Kavalos Deathriders

 The final entry of Ossiarch Bonereapers for a while are the Kavalos Deathriders. They are the cavalry unit for the army and can be armed with either sword or spear. I went with sword because they offer rend which is a -1 to armor save. The mounts are bone constructs made from an assortment of animal remains. They also have the spirit skulls that make painting a bit of a challenge. This unit wasn't as bad with the skulls, but i still had to paint it in sub assemblies.  In game terms I don't think the cavalry are the most useful, but I had to include at least one unit.

Next I'm going to switch gears and work on some more Minotaurs space marines

Otherworld Miniatures Cockatrice

One of my favourite miniatures manufacturers nowadays is the UK's Otherworld Miniatures. Their stock in trade is great 28mm fantasy models with a definite old-school feel. These models are perfect for Otherworld's own fantasy ruleset, as well as other sets like the new Thud & Blunder rules. 

In fact, Thud & Blunder was the inspiration for this model - there's a scenario included in the rules called "Catch the Cockatrice" that features a cockatrice as the objective being fought over by the combatants. This was enough for me to order up a cockatrice from Otherworld.

The cockatrice is a pretty cool little model - cast in metal and multi-piece. I didn't pin any of the parts but rather sculpted some additional feathers around the bases of the wings to add some extra strength.

Just a great looking miniature... can't wait to get it out on the table in a game. Maybe someday...

Bonereapers Gothizzar Harvester

 The next addition to my Ossiarch Bonereapers is the Gothizzar Harvester. All those bone constructs need raw materials and one of the best sources after defenseless towns and hamlets is the battlefield! The model can be equipped with either sickles or bludgeons. I went with bludgeons because I think they look more dangerous. The spirit skulls seemed a bit easier to paint on this one, though I still painted many of the parts separately. Assembly was easy and I didn't have any issues. I also added some metal washers to the underside of the base to give it some heft!

The idea of the harvesters is to scour the battlefield for spare parts, which it places in a large basket on its back. All manner of bones are in there in very gory detail. I used a mix of washes and layer paints to make the bones appear "fresh" as though they haven't been cleaned yet. The kit provides a few alternate arm positions as well as carrion birds fighting the arms over some scraps. The birds were very fiddly and I ultimately opted to not leave them off as I'm certain they would snap off during play and/or transport.

I love the helping hands up the side of the monster for stripping and then depositing the newly acquired bones

I have a unit of cavalry to finish next and then I think I'll take a break from the Bonereapers and move on to another project.

Thanks for visiting.

Wrapping up the Painting Challenge

The Painting Challenge has been over for nearly a month now and I'm trying to get back into the brush-swinging habit - this should be made somewhat easier by the return of winter to the Prairies but I'm having to work at it... anyway I thought I'd try to get myself back into the spirit by posting some of my last Challenge models here as well. Away we go...

From the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge Blog:

Having completed the Chambers of Challenge and offered tribute at the Altar of the Snowlord, all that remains is to post the last few models completed before the end of the Challenge. First up is this Hobgoblin Chieftain on Dire Wolf, from Games Workshop's old Warhammer Fantasy Battles range.

The first army I ever painted for WHFB was a classic "big hat" Chaos Dwarf force, which still maintains pride of place in my cabinets. An important part of the army was a large contingent of Hobgoblin Wolf Riders, which engaged in some "creative reimagining" of battle reports we posted on our blog.

In sniffing around for something to paint at the last minute, I noticed that I had this model that had been waiting for paint for nigh-on 15 years or more. So I got at it!

Makes me want to get the Chaos Dwarfs out again for some old-school WHFB! Barks - take note - I counted 15 SKULLS on this model alone! Must be some kinda record...?

Next up is the King of the Dead to accompany my recently-painted Warriors of the Dead. The King is a metal model which arrived yesterday from an eBay transaction. It was new in the blister, having originally accompanied an issue of the Eaglemoss "LotR" collector's magazine.

As before - simplicity itself to paint. White spray and Biel-Tan Green wash. That's it!

Lastly, another postal arrival from yesterday - a very cool "Death Worm" from Otherworld Miniatures (currently on sale at their site for 4 quid!!)

This monster is a sorcerous construct and not, strictly speaking, undead - at least according to its entry in the Fiend Folio under "Necrophidius". Conscript Brian H. instantly recognized it when I showed it off on our Zoom call last night and directed me to the FF entry. Good knowledge Brian! 

It was obviously another super-easy model to paint and brings the total skull-count for this post to 16 SKULLS. WOW!

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I also posted a wrap-up of my Challenge models on the Challenge blog:

Assembled production

Well, here we are at the end of the Challenge. I'd set myself a modest goal of 500 points which I ended up more than doubling. Still, it wasn't *quite* enough to get me into the top 25 - my good friend Greg pipped me by a mere 6 points! In any event, here's the breakdown of my Challenge production:

• 28mm foot: 75
• 28mm mounted: 3
• 28mm large figures/monsters: 5
• 28mm artillery pieces: 1
• 28mm tanks: 1
• 28mm landing craft: 1
• 28mm furniture/terrain: 12
• 20mm foot: 2
• 20mm cars: 1
• 20mm tanks: 1
• 15mm tanks: 3
• 10mm Titans: 1

self-portrait

I just want to end this post by again thanking Mr. Curt and all of his Minions for running the Challenge for all of us, and also to Lady Sarah and the Minions' other halves for their forbearance and tolerance of the time Curt and the Minions spend on it. Thanks also to my fellow Challengers for the kind words you posted about my work.

See you at the bar...!

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So that's it... I promise I'm going to try to get some models painted... I have an idea what I'm going to do (and I've even finished the conversions and gotten them primed) and I promise you it will be like nothing you've ever seen on the blog...!

Arch-Kavalos Zandtos - Ossiarch Bonereapers

 Every army needs a leader and for the Ossiarch Bonereapers I painted up one of the named characters: Arch-Kavalos Zandtos!

I got this for my birthday last year from my wife. The box allows you to build either the named character or the generic leader. I liked the look of the one above despite it being the less stable of the two builds. There's not much supporting this model and I can see that transporting it would be a challenge, but the looks cool factor once again won out.
 

The model was a actually a bit of a challenge to paint. The design theme for the army includes these spirit sculls that make up the "guts" of the models. These are then surrounded by pieces of bone to make a construct. The model really maximizes this by having the bone pieces attach over top of the skulls. The only way to paint the skulls was to paint all the pieces separately and then assemble it when the painting was far enough along. This then made assembly a real pain.

I'm not sure this inner skull design feature is really worth it in the end. most of the skulls get covered up by the rest of the model and it seem like a lot of work for little pay off. A similar effect could have probably been accomplished if the model was designed with fewer components. This just seemed to be needlessly complicated. Someone just starting out in the hobby would have been lost on this model and making the mistake of assembling first, then painting would have probably seen this model hurled across the room! 

I'm trying to churn this army out quickly, so I'm using contrast paints for the bone. This has been faster compared to how I would normally paint them and the bonereapers lend themselves well to contrast paints.

The bone piece here is a separate component that fits over top the skulls. It would have been more forgiving and easier to paint as a single piece.

Thanks for visiting.

Painting Challenge Submission: Old School Talisman Warrior

I saw Gin's post about the Talisman Monk on the 20th Century Tabletop Miniatures FB page, so I decided to finish Citadel's Talisman Warrior as my next 2nd for the Analogue Hobbies Challenge. 

I painted several of the figures Citadel made for the Talisman board game, back in the late 1980's. Over the years I collected about 50(!) more in bare metal; they were all based on the card art, and replaced card stock standup pieces.

Part of the challenge was trying to somewhat match my painting style of 30+ years ago. For example, nowadays I airbrush zenithal highlights over black airbrushed primer. 

Following my old techniques, with a rounded steel sculpting tool I burnished the Warrior's helmet, shoulder guards, thigh pieces, and the metal of his weapons. The face was undercoated in brown, and I brushed on black primer everywhere else, and then worked up some grey and white for highlights before painting the figure in acrylics. I used a tiny amount of oils for some details and blending, and some Abteilung Smoke oil to shadow the burnished metal parts.

The Warrior is a colourful addition to my existing Talisman models; I should really paint more of them.

These characterful figures are also useful for solo dungeon crawls like Steve Jackson Games' re-issued The Fantasy Trip, another relic from the 1980's that has been reborn in these pandemic times.

From the Challenge: 28mm "Evil Lord"

Another model from Midlam Miniatures' Metal Magic back catalogue... a very scary Evil Lord sculpted by Josef Ochmann.

At first I painted him with the "shoulder dragon" as part of his armour, but later reconsidered... I think he looks rather menacing with his pet dragon perched on his shoulder like a Tonkinese cat.  

Herr Ochmann put some great detail into the faces of these MM sculpts and I've got a few more in the pipeline. I particularly like his range of female adventurers and I've got a few of those lined up for the Lady Sarah challenges.

Stay safe!
 

From the Challenge: Count Orlok

<<ORIGINALLY POSTED TO THE ANALOGUE HOBBIES PAINTING CHALLENGE BLOG>>

Hi there Challengers, it's Dallas here... back again competing in the Challenge after many years away. When Mr. Curt kindly invited me to participate this year I was eager to take up the invitation. While my painting output has always been pretty reasonable, in years past there's been too much to do in the wintertime for me to devote due attention to the Challenge. However this winter, due to a variety of reasons (including but not limited to "no playing hockey during the pandemic"), I think my output will be up to the challenge of 500 points... hence I'm in!

My first entry is this great "not Count Orlok" model from Midlam Miniatures, a small boutique manufacturer located in Gateshead, England. Midlam sells all sorts of old-school fantasy figures, including the old Metal Magic range. This is the "Ancient Vampire Lord" sculpted by Josef Ochmann.

Any resemblance to a certain Count Orlok from F.W. Murnau's cinematic masterpiece "Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens" (1922) is purely coincidental I'm sure... but it suits me fine since it makes the figure fit nicely into the "Hall of Traps" theme on level one of the dungeon.

Specifically, for those who don't recall the film, real estate agent Thomas Hutter is sent by his employer in Wisborg, Germany to Transylvania to close a transaction with Count Orlok, who's buying some property in the town. Hutter eventually arrives at Orlok's castle in the Carpathians and hi-jinks ensue... I figure as the Hall of Traps challenge can be fulfilled by painting a figure "lying in wait" Orlok should fit the bill nicely.

I make that 5 points for Orlok and 20 for the bonus, and sorry about the untidy stripes on his trousers!
 

Siege Weapons of Middle Earth

Having cleared most of the backlog of WW2 Germans from my workbench, I decided to take a break from painting all that Feldgrau and work on another partially completed project that has been collecting dust, a collection of Siege Weapons for my Lord of the Rings armies. This included the Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet and the Mordor Siege Bow, both by Games Workshop, three mantlets and a ballista by Zvezda, a Mordor catapult converted from a Dollar Store find, and a troll loader converted from a chess piece from the Fellowship of the Ring chess set. I covered the details of the conversion of the catapult in a blog post back in 2011 (just to give you an idea of how long these have been kicking around)

http://wpggamegeeks.blogspot.com/2011/01/dollar-store-mordor-catapult.html

The Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet and the Mordor Siege Bow and their crews are straight from the box. The mantlets and ballista are from the Zvezda Siege Machines Kit No. 1. My brother-in-law had bought the kit and was only interested in the catapult that came with the set, so I got the rest of the items as a windfall. I had picked up two troll chess pieces very cheaply off eBay as an alternative to the very expensive (and now OOP) Games Workshop figure that accompanies the Mordor War Catapult. I still have the second one unaltered that I might convert into an Isengard Troll by adding armour and a weapon with epoxy putty. Another project for the future.

While all these weapons can stand on their own, I decided to make bases for most of them with different themes depending on which faction they are associated with. The bases won't always match the terrain they are on, but all my LotR figures' bases have slightly different colour schemes depending on faction.

 The array of Middle Earth Siege Weapons before the wall of Gondor.

 

Zvezda wheeled mantlets providing protection for some Uruk-hai crossbowmen.

 

Zvezda ballista used by a crew of Dwarves.

Mordor Catapult converted from a Dollar Store find. The base is an old CD with sand, flocking, and grass tufts added.

 

 

Troll loader converted from a Lord of the Rings chess piece. The large 'rock' spheres are the plastic projectiles that came with the Dollar Store catapult.

 

 

Mordor Siege Bow and crew by Games Workshop.

 Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet by Games Workshop. The base is another old CD with the stone work made from squares cut from used plastic gift cards.

 

A 'before' and 'after' of the Troll chess piece. I sawed it off the original base and mounted it on a large metal washer to give it some weight. I had to build up the center with some epoxy putty as the feet of the original figure curved down a bit on the base it was mounted on.

I still have a few more details to add to the base the ballista is on, basically a few potential projectiles that could be fired, but otherwise I am calling this one done.

Have a safe and happy holiday. I have more LotR projects waiting in the wings, so stay tuned for more to come.