Orcs, half-breeds and fearless vampire hunters

I've been having a bit of a trawl round ebay of recent days I scored some Mantic Orcs for my Dragon Rampant warband. I wanted to mix up the racial mix a bit, so some GW Orcs, some Oldhammer Goblins and these chaps should give a varied feel.

A unit of 6 to start - although I'll probably mix and match the varieties within Units in the end - and my first experience with Mantic.

They're... ok. Not as good as GW plastics and certainly nowhere near as good as Perry. Probably on a par with some Warlord ones I've dealt with. A little soft detail here and there and probably not as much poseability and variation within the units as I might like but they are dirt cheap.

Secondly, Dr Frankenorc is proud to present my solution to the fact that I find boar riders very silly: the Centorc.

This is a very simply cut and shut conversion of an old 4th edition Warhammer Orc and elf with some greenstuff chainmail and a mane added. As a proof of concept, it looks fine - certainly enough to make a unit of 6 look possible as heavy cavalry.

Thirdly, I painted the playing pieces from Fury of Dracula 3rd Edition. These were very soft on detail so I relied on quite heavy washes and highlights.

I also picked something else up on ebay that I'm very excited about but there will be an update about that next week....

Oldhammer

Continuing my Dragon Rampant work, I've dug out some the oldest bits of the Lead Pile. After all, no greenskin horde is complete without some insane goblins.

Fabulous old Kev Adams sculpts; just marvellous fun to paint. 

I've also started to put together the crew for the warmachine:

And some proper old school hobgoblins. I want to vary the skin tones in my force to make them a little less uniform, so I'll mix and match the bright green I've worked up for the goblins, this uruk-flesh Hobgoblin colour and the dark green I developed for my Blood Bowl team. 

I'll get some proper photos when I can base them. Next up, I've got some Mantic orcs to try.

Rampant Misery

Gearing up for Dragon Rampant, I have pulled my Dark Elves out of retirement. Generally, the paint jobs hold up - certainly not enough for me to want to strip them and start again. You can expect shots of that warband shortly.

But obviously I need an opposing force; how to decide? The freedom of Dragon Rampant is a kind of trap in itself as it can lead to a kind of paralysis. I therefore unleashed my secret weapon - my firstborn. I opened a bunch of browser tabs showing all the possible options - undead, dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins, skaven, pretty much everything - and let him decide what I would build.

He chose orcs.

I'm not displeased by this, as I can throw in a few of my old miniatures (assuming I can find them) and orcs and goblins are always fun to paint. The mantic miniatures also look as though they will be cheap enough to bulk out basic troops.

Before buying anything, though, I hied myself to the garage to dig through the piles of accumlated stuff. Lo and behold I found something I have no memory of buying:

I therefore cracked out the paints (and my notebook to try and remember my recipe for Orc skin) and got stuck in.

The first thing that struck me was the flag on the standard bearer. It reminded me somewhat of Les Mis (showing my musical theatre background, there):

There was, then, only one way I could paint him - which I duly did (apologies for the slightly dodgy photos - taken with assistance from a 4 year old):

It also gave me the name for my Warboss, Miserable Les. When looking at all the options in the GW kit, I decided that - in true Orc fashion - less is not more. More is more. So we have a spear, shield and sword. Mmmmmmm, spikey. 

So the next step is going to be putting a couple of units of Orcs together and then we'll probably throw in some Goblins for seasoning. I also have a couple of Oldhammer warmachines, squigs, fanatics and wolf-riders kicking around somewhere. In the meantime, the full warband looks like this:

Expect updates at the usual glacial pace.

By Your Command

Still chipping away here; currently deep in planning my Dragon Rampant forces. While doing this I have been working on one of my Christmas Presents - the Cylon raider.

This was a very simple build: I decided not to light it as I wanted to concentrate on the painting. So without further ado:

This was my first go with Vallejo air metallics, so I was able to lay down the basecoat and progressive highlights very easy.

Here you can see I've done the pin wash.

One of the interesting problems with this raider is that the CGI model has a sort of 'burnished' look on some panels like this:

 I did this by stippling a black wash over some arease

As there was no LED I painted in the light along with some rough and ready source lighting. 

And a daylight colour test: 

Looking pretty good. Just the weathering and then final shots to do. 

Thank you Dan - and curse you.

A while ago I painted a couple of miniatures for Dan Mersey ( http://merseybooks.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1)  for use in the Dragon Rampant rule book. Today a copy of the rules popped on to my mat, courtesy of the author. I'm also particularly touched that I go a credit for the mini I painted in the book - a totally unnecessary courtesy but hugely appreciated. 

There was also, courtesy of the author/publisher, a copy of En Garde for Musketeer style adventures. Given that I love a bit of swashbuckling this is best surprise present ever. It does, however, mean that my intention not to buy any miniatures this year may have gone out of the window.

This also means that I'll have to watch the Richard Lester Musketeer films again, but that's no hardship. 

In terms of of actual hobby stuff, I built and primed the Raider and I think you will agree she is gorgeous even before painting:

And last but not least, tonight I'll be playing X Wing again and might be fielding this Beast: 

Joker's Wild

As I said some time ago, as a post-Ofsted treat to myself I bought a luxury. The Batman Miniatures Game figures are lovely but waaaay to expensive for me to make a habit of it.

Anyway, the first of the two minitaures I ordered turned up just before Christmas; it is the Joker as he appears in Moore's peerless The Killing Joke as drawn by Brian Bolland:

I made a couple of palette changes; I felt the gloves in another shade of purple didn't help and a blue would make the miniature pop a little more. I also added pinstripes to the trousers to help differentiate them from the jacket.

Anyway, here he is









Cylon Raider is up next, followed by an X Wing repaint.