So, this is my first Army Blog, and what with other commitments, I can’t see it being updated very often, but I’ll do what I can. My hope is it’ll get me painting more, since in about 4 years of collecting, I’ve never actually finished an army, painted, based, and ready to rock. Hopefully, these guys will end up completely done through the power of peer review :P. I’m also painting a couple of 40K kill teams (and the rest of the armies they come from) so I may end up linking some of those as well.
This army is themed around Lord Ashur, my Sorceror-Prophet, awaiting a suitably amazing model to represent him. He’s hell-bent on achieving power, not only in a temporal sense, but also infernal, and obsessed with flame. He believes he can, through experimentation, ritual, and the sacrifice of thousands of slaves to the hell-fires, ascend unto chaos to join Hashut, as a living avatar of his will. When this happens, all shall bow - not only the dwarves, but also the races of men, of elves, and all other things. Around him, he has gathered an army of oath-sworn warriors, each promised a fraction of the power he will eventually inherit. Some are dwarves, bitter and twisted, while clans of feral Bull-Centaurs march under his banner alongside daemons of fire and iron - outcasts and slaves all, to the will of Ashur. They roam the world, gathering slaves to transport back to their leige-lord, to feed the furnace of power.
What this means in game terms is that there’s going to be a lot of fire. Magma cannons, K’daai, and potentially some sort of flamer conversion as counts-as blunderbusses. My B-C’s are conversions from GW’s minotaurs, so they’ve got quite a feral flavour, while the normal bog-standard troops are Baggrannor’s wonderful sculpts. It’s giving me a chance to play around with greenstuff, particularly for the B-C’s, which is very new to me, and create something a bit more unique to game with.
I’ve already accumulated some stuff painted to start us off, so I’ll get right to it.
While Ashur himself hasn’t surfaced, his ride has. It’s just a unit filler as far as rules go, but I think it’ll get the point of “this is the guy in charge” when he’s on top. It’s completely kitbashed, with the blades all being from previous armies. This is clearly what happens when you watch too much GoT while modelling. The flatbed is just big enough to hold a model on a standard infantry base for Ashur, but I’ve also got a chest with some manner of dread relic within for small battles.
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These are the troops so far - the Temple Guard. I wanted them all to have a slightly regal look, lots of red and brass and cloaks for all of them, since they’re meant to be elites. I’ve done the command, though for whatever reason, I’ve neglected to take opponents-eye views of them - I’ll amend that for next time. Any road, nothing converted on these, just Bagg’s top notch sculpts.
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Some lovely Hobgoblins now - Skaven plague monk bodies, with goblin heads. A simple conversion, and they’re not my finest painting, though if there’s going to be 40-odd of them, I guess they’re going to be slaughtered before anyone gets to scrutinise them too closely
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And finally, my first Bull-Centaur. Credit for this one should go entirely to Yawarakaimatsuka, since it’s mainly his idea. I’m using the same bull models (huzzah for chinese resellers!), though minotaurs, rather than ogres, for the torso. I wanted them to look like true mutants - hulking monsters that even the temples of Hashut in Zharr Naggrund wouldn’t have - the huge minotaur bodies work a treat for this, while retaining the more humanoid look of an ogre head (it’s also slightly too small, scale-wise, which always reminds me of those super-bulked out bodybuilders). The plan is to fit them all with beards, greaves, and tassets (the straps for which I’ve greenstuffed since taking those photos), and let them intimidate the living hell out of the guy on the other side of the table. These guys are truly huge - I do worry about the size of them compared to the FW ones, though I’m off to warhammer world this weekend, so I’ll take the opportunity to compare scale.
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And there you have it. A lot to start off with, though I suspect it’ll be dribs and drabs from here on in. Hope this has peaked some folks interest, and I’m always open to criticism, notes, thoughts, and comments
Then bring on the fire. Really nice painting. Incidentally you’ve used almost the same colour scheme on those Royal Guard models as I’ve done, albeit lighter. The Bull Centaur is fine, but the mobile weapons throne is the king of the show thus far. Keep 'em coming!
Cheers guys! I’m really happy with how the BC turned out, and you’re right - he’s monstrous. I’m trying to keep from telling my gaming group his stats as long as possible, to keep them in fear of him ;). I’ve since got the majority of another one modeled up, with just a banner to go. Also, some new photos, mainly just things I’ve had waiting for a good pic or two for a few days now. But first:
@Clawleader: Yeah, they’ve accidentally got the same colour scheme those models always have. I guess they just lend themselves well to a regal red. I tried a purple/brass thing for a bit, but they looked a little too slaaneshi for my liking.
@Bloodbeard: The bulls are cheap resin casts from a defunct mini company (I think they were called Pandora, but don’t quote me on that, the resellers had defaced the logo before casting), but they’re now sold by a Chinese recasting company calling themselves “coolcastornot”. I took a bit of a chance with them, but they came through, they’re (relatively) good casts, and postage was quick and not expensive. I’ve not found them anywhere else on the net though, which is a shame, so I may bulk order a few in case I want to field more of the monsters. And just for you, some Hobgoblins abbey-roading. The heads are a touch on the large side, but then, I’m not adverse to cartoonishly proportioned goblins:
And on to the rest!
This is just the command group for my Immortals - it’s the first time I painted proper eyes on my models (usually I just give the impression of eyes by shading, or use big bright red dots for monsters), so I’m fairly happy that they’re recognisably eyes ;). The champion standing head and shoulders above the others has taken on the moniker of “Varnaz, the Giant” after a work collegue of mine, who stands about 7 feet tall and about the same round the middle.
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And the other thing (two things) are my Iron Throne, all painted up! It was a fairly quick job, done with plenty of reference material on TV in the background I love the disgruntled look the slave has beneath his mask - I like to imagine he used to be someone important before he found himself under the tender lash of Ashur’s slavedrivers. A champion of someone or other, a minor princeling maybe. Either way, his fate is now to pull what must be an incredibly heavy cart (and mechanically unstable too, let’s face it), with it’s rider, today being modeled by my daemonsmith. It’s the Games Day guy, which is a truly beautiful model if you’ve never seen it in the flesh, though he’s unlikely to ever ride the chariot properly. He’s going to be my cannon-sitter, I reckon, for the lovely buffs I get off him. As I say, I’ve yet to find the perfect Ashur yet, but I’m sure if I look hard enough, something will jump out at me.
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And there it is chaps! More productivity! If I keep up this rate, I’ll be done by Christmas (don’t quote me on that).
A great start on this blog, cool painting skills and I like that you have added army fluff along with your pics…please keep up the good work…I’ll be looking forward to seeing more :hat off
Sorry for the lack of updates folks - lots going on (it’s less than a month to my wedding, eeee!). I do have some progress to report though.
The Infernals are now all finished, and mostly based. I’ve used crushed granite model railway ballast to represent a ashy wasteland, with the odd tuft here or there. I’ve also finished painting the BC I posted earlier. There’s no photos of those at the moment, since I’m waiting for good lighting conditions. In the meantime though, I’ll leave you with some tasters of my next project for this army:
This is the base (hopefully) for a K’Daai Destroyer. When kneeling/crawling forward, he fits nicely on the Arachnarok base, with a bit of room for basing material too. He’s a fully jointed model from (I believe) the Dr. Who franchise, though I got it at a flea market and I’ve got no real idea on provenance. I think quite a bit of greenstuffing will be needed, and a complete respray and repaint, but hopefully it should look the part.
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The other is my plan for blunderbusses. They’re the new Thunder Warriors from Avatars of War, and truly beautiful miniatures. My only quibble is that they don’t come on a sprue, rather in bags cut from the sprue (presumably to cut costs on plastic?) with no assembly instructions, so I’ve ended up with a million and one bits that I’m trying to make some sense of. My original intention was to assyrian-ise these guys beards, but it turns out they’re modeled in such a way as to make it incredibly difficult. Instead, I’m justifying them as pirates. To make your beard do the curled thing, you’d need hours of time with hot curlers and oils - if you’re a rascally bunch of slavers and such, you’re not going to have the time to play with your hair all the time. Essentially, they’re going to be the evil Long Drong’s evil not-slayer pirates.
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And that’s what I’ll be up to! Proper pics to come soon, I reckon.
A pox on whoever designed the assembly of the Avatars of War minis. The sculpts are beautiful, but my god, they’re a pain in the proverbial to put together. The GW thunderers may be a bit naff, but at least they go together properly most of the time… So much glue, so many tears
have a great wedding and good luck finding time for other things afterwards. I hates multi-part models, my stumpy fingers just can’t get the FW models right.
The doctor who figure looks like its from the episode where he is in Pompei and they are some sort of volcanic alien.
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