at this point - so there's a fine line between bland and busy that I've tried to keep between!

April 30th, and the varnish is still wet.

Points...

I was a little creative with the points - using WHFB 3rd edition rulebook to build a chariot from scratch.

They're 112 points each - so altogether 448pts.

Next month will be MORE rank and file, and a shrine - and hopefully those beastmen that didn't get finished in February! And a wizard. And another Korag too.

Thanks for reading!