The Windlord

As regular readers will know, my eldest is obsessed with the Hobbit. For the last year he's been pestering me for an Eagle as he loves the scene at the end of the first movie where the Eagles rescue the dwarves. At £35 for 2, though, it was a bit too expensive to buy him one.

As it happened in one the trade groups on Facebook someone was selling some bits and pieces and i managed to pick one up.

It didn't have a base but I ordered one: I had to fill the gaps with putty but overall it was in good nick.

I basecoated it with the airbrush to get some variation in tone on the wings. A light drybrush to bring out the edges of the feathers and then a filter of Smokey ink.

On the base I tried an experiment from a Bolt Action group I'm a member of, using coffee filter papers for the leaf cutter. It's effective but more with the brown than the particular green I chose this time.

Anyway, one very happy little boy which is as good a way as any to end 2017.

2018 will be starting with a new project so stay tuned.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Franz walked into the house, throwing hius muddy tunic in to the corner. As Brunhilde watched, he dunked his head in the washbasin and vigorously rubbed the dirt from the days labours from his broad, weatherbeaten face. 

"Sigmar's balls, Hil," he said, sinking into the chair at the rickety table, "I don't understand. Years, years beyond the counting of it, I've fought that rocky, dusty earth out there and managed to scrape enough to eat. But this year..." He turned and looked out of the window; through the thin animal skin that covered the opening, the light was green. "Everything I drop on the ground sprouts. I've never seen like it. Old Grunwald from the other side of the dale is wanting to buy some of our seeds. I simply don't understand." He sighed, then looked at his wife where she laboured over the pot. 

Brunhilde smiled, and went back to stirring the thick, green stew. She knew. The Gardeners were generous. 

Grandfather would provide.

In areas where the Realm of Life bleeds into the other realms, you find oases of verdant growth. But not all life is safe. The Gardeners of Nurgle toil endlessly to tend the fertility of areas where the walls between the realms are thin; as their labours intensify, the plants and animals grow to inordinate, bloated size. The smell of thick, rich loam and mulch hangs heavy in the air and flies crawl across the hot surface of over-ripe fruits. And when the Garden is fertile and strong enough, Grandfather will send one of His Chosen Grandchildren to claim that area for his own, and spread His gifts far and wide.

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This is a project somewhat related to my Carnival of Nurgle and is my first purpose built Age of Sigmar Skirmish Warband for the school club.

I'm also going to go so far as to say that these are the paintjobs I'm proudest of all year. So here's some shots of them against a white background to show off the colours.

Each of the characters had fairly substantial conversions to help bring them in line with the concept of the Gradeners of Nurgle. The plague lord lost his axe - although the blade migrated to his back - and gained a hammer from the Necromunda set and a number of branches.

The first rotbringer was built around the chassis of a dryad to help with the arboreal theme; a fair amount of greenstuff allowed the marrying of the two kits.

The second rotbringer, the herald of our merry little band, grew some branches from his back in order to hold the icon of Papa.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Is anyone going to Vap in York in Feb? I might venture down this year.

Based on the presents I got this year, the next few weeks are going to be quite heavily fantasy based. Starting with something with a pleasingly piratty theme...

E

Injuries and a return to Middle Earth

Still not dead! However, a couple of weeks ago in two unrelated incidents on the same day my youngest son broke his thigh and our youngest cat broke his pelvis. As I am sure you can imagine no hobby activity has taken place since between overnight stays in the hospital, vet visits and work.

However, all is not lost: both patients are making good recoveries and both are at home. In hobby terms, my present to myself arrived:

For those of you unaware of Battle Companies, it is a skirmish campaign system for Lord of the Rings, allowing a small company of mooks to improve and grow over a series of battles.

Obviously, it being middle earth related u didn't get a look in for a few days as the Eldest nicked it:

But once I started looking through I realised that the haul of LOTR goodies my wife scored a while ago will allow me to field the following companies:

Isengard (always my favourite)
Mordor
Angmar  (the Witch King is almost as cool as Saruman)
Harad
Gondor

And obviously I have Rohan.

From my point of view this is perfect; a small number of miniatures, all conerted - it fits in with the Inq28 and AOS28 skirmish stuff I've been doing recently and also brings in some Middle Earth. Very excited about this.

So for those people keeping score as we go into 2018 the current projects are:

SWA Imperial Guard
AOS28 Skirmish Nurgle - this has started but got put on hold due to that last fortight , will put up a post when I've got the boss painted but here's a teaser:

Necromunda
Middle Earth Battle Companies1

This seems like enough to keep me ticking over. Of course, Christmas is coming so who knows...

Bits and Pieces and the Next Gen

As I said a while ago, although the blog lay fallow for a few weeks, I was busy.

First, I finished off the Silver Tower set:

And I also started playing Silver Tower with the eldest.

Who, around the time of Halloween asked if I had any skeletons; I raided the bits box and made him these:

He also chose the colour scheme for these, which I have taken to calling the Hounds of Liberace:

Finally, and possibly most importantly; we popped into the local GW to pick up some supplies and the manager gave him a tester miniature to paint, which he duly did: so here is my five year old's first painted and based miniature:

He's asked for some more :)