Sybou - chaos army - month 5 - Rank and files n°4 - 350 points

 Hello to all fellow owacers, here is my humble publication for the month of May.

It 's a rank and files month, so necessary to finish two of my units, the beastmen and the dragon ogres.

Dragon ogres:

They gather 174 points. They are 2 and are ready to join their brethrens.

We have the classic dragon ogre that will be used as a champion. The other is pretty good with a sword.

An other angle

They both wear red armour and scales with some grey skins. That will make them match with my ogres.

The beastmen:

I still had to finish 16 beastmen to complete the 50 guys regiment. Here there are:

Four doggoes

Here, we have 2 Khorne beastmen with vicious warhammers. Then we have two beastmen from the C27 line made by Kev Adams: Shearmone and Bolbone!

Shearmon wears a part red part bony armor while Bolbone chose a completely red armor. Both have faces on their chest armor.

Bolbone is my favorite of the squad, with his little pointy helmet.

Four Broos

Some really classic sculpts from the Runequest line. One of them is a fierce rhinoceros with spear and shield.

Four really diverse goons

First we have a slug/ snake guy named "slug man" then from the C27 line, we have Bendle who receives a new knife, then a kind of lizard/ crocodile guy and Ruttrot a boar guy from C27.

Unique beasts and Blood priests

The unicorn broo who's really cool. I have a couple of the unicorn broos and thought of a campaign where a beast shaman poisoned the river of Athel Loren creating unicorn beastmen. The wood elves player having as a mission to root the beastmen from the forest and have bonus point if any unicorn beastmen is destroyed.

I have a Knightmare unicorn champion that could make a cool first levels boss.

Then 2 "blood priests" a cyclopean monkey with a sacrificial knife and "Half beast" that is really mutated. Like two faces guys, one side being mutant the other being more beastguy.

To finish we have a slaanesh beastman. At first, I didn't like the slaanesh beastmen but i changed my mind. I painted this one as a mixed between noble and SM bondage. The gold, the bony blade and pale skin contrast with the leather armor and boot.

I make his mouth really bloody.

The other face of "Half beast" and a zoom on the slaanesh guy

Here are a couple of photos of the whole batch of May. They're really colorful and look pretty good. I'm happy with the result and they should my last beastmen to paint. I still have many things to paint but I think these guys were my last beastmen.

I still have to do:

• 1 Wizard on disk
• 1 offering!
• 1 Wildcard month

The wildcard will be a really old project, so it is not win yet for this year.

Good luck everyone for the last month of OWAC 2024!

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Bye from the squad

Owac VII_ Sybou_ chaos army_ month 1_ rank and file_ 324 points

 Hello to all owacers!

This year, i'm proudly coming back to some classics: My chaos army.

Since my dear childhood where i was just a lad, i was digging chaos and especially beastmen.

The beastmen from battlemasters attracted my attention and i was wondering why they weren't in heroquest?

Anyway, through the years, i gathered a lots of classic chaos sculpts and my army got bigger and bigger.

I have 646 miniatures for my mortals and beastmen army. To this, we must add some daemons, chaos dwarves, hobgoblins and norses.

But each army in its own time, Owac VII will allow me to progress on my main chaos army where there is a lots of beastmen:

25 beastmen with banner and champion

I'm starting the Owac with a small unit of 25 beastmen. Their leader is a pretentious snakeman claiming to belong to Kuresh Nobility. His followers just tell about him he was just a snake that got lucky while chewing wyrdstone.

But most of them don't dare to tell this to his face and he remains a deadly foe.

A scary banner

The banner of the unit is a lamasu king. I tried to copy a banner which was in the Slaves to Darkness book. The bearer is an orc with a skin condition. Hunted by his orcish brethrens, he found his way amongst chaos followers. Here we can see him with his one eyed fellow.

Art coming from Slave to Darkness

Here, we have the full command group. There are a couple of Runequest broos, really cool sculpts. One got a skull like head, he looks like a beast templar. Then we have Carrion, a bird like guy. He's a real classic sculpt from the old days.

Two more broos, then a strange beastman named Cloven Hoof. He got his head placed in a strange way. Then two boarguys named Gizilgig and Swilefog. Back when I found them, i was happy to find other kind of beasts in the army but I didn't find them very cool to paint.

A couple of months ago, I found the chaos warrior that looks like a small ogre. I didn't think he was a good fit amongst chaos warriors so I put him in the beastmen regiment.

Then there is axe wielder who looks like a little lamb. Then we have a guy with a big spear who's looking like a bit like a bugbear.

Following, we have camel man and a big axe bearer with a single horn on the forehead.

Here we can see a classic beast guy, two Bob Olley's fellows, a broo with a stylish helmet and the one in the middle is a fun mini. His name is Birdman, he s a mix of beard and walrus with a big coat, a hat and a claymore. I gave him a big Santa cloack :)

The last bunch includes a broo with chainmail and big mace, a pig with eye patch and big axe, a pot bellied broo, a young but athletic minotaur and tzeentchian fellow with cool helmet. They look fierce and mean troubles.

A last picture before February

Here is my January month that gather 324 points of beasts. They were really fun to paint apart from a couple. I liked training in freehand on the banner ; it's not perfect but it will do the trick.

I had this miniature for several years now and getting to see them painted filled me joy and a sense of completion.

Finally, i have my entry fee to get ready!

It's a skeleton warrior with a spear! I have to get it painted and based before sending it. As its future owner is an undead player, he will be able to use it :)

Next time, some small guys and a big guy.

Carry on guys, we will complete this new owac!!!

Cheers,

                                                                                                                                            Sybou 

OWAC 7 - Sybou - Chaos Army - Intro Post: The Army of Antaron

 Hello everyone!

I'm glad to be back for another challenge with all of you.

I already check a couple of titles of your entries and it seems really promising. I hope i'm going to give you eyecandies as much as you will give some to me.

                                                     Antaron's cursed ones

For this year, i'm going north of the island of Albion, we're going straight in the chaos waste, somewhere lost in this area where time and space have no meaning.

We're somewhere there, ... i don't know where exactly...

Chaos has always been my favorite army, i always began playing with them. I have a pretty huge army with lots of unpainted models.

After several years of "no chaos" i chose to come back to my dear beastmen and other fellows...

The army will be lead by Antaron the Rusty a Nurgle champion.

You know what? I'm the hero

Antaron came from the Border Prince, he was a merchant prince that had to sacrifice his community to survive a witch's plague.

Drown by anger and sadness, he dived into madness and wandered in the Empire forest. Here he fought against beastmen and vanquished their leaders in front of their heardstone.

The Beastmen seeing the madness in his eyes, decided to follow him ; Antaron, soon attracted the attention of imperial patrols and witch hunters ; his last instincts told him to walk toward the North. He fought kislevites, ogres and more chaos followers.

Soon, more beastmen and other creatures chose to follow his lead in the great chaos game.

A big unit of 47 beastmen

These guys gather lots of really cool chaos sculpts like the club of death. I'm glad i will be panting them in the challenge.

A smaller heard

These guys got two handed weapons. Their champion is a snakeman who claimed to come from the nobility of Kuresh. In his back, his retinue told about him that he was just snake that sucked some wyrdstone and got lucky.

Dragon ogres

The army got some big heavy hitters with these 5 guys.

The Golgoth

These big guy's name is Golgoth. He s a chaos giant. He was beaten in a duel with Antaron and bent the knee in front of him.

Svodred the clever one

Svodred is the brain of the army ; follower of Tzeentch, he noticed that the sheer force of Antaron could be easily manipulated in order to do his wishes.

I'll try to improve his base that is a bit empty right now.

The followers

Even chaos armies got some runts that follow them. These chaos goblins will be here to achieve the wounded and scavenge the battlefields.

Some the army is pretty big, we have here, 97 models for a total of 1810 points.

• 1 chaos champion                                   130
• 1 sorcerer on disk                                   110
• 47 beastmen with shield                         528
• 22 beastmen with 2 handed weapon       288
• 5 dragons ogres                                       435
• 1 giant                                                      250
• 20 chaos goblins with shield                    69

In the end i'm going to try to add a war altar for 66 points.

My retroplanning should be:

• 2 months for the big unit
• 1 month for the smaller unit of beastmen
• 1 month for the goblins and the giant
• 1 month for the leader, wizard and dragon ogres
• 1 month for the war altar.

I'm not sure i will succeed but i'll give my best shot.

Merry christmas to all of you and rendez vous in 2024. Cheers you guys...

So long ...

Grant's Wood Elf Host - Month 2 (Rank and File) (313 points)

This month’s post starts with a sense of Déjà vu. The nature of my project meant that there’s a lot of repetition. I’m starting from scratch, so my goal to create a legal and functional Wood Elf Army means that I’m going to have to paint an awful lot of archers over the course of the project. As I’d mentioned previously, my goal was to put as many of these as possible at the front of the challenge, to leave myself with as much of the fun stuff for the back end as possible.

I’d also mentioned my plans to paint a single hair colour a month, with a schedule that would result in me finishing the challenge with a painted, legal 2000 point 3^rd Edition Wood Elf army. I’m happy to report that is going very well, and that I’ve ended February, the shortest month, at slightly more than double my projections. I am where I'd expected to be at the end of April! This is great news, and not just because it means that I don’t have to paint bows for all that much longer. No, it also means that I’ll need to look at things to add from my box of shame/pride. I’ve a whole bunch of Wardancers, some standard sword and shield Warrior Kinband, and my finger slipped last night, and I bought an Elven Attack Chariot. Look for some combination of those to be painted later in the challenge.

On to this month’s output -

1 Beastmaster –13 pts

2 Boars – 12pts

Beastmaster and his Boar buddies

8 Archers – 88pts (Brown)

8 Archers – 88pts (Blonde)

6 Warrior Kinband, Spears – 60pts

                                        

                                        

2 Wood Riders, Longbows – 52pts

                                                                                                                                                                                                      

For a month 2 total of  313pts, and a combined total of 731pts including the month 1 models.

On the subject of the month 1 figures, I got them back out and took some photos to show the state of the project as a whole.

Cavalry

All the Archers

The Warrior Kinband

Beastmaster and Animal Pals

And this Lightbox filling shot of the 2 months of work below.

We're gonna need a bigger box...

                                        
                                        

My main takeaway from this month is that I absolutely hate painting square bases. As much as I’m enjoying the rest of the project, the bases just feel wrong, and I’m finding myself craving the more familiar rounds. While it’s certainly true that massed infantry looks fantastic on the squares, they’re just really not resonating with me. I’m going to leave it another month, and see if the addition of movement trays helps me enjoy them more, but it’s definitely possible that I’ll be rebasing the army before project’s end.

Next month’s goal is to finish off this wave of infantry, and to do something fun from the list. Not sure if that’ll be a Treeman, or the Forest Spirit, or something that I don’t know yet, but it’ll definitely be nice to do something different!

Last time I posted, I’d mentioned how pleased I was with the bases in the army, and a number of comments echoed that. I thought I’d be helpful, and share how I do it. It’s not particularly hard to do, but there are a lot of steps, many of which require long drying times. Be warned – if you’re on a deadline, it’s not possible to do this technique without 48hrs to make sure it’s comfortably dried in between stages. For example, if you’ve a deadline for a blog post to be published…

Step 1 - Paint a miniature. Preferably an old one, and ideally a Wood Elf. 

Step 2 - Coat the base in PVA, and dip it in your ballast of choice. This is a home made combo of sand and small rocks.

Step 3 - When the glue is dry, give the base a single coat of Agrax Earthshade. You're looking to keep the differences in colour, so don't worry if it looks inconsistent. That's a feature, not a bug.

Step 4 - Pick out some of the larger rocks in Mechanicus Standard Grey. No pattern to this, just anywhere you like, any number you like. For a 20mm Square, I'd pick out 6-10, depending on how the ballast had ended up sitting.

Step 5 - Highlight the rocks you've picked out with Dawnstone.

Step 6 - The next two steps are a doubler. Pick out some random patches on the base with PVA glue. You're going to be adding grass on top of this. I find around 50-60% of the exposed base works well. Sprinkle some Forest Floor scatter on the base - a really light dusting is all you need.

Step 7 - Using the same glue, sprinkle on your Static Grass. This should be a little thicker, but you're not coating it in the stuff. Just enough to give the impression of grass. You've still got enough interesting colours and shapes coming through from the previous stages, and don't be afraid to glue over anything that you did in steps 4 and 5!

Step 8 - Get the PVA glue out again, and add some leaf scatter to the base. I find 2-3 pieces is plenty on a 20mm square. I find these sit well in the middle of a patch of grass, to break up the consistency, and add a little variation. They look fine on the dirt ground as well.

Step 9 - Using Superglue, attach a grass tuft or two somewhere on the base. I've added a single medium sized one here - you could use 2 smaller ones to a similar effect.

Step 10 - Paint the rim of the base. Goblin Green if you're a purist, Black if you're a person of style and means. Biggest tip I'd offer with this style of basing is to not be afraid to cover all or part of the steps you've done previously. You're trying to cram quite a lot of things into a small space, and it helps with the variation if some of the details are obscured or even absent from some of the bases.