Orc Warboss on Boar - WIP

Continuing the theme of old minis, here I am with another classic greenskin. This one is extra special!

While I sold off most of my oldest collection when I was needing the money, this one I kept, because it's the very first model that I bought for WFB. While I had to scour many old toy boxes in search for parts, I was able to get most of him - which makes me very happy, I am a sucker for authenticity.

Of course, that didn't mean I would change a thing about him - it's like architectural restoration of an old ruin, some parts could be improved upon. The shield was lost, so I got him a fancier one, as well as the boar's tail and tusks. I also wasn't a fan of the original fur texture on the pig, so I sculpted it anew - to suggest that it's a very venerable mount, like the mini itself! Original standard pole was also lost, so I improvised something similar and added a plasticard banner as well (I never liked those paper ones that were popular back then).

The base is still in old size, as I am waiting for official ones in the right size. The painting will probably wait comfortably until The Old World is released.

Classic Goblin Shamans

Recently I painted a miniature with my son, he's 3, so it wasn't anything too complicated, but it made me feel things I haven't felt for a long time. I remembered simpler times when painting had no rules, no techniques, it was just putting paint on cool miniatures. Now there is a big thought in everything, a right way to do everything.

Obviously, one cannot go back, but this wave of nostalgia made me remember my oldest army - 5th edition WFB Orcs and Goblins. I still have quite a lot of old minis for that army, so I decided to work on them again.

The idea is, to make them as bright and garish as they were in 5th edition. Lots of checkered patterns, reds, yellows, very green skin, no weathering, simple bases. While I'll still use all my skills and tools to make them look good, I'll definitely won't make too much fuss about them, to recapture some simpler times.

First attempt, two goblin shamans, one warboss, painted simultaneously. On 25mm bases to conform with the new WFB, because why not, let's mix it up.

Blood Bowl Chaos Pact - Renegades

Finally, something painted and finally, the Chaos Pact team project is starting to emerge! It's been almost 1,5 years after I got them and the WIP was posted in January. I tried working on them bit by bit, but life keeps happening, even now.  

These here are the first members of my Chaos Pact / Chaos Renegades team, part of the Alastoran Malice Team from Greebo Games. The idea behind the team is a mismatched collection of chaos marauders and other races brought together to play the noble sport, a much less elite variant of the Chaos Chosen team. One of their features is access to 3 Big Guys - those are still being painted - and another one is a single orc, skaven, goblin, and a dark elf available in their rosters, each one bringing some nice flavor from their main teams and I decided to start on them.    

There are some small conversions involved - the goblin has a second head behind the first one, the elf has a decoration on his helmet to bind him together with the GW team, orc has some disgusting pustules all over him (to signify Foul Appearance mutation) and the skaven sports some edgy, oversized horns. As for the painting, while I liked painting all the different colors, the models themselves are very fine and sometimes I struggled to recognize what is what - but that's a good thing too, weirdly enough. Their bases are made according to my own tutorial, but perhaps not that well visible from this angle.      

  The first batch of human marauders coming up soon! Click the image for better resolution.

The goblin headhunter Dugtig is well known in the Blood Bowl world for his skill in finding really good players. Still, many talents he discovered were rejected by the coaches because of ‘chaotic influence’, ‘unworkable personality’ or other similar details. Now, after recent difficult recruitment drives for the Dreadspear Dragons, Badlands Badbuttz and Backbiters, to mention a few, he thought that with all the money he earned through the years he could start his own team, taking all those talented, but misunderstood players. Collecting this small group of mismatched rejects, he created a core for a new Chaos Renegades team. Now the real recruitment begins.

Underworlds - The K'nights of Kross

So, after scrambling my motivation and some paints, I finally managed to paint something to completion since my life became busier! After being told (thanks potsiat!) about the competition on the Warhammer Community page, with the theme being 'Crusaders', I thought that was the sign. I am also posting them all at once - there's a limit to how much I am ready to drag my projects along on this blog!

There was a long break after my last Warhammer Underworlds warband, but just that one, I decided to reimagine the models into something different (the game allows for some heavy dose of interpretation). So, today I present you the K'nights of the Kross - a brave warband of greenskins that's all about crusading and reclaiming the Holeeland, wherever that may be.

The original models were heavily armored already, so making them look more 'knightly' was mostly a matter of changing their weapons, adding some tabards, and painting them in the Templar color scheme. I had a lot of fun painting all the metal, with all the plates and flat surfaces.

Also, here I am, painting an S1 warband, happy with my progress, while GW is probably getting ready to release S4 of Underworlds anytime soon...

The peoples of Vechernya have a lot of problems already in their own realm, but sometimes they have to deal with outside invaders. One of those are the crusading orcs of Chamon, always ready to attack drier, coastal regions of the land. Clad in shiny armor and bearing red crosses, they seem to emulate some knightly order from a faraway time - but nobody can say if it's their own invention, a bizarre transformation of some knights or are they just a heavily distorted part of the Withered King's dreams. Nevertheless, they're very tough in combat and can't be bargained with, thinking only about following their unknowable ideals - more than a match for anyone unfortunate to find them at their doorstep.

Fitting 4 minis in the picture above made them quite small, so here are the close-ups, with the Grand Master first. You can see the WIP HERE.

This guy was the kickstarter of the whole project and he was surely the most fun to paint - the shield, the flowing cape, he was much more special than the rest. His sword, though... I cursed myself for not sculpting any extra edges on it.

The second most favorite, Sir Bonekutta wielding a greatsword to cleave the unbelievers - despite being new in the warband, he's more zealous than the rest. You can see his WIP HERE.

I like the pose on this one, raised arms made his chest and the tabard much more prominent - and the muscles on the arms which were a real pleasure to paint.

The third one, a fan of exotic weapons which still bash skull nicely, Sir Basha. His WIP post can be found HERE.

I struggled a bit with his maces a bit - after some options, I went for mostly black metal with very strong silver highlights on the edges and points, which seems to work quite well.

The last one, Sir Hakka, hiding a disfigured face behind a full templar helmet. You can see his WIP post HERE.

I considered him the least interesting of the bunch until I got a suggestion to put a feather on his head - which improved him immensely (thanks Pepe!). Now he looks very knightly with his helmet, strengthening the whole theme even further.

Underworlds - Hakka - WIP

The scramble with the crusading boyz go on - and the final conversion is here - welcome brave knight Hakka.

The whole idea with this one was to give him a big, boxy helmet, already building over his existing mask - I didn't want a crusader warband without at least one of those. Besides that, I didn't have anything special planned for his weapons, so I just changed the knife into a sword and the axe into a spearhead of some sort.

I pushed the conversions forward a bit because there's a competition on the Warhammer Community page, with the theme being 'Crusaders', lasting for July 2020. It motivated me to actually start painting seriously, instead of just kitbashing and converting as I was trying to over the last months. They are being done right now and they will be done and ready next week - on the last Sunday of July.

Underworlds - Basha - WIP

The crusade of the orcs continues - quicker than I planned because now I have a reason to finish them all before July is over! After Ironskull and Bonekutta, I have another one - Basha.

Unlike his companions - and as his name suggests, he wields blunt weapons. I like to reinvent my Underworlds minis, but I prefer to at least reference their original equipment and/or skills, so I decided against giving him swords. Still, I wanted to change his weapons to make them more knightly, more 'historical'. Flanged maces seemed like a fun choice - they have a very specific look and I could imagine an orc smithing it somehow. I cut several pieces of plasticard to have a roughly similar shape and glued them around the handles of the original mini. I gave him a desert-y headgear to make him fit better in his scenery while avoiding pieces too similar to the ones of his pals.

Underworlds - Bonekutta - WIP

After the boss Ironskull, it is time for the rest of the crusading orcs - this time with Bonekutta.

From the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to give him a two-handed sword - but unfortunately, his pose and grip were made with a long-handled weapon in mind, so I had to be creative. Thankfully, real swords of this size were held often by the so-called ricasso, a non-sharp part of the blade - with some parrying hooks separating it from the sharp part. It call came together to make the sword much more realistic, even if it was a crude slab of orcish metal! I made it out of plasticard and damaged it severely - this greenskin doesn't care about his weapon too much.

To make his head different from the rest, I gave him a simple helmet. Here you can also see much better the cloth that I greenstuffed on his chest - which will get a nice red cross during the painting.

Underworlds - Gurzag Ironskull - WIP

My life is still a bit hectic, so with this project, I will take my sweet time here. I hope the readers can understand!

When the first season of Warhammer Underworlds, Shadespire, was getting out of print, I quickly scrambled to get the teams that I wanted to play, with the intention to reinvent them how I did with my Steelheart's Champions. It's a big part of the game's charm for me, to change the minis heavily while retaining their gameplay value. With the first of the two teams that I got, Ironskull's Boyz, I decided to go for a crusading theme. With their heavy armor, the orcs look knightly already, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Today I am showing you the leader, Gurzag Ironskull himself, as a proof of concept. His pose was good enough to incorporate a shield, so he looks the most convincing - and probably even more when his cape will be painted later on. I also changed his axe for a sword - something which I will do on his comrades too.

The rest of the boyz will follow shortly.

Blood Bowl Orc Head Coach - WIP

Time for something moderately fresh - a conversion. This guy here was thought as a part of a trio with other BB staff members, but seeing as I am on a hiatus and need as many posts as I can get, I decided to separate them into different posts. Better this way than to leave a Sunday empty, I think.

Here comes the Head Coach for my Orc team The Badlands Badbuttz. I have a lot of greenskin bits in my collection and I wanted to kitbash him for a long time, but I couldn't think of anything good enough. I had a eureka moment when I found hands from the WH40K orks, ones used to support their guns - the size and the pose was perfect to be used as a face-palm - thus creating the reaction many coaches all around the world have when playing the game! Because what else can you do when your players break their necks by slipping on the grass, fall down while trying to kick a goblin and struggle for the whole match to even pick up the ball?

His body comes from the overseer of the Gretchin Herd - with his static pose and a big gut, it fit perfectly in this role. Besides, I also gave him some sporty wristbands and a baseball cap with a very long bill - with a spike to make it properly menacing.

Blood Bowl Chaos Renegades - Conversions WIP

New year, new Blood Bowl project! I actually got it half a year ago and only now I finally got around to working on it - and it's still much faster than it usually is with my projects.

This merry bunch here is an Alastoran Malice Team from Greebo Games - made to be used as Chaos Renegades/Chaos Pact team for Blood Bowl - a very hit-and-miss mix of various monsters and creatures. The bulk of the team is made out of standard human marauders, supplemented with a single goblin, elf, orc, skaven (with all their quirks included) and rounded off with an ogre, troll and a minotaur, a triple serving of Big Guys - packing a massive punch, but also very prone to all their negative traits.

I wanted them since I read their rooster and rules for them, and even considered making extensive conversions of GW miniatures, but then I found this exceptional range from Greebo and casually mentioned that it could be a super nice birthday present (which I got, thanks for that!).

Here is the whole team. I tried my best in photoshop, but metal, unpainted miniatures are really hard to photograph well (or at least I cannot do it) - the upcoming painted photos will hopefully remedy that.

And here I showcase all the players that got some conversions. The miniatures are very nice so I left them as they are in most cases, only adding minor flavor or something that signifies their upgrades and mutations.

First, the orc got some disgusting boils, ogre a helmet to make him more sporty and the goblin a second gnoblar head on his back to make him a dodging nightmare for the opposite team. Then, there's a horned skaven, a multi-armed marauder and a wolverine'y marauder with claws. On the final photos, there's a marauder with a mohawk (to remind me that he has the same skill as dwarven slayers), a dark elf with a helmet ornament (to make him similar to the Dreadspear Dragons) and a female marauder that I modified a bit to make her a Thrower.

Once again, sorry for the photos, the glare on that metal is just unbelievable.

Blood Bowl Additional Players - Orc Blockers and Blitzers

The unpainted WIP versions can be found HERE.

Today I bring you the positionals for my existing Orc Blood Bowl team, the Badlands Badbuttz - namely, two Black Orc Blockers and two Blitzers. The 2016 box comes with two of each, while the rules allow for four of each - and using all of them really helps to make the most out of the greenskin team. I used WFB miniatures, Black Orcs and Savage Orcs respectively, converted a bit to fit both the game and the other members of the team.

After initial successes in the new season, the head coach of Badlands Badbuttz decided to expand and recruit some new players, especially some ever-useful blockers and blitzers. Sadly, he got to it a little late in the season - most players were already taken, leaving only broken, mangled and/or useless rejects. Not discouraged, he sent his headhunter Tugtig deep into the world to look for promising players in their local leagues. The industrious goblin returned many weeks later with some rather, "exotic" greenskins. First were the black orcs from the Dark Lands league, used to heavy armor, prone to aggressive bursts and hardened after playing countless seasons with the hated Chaos Dwarfs teams. Second were the savage orc Blitzers from the scorched southern Badlands, completely crazy and frenzied from all the sun and using magical warpaint instead of armor. Getting them to play with the rest of the team will be even more difficult than usual, but well, the Badbuttz are nothing if not known for their diversity and some internal rivalries!

The painting of the Blockers was rather straightforward - it was the same thing as with the original team, lots of red, black, white markings. The one holding a human head in his hand has a red-white shield on his other hand - referencing the icon for the 'Guard' skill that's used in the video game - now it should be clear who has it! It was also the first time when I used a sponge to add weathering on their armor - and I must say, I am pretty satisfied with the effects.

Savage Orc Blitzers were much more interesting in comparison - there was no metal, lots of bone and lines, with the skin coming forward as the most important area. It was the first time since many, many years when I had to paint so much of orc skin - and a good opportunity to get the right hue of green for them. I was so happy with the result that I kinda didn't want to cover it with warpaint - but it was important for their theme and to somehow represent their high Armor Value - and it also turned out rather ok.

Blood Bowl - Orc and Dark Elf reinforcements - WIP

It's been some time since I finished painting my Blood Bowl teams and since then both me and my wife got into it very much. We got the video games, learned the rules, tactics, leveling schemes and generally got much better in it. Thanks to that, we also noticed that the basic team found in the box were somewhat lacking, not having the optimal amount of some useful players, like Orc Blitzers and Black Orcs. Thankfully, I had a phase when I wanted to start collecting an Orcs & Goblins army - so when I was back in Poland I looked through all the unused boxes in search of some new players to recruit.

Black Orc Blockers - those were easy, I just took some bodies from the Black Orc Warriors (Arboyz) box. Unfortunately, all the minis that are used in Blood Bowl are slightly bigger, so those old Black Orcs were actually smaller than normal Orc Linemen from BB! To fix that, I gave one of the Black Orcs longer legs, while the second one got a bigger torso. As for the Blitzers, I built them out of Savage Orcs - they have more dynamic poses, so they fit quite well. I just took off their weapons and glued some bits on them.

EDIT: Painted versions of those Orcs can be found HERE.

And something for the Dark Elves too. The team is not painted yet, but I am working on them at the moment - I bought them because my wife really liked their playstyle. She tried them out in the video games first and there she had a player that really stood out - Torles the Unlucky. He was injured several times and had some significant disadvantages, but she kept him on the team still - both because she has grown fond of him and because he still had some useful skills. Seeing that, I decided to kitbash a tabletop model for poor Torles, preferably on a wheelchair, but still able and eager to play and score! Thankfully I have a lot of Dark Elf bits, so it was much easier than expected!

The seat and the wheels are out of plasticard, the rest of the chair is either sculpted or taken from a Dark Elf Noble on a Black Dragon kit and Torles himself is mostly made out of Corsair bits. Skeleton shields were used on the wheels for the manual propulsion - with corsair spikes for extra menace. I also added a flowing dragon hide on the back of the chair, both to tie him with the rest of the team and to give the model a sense of speed.

EDIT: Painted Torles can be seen HERE.

Blood Bowl Team - The Badlands Badbuttz

My first painted Blood Bowl team, that was a fun project, with lots of things that I didn't do for a long time. I haven't painted any greenskins since 2002, didn't use any decals since 2006 and didn't paint minis on round bases since 2012 - so that was kinda refreshing after the unending hordes of undead. I had to keep myself from getting into too much detail because I wanted to finish them as fast as possible, but some detail still made it to the finished minis.

For the armor, I choose wanted to go with the red depicted on the box, but that was too uniform for me - something messier would fit the greenskins more and I needed some differentiation for the duplicated models. Thanks to adding black to the mix, I could make sure that two identical linemen wouldn't have two pauldrons or greaves of the same color - that should help to set them apart a bit. After that, the armor got all the freehands markings and numbers. When that was ready I applied all the damage - first by making dark brown spots and only later adding bright silver ones on those. It turned out quite good and properly orcish, but I think I made it too messy and chaotic in the end - they did lose that strong, red effect they had before adding all the dents. It was also quite problematic to keep their colors strong enough, as my painting tends to be pretty dark and dirty - fine for the undead, but here I wanted something crisper. Refining that time and time again added another messy layer to this paintjob, but I think it turned out not that bad on the Badbuttz here. I just need to be more careful on the next, Bretonnian team.

For their skintone, I always wanted to try out the recipe for a pale orc skin shown by Duncan on Warhammer TV HERE. I either messed something up or my laptop is showing false colors, for my orcs turned out much more saturated and neon-like than those on the video... Thankfully that was easily fixed with a dirty, yellowish glaze.

The Badlands Badbuttz are a team that was always about representing the Badlands as a whole - yet while earlier it meant taking unwanted rejects from other teams, these days it’s more about gathering valuable talents from all around the land. All thanks to the famous goblin headhunter, Dugtig the Headhunter, who started helping the team recently. Even though they hail from many different tribes, when they don the black-red colors of the Badbuttz, they act as an effective, unified force composed of diverse talents. Well, that’s the idea, at least. In practice, they are only slightly more interested in crumpin’ their opponents than themselves on the field. It’s probably only thanks to their stern Black Orc captain, Ogak the Flayer (known for flaying game balls when angry) and their own competitiveness that they manage to win matches from time to time. Still, even if they are slightly unruly and have difficulties following plans, they are all talented players with great intuition and ability to improvise. They just need a good reason to set aside their differences and winning the Blood Bowl is definitely one such reason.

First, the whole team:

And the individual players:

Blood Bowl Converted Players

Okay, now it's time for something completely different - some Blood Bowl miniatures!

I bought the box with the main game rather spontaneously about a year ago - and it was lying on the shelf, gathering dust ever since. Only recently the motivation came to me to actually take it all out and paint those dudes to play the game properly. I wanted to get over it quickly, not wanting to invest too much time on any non-undead miniatures... but then an idea came to me. As I was putting the human team together, I found a helmet from an Empire cavalryman lying around and I saw that changing their generic helmets into those over-the-top ones with ridiculously large plumes would be quite cool. Then I noticed that I don't have enough Empire helmets - but I certainly have enough of the bretonnian ones - even better! I cut the standard heads off and put the bretonnian ones in. I could do some more converting on them, but I also wanted to finish them quickly - this seemed like a good middle ground. You can see the human team below, I hope they look ridiculous enough (I still need to come up with a name for the teams).

EDIT: Finished, painted team can be found HERE.

When I converted the human team I remembered that I also bought the big guys for both teams - the ogre and the troll. The greenskin team and that troll don't need any conversions, but I still needed to do something with that ogre to make is somehow chivalrous. So I cut off the top of his head, gave him a cool crest with some cloth addition, added some shields as greaves and adorned that gutplate with some fleur-de-lys.

I know that Bretonnia traditionally didn't use any mercenaries in their armies, but I like to think of my bretonnians as cynical a-holes for which the nobility and chivalry is only a facade. Wanting to get some edge on the field, they found an ogre willing to play for them, quickly made him a knight to bypass the 'no mercenaries' rule and called it a day. That also explains why his conversion is rather simple.

EDIT: Painted one can be seen HERE.

Last but not least - the single orc player that I converted, he will be the captain of the team. He got a helmeted Black Orc head and I gave him a bear trap in his hand - which seemed like a proper Blood Bowl fun implement. I converted him because I was really disappointed with Black Orcs Blockers - how can you have them in the game and not give them those cool iconic helmets? Thankfully I had some spare heads so one orc will be parading on the field like a proper boss. The other one will keep his standard head to make this one stand out more.

EDIT: He, together with his team, can be found painted HERE.