Sharkplain

I bet you forgot I was doing those realscale Space Sharks by now! Well, I can't blame you (sigh), but I can bring you more stuff!

When I saw the mini of the Sarge I knew I had to do something special. It certainly deserved it:

What do you mean 'over the top'?

It was a candidate for the Veteran Squad Sergeant, of course, but I thought it could serve as a Chaplain as well. Hmmm, but it would need some conversion work...

We can arrange something

The head and top Crozius Arcanum are from my old 2nd Ed. Chaplain. The rest of the Crozius is a Grey Knights staff. The greenstuff work was kind of tricky, as turning all those strips into some full cloak was not as easy as expected. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the paintjob could solve the most obvious failures.

So more Maori inspired designs were required

This is the final result:

'Brother! You call that a haka? Outrageous!'

Combining Maori and Warhammer iconography is a fun thing to do. Jade toki, facial tatoo on the skull helmet... You can integrate that kind of elements into the Space Marine concept, and they work surprisingly well.

I should have painted something more on the back cloak

Here you can see the Chaplain alongside the other characters:

What a happy fellowship

As I see the pics I think I could add something on the backpack. Not sure if a banner (I haven't done that with the Captain and could also do that) or some other element, just like the Librarian.

Hmmm... still some decisions to make...

Gladiators of Khorne

Inspiration not always comes at once. Sometimes you fiddle with some strange ideas that never come to fruition and the result you try to achieve remains on the edge of your own perception, hidden and unreachable. As all of you know, Muses can be elusive. That happened to me this time with the Khorne band for Shadespire. I wasn't able to find that touch I was looking for, just to make the band look different. Fortunately a friend pointed out the right choice and then it all was 'oh, why didn't I think of that!'

Gladiator heads by MaxMini

They suited the theme perfectly and fitted the minis, so very little conversions would be needed this time.

Minimum mandatory conversion

I took out most of the spikes. I mean, Chaos doesn't have to mean spikes everywhere. It can, and it's cool, yeah, whatever. But please, allow me the option of not having Chaos hedgehogs.

I didn't want to replace the weapons, as tempting as the idea was. Given that the game relies on individual characters, I wanted the minis to remain recognizable at first sight when consulting the cards and stuff. So no weapon swapping nor new poses.

Not all the ideas were good (remember what I told about the Muses?). I tried to make different helmets, so the five minis weren't mere clones, but it proved tricky.

Didn't find the way to make it work properly

So I finally took the easy way :P

I tried it again with the boss:

Once again, the open helmet didn't work

But remember, I do not fail, I just find different ways that won't work. If the quote is really from Edison, then a light bulb went on over my head. I remembered I had this:

From The Hobbit box

Would this work...?

Well, it works for me

The next one was hard. Not only I hollowed the helmet, but had to take the crest out:

Also sculpted the skull jaw so it was a closed helmet

On the other side, the last one was pretty easy.

No, not Chtulhu, those are chains. Chainmail, you know

Well, so now I had the five minis, time to spill some paint on them.

On their way

The pic doesn't show (you know my awesome photo skills, ahem...), but all of them have different skin tones. I also made some work on the bases. The original ones show a cracked desert, but I put some Das and used the rolling pin I used for the boards, so now the bases are consistent with that.

Let's see the final work:

Blood for the Blood God!

Just an example on the board:

Background still pending

I hope I can show pics of these and the undead sigmarites on a couple of boards... on a game! Hopefully anytime soon... (That means months, ahem, but whatever...)

Octobretonnia

I've gone rogue. While everyone is doing Orctober, Zomtober or Dreadtober, I've set sail for my own sea of madness and I've declared... Octobretonnia.

Ehm. Well, yes. I needed an excuse!

Long, long time ago, I sold my WHFB armies, but I kept a few Bretonnian Knights, just out of nostalgia. For years they were simply gathering dust on a shelf, until I was brave enough to repaint them. I will save you the sheer horror of their original paintjob. A younger me, you know.

Anyway. New life for these blokes then! You will see, all of them are mere 5th Ed plastic Knights of the Realm, but for the leader, a Knight of the Grail. I wanted them to look really gaudy and flamboyant. Kind of the craziest armorial you can find. However, you can say I started in quite a restricted way...

Classical and easy

Don't worry. It got more complicated soon.

Yet still manageable

As usual, you cannot see the highlights. I promise, there are highlights (sigh)

But, of course, it eventually got out of control...

I blame Google. I would have never imagined such a design

Good thing about painting fantasy is that you don't have to pay attention to actual heraldry rules. You can use whatever colours you fancy and any design that comes to mind.

I mean this about colour

At some point this became a 3D mandala. The craziest, weirdiest mandala ever.

I think I might be developing a true OCD

Pics are awful, I promise you should be able to see much more depth.

I really mean it, this pic brings shame to me and my family

Some designs are more inspired than others. I'm happy with some of them but horrified at a few others.

Particularly this one. I may repaint him again

As I was working with an autoimposed schedule, I haven't been able to give the unit a banner.

I will have to solve that

Anyway, I managed to finish these just on the edge of midnight, so I declare this mission successful :P

This one was particularly dreadful

The Knight of the Grail. Most likely my favourite Bretonnian mini ever

So here we have this particular round table:

No epileptic was damaged during the production of this unit

I still have to make a proper banner, to improve the bases and likely to repaint the yellow/green one. But I think I passed the test/challenge. Wow, man, what a month!!

BONUS:

I was committed to make a true Octobretonnia. This is a commission for a friend, just a conversion work; the paintjob will be his. He asked me if I could 40K-ize the Bretonnian Reliquary so he could use it in a Necromunda setting (within a Cawdor band, I presume).

I started with this

And went crazy wiring it all

Remember, there is no such thing as 'too much' in Warhammer

Specially in 40K

I'm looking forward to seeing what my pal does with this now!

So, as of today Octobretonnia has ended, back to regular stuff!

Battle of Five Armies Boardgame

First of all, I'm talking about this, not the GW one:

If you look back on this blog, you may see that I'm not scared of losing sanity points painting these games. I already did that with the War of the Ring boardgame (Pt.1 and Pt. 2, and even played it!) So, what are a few hundreds of minis, what do they mean to me? Nothing! Nothing, I say!

The blurriness is just the effect of my tears as I behold the endeavour

OK. So during these last weeks I've been slowly painting both armies, unit by unit. The minis are essentially the same that the War of the Ring ones, so I was familiar with them (extra loss of sanity points though, as this project was about painting the same minis again!). This time I started with the Armies of Darkness:

The Orcs

The Trolls (no paratroll incident this time)

Bats (these are new! Yay!)

Crossbowmen. Crossboworcs. Whatever

Warg riders

All of them!

Now to the Free Peoples:

Men of Esgaroth

Mirkwood Elves

More Mirkwood Elves

Dwarves

The Eagles

All of them too

We also have some characters:

Bolg, Gwaihir, Beorn, Thorin, Bilbo, Gandalf, Bard, Dáin and Thranduil.

The aforementioned

Phew! I'm hoping to show good pics of them on the board anytime soon! They certainly have deserved that (you wouldn't expect me to play with unpainted minis if it was in my power to avoid that, right?)

Now I wonder if I should eBay a GW BOFA... Hmmmm....