Swooper

45 days? That's right around midsummer, not the beginning of summer.

Great Unclean One, sitting in a tree, R-O-T-T-I-N-G! 🎶 Sorry, the mental image of a GUO climbing a tree is just very amusing! 😄

They said on Facebook that basically the new Wildwoods replace the old ones, but you can keep using the old ones if you have them. Edit: Somehow I missed this was already said a couple of hours earlier, my bad.

Heard a rumour on Twitter about what this Contrast™ is. Supposedly it'll be some kind of multi-tone paint that has shading and highlighting all on one layer. The source says the Iron Golems warband is painted with only one layer of this new paint. I'm not sure if I buy it myself, but it's at the least an interesting theory and I thought I'd share it.

Start Collecting Everchosen: 6 Varanguard and Archaon for £60! 😅

Build phase pretty much done now, with the dragon ogres and ten each of gors, ungors and bestigors assembled/kitbashed and based. Can hopefully prime everything tomorrow if it doesn't rain. The dragon ogres are all posed slightly rearing up on their hind legs, so I propped two of them up on some rocks to make them seem a little more natural. I knew I wanted to add a little something to their bases as they are fairly large, and when digging through my bitsbox for ideas thought to put some battlefield debris in there, a shield (previously used for a colour test), a helmet and a hammer from the chaos warrior kit. These will all be painted very rusted. Then we have the bestigors. I already had two standard bearers, but only one musician, so I needed another banner and two musicians to fill out the unit of 30. Didn't want to repeat identical banners or instrumentsin the same unit, so that means kitbashing time! I've been gathering various pieces from bits sites and my friends' bitsboxes over the past several months for precisely this purpose. On the other hand, I was out of one-handed minotaur axes so I didn't really do any weapon swaps, except one of them has the axe blade from the gor champion with the rings filed off. Bits from a total of eight kits were used on the bestigors. Banner from the ogre gutbusters kit, banner top from the minotaur kit, marauder axe. The banner top doesn't fit perfectly when seen from behind, but I reckon it's fine. Musician #1: Horn from the marauder horsemen kit, left arm from the gor kit, shoulderpad from the marauder kit. The right hand needed some greenstuffing to blend with the gor arm holding it, nothing big. Musician #2: Gor head, chaos warrior horn, sword from the older version of the gor kit (I managed to find a couple of those and a flail hand on a bits site). Gors next! Needed two banners and two musicians in this case. Used bits from eight kits to make these. Musician #1: Marauder drum (same as I used on the ungor riding the minotaur), stormvermin drumstick. The drum hand needed a lump of greenstuff to fit on the gor body, otherwise this was fairly straight forward. Musician #2: Bestigor horn, bestigor horns (heh), axe blade from the beastlord I put on the stonehorn/mutant cygor thingy. Banner #1: Marauder banner. I was for some reason out of gor banner arms, so I cobbled one together using the mace arm. It's all pinned so it should be stable enough. Banner #2: Banner from the black orc ('ardboyz?) kit. I always thought it was appropriate for beastmen, even if it has a gor head on it. They carry around beastman skulls on their totems, I imagine they were heads before the flesh rotted off. Bestigor axe in the off hand. I've been sticking arrows in some of my bigger beasties, figure I should also have some sticking out of shields. This was incredibly easy to do, I just cut the arrow in two near the head, drilled a hole in the shield at an angle, put the arrow pieces through from either side along with a small drop of plastic cement. Here are the extra sword and flail arm I mentioned. Finally, ungors. I had only assembled raiders before, but most beasts of chaos armies seem to have a unit of ten ungors, ready to sacrifice themselves at the herdstone to attract more of the herd. Clearly, I needed such a suicide squad myself! You may notice there's a headless ungor in the back. The reason for that is a bit of an issue I have with the ungor kit. See, it has too many "special" champion heads, not enough regular boring heads. I ran out of the regular heads, and only had champion heads left. My buddy has some ungor sprues he's willing to trade me though, just haven't managed to meet him this week. Seven kits were harmed in making this unit. Here's the unit champion, or... *checks warscroll* ...halfhorn. I swear this wasn't an intentional joke, I just cut off half of his horn to differentiate him from the shaman, which has the same head. I gave him a torch from the flagellant kit, because someone needs to light the barbecue. The standard bearer got a clanrat banner. I needed something to put on top, however, and an ungor skull (I think from the chaos warrior kit? There were a lot of skulls in there) seemed a perfect celebration of the fragile mortality of this unit. I actually drilled out the bell on the banner, because details are important. Then there's the little drummer boy! Stormvermin drum. Needed some greenstuff work to make it fit, but I think I did all right. His club doubles as a drumstick, after I shaved all the spikes off. Don't want to puncture that nice man-skin drum! Got this pitchfork from the giant kit I think. Seemed like a good fit for ungors, along with the torch they've got a little bit of a lynchmob vibe going. Then there's this guy. I decided to try cutting the horns off one of the champion heads and try my hand at sculpting some smaller ones - shouldn't be hard, right? Ehh. I'm not the greatest sculptor, and ungor heads are tiny. I might end up just cutting it off and using a different head once I get some more regular ones. Also, a mould line I missed. I fix, I fix. So yeah, build phase nearly done. Next up hopefully priming this lot, then painting a 3D-printed D&D mini for my friend, then... probably some bestigors. I think I'm going to experiment with larger batches, so might be a while until my next update here.

The dust has settled, and so has the Vallejo Still Water! Took a couple of more layers than I expected, but came out okay and now my ghorgon is ready! I don't have a rotating platter so I just took lots of pictures. High res versions here. When I did the skin highlights I wanted to add a bit of texture, so I did lots of thin lines perpendicular to the muscles. Guess I was influenced a bit by Iceland's resident hobby hero (the only Icelander to have had a model featured in White Dwarf), as I had been in my FLGS earlier on the day when I started highlighting and saw his models on display. Ended up glazing over the lines a bit later, but you can still see them in some spots. I tried a new method for the grey I used on his fur, which I learned from Warhammer TV's Abaddon video. Dryad Bark, shaded with Abaddon Black, washed with Nuln Oil, drybrushed with Stormvermin Fur. This is the main reason I watch their tutorials nowadays, to pick up interesting combinations like that I wouldn't have thought of myself. As useful as the Citadel triad system is, I love being able to step outside it and highlight with different colours to create the illusion of different tones! I did an extra step on the warpaint this time, a layer of Kantor Blue between the black outline and the Macragge Blue. I felt Macragge was too bright to leave as the darkest blue in the shaded areas, and that it would be more visible on such a big model. Tried a new method of adding verdigris to bronze. Before, I'd been using Nihilakh Oxide, but I never managed to make it look as good as I wanted. This time, I used glazes of Stegadon Scale Green and then Sotek Green, and I'm so much happier with this method! Considering going back and fixing the bronze on my other models. I also did a bit of rust with the same method, except using Scrag Brown and Troll Slayer Orange. Wanted to show that this guy had been up there a while, mainly, but I liked it so I added it to some of the other iron parts too. Should I add a little bit of rust to my other models? Beastmen don't really seem like the types to properly maintain their equipment. I went kind of blindly into painting these bits. I knew I wanted them to look bruised and probably infected where the iron claws had been fused into his skin, but I wasn't sure how to do that with such a dark skin tone. I ended up highlighting up from Tuskgor Fur (the brightest highlight on the rest of the skin) up to Cadian Fleshtone, and carefully applying both Druchii Violet and Carroburg Crimson to create the effect I wanted. Reasonably happy with the results. I didn't really make any modifications to the model as I quite like it as it is, but I did stick a couple of arrows (from the ungor kit) in him. There's a drop of Blood For the Blood God there, although it's hard to see against the dark skin. Underneath all this sponge is a bush I bought from Serious Play when I ordered all my basing materials. They're quite big so there isn't space for them on but the largest of bases, but maybe I'll make some terrain one day and put them to good use. That's it for now, hope you like it! Will be posting some grey plastic next, as I've been having fun kitbashing a box each of gors, ungors and bestigors, adding standard bearers and musicians to fill the 1/10 quota.

Endless spells done! Here's an imgur album with higher resolutions, if anyone wants it. It didn't take me six weeks to paint these, though. It certainly took a while, endlessly fidgeting with the gradient on the Wildfire Taurus's flames, and I ended up half-assing the blend on the Dirgehorn, but what delayed me the most was actually just that I couldn't be arsed to finish basing them so they sat in my painting area while I worked on the next model and finally got based alongside that. That model is now 99% done, only needs a couple of days for some puddles (made with Vallejo Still Water) on the base to cure. I'll post pictures later this week, meanwhile here's a slightly-out-of-focus teaser: After all this painting lately, I decided to switch to build mode for a while. I recently received a box of Dragon Ogres and a Shaggoth (which was slightly miscast, waiting for a replacement from GW), and I have an unassembled box each of gors, ungors and bestigors that I want to get ready as well, now that I have managed to gather all the bits I wanted to modify them (mostly various different banners). The dragon ogres got assembled last night! I went for glaives on two of them and a crusher on the third, because I think the glaives look the best even though I'll probably run them all with crushers (my friends won't mind it's not 100% WYSIWYG). The third glaive is reserved for the shaggoth, because I really don't like his axe and am planning a minor conversion which will involve some bits from an endless spell... more on that later. I was sad to find out that dragon ogres are still shipped with square bases, but thankfully I had the right size for them lying around from the mournfangs (two of them aren't glued on the bases yet, hence the awkward positions below). I really love the dragon ogre models and am looking forward to painting them so they'll probably jump the queue, even if I haven't completely nailed down the colour scheme for them yet. Am thinking tealish for the dragon hide, darker scales on their back, lighter underbelly, bronze armour. Unsure what to do for their fleshier upper bodies and some of the detail bits like leather and cloth.

Dwarves got new factions two years in a row, so there's a precedent for that.

Anyone seen the classic fantasy movie Willow? Remember the Death Dogs the evil queen Bavmorda sent after the heroes? Those were my inspiration when I sat down to paint my warhounds a couple of weeks ago, and they are now finished! So when I started, I knew three things: I wanted them to be quite dark, nearly black, like the death dogs, but still have some colour scheme links to the rest of the herd. I wanted to do them all in one batch of ten (even though I usually work in batches of 5-6), since they lack a lot of the features of regular beastman units (weapons, armour, cloth etc) and I wasn't going to give them warpaint, they should be rather quick to do. Like the rest of my herd, I wanted some colour variants among them. For the base colours of their skin and manes, I mixed and matched Rhinox Hide, Dryad Bark and Skavenblight Dinge among them (all colours present in my colour scheme). Instead of the usual purple shading wet-blend, I used black, and then shaded them with Nuln Oil to really darken them further. I then highlighted each colour very sparsely to maintain the dark tones. One of the tricks to painting dark colours is to use only thin highlights, as thick highlights will make the surface appear to be the colour of the highlight instead of the colour of the base coat. When I started out I wasn't sure how I'd paint the scorpion tails, scales, ear-snakes and other mutations present among the hounds, but eventually settled on Dark Reaper. It's one of my favourite colours in the Citadel line, but I hadn't had a chance to use it anywhere on my herd yet (it's the main colour of my BFG Tau fleet though!), but it seemed like a good choice for these mutations and I like how it came out. Anyway, enough yapping, here are some pictures! Since finishing the hounds, I've started working on my endless spells. Here are a couple of very-WIP shots of them: The skin is painted with The Fang mixed with Abaddon Black (roughly 2:1 I believe), then drybrushed with The Fang. The fire (and inner glow of the bull) is a gradient from Trollslayer Orange through Mephiston Red and Screamer Pink to Xereus Purple, though I have yet to brighten it with some lighter shades. The Dirgehorn is not as far along, and the magic effect part is only basecoated red so far, but it will get the same treatment. The ravens are still in the box, I doubt I'll bother assembling them as the spell doesn't seem worth it, and will probably use them for some conversion or terrain piece down the line... Anyway, that's it for now, I'll chime back in when those two spells are ready!

There's a jumping Stormcast that looks lightly armoured on one of the screenshots people grabbed from the trailer.

I'm going to choose to believe this because it sounds awesome and I want it to be true! 😅

Are we not doing WiP Wednesdays anymore? I think it would be a shame to let this thread die. Here's what's on my table, a batch of ten adorable puppies! Managed to get three colours and a wash on them today.

I needed a quick break from my beasts so I decided to paint up a conversion I made last year, a Lord of Slaanesh on foot. He's made of a Knight-Questor (with all Sigmarite iconography filed off), a head from the chaos chariot kit, a chaos knight's shield and a flaming sword from the Empire battlemage kit, as well as a pair of gor horns I put on his shoulderplate along with some greenstuff to turn the lion head into a more daemonic visage. I'll gladly admit that my sculpting is terrible, but faces are hard and it's the best I could do. The OSL turned out better than I expected, and better than it looked like it would right until I managed to fix it with some glazing at the end. Painting the cloak was fun! I love organic surfaces like cloth where you can slowly build up highlights through multiple layers.

So, uh. It's been a while. Had a massive hobby slump for the past few months (actually, I was mostly spending my free time preparing a D&D campaign, because apparently I can only focus on one hobby at a time) but managed to shake it off over the holidays and finish the models I started working on in September this week. Here they are, the Avatars of War beastlord and the first five bestigors. After painting it, I can't say I'm a fan of this sculpt. It's very chunky (particularly the horns and the fur on his back), weirdly proportioned and the pose is odd. There are some bits of him I'm not even sure what are supposed to be. He's also a bit outdated now that beastlords all have a pair of axes, but no big deal. I did a minor glowy effect on the runes on his axe, in the colours I'll be using for magic effects in the future, purple through red to orange. I like how it harmonises with the colour scheme. Then there are the bestigors. Not much to say about them, I did the standard Rhinox Hide/Naggaroth Night/Druchii Violet/Doombull Brown/Tuskgor Fur skin tone, but there's not a lot of exposed skin to use for war paint. At some point I considered painting the designs on their armour, but decided against it in the end. Happy with how the gradient on their horns came out. Since finishing them I've been doodling with basing some warhounds I impulse bought in September, along with the two chariot proxy conversions, and endless spells. Not sure when the next update here will be though, since my next painting project will be some board game minis for Wildlands, a surprisingly fun skirmish game I got for Christmas. I'm back on the horse (goat?) though!

Ungors are 20p cheaper, but raiders can at least fire their bows while they're waiting for their turn on the barbecue. Up to you.

Link to my army log in my signature, painted models from page 2. Did everyone see that we're getting Made to Order Morghur and Khazrak (but no Redmaw??) next weekend (as well as Throgg and Galrauch)? I'm definitely getting Khazrak and Throgg, maybe Morghur as well.

Well, this turned out to be exactly right!

Haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet, but there's a rumour in the BoC facebook group that this weekend will have made to order on old beastmen heroes (Kazrak and Morghur were mentioned) as well as a few other chaos heroes, like Throgg. Usually they announce Made to Order a week in advance, so my interpretation is that they'll announce it this weekend, but that it will actually happen a week later. No idea how reliable this is, just passing on what I heard.

The models aren't hard to paint (not a lot of fiddly details, like Tzeentch models for example), it just depends on how much effort you want to put in. I use 40+ paints on each gor, wet blend and freehand warpaint, but you can definitely use a much simpler method if desired. Edit: Regarding spray paint, Army Painter have a couple of brown primers you could use.

Anyone heard anything about more BoC units getting the rebox treatment in the foreseeable future? Asked a GW store manager about it recently, didn't seem like he knew anything.

Pretty sure those images have already been posted, scroll up a bit.

Anyone watch the twitch stream today? I missed it. Did anything new get mentioned?

It's clearly a goblin-head shaped helmet. Nose and eyes on the visor, big floppy steel ears, hooked chin jutting out. Edit: @froo Really, we both reply to the exact same seven-hour old comment within one minute? Wow.

Are GW books normally priced differently by language? I was looking at the EU preorder page, and the BoC battletome is 32.50€ in English, 25€ in German and French, and 20€ in Italian and Spanish.