Byron's Invasion of Ulthuan - foraging mission (395 pts)

An army marches on its stomach. And, goblin stomachs are often full of mushroom. 

While waiting to hear back from his scouts, Grom turned to the next important business for his army, Food. Nearly all of the food packed onto the rafts had been eaten during the voyage or was already spoiled. The goblins were hungry and needed grub in their bellies before they turned on each other. 

Night goblins shamans are skilled connoisseurs of mushrooms; it is a key ingredient in their spells and nogs. So, Grom sent Madlum the Shaman in charge of a foraging mission to find Mushrooms. 

Cimrond Joyriver greets the morning with a White Lion stretch,
while the brothers Kurwyn and Dolryll share their latest groovy jam.

Madlum, was smart enough to know that he didn't know where to find mushrooms on Ulthuan. But, he was also keen enough to know what kind of elf would. Those kind of elves always made themselves known by their particular kind of music and their proclivities toward stretching on rugs and breathing funny for a long time. As silly as they were to him, Madlum knew their mushrooms made the best ingredients for his magic and to get his fanatic friends all worked up. 

Kalerond lightstoned, standing wide in mountain pose,
tells of his recent retreat at Tor Elyr

Just as Madlum had told them, the elves made themselves known. Grobbit and Gribbit spotted the unwary elves from their vantage point in the underbrush. 

Grobbit peaks over the underbrush

Grobbit spies on the elves while formulating a plan with Gribbit. 

Teamwork makes the dream work - at least so says Grobbit.

Grobbit and Gribbit lower down a bit and wait for their buddies to spring the trap - with the say so of Madlum, that is. 

The attack is begun! Grobbit and Gribbit prod their squigs out of the bushes toward the elves. 

Eadrihyr Joykeeper grabs the reins of Shadowprancer
but the horse is startled by the unfamiliar monsters approaching

One of the elves tries to mount up and escape to raise the alarm, but he is caught by a second group of goblins that emerges from the bushes poking squigs toward the elves. 

Madlum is gleeful. These elves will undoubtedly know where to find the mushrooms he needs. If not they can make a good stew for Grom and the others. 

Now for pics of the minis:

The new lot all together.

Goblin Fanatics (30 pts each). The fanatic on the right is a converted Bequest goblin.

Madlum, Goblin Shaman Champion (83 pts). Madlum is a harlequin goblin sculpted by Kev Adams.

Squig Hunter Teams (8 pts each). The herder team on the left is another bequest miniature, but their pitch fork was swapped with one of the other hunter teams. The bequest team is giving "Goblin Gothic" vibes. 

Squigs (20 pts each). Mostly bequest miniatures, except for the dragon squig in the back. The Squigs are mostly good sculpts, but many of the other bequest sculpts have very soft details. 

Total: 395 points.

Finally, pics of my progress toward covering the entire shelf. Despite easily meeting the 200 point goal, and the minimum threshold for a rank and file month, I did not get close to my goals for February. 

My goal for March is to focus on models with bigger bases in hopes that it will close the gap. Lots of trolls, wolf riders and chariots are lined up for March. 

APRIL: Tom's Space Orks (R&F month 3 of 4): 246points

An April paint pic for that thumbnail yo!

Ooooweeeee. April! What a mishmash of motivations this month. I am still hating the bikers, so no progress yet on those but I did have a bit of an extra boost on the freebooter unit, and I did the thankless - but in my mind important, task of painting up most of the movement trays needed to house all the painted boys so far.

Whilst I'm on the subject, here's a bit of a step by step on these. I started out thinking that it's the soil their standing on which is this colour, although someone somewhere said a while ago it looks like their standing on a really rusty surface. Kinda cool.

Before any paint, I glue the two halves of the movement tray together and add some s Iand and wire and skulls. Less is more, which I tend to struggle with. 

I'm using Greenstuff World movement trays (link), which I've spray painted white (link). I tend not to worry about the outside edges of the tray, as that'll be painted black. You'll find anyway that the spray will soak into the wood - coverage isn't brilliant, but really that's kinda to our advantage later...

Next up is a coating of Games Workshop's contrast paint: Terradon Turquoise (link) 

When thats dry, I add a coating of Greenstuff World's crackle paint, Martian Earth (link)

Black, to cover anything left white! there's a few coats of this later, so thin and quick is ideal.

 

Another coat of black. Most usually I've had a cup of tea, or painted something else whilst waiting for it to dry. It's quite good to paint a model you're stuck on in these little windows, as you know the time is super short. Hello patch of armour on a war machine... 

Next up, I add some neat splotches of Terradon Turquoise...

And then load up the brush with water and mush all the splotches together. Sometimes you have to add a bit more turquoise.

Then I dry the paintbrush off (usually by scrobbing it on the paper there, or maybe sometimes on my clothes...), and I take off some of the watery paint with the dry bristles.

Next - I've added some Greenstuff World fluorescent orange (link), whilst the turquoise is still wet. You'll find that the wood of the movement tray will suck up some paint still, so everything dries a little faster than expected, which is noice.

This is then stippled in with a dry(ish) brush (again scrubbing the brush I've used throughout on the paper to dry it off a bit)

I've added some GSW flurescent yellow/orange whilst everything is still wet

(you can maybe see it more clearly on this big tray)

And stippled it all together. You can see one of the brushes I've used throughout this. It ain't pretty!

They'll look like this after stippling

I've gone slightly back in and added a few small botches of the yellow-orange paint just to lighten stuff up if I've been a bit unlucky/too heavy handed with the stippling. Hard to really notice, but hey.

See the drips and stuff?

The paint'll be a pain if it dries thick down the rim (the models won't sit right), so I just try and wipe it off really very roughly, with a damp brush. Thinning those drips out with the damp brush will make the final covering of black actually be the final coat, so....

Then another layer of black to cover up the spills. It should cover them really well by now :).

Then I place dots of GW's Baharroth Blue (link) on the lumpy sand, and some small dots over any crackle paint bits that have fallen off...

Paint skulls with P3 Menoth White Base (link)

The Menoth White Base mixed with a bit of pure white

Add pure white

Add GW's contrast paint Skeletopn Horde (link)

Then I suck some of the contrast paint off with a dry brush...

Paint the wire with dibdabs of silver - in this case I used Vallejo Game Colour: Silver (link)

And here they are complete...

They get a quick varnish of Hycote Clear Lacquer (link) followed by a spray of GSW matt varnish (link). As a Thing, every model gets this varnish combo.

..and in use!

Anyhow - enuff bases, here's the orks in the freebooter skwad!

A Knightmare Miniatures ork hybrid (link). A great sculpt and the exact size to, um, blend in!

Here's a boy with mechanical trousers. (A two-parter model where the legs are separate from the torso)

(Actually..,before I go any further, here's the gretchin I counted points for last month, but forgot to take a picture of) :

And now the meat of the post: Cyboars!

Pretty similar colouring for these lads, just sticking to the yellow and red, and now it seems that the dark blue has prevailed as a colour, rather than the lighter blue of my earlier models.

A mid blue for the shoulder pads, helmets and backplates just to differentiate them slightly from the regular troops. I really was tempted by body paint - even if it was a simple slash on the face and a few arm rings - most likely in white. I might go back in a few months and do this, but it's more than likely they'll just stay as they are:

1

2

3

4

5

Onto some squigs. These are the rest of the knightmare miniatures range. There is one more which looks like a mushroom, but I have shunned it in favour of the animals beasties :)

As promised last month, here's a group shot of ALL the squigs, including those from last year. 

A veritable herd. 

Or flock. 

Or bite.

Whatever :) 

I did also manage to find the last catalogued runtherd, which I'd missed last year as he is listed in the Snakebite section rather than the runtherd section. I must've glossed over him a hundred times 😂. Anyhow, I painted him up in freebooter colours rather than his snakebite calling, although to be fair I think he'd easily fit into both camps... The banner will be done next month, (along with the ork biker nob banner).

And now, a Big Gun! This one is to make up the points, as at the time of writing (27th April) I do not want to paint another cyboar... This gun doesn't appear in the Ork Codex I'm using for points, but it'll happily stand in for a Splatta Kannon...

As you can see, the Kannon's a bit rusty, so as a crewmember I've painted up this grot oiler...

And the loader. Admittedly I could've added a chain and a ball to the rocket, but as always, I chickened out and kept it as the unaltered model...

I'm really struggling with painting up the regular plastic boys I had planned to paint, so I think that I might switch them out for more gretchin for May's post, or just some regular metals. Anyway, it's never really too late to change me mind on this, so if I do paint something not planned, I'll timestamp it next to the White Dwarf as per this month :)

Anyhow, here's a little runty assistant. Selling some tasty shneks.

I struggled a little with the shades, but I'm counting it as done anyway... The spelling mistake on the board was totally natural - I really thought I had it correctly spelled right until I varnished him 😂 Thankfully it'll just be read as a snotlings lack of literacy rather than my own! I should really have spelled it S K W I G ...

Intro (link)

Month 1 (link)

Month 2 (link)

Month 3 (link)

Month 4

12+4...Freebooter

12+2...Freebooter

12+15...Cyboar

12+15...Cyboar

12+15...Cyboar

12+15...Cyboar

12+15...Cyboar

18...Runtherd

Squig

Squig

Squig

Squig

3...Runt assistant

60...Big Gun with 2 crew

Total: 246

See you next month for some motorised Wildcard shenanigans :)