Freeguild Marshall

 When I saw the Cities of Sigmar box released in 2023, I required it. I'd failed to connect with Age of Sigmar as a game because it lacked character for me. The main army of Stormcasts just lacked oomph and never appealed. Then I bought a Kruleboyz army and completely forgot about it (whoops) then picked these handsome fellows up.

 More to follow in time, but I started with the best model in the box. Swapped the standard head for one of the fancy helmets for the cavalry. Beyond that it's a case of trying to find the focal points then spending a little more time on those - face, sword, and gold plates on the leg.

I want this army to feel fancy and not downtrodden, but they're also on the edge of a horrible surprise ot find themselves in swampy environons. Possibly more suited to swampy orks ... 

  

Alchemite Warforger

 It started as a one-hour speed paint, but it was far too cool a model to leave at that. Glad I spent the extra time on it to improve everything. I wish more modern sculpts were like this - it has a ton of detail and yet remains reasonably uncluttered.

  

Happy new year

 Here we are in 2024. We made it, well done.

2023 was probably the worst year of my life from both a personal and professional perspective. I won't dwell on the negatives, other than to say we're through it and I hope never to repeat the experiences, but it was a year where I was reminded how fortunate I am to be surrounded by so many wonderful people.

With that done, let's move onto the goals for this year ...

40k: Saim Hann Eldar

Yes, it's finally time to get these moving! After spending time in 2020 and 2021 collecting all the old metal Eldar, I started them in early 2022 then put it on hold in a fit of pique when GW released new plastics and suddenly everyone was excited by Eldar, and I sulked. Apparently I'm a grown man.

Kings of War: The Midden, Dwarfs

I spent a lot of time building these but painting halted and I'm excited to get round to finishing them. They are repetitive sculpts, but with a few donations from good friends I've mixed up a few elements to break up the monotony of the seven sculpts in the box. The fact you can field a legal unit of 20 with only 16 models, and don't remove a model from the unit, gives great scope for vignettes.

Age of Sigmar: Hammerhal Aqsha, Cities of Sigmar

I was enamoured with the release, and ... well, you know the story. Man buys box, man builds box, man stops and moves to another project.

I have other plans as well, but with far less structure currently. So let's start here and see where it takes us.

Mugruk Da Watcha

 

 

 

I painted this as a secret Santa present and was quite pleased with the results. In particular, the textures were great fun, especially considering how flat and smooth the stone and wood surfaces started. The one major error I made was getting lost between deciding if it should be a centrepiece for a gaming table or a display piece, and it ended up as a compromise. If it were a display piece, the edges would have been much darker to draw the eye in, and if it were a gaming piece, the edging should have been better defined.

Holga Clovenhorn

 

I was gifted this model by a friend last year and went back and forth over how to paint it. In the end I picked the same colours on the palette that I was using for my Eldar but tried to make it a little moodier. The face is a joy to paint, and a real challenge to give expression to.

Slaughterpriest

Another golden oldie from my box of "what the heck is this". When White Dwarf was revived as a monthly magazine, this was given away with the first issue - which was remarkably good value for a £6 magazine.

He's far from a perfect paintjob, and the shadows and reflections are not consistent at all, but I used him as a tester for some of the colours I want to apply to the Eldar force, and it's nice to have a few standalone projects to try these things.

No basing scheme yet, but I think he may get something similar to Chopper Bob from a few months ago, as it could be fun to have a Khorne warband with a bit of a theme.

Dankhold Troggboss

This was an experiment in using primary colours from Instar (https://shop.instarpaint.com/) as a test of their paint range, as Mr Instar was giving away packs of the primaries at Salute 2021 (or was it 2020, both work!) and I thought it only right to give them a good workout on their own merit.

The paints are too satin for my personal taste, as it's hard to see what you're doing under lights, but a quick hit of matte varnish and the result is pretty great. Well worth a look, and if you like glazing then I think the composition will be of interest.

This time I did remember to take a lot of WIP photos, so I hope these are useful.

 

Steelheart's Champions

Tricky project, this. I started with ambition to make super shiny gold NMM but my enthusiasm for the idea petered out by the time I'd finished the first couple of feet. Urgh. Motivation, right? But sometimes it's best to press on and just get the project done.

The result's fine. But it's ... fine. I was a little disappointed in myself I couldn't push on and do more, but a lesson for future projects. Finishing meant all three of my Shadespire warbands are now complete. That feels pretty good.

Garrek’s Reavers

 This started with a paintalong for HobbyVices and LonelyHavocs' 1-Hour Hero challenge where I picked one of these guys at random and it escalated quickly into completing the full warband. It wasn't a long or complicated exercise, maybe 12-15 hours in total, but nice to get them completed and ready to play.

The one hour paintjob, from bare plastic to this in sixty minutes.

Chopper Bob, champion of Khorne

 After moving house, my hobby mojo took a bit of a hit. I had a few projects on the desk but couldn't bring myself to be enthused for any of them. Talking to a friend about playing Gorechosen and thought it would be fun to kitbash my own champion of Khorne as an exercise in nothing to something.

It's worth noting I don't kitbash, or greenstuff, as my creativity on this front is enormously poor, but taking the frame of an oldschool Chaos Warrior, throwing 40k Ork pieces at it until something looked right, then adding a Space Wolf space marine head ended up with something rather enjoyable.

The colour scheme is deliberately cool tones and a little less of the rich Khorne red than you'd normally see, as I wanted to paint something Warhammer in a non-Warhammer palette and more toward things like Kingdom Death.

Oh, the name? Well, I'm pretty awful at naming things, and when I haven't a clue what to call it, it ends up as a Bob. Let's lay the blame for this squarely on a childhood of Blackadder.

WIP shots in reverse order. Got to love that GW pack of skulls.