Myphitic Blight Hauler #3 - WIP

Okay, the last one of the Myphitic Blight Haulers for my Death Guard.

This one is based on the smaller tractor from the Galvanic Servohaulers set - stripped bare and with most of the armor and weapons from the original crawler. Cables are really cool and here they play a big role, I could really go to town with all the various kinds and sizes. Besides, the mouth is pretty cool I think - with several tiers to it, with many smaller jaws inside - with some wire tentacles for extra fun.

I look forward to painting those - but first, I need to level up my vehicles painting skill. More info next week.

And here are all the 3 of them together:

Myphitic Blight Hauler #2 - WIP

Second Myphitic Blight Hauler. This one was based on one of the small machines that are part of the Galvanic Servohaulers set (sadly discontinued!) - military machines from WW2 are part of the inspiration, but industrial ones are very important for this project as well! Plows, tractors and other work tools coming to life because of an otherworldly red plague, all to kill the ruling class is very fitting for this commie-inspired army.

Much more kitbashing here, the original basis is barely visible underneath all that.

Sadly, this model is partially responsible for the length of the last break here - I wanted to have that meltagun on a technological arm, but I just couldn't find the box with it! There was no substitute and I just got angry at the whole project and shelved it. Only many months later I found it by accident and gladly resumed the work on them. Thus, you can see the finished model at last!

Myphitic Blight Hauler #1 - WIP

What I was getting into WH40k with the Death Guard, I was really looking forward to the machines that they use. I especially like the smaller ones that serve as infantry support, like Dreadnoughts or the Myphitic Blight Haulers. The latter ones are the topic of the current project. I would love to have 3 of them, but sadly, GW is offering only one sculpt. It really doesn't make any sense for such a daemon-posessed machine.

So, I did the sensible thing and hacked the original one to pieces and bought some extra plastic to kitbash the hell out of them.

1st Crawler is based on a 1:48 scale model of a BA-20 soviet armored car. This cheap piece was then covered with tech and organic bits to bring it into the 41st millenium.

In general, I am pretty happy with my first truly technological model - combination of machine and organics fascinated me for a long time and it's really cool to try i out for real.

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.

Gudvanger's Monster #13 - The Pegasus - WIP

Fifth new member of the Crypt Horror unit. This one went through numerous revisions before becoming what he is right now.

First, that was supposed to be a mockery of a vampire, with wings, a Vargheist head and claws. Then I noticed that I don't have any good clawed hands to use, so I gave him hoofs on the hands. Then it was mismatched either way, so I used horse heads, because I had some of them laying around. The wings were supposed to have some tattered membranes, but it wasn't looking very good, so I got rid of them. In the end, he turned into a mockery of a pegasus, rather than a vampire, which is also quite cool.

Gudvanger's Monster #12 - The Arm Horror - WIP

Undead stitched monsters are still going strong, here I am with more conversions.

In the original unit, there was one that I called a "head horror", covered with way too many heads. This one is continuing the theme, being an "arm horror". I gathered a lot of Crypt Ghoul arms and some extra chonky Cygor fingers to create this busy-looking creature. Simple and fun.

Gudvanger's Monster #11 - The Cannonman - WIP

Third one for the expansion of my ogre-ish Crypt Horrors. After the Skullman and the Moleman, it's time for the Cannonman.

I managed to secure some Leadbelchers and I always wanted to use one of them for this project - with some tentacles writhing inside, it's a close combat creature after all. The results are rather messy, but that is often the case with my minis, isn't it? The head was a spontaneous decision here, I wanted a tiny head on a tall neck, but during the sculpting I noticed that a whole body could fit there - so I added an extra arm there. Well, when their mad creator is stitching them together, he doesn't really have to keep the standard humanoid anatomy, anything goes.

Gudvanger's Monster #10 - The Moleman - WIP

Continuing with the unit from last week, I'm still in the build mode.

Lots of sculpting on this one! I wanted to create a mole-man of sorts, with giant, thick arms and hands, tiny head and using the Vargheist hairy back. Here you can also see my new approach to stitches - while in the olden days I just rolled a greenstuff 'thread' and cut it into small segments to be used as stitches, this time I'm using a brass/copper rod that's bent and cut. There is lot less of those stiches that way, but they are way more substantial and 3d. Hopefully a mix of two approaches will look ok in the finished unit.

Gudvanger's Monster #9 - The Skullman - WIP

Converting an Ogre Bull last week reminded me of a project that I wanted to start years ago - to expand on my 8 Crypt Horrors, which were all converted from ogres back in 2014. Since then the concept for my undead army evolved and I also could afford bigger units. Since I'm in the mood for converting, I'll try moving this project in the right direction, we'll see how many I'll be able to do! My skills also got better since then, so it will be a lot of fun to revisit the unit that taught me how to convert.

First guy here is based on an idea I had in 2014, lots of bones and that wicked Irongut sickle. Adding a skull instead of a normal head was a spontaneous decision and a one that I really like, one can clearly see it's an undead monstrosity and not just a Nurgle one.

Men-at-arms filler - Tarrare - WIP

Second filler for my ramshackle Bretonnian Men-at-arms unit. This time, it's an ogre!

I love ogre bulls as basis for conversions, they are like a blank canvas to try all sorts of stuff. An extra one was laying around, so it was a no brainer to incorporate him in the unit. I think of him as an ogre baby that was left in the countryside to be adopted by peasants and raised as an abnormally large and hungry child. That's why he has no gutplate and uses only Bretonnian equipment. This was also a perfect excuse to use that hanging cow from the giant set - brings out the agrarian theme of the unit even more!

Men-at-arms filler - Crashed Wagon - WIP

After the last long stretch of knights I wanted to try something different, so I switched to build-mode and started setting up my Men-at-arms. I have been buying those dudes for a long time now and gathered a sizeable collection. I plan to have 3 units of them, to avoid painting all of them in the same color! One of them is going to a random bunch of misfits, so not only they carry improvised weapons and shields, they'll have some fillers, just like my old Zombie Legion.

This is the first one, I reused an old orc chariot to serve as a crashed wagon for the dudes. Finally a good excuse to use all those barrel bits I had laying around! One extra man-at-arms is included, as with that wheel he really fits in well.

Mounted Bretonnian Damsel - WIP

Sadly, I wasn't able to finish what I was working on recently, so a little filler this time. Sorry!

Quick conversion I did for the mounted damsel for my Bretonnian force. I was unhappy with how one sided her design is... I understand that this is how she sits on the horse, but there are ways to make it interesting. A sculpted quilt, some bits and detailing, her other side shouldn't be now as boring as before. Now, after painting Bretonnians for so long, I don't know how to paint a horse so exposed!

Iakob the Savage - WIP

After Havel, here I am with even more vampires! Just a conversion WIP though.

Back when WFB was a thing, there was a possibility to build a vampire character that's a murdermachine and melee and yet possesses the ability to use magic from the Lore of the Beasts. Thanks to the vampires' unique rules, they could retain their powers while using the spell that transformed them into monsters. A mountain chimera in this context was stupidly overpowered. Of course, it cost a lot and was very easy to counter, so nobody used it seriously. Still, I loved this idea so much that I wanted to at least model a vampire to fit that description, a powerful barbarian just barely containing his inner beast. And after that, of course, the transformed versions...

This is my take on this. The model is based on a Khorne Exalted Deathbringer from GW. I redid quite a lot with him, I expected this conversion to be much easier, but the ideas just kept coming. Because I'm using the same head as the one on Gavros, I kept his ears small and sculpted some weird tendril hair on his previously bald head. I'm really unsure if I like it... if it's bad after getting some paint, I'll just rip it off.

It's a miracle I managed to fit him on a proper 20x20mm base!

FKB XCVI: Size Matters - Brutogg Corpse-eater WIP

Just like last month I hosted that little game of trying to model something to a given topic, here I am participating. The topic given by Bahior was "Size does matter" - which fit perfectly with an idea I had in mind.

I actually got Cursed City when it was originally released, one of the last reasonably priced boxes... and then it stood on top of a shelf for a year. Here I am trying to kickstart it somehow.

You see, I really love the style of the minis for this game and I'll be using most minis as they are, but an ogre without a big belly and a gut-plate? I can't stand that, size indeed does matter here! I did some conversions to put some meat on those bones and make Brutogg into a chubbier chap. HERE is the original for comparison. I have some other similar small changes planned and after that I can start tackling this monster of a boardgame.

Malignant Plaguecaster - WIP

WH40K with Nurgle continues. I wanted to have more finished conversions before I start painting, so I did some other characters too, besides the Lord of Contagion two posts ago. Today comes the Malignant Plaguecaster, the simple psyker from the previous starter set.

I was mostly fine with the model, except for the puff of noxious gas that he was blowing from his hand - I hate painting such special effects. I decided to replace it with a writing mass of tendrils, which is both properly substantial and also a connection to the flesh horror theme of this army. There is a toothy maw between them - it was a perfect use for the little squig that I spared from Mollog's kit.

Lord of Contagion - WIP

The unexpected happened - I got myself some first 40k minis to paint, an actual collection!

Blood Bowl got me into Nurgle good and I just couldn't stop marveling over modern Death Guard miniatures - all of them full of little, unneccesary detail, holes and gribbles, with so many variants and options... Death Guard players are just spoiled with how rich the range is - so I decided to give them a go. I am quite fascinated with morbid combinations of flesh and machine and this project will be good for exploring that - once I get their style and theme right.

The big leader guy from the previous starter set, Lord of Contagion, seemed like a very good start. The current idea for their theme is white/wintery armor with an industrial and soviet feel to them - with some flesh&technological horror included. To get some of that that, I cut off the special effects from his back (I hate painting those) and replaced them with some smokestacks. He is standing on a T-35 tank turret I painted in middle school - to make him stand out a little bit more and get that some soviet points too. The original tank model was wrecked by a cat long time ago, so this is its new purpose.

Some more HQ will be coming up while I'll be exploring the color scheme and trying out some snow effects for the bases.

Underworlds - Mollog's Mob - WIP

Seeing the approaching 4th season of Underworlds, I decided to buy the last of the expected-to-be-discontinued 2nd season warbands that I liked - the Mollog's Mob. When they first appeared, I disliked them, they were a bit too comical for me, at least for Underworlds. Then I got into Instagram and followed a bunch of AoS28 folks and the idea on how to convert them slowly appeared in my head.

As far as I saw, one of the easiest way to make a monster creepier is to make it more human, have human attributes when one would expect monstrous ones, make the weird thing that much closer to us. To achieve that, I gave every single creature in the band, a human-like face - the troll, the squigs, the frog, everything. Because of the scale difference, every face turned out pretty distinct and characterful, an unexpected, yet good feature.

With the main man here below, I wanted to go a small step beyond - which was inspired by the great menagerie of grimdark Giants which can be seen HERE and the manga/anime Shingeki no Kyojin - where the giants are not just big humans, but humanlike creatures that were scaled up to their size, unperfectly, like in an broken mirror, or by an unskilled creator. Those creatures carry certain human features, but they are all set up wrong - so my 'Mollog' has a very wide mouth and instead of a club, his whole left hand has way too many joints and is just generally too long. The original troll's uneven proportions were perfect for this. Someone may say that this is too small for a giant, but I like my giants on a spectrum - which starts from about this size, when it can overpower an average human with size alone and devour later, if not whole, then bite by bite.

And here are the squigs, little minions of 'Mollog' - those were nice and easy conversions.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 4

Finally, the last Champion of Chaos is complete - the most flashy and overdesigned of them all, the Snake.

Here the stats came first - this one got blessed with extra agility, giving us something like a nimble elf that can still punch and take hits like a Chaos Warrior. When designing them, I realized that some mutation skills give an equivalent to extra agility for some actions - Two Heads for dodging and Extra Arms for handling the ball - so I decided to merge them all into one and finally be free from the restrictions about the amount of extremities.

This gave us this snake-like monstrosity - inspired by the Naga Queens from HoMM3 and some old Slaaneshi Champions. The central part, the torso-head is a variant of the disturbing babyfaces used on may Inq28 pieces - I used a female vampire head from a bust I won some time ago (I never really expected to paint it). This thing got then decorated with all kinds of details and pieces to make it all complicated and at least a bit bizarre.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 3

Third Blocker is done - and it's actually two Champions of Chaos - the Twins.

I had one of the tough guys planned as the mobile one - then I had to think how to represent him. I went through some iterations, until I finally decided to make a weird 'cavalry' piece. Two conjoined siblings would count as a single player as far as the rules are concerned - allowing me to sculpt something wildly different from the norm. Of course, I had to design them so that I will avoid certain rules - so they only have two functional arms to share between them and only one set of eyes (probably one mouth too). The bottom one is stomping forward and punching, with the one on top concerned only about the occasional ball handling situations. As you can see HERE, I sculpted the big mouth and even every tooth separately, because I was unsure if I wanted them open or closed. I decided on clenched teeth because it was less obvious - most monsters with large mouths tend to keep them open as they run, just ask any squig.

It was a nice project, all the greenstuffed flesh reminded me of the Sloth the Sloth.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 2

Today I want to show you the second blocker - and probably the weirdest of the bunch - the Fishman.

I'm not really sure how this idea came to me and what inspired it, it just happened during one sleepless night earlier during the year. A Champion of Chaos that may look comical, but is actually dangerous and cruel - spindly human legs diappearing inside a metal fish costume with bulging eyes, with a strange head and elongated arms, nobody sure where does the armor creature ends and the armor begins.

Contrary to how simple he may look, he was really tasking for me to sculpt... Different layers of sketches, empty mouth, different parts made separately, only to be glued on later, arms made out of Milliput sticks joined at the joints with wire to set the pose properly, the textured, hammered metal - it was a lot of work and it was probably all my fault. He may have turned out too fat and too big, but I accepted it and I'm happy with him, all things considered.