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Hello, 2021 brings with it a new year - and sadly one in this covid hellworld we are living in - so let's get a bit of positivity going. A new year means resolutions - and that means not only can we all swear (and fail) to get back exercising to work off our christmas dinner - but also hobby resolutions. To those willing to take up the offer, I present an offer - hobby resolutions for new armies. What army are you looking forward to forging in the next year? What projects have you put off for too long that will give you joy that you want to start? Now is the chance. Comment your goal - your ideas, stories, models, factions - and let us all revel in delight. I myself am taking a trip to the dark side and taking on a pledge that - by this time next year - I will have at least 1000 points of painted models for each of the factions within the Grand Alliance Chaos. Good luck - and happy hobbying.

One great thing about gw kits is the little character full animal sidekicks/ scenery bits that come in them. They're great for making servitors or daemon familiars out of and they all look pretty great so i was hoping tga could come together and compile a list of all the little dudes and which kits they can be found in.

I have wanted to mount an Ironjawz Megaboss onto the Magewrath Throne for a while, sitting in that brooding, slightly slumped position you see Conan sitting in (or any of the Jarls in Skyrim...). Thing is, I am: a) paranoid about cutting him up and getting it wrong b) concerned that the angles will all be off c) worried that the megaboss is the wrong model So, in light of all of that, are there any decent tutorials or help that can be offered? I have scoured you tube and not seen anything that makes sense or fits what I am trying to do. Eventually I want to use it as the centerpiece for an armies on parade type entry of a cave of treasure and the armies about to march out to war. Or something like that. Any help, hints or advice would be appreciated.

So inspired was i that i finished our converted wight king from yesterday and painted him Not half bad right

3 little chaos warriors sitting in a box A nice cheap way to get involved with the hobby, also not as open to conversions as other boxes but we still have options Swapping heads is always quite easy and by using a plume from another unit you can add eldritch fire and make a Wightking with tomb blade Looks pretty good imo I used one of the other ones to make an inquisitor I have one more to go and I'm not sure what I'll turn him into but I'll think if something

The chaos cultists have shown up in more blanchitsu articles than almost any other model (lord of plagues being the most common one, the amount of times that guy has shown up is almost comical). So let us see what AOS heroes can be made from within the exceptionally cheap box. Well the most obvious hero I could think of was the necromancer, with a few skulls, a wildwood ranger head and some other bits, one can make a passable necromancer. We still have 4 models to go in the box but I'm going to increase my bits box slightly before I commit to any more conversions. Next time: more chaos cultists

So I finished the bootleg knight questor. Next time, we have the chaos cultists box.

you see plague marines? i see a multitude of options... buy multitude i mean 3 with 3 easy to build plague marines and some bits and too much time with a damn pocket knife and pair of clippers one can create a Lord of blights A lord of Plagues And a putrid blightking Or just 3 putrid blightkings, with more skill and some green stuff these options could be even better. Cost of the official models Lord of Blights $40 aud Lord of Plagues $22 aud Putrid blightkins $18 per model (box of 5 for $40) our cost $25 plus bits

The storm of sigmar box is a good value little box and pretty decent gateway drug into age of sigmar, unfortunately all the models within are of the "easy to build" variety and i thought had limited options for conversion, That was until i started tearing them to Pieces and cutting all their limbs and heads off. So what parts do i have out of the box 2 retributors 3 Liberators 3 Blood Warriors 5 Blood Reavers What can we make out of these? Firstly the stormcast models are all sort of based around the same set of Chassis either a liberator or retributor body and from that base we can build quite a few of the stormcast heroes Firstly, the most easy is the knight questor We can see that the base is pretty much the liberator prime So after some cutting and filing and with a spare power sword and a pretty unnecessary head swap As you can see i did some stuff to the other liberators but they may soon have their bodies scavenger in order to make something else Next up we have the retributors and they are pretty versatile Forming the base for the Lord Relictor and the knight vexillor Among others but seeing as you only get 2 retributors in the box As for the bloodbound we've got some fun stuff you can make lords of chaos or khorne skullreapers Wight kings And Sigmar War priests/ excelsior warpriests So for out of a $55 australian, box I have wrung approximately $232 aud of heroes which all look adequately fancy and I've still got a few units to mess around with As to where this blog is going now, I've got my eyes on the easy to build Plague Marines box and some chaos warrior parts we'll see where it leads. Know of any kits that are perfect for turning into other stuff? Know of any kits full of bits I can use? Know of any cheap kits that just kinda maybe look like more expensive ones if you squint? Then tell me in the comments and I'll muck around and see what I can do.

So here we are in the Age of Sigmar. I must admit, to my shame, I was one of the first to denounce this change. I railed against the lack of points, I decried the aesthetic of space marines creeping into my fantasy world and I openly mocked the 4 pages of rules. I played zero games before I said these things. Then I read the scrolls. Yes, the silly rules involving talking to vampires, raising a goblet to the lady and gazing deeply into your opponents eyes may have been upsetting, but the layers of intricacy that the scrolls added intrigued me. I played two rounds of a game with High Elves (Aelfs) and an Orc & Goblin (Orruk) army and immediately loved it. A Giant (Gargant) ate my Pheonix Guard, (still Pheonix Guard) some Lion Chariots went rampant and Tyrion ran about shooting things with his fiery sword. It was chaotic and silly and ridiculously fun, but the store closed an hour earlier than we thought and we had to pack it in. Even though it was only two turns, I spent the next month trying to convince my regular group to join me in this brave new endeavor, but alas they had been seduced away by another game that still had points and square bases. Now I have to travel to the next county to get a game in despite living five minutes from a great gaming store. No bitterness here, though, I'm glad that my old gaming group from Lancaster were willing to embrace the game because they are some of the best people in the local gaming scene. Besides, the long drive gives me ample time to listen to AOS podcasts and the excellent audio dramas that Black Library have produced. Hobbywise, the shift has really ignited my hobby ADD. Earlier today, I had Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, Elves, Death, Bloodbound and Stormcast spread across my hobby desk, two tables and atop some large tupperware boxes. Paint bottles were strewn about, broken shards of square bases everywhere I looked and the baleful remains of neglected brushes seemed to stare accusingly every time I tried to paint. So today, I reached a breaking point. I decided to come up with a plan, clean up my space and started this here blog to keep myself moving. So. June 18th, my club is hosting a narrative event/tourney. The points will escalate from a 20 point SCGT to 60 over 5 games. The rough draft for round one is that starting heroes are capped at 5 points, units must be 6 or less and no duplicate units. Kinda restrictive for Stormcast, but that's the intent. I figure for 60 points my goal is to paint the list I've been running at that level. It includes a Lord Celestant on Dracoth as the general, a Lord Castellant, A knight Venator, 10 Liberators, 5 Judicators, 6 Prosecutors, 5 Paladin Protectors and a Gryph-Hound. So until the rules are finalized, those are the only models on my painting table. 4 weeks to get those painted to completion. Once that is done, I'm focusing on my terrain collection as the club has asked to borrow it for the event. Luckily, a number of models have paint on them, so I have a bit of a headstart. Here's a look at the paint scheme, going for the Knight's Excelsior. The last chapter of the Godbeasts book made me fall in love with this stormhost. "The Hallowed Knights wept to see what had become of the realm they had come to save, while the Knights Excelsior looked upon the destruction they had wrought and saw that it was good." I have two packs of the upgrade sprue waiting for me at my local hobby store. Quick note on terrain, I was listening to Vince Venturella's Warhammer Weekly Youtube show from April 13th with the terrain tutor. Good episode if you want some inspiration for terrain making. The terrain tutor was talking about building terrain on used discs, so when I found a scratched one in the random detritus of my desk I thought I'd try my hand. I have the Witchfate Tor model and it comes with a bunch of spare wall sections. I grabbed those and some spare bits and made myself two more interesting pieces of ruins to use in my games. Here are some WIP shots. One is on a disc, the other is built on a spare piece of plasticard. Going to need more layers of sand to cover up the bases that some of the pieces are attached to, but I think these will make some cool scratch built terrain pieces when I'm finished. That's it for this week, check back Monday for an update of my progress over the weekend.

I've long been an admirer of the Table Top World terrain - it always appears to be excellent quality and well detailed terrain. Some of it is very expensive, but they have a few pieces that are more reasonably priced, and one of these is the Windmill. It turned up quickly and was well packaged, with all the pieces securely packaged inside the main building section. The casting quality is very good as well, and there was barely any clean up needed. I had a plan for the base that I wanted for the windmill, which was to place it onto a step which was surrounded by some of the excellent ribs from Gary M on Twitter. You can see here how it would be situated. It was important that there was a lot of space around the windmill as I had a little plan for it, so raising the height seemed like a good idea. In the photo below you can also see some the other death terrain pieces in their earliest stages and showing how I generally lay out terrain at the beginning of the process. Once I had cleaned up the Windmill I started on the conversion process. I ordered a very small motor from Pimroni that had a rotational speed 14 rpm. These come pre geared so all you need to do is add a battery pack to them. I ordered a 6amp circular battery holder from Ebay to power the motor and this was attached simply using a few wires and a terminal block. It didn't matter which way the batteries are connected to the motor - all this does is change the direction the motor spins, so you really can't go wrong. Mounting the motor inside the windmill was slightly more challenging. The top of the windmill is cast separately which is a good start, however I had to drill out the hole for the spindle to go through. I replaced the spindle with a small piece of wooden dowel which I drilled on a centre lathe to ensure the holes were located accurately. I drilled a small hole all the way through so that the sails could be mounted and pinned to one side and the other could be pushed on to the spindle of the motor. I then mounted the motor on some hard board and glued it into the top of the windmill. Once I'd done some testing to make sure that everything worked well I glued a ring into the top of the windmill to allow that to be rotated as well. To paint the windmill I used some spray paint and gave the whole thing a few cots of dark grey, light grey and white to pick up a lot of the raised detail. I sprayed the top brown, and didn't worry too much about over spray on this as it would just add a bit of variation on the stone. Once it was dry I washed the whole thing with various different colours and made sure to dry brush the whole thing. This picked up all of the great texture on the model . I was able to selectively wash various stones with blues, green and browns which just adds a nice amount of variation on the piece. I then carefully sprayed the windows with a bright acid green paint to do a glow effect. The Sails had to be painted by hand and took a bit of time, but I didn't spend a great deal of effort. Once this was done I was able to finish mounting the model onto its base. Overall I was happy with the colour scheme and the overall look, and hopefully it will be well received by players at the event this weekend.

On Wednesday we had our first Skirmish campaign at work, which was great fun to get several small games in the same evening for a change. Terrain seemed important so i looked around and put together this quick project that I did over three evenings - mainly to allow for drying between each stage. The work each evening was quite small. Stage One Looking around I finished off a bottle of sparkling water and that seemed the perfect base for a kiln/chimney for a small workshop building. With a few pieces of foam card I roughly formed the shell of the building and stuck some thin wood pieces over the joins to hide the connections. I then piled up filler around the base and let it set overnight, I forgot to take photos at this stage. Stage Two I cut up a box into small square to use as roof tiles and bricks on the chimney and stuck them all over the correct places to give some form. I used the box folds to create the gutter looking areas. Greenstuff was used to create the thicker brick stucture at the top and add some sticky out bricks. Stage Three Once dried and after a quick cheeky spray, to create a more realistic finish I rubbed astrogranite debris over the 'bricks' so that it collected in the gaps between the squares to get a mortar look. And sand and glue mix would probably of worked too. Once that was dry - it was pretty fast i thin just splattered on some paint quick and built up some fast layers of drybrushed highlights. Gave that a few minutes to dry then started working washes over the model. the final touch was some flock and tufts... Final touches were a couple of random assets from the bits box. I hope that gives some ideas for quick and easy (and very cheap) terrain

After Blood and Glory last weekend I came home pumped up for some new and exciting Hobby challenges. The first thing I decided to do was create my very own Oak of Ages to be the centrepiece of a new set of Sylvaneth terrain. I've purchased a Grassy Plains 2 FAT mat and I realised I didn't have any 'green' terrain to go with it. So I started raiding the terrain bin.... A while ago I'd bought a big piece of Aquarium terrain to make a realm gate with, and I knew that my son had collected some twigs and sticks recently that were drying on the porch outside the house. With these as a basis I started gluing things together. I had an old 6" base from my free wood elf wood from 8th edition which was the perfect size for a base so I mitre bonded the tree stump down. I then Dremmelled some bits off half a realm gate to make it roughly fit the gap that was in the wooden piece. I added some random playbark to hide some of the gaps and then started applying cheap air dry clay to add texture. To make it look like bark I used a piece of playbark to texture it and push it into the gaps. This was much faster than using a sculpting tool. When the clay was dry I went over it all with watered down PVA as the clay doesn't always stick as well as you would like. The next job was to stick on some big sticks to the stump to start making the canopy. I just mitre bonded them in place, trying to find places that had gaps and grooves tap they fitted in to. Once these dried I used a pack of Woodland scenics tree armatures to make all the smaller branches. I just went round the tree drilling small holes in and pushing in the tree armatures. Once dry these need twisting and shaping. Even after this they don't look too realistic at this point, but hopefully foliage will help cover this up... I then attacked the whole thing with spray cans. I just sprayed it in bursts with all sorts of browns, greys and whites and then dry brushed areas. I'm going to come back to add more detail later so I wasn't too worried about how this all looked. I just wanted it all blended together and all the air clay covered up. The only thing I tried to do was make sure that the realm gate part was lighter than the rest of the tree. All of my Sylvaneth have a lot of foliage and plants on them, so this was always going to be a very green, summery looking tree. I couldn't use my usual stuff though (Woodland Scenics fine foliage) as it is £17.00 a pack, and I'd need quite a bit for the tree, making it prohibitively expensive. Instead I ordered some wire wool. To start with I piled it on, but after some Twitter feed back from @Bishmeister and @Painted by G I teased it all out a lot more so that I ended up with a much more natural look. I then used an entire can go green spray paint to undercoat the wire wool. Before feedback: After Feedback: When that was dry I went out into the garage, got a big mixing bowl and started making a bowl of tree flock, pretty much exhausting my clump foliage stocks! I used quite big clumps and a variety of sizes and textures. I then went round the tree a bit at a time covering it with spray glue and tipping the clump foliage on. Once the whole tree was covered I gave it a good shake, turned it upside down and went over any patches that I had missed. Once I was happy I then sprinkled over some fine turf mix as well to even up the coverage and fill in any small gaps. Once this dried a bit I mixed water and PVA together and poured it into a spray bottle and generously coated the whole tree. This should make it fairly durable. I'll also add some matt varnish as well as I want to eliminate any shine from any PVA glue that has ended up on the tree itself.

Two weeks before the Facehammer GT I decided that I could probably add Alarielle to my army list. The model is very impressive, and I basically worked on her in three separate stages - The Base, the Wardroth Beetle and Alarielle herself. Basing Alarielle For the base I followed my standard Sylvaneth basing style. I've written about it so much on this blog I imagine anyone could follow it now with ease! The first step was to glue down a nutella lid onto the so I knew where my water effects were going to go and also so I knew that they had something to be contained in. Once that was done I built up the base using the lots of playback and polyfilla. Again I left space for a channel that I made from plasticard that came out from above the rocks - this would be the starting point of my small waterfall. I also superglued on all the branches and skulls at this point and sanded it. This was all left to dry before being undercoated black and then brown over the top. Once the base was dry I could start painting it properly. Again I used a range of different browns and greys to try and vary the contrast as the base is so large. I used the traditional grey at the back and then brought more browns into it at the front. Colour was added through the very bright toadstools, and I also undercoated the pool and stream areas in a dark blue. You can see in the image above that I had done the first two resin pours as well. This took about 48 hours as the resin needs 24 hours to fully cure. Unusually I decided to go back to static grass for this base as I had a large area to cover. I then added the tufts and bushes at the end. The Waterfall is done using a combination of water effects poured out onto a non stick baking tray and left to dry. You can then peel them off and cut them to shape. I use the Woodland Scenics water effects for this and you can also use that to glue the waterfall down. The pool still needs some ripples added which I'll go back and do, but at this stage I knew I needed to get cracking on the Beetle. The Wardroth Beetle I put the Beetle together pretty quickly - Its very big, easy to assemble pieces, although if you look closely you'll see I missed off part of the wood on the top! Once built I undercoated the beetle grey and white. I used a base coat of Dark Reaper mixed with Palyd Whych Flesh to cover the model using the airbrush. I also used it to get the fade on the horns. I knew I was going to want to get green onto the model to tie in all the foliage and plants that cover the beetle sculpt so I tried to get that fade as bright as possible. I used quite a lot of dry brushing and washing on the model because of its size, and then went in and used a lot of edge highlighting to finish it off. The underside was also a very bright green so it had that kind of insectoid two tone look to it. Once this was finished it was just a fairly simple task of going round and picking out all the small details and finishing these off. Alarielle the Everqueen In contrast to the beetle Alarielle herself was an absolute pain to put together, particularly getting the wings in the correct position. I also undercoated the model White which was a really bad idea. I'd have been much better undercoating black and then using a white top coat as the model is difficult to paint in certain areas and there was a lot of white areas I struggled to get too. I started off again with the airbrush getting the wings done as I knew this would be the most annoying bit (not the most time consuming though) but it actually dry brushed up beautifully. I finished it off with glazes of yellow and way watcher green which really brightened the model up. Using lots of different green tones helps to break up such a large model nicely and I think its quite important. I then pretty much followed the Duncan video on the rest of the model. I gave her some quite scary pupil-less eyes to carry over the sylvaneth theme. The skin technique that Duncan shows in the video was very simple but remarkably effective. I just followed that step by step! I changed some of the colours from the GW video as I needed the blue of her robes to tie in with the rest of the army. I managed to finish the model off with a couple of days to spare, was really happy with it, and she was great fun to play at the tournament. I also think she helped secure a best painted nomination, although I didn't manage any awards this time. The Finished Model

In the beginning I made some resin forest bases (these have now been made into 25mm round bases) I painted some test models, Grots and Squigs and these turned out okay. I cleaned all the mould lines from the models prior to carrying out a mass undercoat and base coat using an airbrush. To do this efficiently I pinned each model (I will be using homemade forest resin bases) with a long paperclip to a cork to create a cork spraying carousel. See image below. I love the Fellwater Troggoth models but wanted greater variation in them so I set about converting them. I also sculpted hair onto the backs of their necks with greenstuff to tie them in with the original metal models and to cover up the smoothness of the neck. I added fanatics being molested and changed some of the weapons and arms. I have completed five Fellwater Troggoths so far. I also set about converting the Giant Troll Hag from Forgeworld. I added branches to the tree walking stick and added some ornaments to it. Hair was added from the Gorgon kit. The idea with this piece is that Bog Momma is chasing the squig hopper who has a bunch of flowers in his hand. This is to lure Bog Momma to war through the forest. All the forest creatures flee before her as she tramples her way through the forest leaving a path of destruction. They are also fleeing from her stench. She craves 'pretty things' and things which may make her smell nicer but she inadvertently kills everything with her foul odour. Pictures are of the finished model although this requires rebasing. I have completed the Squig Hopper unit with its scenic regiment tray. This maybe used during games of Aos to speed up unit movement so I have added a leaf litter insert into the bottom of the tray for when models are removed. I intend to do this with all the massed infantry units. I am currently working on the Forgeworld Colossal Cave Squig which I have converted. WIP mages will be posted on Twitter @bishmeister1 and here once completed. Thanks for looking.