Wilbur & Sal

Here's a couple more muties from Eureka's brilliant (and reasonably priced) Chaos Army range by Mike Darpa. First up is Wilbur the Wild. He's more beastman than Bosch, but I think he's a great little sculpt.

Joining him is Unstoppable Sal. There are so many neat little ideas in this design: the swollen, bandaged feet (I suspect they've gone squirmy), the weird tusk skates (whatever the hell they're for), the tentacles and the look of slack-jawed horror on her face. But perhaps my favourite bit is the old saucepan for a helmet.

I've been knocking these out at pace, as and when I've had the opportunity, and as such I've probably rushed Sal a touch. It would have been nice to lean into her patchwork clothing ala the Marauder giant. As it was, I lazily used the same colours as Wilbur. But that's OK. You see, they're best mates and they were together when they stripped the corpses wearing the green and black uniforms. Or something...

Here's the gang so far.

Cheers

 

The Hounds of Hell

For gamers of a certain vintage 'Chaos' will always be synonymous with Ian Miller's iconic artwork for Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness. From the writhing body horror of the page borders to the full page illustrations, Miller's art gave the wargaming supplement the look and feel of a forbidden, blasphemous tome.

I was already familiar with Ian Miller from his Fighting Fantasy gamebook covers and his work in the Tolkien Illustrated Encyclopedia (more on that below), but Realm of Chaos era Miller blew my teenage mind. I don't think another artist has captured the vibe of chaos so well. Chaos should be weird and Miller turns the weird up to 11. The pieces are also beautifully realised, with dense engraving-style linework making all the grotesque, misshapen wiggliness incredibly detailed. It's like Durer on a seriously bad trip. I absolutely love this stuff.

So when I saw that John Robertson/Myriad Miniatures was doing a third collaboration with Ian Miller, this time based on his chaos illustrations, I got very excited. Check out some of the sculpts on the Osmoticmeld: The Hounds of Hell Kickstarter page. They are wild!

The scope of the Kickstarter is ambitious. There should be enough options to build a full army. I doubt my fun budget will stretch to a whole set, but I'm particularly taken with the followers and knight sculpts that I've seen so far. I will definitely be picking up a few odds and sods.

I did something similar with the first Osmoticmeld Kickstarter. I was a bit skint at the time, but when I saw the sculpt for Signum, based on an uruk hai from Helms Deep (1979), I knew I had to get him. I'd first seen the piece in the Tolkien Illustrated Encyclopedia when I were a lad and it made a lasting impression.

I'll be honest. I was intimidated by this sculpt. Where to even start? Eventually, I committed to painting it for the Golden Gobbo over on the Oldhammer Forum and I made a bit of a hash of things. I was aiming for the red and silver gear in the original artwork, ballsed it up badly and then tried to cover my crime with bronze. I was chuffed to bits to get a 3rd place, but I wouldn't have personally put this paint job in the top 5. I think I may have picked up the odd vote purely on how cool the sculpt is.

So where did I go wrong? I think the wheels started coming off at the undercoating stage. I went for a matt black undercoat with base coats applied immediately on top. The detail is so fine I think I would've been better off giving the undercoat a white or grey drybrush to help pick it out first. I also think I should maybe have started with a mid-range colour and used inks to get into the nooks and crannies, rather than starting with a base colour and trying to work sequentially outwards. Finally, I can see where I was in a rush to finish towards the end. So, not my best work by any stretch, but good enough to find him a place in my orc army. 

A couple of years on, my confidence with painting has improved and I have a few more tricks in the bag. I'm looking forward to getting hold of some of these new sculpts and challenging myself to do them justice. I may even pick up another Signum and see if I can can make a better fist of things second time round.

Antonius Bartonius and his Musical Bellows

 I've slapped some colour on another Eureka Miniatures' Chaos Army chappy. He's Antonius Bartonius and his musical bellows. Painted over a couple of evenings a couple of weeks apart (it's been a busy month).

Having trawled through far too many Bosch and Bruegel paintings searching for these little weirdos*, I thought I'd have a go at making the skin translucent and the cloth meaty slabs of colour ala Bosch, as opposed to my usual tendency to desaturate everything. I'm not sure that I necessarily pulled it off, but I enjoyed trying something new and I'm reasonably happy with how he came out. Here he is with his dog (careful, he bites...)

* I couldn't find an exact match for Antonius, but I think he captures the vibe perfectly.

A Weird Little Freak

 

I had a rare free evening this week, so I treated myself with slapping some paint on this weird little guy. It was liberating to paint a miniature for no other reason than my own amusement.

He's Batface the Biter from Eureka Miniature's Chaos Army range, sculpted by Mike Darpa and inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel. I picked up half a dozen of these minis a while back. They are lovely sculpts, crisp castings, with only minor clean up required, and this one was a joy to paint. 

Part of the fun of this range is searching for the images that inspired the sculpts. There's quite a few heads with legs in the works of Bosch and Bruegel, but I think this one is loosely based on a demon in the central panel of the triptych The Temptation of St Anthony (c.1506), currently in the collection of Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

Bosch's demon is more fishy than bat-y, and has an arrow in his bum, but I'm pretty certain that this is the one. I might do a few more of these.

Cheers

Head on a Stick

Cards for Chaos Marauders illustrated by John Blanche (GW 1987)

Hobgoblins in 1st and 2nd edition Warhammer were subject to frenzy. This meant that, if they could get a charge off first, hobgoblin infantry could hit pretty hard. With 3rd edition this trait became linked with fielding a sacred army standard. I'm not sure why there was this shift to hobgoblins carrying totems into battle, but I do wonder if the excellent Hobgoblin Standard cards from the Chaos Marauders game, released the year before, might have had an influence?

The entry for hobgoblins in the 3rd ed. rulebook included the following rules:

"Hobgoblin forces always carry their army standard into battle. This takes the form of a staff or pole bearing a trophy or sign, and is carried in a small wagon drawn by a span of fierce Hobhounds. So long as their standard remains intact, any Mournguls are subject to frenzy. The army standard, its wagon and crew must be included.

"The Hobgoblin standard is the symbol of the tribe's honour. Any enemy unit engaged in close combat against it is hated by all Mourngul units on the table. 

"The standard is a potent magical symbol to the Hobgoblin wizard. Totems always have the ability to act as a magical reservoir as described under magic standards. All Hobgoblin wizards must surrender half of their magic points before the battle and place them in the standard."

 

As there was no model for this, the cart and totem would need to be cobbled together using bits from other ranges or scratch built! A superb example can be seen over on the Somewhere the Tea's Getting Cold blog, but drawn by a lobotomised ogre rather than a span of hobhounds.

The requirements were less onerous for the hobgoblin mercenary contingent list in Warhammer Armies. Now you could take a standard bearer rather than needing to scratch build a dogcart. The contingent standard was also optional, but then why wouldn't you take one?

"The contingent standard is a sacred tribal fetish. As long as the standard remains intact, all Hobgoblins are subject to frenzy. Any enemy unit engaged in close combat with the standard bearer will be hated by all Hobgoblins."

 

From Warhammer Armies supplement for WFB 3rd ed. (GW 1988)

The obvious choice of model, and the only hobgoblin standard bearer in production in 1988, would have been from the Despoiling Hobgoblins of the Darklands Regiments of Renown set. However, I currently have enough despoiling hobgoblin troopers in the Dettol jar to field Throg and the boys as their own unit, complete with their iconic standard as Goodwin intended. This meant I'd have to leave my comfort zone and convert another hob for the tribal fetish wrangler. I settled on a DL2 discipline master (from the Aly Morrison's Hobgoblin Warriors boxed set) who had come with a job lot of hobs minus his man-catcher.

I initially toyed with giving this chap a banner rather than a totem, but it didn't really fit the vibe. Clearly, what was required was a head on a stick! For the pole I drilled a small hole into the hand and glued a wire spear in place. This was then padded out to the required thickness with green stuff. For the 'board' to attach the head to the pole I used a plastic shield from the bitz box. The chains and skulls are from a GW goblin sprue.

I'd only ever attempted some basic green stuff furs, so the head proved to be a challenge. With more than a nod to the Despoiling Hobgoblins standard, I was aiming for the skinned face of some 'orrible chaos ogre-type beastie that has been nailed to a board. It turns out that sculpting faces is tricky. That said, I felt this was a reasonable first stab. I then put the model in a draw and forgot about it for a year...

...and now, with hobgobs back on the menu, I've banned myself from painting any new shinnies until I've painted the draw goblins. It was time to tackle ol' Big Head.

This actually turned out far better than I was expecting. I'll be the first to admit that it's a rather basic paint job, but I think I've managed to capture the 3rd ed. vibe with this one. I'm pleased with it.

Here's my conversion next to the Jes Goodwin classic Despoiling Hobgoblins standard bearer (I call him 'Old Scrote' due to his wrinkly head). I think Mr Goodwin's sculpting might just have the edge over mine... 

And here's more of the draw goblins finally coloured in. These are all slotta C36 hobgoblins.

This hob got a 'orrible chaos ogre-type beastie for his tower shield. I haven't done one of these in ages. I'd forgotten how much fun they are to paint. 

I've still quite a few draw goblins to get through. Whether I manage to paint them all before I get side tracked remains to be seen, but it feels like I'm on a bit of a roll. Next up will either be some ADD54 hobs or some Chronicle hobs. I'm veering towards the Chronicle hobs at the mo' as they're a little less fiddly. We'll see. 

Thanks for taking a look. 'Til next time, go easy folks.

OLDBOWL '86 - 1st edition Blood Bowl

The year was 1986. Channel 4 had spent several years exposing UK audiences to the bizarre and exhilarating spectacle of the NFL, William 'the Refrigerator' Perry of the Chicago Bears and Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins were household names, and Games Workshop released the first edition of one of their most iconic board games. 

Designed by Jervis Johnson, the game reimagined American Football in GW's nascent Warhammer Fantasy Battle setting, complete with bad puns, chaos spikey death bits and lashings of ultraviolence. The insanely cool box art was by Brett Ewins, known at the time to fans of 2000AD for his run on the Judge Dredd strip. It was 1986 and Blood Bowl was top of my Christmas list.

 

 

Having recently dug out my copy to administer the traditional Easter weekend Blood Bowl thrashing to the kids, I thought folks who'd missed out on this gem might be interested to see what was in the box. Along with the rulebook, you got a pitch made from 6 interlocking boards, a pad of team rosters (which I've judicially rationed for nearly 40 years), a load of cardboard counters for the teams along with 30 black plastic bases, score tracker tokens and a reversible football token for when the ball is being carried or on the deck. Not shown here is the referee token which is tossed to decide who goes first. One player flicks the token in the air while the other player calls 'dead' or 'alive'. I suspect mine's hiding down the back of the games cupboard.

For the goodies you got 15 humans (who could be used to represent the Creeveland Crescents), 15 dwarfs (the Dwarf Giants or maybe the Dwarf Warhammerers) and half a dozen Halflings (not quite enough to play the Bluebay Crammers). Stats were also given for elves.

The baddies got a team of 15 orcs (the Gouged Eye or the Severed Heads) and 15 dark elves (Darkside Cowboys). Stats were also provided for half-orcs and hobgoblins.

 

A couple of special teams were also included. The Chaos All-Stars are, for me, the GOAT. You got 12 fairly crappy lesser goblins, but you also got 4 ogres, who in addition to being hard as nails could throw the lesser goblins. The tactic of chucking a gobbo who's holding the ball at the opposing team's end zone has been well used down the years. Once you got bored of ogres being far too good, you could switch them out for either trolls or troglodytes. These are still tanky but suffer from stupidity.

For the Champions of Death you got 10 skeletons or 10 zombies, 4 ghouls and a mummy. Rules were also provided for the Heroes of Law (humans, elves, dwarfs and halflings) and the Evil Gits (orcs, dark elves, half-orcs and hobgoblins).

As you can see, GW crammed a lot into the box and with so many teams available the game had lots of replayability. It was also a hit. Such was the enthusiasm for the game an expansion set, Death Zone, was released early the following year. I lost my Death Zone box many moons ago, but fortunately I still have the rulebook and all the extra bits. 

The rulebook tidied up some of the rules from the original game, resulting in smoother gameplay. Optional rules included new special players (chuckers, catchers, runners, defenders and kickers), pitch invasions and magic. A great deal of the rulebook was dedicated to a campaign system for running leagues. This introduced elements such as buying players and paying wages, arranging assassinations, bribes, performance enhancing drugs, sponsorship deals and cheerleaders.

Death Zone came with green, red, yellow and blue plastic bases for tracking special players on the pitch (which are massively helpful) as well as a load of new teams. First up were the teams missing from the original game - elves, half-orcs and hobgoblins. A further 9 halfling counters were also included. Presumably someone somewhere was desperate to field 15 of the wooly footed buggers despite them being truly awful.

Amongst the new teams came slann (Central Lustria Croakers) and goblins (Low Down Rats). The Heroes of Law got a couple of treemen for their roster while the Chaos All-Stars got some minotaurs for their big monster slot.

The Norse got a team consisting of 11 norsemen and 4 berserkers who are prone to go, well, berserk.

Another new team was the Albion Wanderers consisting of 5 knights and 10 peasants. Their special rule is Forelock Syndrome. Any player attempting to pass the ball to a peasant roles against their cool and if they fail they have to pass to a knight instead. Additionally, all knights must be moved before the peasants.

The werewolf team looks good on paper until you realise that all transformations must happen on the pitch and this takes the player out of the game for an entire turn. As the rulebook says, "They seem to perform brilliantly against skeleton teams, but have a terrible time keeping their minds on the game when playing treemen."

Nurgle's Rotters are represented by a selection of putrescent humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and halflings along with a couple of Nurgle beasts. On the upside, the Rotters can attempt to infect opposing players,  causing them to switch sides once the rot reaches their brain. On the downside, the Rotters are so rotten themselves that they are prone to falling apart every time they are attacked or tackled. There is always the chance that they will be "reduced to a gibbering, pulsating, throbbing, pustulent, festering blob of diseased-ridden tissue." Several counters are provided for this eventuality.

There were also stats and rules provided for Very Special Players. Alfie Shortzenegger is a halfling player who is not quite as crap as his peers, but his devotion to the minor deity Bod-ee-bill'da has made him suffer from stupidity. Talking of stupid, Thrud the Barbarian might turn up to play if both coaches agree, although he's liable to get confused and switch sides after each score. Finally there's giant referee Galak Star-Scraper, who steams onto the pitch if he thinks there is foul play going on and then proceeds to stomp everyone until he's managed to stomp the perpetrators.

To support the release of Death Zone, the Skaven Scramblers came free with White Dwarf issue 86 (Feb 1987). The team included star players Breeet Braingulper, Skrag the Unclean, Shisk Four-Arms and Glart Smashrip along with 11 standard skaven. In true Warhammer style, the skaven also received a mutation table.

White Dwarf issue 88 would include a team of Mega City judges and a team of fatties (GW had a licence for producing Judge Dredd games at the time) , but I don't remember ever seeing this in the newsagents. It's a pretty weird tie-in, though.

So there you have it, nearly the complete Blood Bowl 1st ed. Despite the clunky mechanics (pretty much ripped straight from WFB 2nd ed.) I was obsessed with this game as a kid and it is still a treasured possession. I'd play at any given opportunity and even ran leagues for my mates. One of my friends bought Blood Bowl 2nd ed. when it was released in 1988. The new mechanics were a huge step forward and I remember being impressed by the 3D polystyrene pitch and plastic human and orc teams, but I stuck with the original. With one boxed game, one expansion set and a freebie I had all the bits and pieces I would ever need for a lifetime of playing fantasy football.

Right, enough rose-tinted reminiscing. I need to crack on with painting goblins. Laters.

Come Mister Talisman, tally me hobgoblins

I have done an incredible amount of painting this week. Mercifully, I have now finished redecorating upstairs... I'm with the Mole on this one. 'Hang spring-cleaning!' 

I still managed to knock out a couple of hobgoblins this week, despite all the DIY. On the left we have the Talisman TL6 hobgoblin (1986) and on the right another C36 slotta hobgoblin (1985), both sculpted by Aly Morrison.

As a kid I was fortunate enough to have both  Talisman 2nd ed. and the Talisman Expansion Set (which included the hobgoblin character) and I must have played the game a hundred times or more. Citadel's Talisman range was based on the wonderful Gary Chalk illustrations for the game (playing pieces were cardboard characters that slotted into circular plastic bases).

I was sorely tempted to paint this fella the same as GC's hobgoblin, but in the end he got the same army spot colours as my other hobs. Once the varnish had dried, I undertook a wee stocktake on the hobgobs painted to-date. One, two... eh... three... um... some... some more...

I'm pleased with this lot. They're pretty basic paint jobs (mine usually are), but they have cohesion without veering too far towards Middlehammer uniformity. I have a cunning plan for these guys. I'm going to need twice as many, though, so I'd better pull my finger out. Cheers.

 

The Elusive Baron

I've finally got my mitts on Baron Brightgore! He's from Citadel's 1985 C36 hobgoblins range, sculpted by Aly Morrison.

I've wanted this miniature since I was a kid, after seeing him depicted as the Khan of the hobgoblin mercenary contingent in Warhammer Armies (1988). I remember thinking how cool and goblin-y he looked.

Since I've been collecting C36 hobgoblins the Baron has proved particularly elusive. After several years searching I was stoked to find him on eBay, and for less than half of what I would've been willing to pay. I'm always pleased to see paint on secondhand minis. It shows someone's had fun painting them and (hopefully) playing with them. That said, BB was definitely due a refresh, so he was sent off for a Dettol bath and then repainted in the colours of my horde. 

While I was about it, I knocked up a few more hobs for the ranks. From left to right they are a pre-slotta C36 (1984), a DL2 'Champion' (1984) and two slotta C36 (1985). 

There's plenty more where this lot came from. It's taken a while, but I've managed to collect nearly all the C36 sculpts. There's now just the small matter of painting them all. The one notable absence from the collection is 'Gyokurinti the Strangler' - a mutant hobgoblin with a maced tail from the pre-slotta range. Unfortunately he appears to be as rare as rocking horse poo. One day...