Followers of the Forbidden Scriptures of Dingir Nakart Zhinn

[Kuanor]

@Admiral

Lovely oil painting! It gives a heavy and foreboding impression.

Thx. ^^
I was hoping for something like this.

@Antenor

If you look carefully, you’ll see that they have chains inside - the idea being, I think, of those chains holding the bull’s harness together and having been drawn so tight that they cut deep into his flesh. It’s a sophisticated detail and pretty grimdark

I had another look and… am still not convinced that the chains make any sense. ^^
They are very deep and covered by flesh and skin, and there are no harness parts where the chains are running.
Look:

Not even close.
I think, yours had at least some armour plates in that area.
But all of the plates I see here are quite credibly holding and nice, soft and animal-friendly leather/fabric belts, no mysterious chain implants.

I mean, sure, I can just cover the details I don’t like and probably will, but I’d at least like to know if they had a plausible intention.

[Antenor]

You’re right, mine has a whole bunch of additional plates. Seems as if the separately-sold version were less heavily armoured than the one that comes with the rider included. But come to think about it, even so the chain farther back does not seem to connect to anything. Maybe I had an easy time ignoring it because I was trying to speedpaint mine and didn’t put too much thought into what connects where But if those rifts seriously annoy you, you’ probably won’t be having any problems filling them with some putty.

[Zoddtheimmortal]

Yeah id fill those crevasses too. Still a good model. You will never know once painted

[Kuanor]

Back to the trist and colourful parts of the hobby.

I was painting with artificial “daylight”, deliberately too colourful (because the result in real light is often the opposite), with a new variation of the paint choices for the two metal layers, and the result looked like this the next day:

Next to the older two attempts:

And after some desaturation of the layer with violet layer they now look (about) like this:

I think I want this layer a bit darker still, but if you agree, the colour scheme can almost stay. It will need a few little details in a different, perhaps bright colour that has to be found still.

You can also see the difference between oil and acrylic, as the faces are painted in acrylics and a lot less smooth as they could be. They’ll probably get a layer in oils, too.
(The dark-red-brown leather are still in acrylics.)

[Kuanor]

Follow the signs of the crimson thunder!

[Kuanor]

So after the army project had its first anniversary (somewhere around December or autumn), yesterday I had my very first game with this army!
It was not my very first game with Chaos Dwarfs overall since in the meantime, I had a re-introduction to Kings of War (I had played a few games 2nd edition before, but not 3rd until then) with a lent CD army.

I don’t quite remember, did someone ask for a group photo about a year ago? ^^

Anyway, my friend here suggested to play a TT game for new year and liked KoW well, and also suggested that I finally try out my dwarfies. So that she could have my Dark Elves.

It was all more or less improvised (but legal to the 51% rule from KoW!),

If someone is wondering, I didn’t even think of this combination, but since I made the same joint for the wheels and the mortar, it was kinda obvious in backsight:

Also, sticking a full army to provisory bases already had taken quite a bit longer than even unboxing the barely transportable DEs.

Since I’m not writing a full battle report, I won’t post the army lists (unless someone wants to see them), but the game itself looked like this:

The mission was about holding or carrying away the objective markers (the round bases) on the centre line.
I had the first turn, took out one bolt thrower with a lucky mortar shot, an threatened most of the units on the right flank with the Sorcerer-Prophet on Great Taurus (I had removed its wings after the initial photos because I didn’t trust them staying in place).
The DE Lord on mount exposed herself as a test target for the Magma Cannon Dragon Fire Team.
Also, the next turn, I had the opportunity to turn the K’daai, shoot her, and them Surge them into combat on top.
But they did only do 2 damage (the fire team was disappointing most of the game, against Def 5 one would almost expect).

The bis COK unit joined in and took over the left flank, the Devastators couldn’t catch the Dark Rides moving backwards,

and the Great Taurus, after eating the tasty bolt thrower, rolled a 1 on overrun while needing at least 2 or 3 to get out of the arc of sight of the CO Chariots.

(The nail polish bottles are the “wavering” markers.)
I hat not much luck with nerve tests during the game, but the overrun 1 already was looking like it would cost me the game, and I believe it did.
The rest of it looked like this:

The big unit of Warriors with Brew of Haste, despite running over obstacles most of the time, finally did get somewhere, beat up a few units, but instead of fighting had to try to get hold of another marker and endure the CC attacks in the flank and rear from the crossbowmen. Which they did (just wavering in the last round), and saved me at least 3 victory points vs. the 4 the DEs got by having a few fast characters left at the end of the game.

The End.

[Zoddtheimmortal]

Nice rep. Sad ending. I believe painted models have more luck, so i hope you get around to testing that theory later this year!

[Anzu]

Nice army! As a casual rock hound I fully approve of this terrain.

[Kuanor]

@Zoddtheimmortal

I believe painted models have more luck, so i hope you get around to testing that theory later this year!

I’ll have to keep losing and see if the assumed regularity holds then.
The other option would be to paint-strip my dark elves, but I’d rather not.

[Bassman]

Nice Dark Elves BTW

[Anzu]

@Bassman First your elves and now this. I’m starting to believe we have an infiltrator among our ranks.

[Bassman]

@Anzu you know Elves are sneaky and not trustwhorty

[Kuanor]

While I was contemplating what to do with all the new time after the musician BH, over at Tabletopwelt I noticed that their monthly competition motto for January was “tactical mastermind”. I’m not following the monthly thing as closely, as it is a bit too frequent for my taste, but I took that opportunity to paint a blunderbuss champion in two days.
Since it is maximally casual and not anonymous or anything, I can already show the mini here:

[Kuanor]

Alright, I have to tell you a story.
Jasko already knows.

Some of you might remember my struggling with the slightly too small 28-mm-downscaled LKM CDs that were also slightly too true-scale next to FW and RA models. I then calculated what scaling factor they would have for 30 mm (which should fit better), asked my etsy seller to print them like that and… got them in 29 mm.
He promised to re-print them, sent me a test model (which was fine indeed) and then forgot. It was summer or spring or something, I had to remind him, he forgot again, I reminded him again, but this year he actually delivered:

They looked like this shortly after:

I’m currently putting strings on the crossbows I got from Jasko and which those models were ordered for, and he is about to send some more if he didn’t already, so we’ll see another regiment here soon. ^^

I’ll also have to tell what this Hammerfall-themed teaser above was about (soon).

[Kuanor]

Update:

Not sure if I lost a right arm, but if so, it shouldn’t be difficult to replace. ^^

I’m more worried whether all of the models can be puzzled into a regiment, the crossbows take quite a bit of space after all.

[Kuanor]

Finished the right hand held crosswbows, now with more hammers:

I decided that this is a good use for those bits and against saving them for immortals or something.

Also, they fit into (at least two) lines quite fine:

Just need to remember puzzling them again when gluing on bases (after painting).
They need a bit filling the gaps and can be declares finished building so far; there are 5 more from earlier on the smaller bodies that can be mixed in for a total of 14.

Next thing to show will be the Bull Centaurs that were being built before the musician-themed GH and the musician of whom made it last-minute painted into the competition.
The thing is, I’m not even happy with the outcome (even if didn’t matter considering the photo quality) and that the regiment is all over the place regarding the progress of the individual models.
The conversions there are somewhat more ambitious and I’d like to have those further behind to catch up a bit.

One of the bodies, number seven, I had to copy with Oyumaru, the rest if them is halfway built from plastic bits with sculpted parts.
For the copy, I’m quite happy with the outcome:

[Kuanor]

Alright, first I’ll better show what the above is a copy of, so let‘s have a look at the making of the bull centaurs, the first of which was shown in the musician GH.

The truth is, back in Autumn I was starting with more models, even a full units when it felt like having plenty of time, later only the musician and two of his friends to have a little squad for the HG, and an early version looked like this:

The (not yet fixed) heads you seeing there were from those:

Two steps back, what you are seeing are parts of chaos knights, some AoS giant boar (whatever it’s called there) orc rider torsos, more orc (Ironjaw) parts/arms I looted from an O&G playing friend, and mostly ogre heads. One head is from an orc set still, converted to look closer to the ogre’s. You don’t see it because I was playing around with self-made plastic putty, so it has the same colour as the main plastic part.

I had decided to make unique bull centaurs instead of buying printed LKM models for some reason, and because I underestimated the amount of work needed as often. ^^

And to get the ingredients complete, the bases (which will be more or less copied for the rest of the project):

The bull centaurs themselves needed their bellies filled and dressed, their other bellies filled and dressed as well, their tails added…

…their beards sculpted and their weapons and hands glued on…

At this point there was already clear that I wouldn’t finish all three of them for the GH, but I wanted to try at least two (without success in the end, unless having the second one built also counts.)
A not that easy task was was to decide which bull centaurs would get shoulder pads and which of them wouldn’t.
I also had to re-do the musician’s armour plates as the plasticard ones looked bad, so I half copied, half sculpted some deco.

In the end, just before painting (one and base-coating the other) they looked like this, provisorily stuck on their bases:

I won’t show the painted result here that was seen in the GH because I wasn’t happy with either the state of the paint job nor the photo, and will add them as soon as this changes.
In the meantime, until I get distracted, there will be continuing building of the rest of the unit (supposedly seven models in the end), even if it might look somewhat samy for you, and probably base adapters from 25×50 mm to 50×75 mm for optionally playing them as BC Renders as well.
You also haven’t seen the rest of the custom-made weapons yet the remaining BCs are waiting to get hold of (but only after the GS work on the bodies).

[InsectoidPoet]

Awesome Bull Centaur conversions! They give off a nice Legion-of-Azgorh-ish vibe regarding their size and design.
The sculpting is great; I’m always impressed when someone manages to do stuff like detailed armour pieces or realistic musculature!

[Jasko]

Damn these are nice!

[Uther.the.unhinged]

Truly lovely conversions Fierce and noble yet chaotic. Great mix