Let our powers combine!!

*this is a fucking wall of text, but there's photos at the end, so stick with it!*

How do folks, been very busy in real life lately so the painting has taken a temporary back seat, but I have had time to start something a bit exciting (well I think so anyway). 

In the last blog post I was banging on about the Khorne warband I was getting all tumescent for, but that led me into a conversation with Ned Gladdis (I can't do links cos I'm shit, but check out his blog The Work Of Shaitan if you haven't already, it's fucking magic) about a possible cross blog project based on the RoC warbands. The basic plan we've bashed out is we take two gods each, and do a warband for each one. However, as we were chatting, we realised we don't see too many Rogue Trader based warbands, so because we don't already have enough to be doing, one of our two warbands will be Rogue Trader themed. The overall plan is to alternate weekly posts on our progress until we have another bunch of minis to display in our cabinets, but as always that could be subject to change 😉

Still with me? Sound! I've drawn Slaanesh and Nurgle for the project, so after a bit of a think I decided to do a slaanesh worshipping renegade marine, as I've painted a fantasy slaanesh army already, and fancied a change. And it's this champion that I present to you this evening, Adolphus "The Gentle"

Adolphus barely escaped his chapter with his life following his exposure as a chaos worshipper during a particularly gruelling campaign on the moons of the Githrak system. As the trench war ground on, it began to take its toll on Adolphus, his heavy MkII armour making him the spearhead of multiple assaults, and the constant violence began to dull Adolphus' sensibilities to the point everything became a crushing cycle of blood and death and adrenalin. When the voice began to talk to him, he revelled in the new acts suggested by the soft whispers, and his assaults became more and more spectacular in their application of brute force. Soon enough the other members of his squad began to notice, and he became isolated as they realised he was cracking under the pressure, but with no surviving chaplains there was nobody equipped to help. 

It was when they found Adolphus bathed in the offal of six chapter serfs that his true nature was revealed, the curses he spat as he murdered his battles brothers was not his usual gruff tone, but a soft almost feminine rasp. The whisper in his ear was now the voice in his throat.

Now, my first roll was a marine champion, automatically equipped powered armour, and rolling for his equipment I got a bolter and a chainsword. Rolling for his reward, I got attribute: blood substitution (acid), which wasn't half bad, and then his personal attribute was...... Silly voice...

Right, so now I have a space marine champion who bleeds acid and sounds like Mr Slave.. I can work with that! 

For his retinue, I rolled two units of humans (5 and 7 respectively), and an assassin!! I've already gathered up enough pirates and mercenaries for the human squads, and I'm about halfway through the chaos assassin conversion (I'm fucking rock hard to get that one going), but that's for another time. I will now hand over to Mr. Gladdis on his blog, where this time next week he should be starting his Renegade rabble. Thanks for looking!

#justiceforgary2 and more fucking distractions

Hello there! I'm back from the pit of blogging laziness I slipped back into last week with another round of pictures of dubious quality and s side order of foul language, so here we go!

My #justiceforgary campaign is still ongoing, with my personal painted Morley sculpt collection growing by four of his ghouls. Now, I'm a fuckin terrible Paul Muller fanboy, especially anything ghoul related, so this was gonna be a tough wank painting wise, but like a teenager with a Woman's Way magazine, I soldiered on and arrived at quite a satisfactory finish (if I say so myself)

Now, when I posted these boys on Facebook, the main point of conversation was the huge bones they're running around with, and the piss was duly taken, however, in a fit of paternal protectiveness, I've decided that the background of these particular lads is that they keep raiding the necromancers ogre spare parts pile (to fuck with him you understand), so I'll be theming more models around this, including a skeletal ogre who's missing a few parts, so watch this space (but don't hold yer breath)

Moving on, this week I also got a scavvy gang done for a customer, so I thought I'd fold them into the #justiceforgary thing, as they are genuinely lovely models. My own gang is still being picked away at (it involves a lot of converting), but I thought I'd get these lads in for the cause too

They speak for themselves really, don't they?

And now for something completely different

I was chatting to the multi talented spaniard Diego Serrate of Troll Outpost and Space Riders (and soon to be Patheon of Chaos project, I'll get back to that in another post), and as our conversations tend to do, it got on to chaos warbands from the Realms of Chaos era. Anyway, long story short, I got distracted from my next big personal project and rolled up a warband. I got:

Level 10 champion; mark of Khorne (chaos armour) and blood substitute: molten metal

Using the guidelines from Realmofchaos80s, a level ten champ gets 3 rolls on the followers table, and from that I got;

4 beastmen

6 skaven

2 minotaurs

That's some good fucking rolls if you ask me, so after a root in some boxes, I've put together the warband, and last night started painting my yet to be named champion. I'll probably never get a game in with these lads, but it's a nice little sideline to the commissions I'm working on, and also soaks up some of the lead pile, which is always a good thing! 

So that's me for now, hope I didn't bore you too much (and if I did, don't let the fuckin door hit you on the way out ye miserable cunt), and I'll just say thanks for reading, and leave you with a few glamour shots of the latest addition to my howling griffons, very kindly donated to the cause by Mr. Steve Casey, who I think we can all agree is an absolute gentleman and a credit to this mass midlife crisis that we call Oldhammer. Til next time folks!

Impending ultraviolence..

Hello! Got the first wave of my marine project finished last night, so rather than a fly by night photo dump on Facebook I thought I'd document them in a bit more detail here. This is a bit of a personal milestone for me, as even though I've been collecting these little metal and plastic bastards for over 20 years, this is the first time in dozens of attempts where I haven't lost interest (or the will to live) halfway through a squad, and I now have a full marine squad proudly on display in my cabinet! Anyway, enough bollocks, here come the Boys:

Firstly, the command section. Lieutenant Bisley, T.F.U of the second company of the Howling Griffons has a remarkably distinguished (and violent) record within his chapter, given that he's only been a fully fledged marine for just over two decades. He and his strike force have responded to inquisitor Annolucems request for aid in investigating the communications blackout from the systems main hive city, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of their "investigations". Lt. Bisley is flanked by chaplain Constantine who has pledged to ensure the purity of the force given that inquisitorial duties are rarely due to natural phenomena, and medic 1st class Fulci, an invaluable addition to such an "impetuous" outfit 

Fire team Alpha, half of 3rd squad, second company, also known as "The Boys", this is Lt. Bisleys former unit, and his first choice for any undertaking that requires that "special" touch. Led by Sgt. Patricus Sharpe (seen in the middle), Bisleys former second in command, this fire team is the close quarters section, well equipped with assault grenades and flame units to get the job done 

Fire team Beta, led by Corporal "Deadeye" Jones, is the fire support element, normally equipped with a heavy bolter to keep heads down while Alpha team get into range

The boys are currently en route to the rendezvous point with the inquisitor, more on whom will follow at some point soon. Thanks for looking! 

#JusticeforGary

Hello again you lucky bastards! Ive been mulling this post over in my head for a long while now, and I think it's time to put thumb to keypad and get it out there. 

Gary Morleys Nagash isn't that bad a sculpt.

Finished laughing/crying/shouting? Good. Let's continue. Recently, I was one of the multitudes that absolutely hated the original Nagash model. I'd owned it as a kid, and loved it, but as time went by and my "taste" developed, I was more than happy to go along with the piss taking of the clown headed bastard and the poor chap that made him. My own model was chucked in a box, unloved and ignored until Inquisitor was released and I hacked the poor fucker up to make a chaos magus. Fast forward ten years or so and a very good mate of mine handed me a big bag of undead miniatures, the result of a clear out he was having, probably to make room for more dwarfs (that fucker loves his dwarfs). In that bag was another Nagash, in very good nick too. But, as I was still blinkered, off he went into a box again.

Then the new Nagash came out. People were going mental for it, how impressive and big it was etc, etc. From minute one I thought it was fucking shite. Overpriced, overdone shite. With a tiny head. I kept thinking about Morleys sculpt, it couldn't be that bad could it? So I dug him out and started to think about thinking about doing something with him.

And then I did. And here he is

(The zombies are from a commission I was working on, but they look the part)

He's genuinely not that bad at all. A bit of repositioning gave him a better pose, and upon having a good look at his face, the major problem is the teeth run too far around the jaw, I imagine if he still had all his skin he's have a head like a South Park Canadian, so with a bit of fudging, he got some flesh on his cheeks. Also, whoever painted it for GW back in the day mustn't have been paying proper attention, his head isn't really a skull at all, given that it has eyebrows!  

Anyway, the upshot is, he's actually not as bad as everyone makes him out to be (in my opinion anyway), a little bit of thought and a less mental colour scheme goes a long way to sorting him out.

"So, you handsome bastard, besides you now championing a model you used to hate, what the fuck is the point of this post?" I hear you ask. Well, working on this big fucker has made me revise my opinion on Mr Morleys sculpting quite a bit, so I'm now actively seeking more of his stuff, in particular his undead sculpts (they can go in my army then, so there's method to the madness), to see what they're like to work on 20 years later when I have a much better idea of what I'm doing. I'm sure there's some gems to be found, and to that end the first part of the project landed on the doormat this morning:

It's a slow burn project, but something I'm quite looking forward to, so watch this space! And next time you're holding a Gary Morley sculpt in your hands, don't just sneer at how "shite" it is, give it a go and see if your mind can be changed too- or better yet, send the fucker to me! 😉

Thanks for reading folks!