Fifty shades of Grey...tchin

 I guess by now you have already seen the new WH40K Edition box. It's of course a... homage to THE box. The mighty Second Edition box. Blood Angels and Orks in Armaggedon. What can I say, I'm pleased that this is a thing, but well, I cannot be at ease with those new minis.

Have you seen the Gretchins? Have you seen them? I'll try to elaborate my opinion:

 Stung as I was by this bad taste joke of a mini, I took the only rational path one can take, the only one left. The only one, I say.

To paint all the Gretchins I have unattended

 50 great glorious Gretchins!

I know that as soon as you have seen that pic you have already discarded any trace of words such as "rational", "logic", "sanity" and some other expressions that are meaningless to me.

Fifty indeed

The first decisions involved general appearance and palette. Of course I was deep into Red Era, I wanted these to match my Orks and there would be no point in painting them any other way. I doubted if I should paint them all in a coherent way or more in different patterns. I chose the first option, not to have a colour explosion. I thought I could keep them colourful enough, yet not over the top.

You get the idea

 The thing is that the Codex (if you have to ask what Codex I'm referring to, I'm afraid this might not be your blog of preference after all, sorry) allows units of 10-40 Gretchins. I have 50. Would it be better to have two 25-Grot mobs or just ignore the Codex and have a single glorious large mob of 50 Gretchins?

Well, though I'm biased towards the second choice, I am keeping my options open. Though they are essentially the same, I painted 25 with a black helmet and 25 with a red one:

Cousins

This way I can take any of both options, making them recognizable at tabletop distance if I need two mobs, but keeping them visually coherent if I prefer just a large unit.

Not so many after all, if you think of it

 OK. This was the hard part, the dull one. To get these fit. Oh, BTW, note to self: I have to buy an electric drill. Making holes manually on all those autoguns was... challenging.

But if you have been following this humble blog for some time now, you may have a righteous question, or at least the hint of an intuition. Am I suffering to have 50 identical minis? Or 25/25 identical minis?

No. A hundred times no.

You can see that I have presented them in rows and columns, and it serves a purpose. I painted different motifs on the helmets following the columns:

Five by five

Besides, I cheated, there are columns where I didn't paint anything!

Then the same process on the rows, but this time on the sleeves:

Only four rows, the fifth one is clean!

This way I have made sure that there are not two identical minis. All of them are slightly different, if just by tiny touches here and there.

Now my soul is in peace with the universe.

I added a few random checkers here and there, just for fun, and to add more visual differences, but with no distinctive pattern this time.

You can say I got wild with that, huh?

The keen eye may have spotted a different Gretchin among the crowd. Right, in fact I only got 49 plastic minis, the fiftieth one is this metal Grot:

The Waldo of Gretchins

 Time to show some group shots. First the black helmets:

With Waldo the Gretchin

Then the red ones:

The closest to Red Era I could get

 What about having them all together?

50 Gretchins walk into a battle...

 The last pic includes a fat leader, the not-Grom I painted long ago, because you always look better when you take a pic next to someone fatter than you.

I insist, they are not that many...

Well, this has been quite a trip through the Valley of Insanity, but in the end I think they got the right vibe. I should really see what Ork stuff I have painted by now and build a proper 2nd Edition army list...

Starting a new adventure: Warcrow

 The title may have given me in. Right, I'm getting myself into a totally new project. "How can this be even happening?" I hear you mumbling. Well, long story short, I took the kids to a hobby event and they were on the "Ooooh! Ahhh! Shiny" side of the spectrum. They got their eyes on this game, Warcrow, brought by the same people from Infinity, the guys from Corvus Belli. Yes, I've noticed; "Corvus Belli"... "Warcrow". For sure their IP will be easy to remember.

I digress. The Suberlings really got into the aesthetics of these minis and I saw the chance to get them into the hobby, starting with minis of their own liking. Sooo, here we are! (sigh)

But now, what's Warcrow all about? Is it just a fantasy Infinity? Well, you can certainly see the minds & hands behind, but it wouldn't be a fair comparison. It takes place in the world of Lindwurm, where magic comes and goes in cycles depending on the arrival of a mystical celestial body called... the Warcrow (dun dun dunn). Magic is returning, ancient powers are waking up, everybody mistrusts everybody else, and naturally this means (no relation with actual events along present or past history whatsoever) heavily armoured people start solving diplomatic disputes with axes and halberds.

Yes, it has this kind of Infinity vibe, in a subtle way. No hackers or ninjas (yet), but you can feel the clean aesthetics, dynamic poses and the way factions seem to have very distinct personalities. Oh, and tactical stones, sure thing.

Both my kids liked human factions the most. So humans it is. Let me start with the Hegemony of Embersig. They’re basically a young, expansionist empire mixing humans, elves and all sorts into a disciplined military machine dressed in black armour and gold trim. A bit of Roman Empire, a bit of dark fantasy conquistador, a bit of “we are definitely the good guys, please ignore the marching columns”. Very stylish lot.

Starting with the leadership, these are a special character, named Dragoslav Bjelogríc, a Hetman of the Black Legion, and a Black Legion Bucklerman Sergeant

Moustache boys. No, definitely not Mario Bros.

The Frostfire Herald, i.e., an Elven Mage, and a War Surgeon.

The pic is bad (as usual), but you should be able to spot the 'Plague Doctor'-like mask

The muscle of this warband are the Bucklermen, the regular troops from the Black Legion:

As with any ultra-dynamic minis, it's almost impossible to find their golden angle

You can see this is a more skirmish-oriented game. This is all you need to get a functional warband:

We're dark, ominous and terr... I mean... We're the good guys!

Taking good pics of such dark minis is tricky!

We can move on to the other human faction, Feudom, which feels much closer to classic feudal fantasy:  knights, oaths, religion, honour and all that lovely medieval business. From the little I’ve read, they seem to lean into the whole crusader-kingdom aesthetic rather heavily. I wouldn't say a Bretonnia copycat, but certainly in that 14-15th Century Burgundy vibe, as described by Japanese videogame designers.

Here you have the  warrior ladies: Morgane de Jauffret Syzigian and Verena of Aurtigard:

(Yes, I had to look up for the names)

The banner bearer and the Knight of the Sacred Relic:

Wouldn't like to mess with that grimdark crusader. Don't know how can he even lift that hammer

Finally, the generic troopers, the Guisarmiers:

(The "guisarme" is the long halberd)

 Again, a manageable warband to run reasonable skirmishes:

Agincourt on steroids

Just a proof that I painted the rear parts too!

 

Well, what a start of a project, huh? I still haven't read the rules, but at least we have a couple of warbands to give them a try.

You know, the thing is that these were part of two separate starter boxes, so I have two other warbands to assemble, now the non-human factions. I still have many other stuff to do before, but at least the kids now have enough to get started!!

A place for an observatory

I'm going for a rather quick job today. I could say it was a work of opportunity. As an introduction, I'll tell you that I built this observatory vault some time ago, thinking of placing it somewhere on my Qala Debdou board.

This is way simpler than it looks

It's just a bottle cap. I replaced the straw with a scratchbuilt telescope:

Sorry I didn't build the interior

The thing is that I never found the right place for this. I tried it on a different number of buildings and towers and it never felt right. Well, then I stored it, hoping that I'll eventually find the right place for it.

Opportunities present themselves if you are looking for them (Dammit, that sounded like a coaching book or something!)

But anyway. More life advice: you don't have to go mad everytime the kids break something.

Trust me, sometimes it's an opportunity

You see, this plastic tub experienced some... issues. But you also know that we are totally pro recycling at home! Oh, well, I know. For most of you that expression means I take this stuff to the proper container. Right. We also do that, right. But recycling also means this...

Oh, you can't say you didn't see this coming!

 You can see I took the easiest approach, just glued a few random bits here and there, but I really didn't think I needed to overdo it, so I kept it relatively clear. After that I just white primed it and added the basic colours, in the usual way of my other buildings:

Terrible simple, yet functional

 It feels almost embarrassing, but I have to say that this is almost everything. From this point on I just have to get it as dirty and weathered as I can:

You call this dirty?

OK, better, but not there yet...

 Once I got it really battered, just had to add the dome:

A modest observatory

Maintenance crew is not doing quite an outstanding job here

They all come top of the hill to spot the stars

 It was a fun thing to do, pretty quick work, but I think that the building didn't really ask for much more. I think it fits well with my other buildings of the like, and in fact I do have quite some now! I should put up a board some day only with these.

In the meantime, I'm working on more projects, so I hope I'll be able to bring more stuff soon!

To Infinity... one more time

 Here I am again with more Infinity stuff! My pal, who got me into this madness in the first place, has been expanding his Code One stuff, so here we are again!

I insist, these are some of the finest sculpts in the hobby, and painting them is one of those exercises that somehow manages to be both deeply frustrating and deeply rewarding at the same time, if you know what I mean. But let's go to the pics.

I haven't followed the original paint schemes 100%, but I believe I've been faithful to the patterns. That gives me some visual coherence with the previous batch.

Here we have the Booster Pack Alpha:

I have no snowy fields, this is as much winter as I can get

 I feared I couldn't get the mix of blue I used for the first time, but fortunately it worked at the first try, so it contributed to my mental peace. The minimal bits were scary too, but I managed to glue them all in place and didn't mix bits from different packs. Phew!

Here you have... ehrm. How to put it. Booster Pack Beta.

Seriously, guys, you have to work on those commercial names

 Both packs are reasonably similar, yet different. I had to paint some pieces before attaching them, so for some days my bench has been quite a messy place 😅.

Now a couple of special characters. I'm afraid I don't know their names, I'm not that deep into Panoceania lore, but they both look cool.

The hammer guy is part of a special mission/scenario box

 These two are the Dronbots, and they deserve a special mention. I've magnetised the weapon options on both of them, so my pal can swap loadouts depending on the mission. It's the kind of small practical detail that takes a bit of extra work but makes them look cooler. I hope.

These may be my favourites from all the batch

 And then there's this fella. The Jotum. A TAG (that's basically a giant walking weapons platform) and quite the centrepiece of a force. Painting it is a genuinely different experience from the infantry, mostly because you actually have enough surface area to work with. The white panels on this one were the main challenge; white is always white, and it always judges you.

Not a guy to mess with

Here you have them all, quite a force on their own:

Disappointing lack of snow on the board, I know

I wonder how these look along the previous guys I painted, but I bet it's quite an imposing force.

Now I have to paint their Yu Jing counterparts, but before I start that I have some other stuff that has been demanding my attention for a while. All in due time!

On medieval matters

 Hi everyone! A brief update on my most recent works. I've been struck by the Bretonnian vein, but have managed to only paint a couple of characters. I started with a Grail Knight on foot.

The good thing about Bretonnia is that you don't really have to care for actual heraldry (which is in fact way more strict and complex than one could imagine at first). You can mix whatever colours you fancy and it will be ok! (In fact I'm surprised that no one has ever painted Bretonnian Knights in Space Marines colours and heraldry, but that's another story...)

For this one I made this up:

Because orange & white look cool. Yup, that's my reasoning

Then you have to paint the big cup thing

Say what you want, that's not a carpenter's cup

 The fun starts when you have to replicate the stripes on the clothes of the little man. After some time I got this:

Looks like a permanent warning sign. Which is suitable for a guy with a hammer, I guess

Ready to discuss about cups. Cups are his passion

 Apart from the Grail knight,  I thought it was a good opportunity to paint the Sorceress. If I had gone for a warm palette for the warrior, I opted for a cold one for the lady:

I was happy with the colour, but it looked too dull and generic

So I thought of adding some trimming and embroidery

I even tried to make silver threads in the center of the lighter lines, but it really didn't work. The glow killed the effect and made a mere mass of unreadable shapes. Anyway, the final effect, as you'll see in the next pic, added some depth and made it look like an ornate and appropiate dress for a lady.

You can see that I made exactly the same for the mounted Sorceress:

Those dresses wer on sale at the store, you know

They are not exact replicas, but they are close enough, so I'm using these as mounted and standing version of the same character, just in case.

Well, my Bretonnian army was lacking characters, so I have tried to solve it to some extent. Here you can see how they face the enemies of the Realm:

I believe this has quite a Warhammer Quest vibe

 BONUS!

Apart from my Warhammer mumblings, we’ve managed a quick family getaway over the Easter break and headed off to Burgos, which is pretty feasible from home, and it's been quite fitting for this medieval mood!

You know I quite fancy doing this sort of drawings. I keep on taking the risk of going straight in with ink, one day I'm gonna mess it up...

This is supposed to be the Abbey of Las Huelgas

A late 12th-early 13th Century Abbey, conceived to serve as royal mausoleum and center of political/religious power. I won't bother you with thousands of pics, but please indulge me if I cannot resist to show you the burial of Alfonso VIII of Castile and his wife Eleanor of England (daughter of Henry II and Elaenor of Aquitaine, sister of Richard the Lionheart):

Just a nod for you, my dear British fellas

Alfonso VIII led the battle of Navas de Tolosa, and in the Abbey is kept since then what is believed to be the banner of the Almohad Caliph Al-Nasir:

 

This thing is huge. 3'2 x 2'2 meters

The Town Museum keeps the sword Tizona, which is traditionally identified as El Cid's weapon (sorry, no pic!), and the Museum of Human Evolution focuses on the archaeological site of Atapuerca, which is quite impressive indeed. No pics allowed on the actual fossiles, but we are talking about 28 separate individuals of Homo heidelbergensis, early Neanderthals, which is like a huge discovery.

The following shots (last ones, I promise) were taken on the town castle, built on the top of the hill and currently under a daring project of renovation works, as a metallic grid is being put in place to show how the original structure was.

The entrance. Tiny Suberlings for scale reference purposes

The grid, showing he bulk of the original construction

A better view of the grid

 Well, I'm restraining myself of flooding you with more pics, as I also don't want to distract you from the minis! I hope you enjoy all my mumblings, I'll be bringing more stuff anytime soon!