VonBlogBath

Gaming & stuff...

Monday, 6 August 2012

What a difference a base makes...

Oh yes, I went there.
Today's post is about basing: it's incredible the difference it makes to how "finished" the model looks.

There's far more variety available, nay expected, these days. Back when I worked for GW, it was either green flock with goblin green on the side, or sand, painted goblin green, drybrushed sunburst yellow, with goblin green round the side. Nowadays though...

There's a bewildering array of choices: I opted in the end for grey "on top", drybrushed to white, with clumps of brown bracken to break it up, and brown on the side.

My Waaagh, so far.

I like the rocky scree effect. I tried painting the sides grey, but it looked too much like concrete. Then I tried green, but it was too bright. Brown looked good though. :)

You may also notice that in the forefront there are some new models: my first 5 goblin archers (there's another 5 half-done already). The little blighters are pretty fast to paint, and I'll talk more about them next time. (I'll also try to get some better photos: the flash is playing silly buggers just now for some reason).

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Gobbos

So having painted up everything I owned, by completing my shaman, yesterday I picked up my battalion and began putting them together.

Mord
My choices were Orc Boyz (infantry), Orc Boar Boyz (heavy cavalry), Forest Goblin Spider Riders (fast cavalry) and Goblin Boyz (infantry).

While I love fast cav, and spider riders in particular, they're going to need a little conversion work to make them look less static, so I opted for my Goblin Boyz.

Goblin archers
I gave them short bows - Gobbos have a WS of only 2, but a BS of 3. While ranks of Gobbo spearmen look cool, they're not much cop, unless you're using the unit as a meat shield to deliver characters into combat. As that's not my style, I wanted a unit that would look good, and would make sense, character wise.

Gobbos are sneaky gitz, so short bows it was. A musician is a must, to reform to maximise shooting / combat, and they're so cheap I gave them a standard too. I also opted to give them shields (1/2 a point each!). I put a boss model in there, but truth be told I'm likely not to bother with a boss.

They were tricky as hell to get to rank up, but they look awesome.

There were also loads of bitz left over, which got me to thinking...I mentioned before, that I'm not a fan of the wolves that come with the Goblin Wolfriders. And honestly, can you blame me?

Wolf Riders are awesome: these wolves are not.

GW did recently release some outstanding wolf models, for 40K, in the form of the Space Wolves' Fenrisian Wolves.

Fenrisian Wolves from GW: raaaawr!
Baz mentioned he'd seen them converted to carry Gobbos, but the cost of converting Wolf Riders onto those is prohibitive, if I need to buy boxes of wolf-riders, throw away (or try to resell on ebay) the rubbish wolves and buy the cool Fenrisian Wolves. If, on the other hand, I had the bits for wolf-riders left over...

So I checked my sprues. I have tons of Goblin heads left over, as well as some bow arms, lots of spear arms, command arms and shield arms. I have shields. I have heads. I have cavalry legs - this is looking promising... I have everything I need. Except torsos. Dammit! No torsos.

Luckily, I found a bits seller on ebay, and for just over a tenner, I've got 20 goblin torsos winging their way to me. They'll still be expensive wolf-riders, but not nearly as expensive, or as wasteful. But I won't be converting those until next month at the earliest. This month's budget is well and truly spent!

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Mord

A quick follow up to yesterday's post, "Who's the Boss?"

Yesterday I painted Skargutz, my Savage Orc Boss:

Skargutz - Savage Orc Boss
 Today, I've painted my first "hero" level character, Mord - Goblin Shaman:

Mord - Goblin Shaman

Mord - rear view

He's the sneaky git who is manipulating Skargutz's boyz, bringing them to the greater Waaagh, and here they are together:

Characterful...
I really wanted to post this blog for that last shot - the scale difference between the Orc boss and the Goblin is really pronounced!