Zombie Legion - Forest Treasures

Part of the Zombie Legion

Yet another batch of old zombies to show, this time under a vague description of heavy containers / scenery pieces that zombies stand on or try to move. It was mostly a way to use some of the larger bits that I had laying around and without any good use for them - making them probably the most classical 'fillers' that I have in the legion.

People in Kislev say sometimes, that Varsavia is a perfect place to lose something. By means natural and unnatural, people, armies and whole cities can disappear without a trace. Remains of those can be then found much later, their original purpose already forgotten. Using his zombies’ eyes, Constantin patrols Varsavia for those lost treasures, because sometimes they can be really valuable. If not, they can be used as vantage points - or at least as a curiosity for Eshnuu, who really likes to deduct how some of those artifacts end up in Varsavian forests.

First is an ogre Leadbelcher Cannon that I made as an abandoned scenery piece in the middle of the forest. Adding various sorts of weathering to it was quite interesting. It was also dubbed once as 'zombies with guns'.

Next comes a dwarven wagon, next scenery piece left in the forest - taken from the Battle for the Skull Pass set. I decided to try out some water effects resin at least once in the legion, so I prepared a shallow hole in the base, filed off some of the wagon's wheel and submerged it in some sickly green 'water' - with a ghoulish zombie on top. A mini-diorama, I guess.

And the last one, two zombies dragging a treasure chest, because who said undead couldn't be used as menial labor? This piece is meant to be used in the legion together with the Stegadon. The monster's tail sticks out a little further than the base and it was difficult to find a zombie that would fit behind the monster without it looking weird - so I placed a small chest on the ground with two zombies beside it. Now the tail doesn't interfere with anything. Besides, I could use that rather cool-looking chest.

Underworlds Warband - Sons of Skalv

Second Warhammer Underworlds warband is now ready - this time, one based on Garrek's Blood Reavers. You can see the conversions HERE. The whole idea was to get rid of all the ornaments and make them look more like low-fantasy Vikings, turning them into raiders that do worship Khorne and believe is piling skulls for his throne, but know him under a different name and don't know anything about the 'mainstream' cult.

Besides simplifying their sculpts and changing some bits, I wanted to differentiate them from normal Khorne warriors through paint too. I choose pale, desaturated colors and painted their clothes in many different hues, not only red and brown. Their weapons are also simpler and dirtier than the ones proposed by GW. To make them extra special I freehanded some Norse- and Celtic-inspired tattoos on them.

In the end, work on them was a fun experience and I think they turned out pretty well. It was also probably the first time in my life when I painted so much human skin! Now all that remains is the Stormcast warband - they are easily taking much more effort than both other teams combined, several times over!

Another reality that’s reflected in the Withered King’s dreams is the appearance of the barbarian hordes living on the northern coasts of Vechernya. Speaking an alien language, warlike, unwilling to cooperate and worshipping Khorne in all but name, they are almost always at war with their southern neighbors. Sometimes they are pushed back and brought to heel by an organized effort, but they always come back under one name or another. The newest ones are just starting on their own Path to Glory, as warbands rampaging through the southern lands to earn the favor and respect of both gods and their ancestors. One particular group, all sons of a great warchief Skalv is particularly successful. If they will prove their worth and survive, future Vechernyans will tremble before hordes of bloodthirsty raiders, all claiming to be descendants of Skalv.

First, all the brothers together as a whole warband:

Next, the singular warriors, with Garrek Gorebeard and Bloodbeast Sarrek going first:

And last, but not least, the rest of them - Karsus, Targor and Arnulf:

Monster Slaughter - The Triton Family

And now for something different, once again!

Some time ago we visited our friends here in Berlin and they always have a whole pile of new board games to try out. That one time we tried something called "Monster Slaughter" - a game by French company Ankama that got funded through Kickstarter in 2017. It centers around a "cabin in the woods" horror movie plot where a group of teenagers explore a creepy, abandoned shack with monsters trying to murder/eat them - with the players controlling the monsters. Everything is represented by pretty good miniatures.

Each monster group is a family - a dad, a mom and a child - and there is a crazy amount of them: vampires, ghosts, clowns, werewolves and many others. I played Tritons, the fish-people, the ones you can see below. After the game, I asked if I can take them home to paint because I got to like those guys. That, and they are also probably the least stylized family of the whole bunch, which also was a plus for me. Most of them are pretty comical, which fits with the comedic style of the game, but it isn't really my taste that much. Besides, they are green and dirty, and that's exactly how I like my miniatures!

They were pretty fun to paint and our friends were happy with the results. The only thing I didn't like about them was the material, which is kinda soft and bendy, like the ones used by Reaper Bones. It was a real challenge to get the mother's trident straight and removing the mold lines was also pretty tough - but besides that, they are fine minis. They were also first board game minis that I painted, so that's something too.

And here are the cards with their stats that are used in the game - I used them as instruction how to paint them. This picture was taken from the Kickstarter page.

Blood Bowl Big Guy - Chompa the Troll

After Blood Bowl proved to be a great game to us, the next logical step was to paint the big guys. The first one after the essentials was the Troll - I actually got interested in the whole game because I liked this particular model!

At first, I wanted to paint him blue like the Stone Trolls of old, but then I thought he would differ too much from the rest of his team, so I painted him green for some uniformity's sake. Still, I tried various greens together with some ivory colors on different parts of his skin to make him more interesting and I think it turned out pretty good. That, together with the blue back-plates, clothes, armor parts, the goblin, some leather and spikes, made for some really interesting painting process.

Chompa is one of the very rare smart trolls - well, relatively speaking, at least. He can use simple words (he even gives interviews!), is capable of some strategic thought and gets his salary like everyone else. One could think that this makes him an effective and focused Blood Bowl player, unlike other Trolls, but that’s unfortunately not true. After becoming a star, Chompa found himself with more income that he could use simply for food, so he got into interior design - his cave is really an eclectic wonder to behold. The trouble is, he is thinking about new wallpapers and carpets so much, he can still stand still in the middle of a match, completely unaware of the carnage going on around him - so functionally, he’s not that different from a typical troll! Of course, he punches and throws goblins also as well as other trolls, so his position in the team is safe (as well as his salary!).

Zombie Legion - Skaven

Part of the Zombie Legion

Some zombie batches are still left to post - this time, some Skaven. I didn't have any spare ratmen bodies in my bits collection, so these were all bought specifically to be used in the Legion - mostly for a bit of diversity and completionism. Being non-humans, it was difficult to zombify them, as I couldn't just change some bits around, so their conversions are rather simple.

The wolf-rat was bought near the end of the whole project, when I was looking through ebay for some last miniatures to fill some space - and someone was selling it cheaply. It's not only an interesting piece by itself, but it's also a Forge World model used as a lowly zombie filler - another thing to take off my bucket list, I guess!

Ratmen crawl underneath all the Old World and they sometimes resurface even in such forgotten places as Varsavia. Their clashes with the vampires are not very common, but their soldiers, as frail as they are, make it into the zombies’ ranks too. Once skaven launched a more organized attack, bringing with them strange rat-wolves - beasts specializing in forest combat. Sorin's Vilks countered them quite effectively and brought them down with numbers - since then, one of such creatures accompanies the zombie horde.

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.

Underworlds Warband - Kiril's Retinue / Vechernyan Wights

As you could already see in one of the previous posts, I bought Shadespire and started assembling the teams that came in the box. Besides those two, I got the Sepulchral Guard too, of course - I am collecting undead after all! I liked the miniatures so much, I would get them even if I wasn't planning to play the game.

Ever since I saw the previews of this band, I wanted to paint them in my usual patinated color scheme, like all my other WFB wights. But, on the other hand, I wanted to integrate all my Underworlds bands into AoS setting somehow. So I came up with my own little land in Shyish which would be a twisted reflection of the Old World - set in the Mortal Realms, but also still vaguely connected with everything that I invented for my WFB army. Now I could paint the same patinated armor and yellow freehands, like always! I actually painted them parallel with the Grave Guard, but seeing as they are more special and not a horde, I added additional layers of shadows and highlights, which took some extra time.

All in all, I enjoyed painting them - now I need to finish the two main bands and try out the game!

Vechernya is a land in Shyish, ruled by a plethora of warring princes, tsars and dukes - but held together by the influence of the local god - the Withered King. He survived the Wars of the Dead, but since then remains in a weakened state, slumbering, beneath the notice of Nagash and his Mortarchs. Still, he affects the land by forcing his dreams into reality - dreams of a realm otherwise forgotten, perished in the bygone times. Although the inhabitants of Vechernya have free will and progress through their own histories, their lives and events tend to reflect the Withered King’s memories - trapped unaware in cycles of deadened existence. Even death isn’t a release from it, for dead Vechernyans are known to raise from their graves - all to continue one of many existences lingering in their god’s mind. One of such groups of undead is the Kiril’s Retinue, roaming the land, wishing to rejoin their old unit and leader. No matter how many are destroyed, new ones always seem to come and group together. All of them are driven by the same purpose, one they often cannot completely recognize as their own, yet still hopelessly following the Withered King’s dream.

First, the individual wights:

And the whole warband: