This Old Black House

At Hotlead I bought a box of lovely poured resin Hudson & Allen early and high medieval buildings from an estate sale. 

As purchased there's a couple of smaller buildings not pictured 

The three stone "dark ages/highland" buildings were what I really wanted because I've always fancied doing some Picts to fight my 3rd century Romans, especially now that there are a couple of plastic options to build a Pictish warband with. The Medieval buildings were a nice extra and worth paying a few more dollarbucks for the lot.

As you can see my friend had painted them rather unimaginatively without much in the way of shading or depth or highlights. As you can see above, the roofs on two of the Pictish houses were a solid dark green, the same green he painted the grassy bits on the integral bases with. And the third with the sand roof is just well.... ummm. Let's just leave it at that.

So everything got a nice coat of burnt umber ink and then I started drybrushing. Couple of shades of grey on the stone. Couple of shades of green on the sod roofs and the grassy bits of the bases.

After fretting over how to paint the sod roofs I said "Sod it!" and decided to just use the same flock that I would put on the ground.

 This took a couple of nights to accomplish. And then after shaking off the excess I went over the bare patches, which were sculpted to look like old roof in need of refurbishment, with watered down burnt umber.

With out any Picts yet, some of my Romans are checking the village out.

And the Quar like them too. I think these will be nice for any Quar living in the rugged mountainous regions of Alwyd.

Death to the Man-Things!

Another batch of Skaven has rolled off the painting bench of the Underrealm. This group has a Midgard unit of 8 more heavily armoured clan rats and two more rat ogres, all ready to wreck destruction upon the kingdoms of men.

Look closely and you can see regular rats poking out by their feet

Love this guy, Wish I could do an entire unit or two of him as Stormvermin

And two poor, tortured, and quite angry about it, rat ogres. If there aren't humans to kill I'm sure they'll take their frustrations and pain out on the closest warlock.

Used red ink to make the skin around the Horned Rat sigil look angry and sore and probably infected

Green contrast paint over yellow and then some red ink in the skin cracks to make this look very ouchy as well

Each rat ogre will be it's own unit, with some 3d printed swarms of giant and regular rats to fill their base out with.

Painting is pretty simple. Brown undercoat, Dry brush steel bits. Block paint the skin, clothing/rags and fur (using GW Vermin Fur!). Then it's burnt umber ink wash. Highlight metal again and do some dteails like the warp stone and claws.

Done.

Only 5 more units of clan rats, some artillery and some characters to go. Might have enough to play with then.

Squeak!

"Kill the Man-things! Yes yes!"

I now have Skaven. 

I'd been noodling around, kicking tires on the Next Project, now that Quar are winding down, and contemplating Skaven (I was also contemplating 3d printed NSFW Tau and Slaneesh cultists for Xenos Rampant. Maybe later). I've always liked Skaven, even when I didn't care for the rest of the Warhammer scene. They were unique, and always seemed kind of fun. Then seeing what Brett did with Warhammer meeting Midgard last fall put the germ of the idea in my noggin, where it festered.

Scott had bought a couple of Age of Sigmar boxes (the Skaventide set and the Skaven Spearhead box) on blow-out (AoS means "Always on Shelf") to help his local game store and said "Hey you want some Skaven?" So I am now in possession of a ridiculous pile of plastic now. It has been a long time since I've encountered any GW plastics (the High Elves from the Warhammer Fantasy 4th edition starter set back in 1992) and these sprues of clanrats just seem unnecessarily complex to me. Why can't the two body halves be beside each other on the sprue? Granted, the poses are incredibly dynamic, but there's almost too much complexity. I can see why folks in the Warhammer sphere paint on the sprue before assembling.

Being used to Gripping Beast and Wargames Atlantic plastics with just torso and choice of arms  and heads so you can have some variety in how the weapons are positioned, the GW plastics are very fixed. You can only assemble most figure in just one way. With three figures on the clanrat sprue you have the option to make one carrying a banner and the other two musicians, or you can just assemble them as regular sword carriers.

That's it. There isn't any room for conversion work or different weapons.

Drummer 

Fellow on the right can also be swinging a bell I think

Note normal rats at his feet

Of course I made the mistake to assemble the Grey Seer from the Skaven Spearhead box first. Hoo-boy! that was frustrating. No locating pins or slots. Figure assembly as jazz. Parts just kinda sliding around until you kinda felt a vibe.

His staff is supposed to be more upright. But damn me if I could figure that out, and get his head somewhere near where a head should be. 

But I got things to sort of line up in what looks like it makes sense. Maybe.

I'm told the Grey Seer from the Skaventide box will be better. I hope so.

But each sprue of clanrats will give me 2 1/2 units for Midgard, and between the two boxes I've got 3 sprues. So 7 units plus a few extras to fill bases beside the Rat Ogres or artillery.

The Rat Ogres in the Spearhead box are very steam punky with cannons or drills where hands should be, but in the other box at least there is the option to just give the poor tortured beasts choppy implants.

They do look rather tortured and maddened. I feel rather sorry for them.

No wonder he's angry

I'll make each one a unit on it's own and fill the base with swarms of giant rats.

With these 10 Skaven, I think I've now tripled the number of painted Games Workshop figures in my collection. 

Movement Trays

"It's just a small skirmish game. I just need a dozen figures or so. I'll base everyone individually."

Narrator's voice: "Indeed, he would not stop at a dozen figures. Or even two dozen."

140 orcs and goblins later....

My Middle Earth armies and my Samurai are all based individually. Which gets tedious to move, for obvious reasons. 

Fortunately both collections are organized in 6s and 12s. So I got Don to print me some movement trays. Some ranked up, and some looking skirmishy or warbandish. 

Most fit 1 inch fender washers, my base of choice. But I also got some to accommodate the 20mm washers I use for dwarves and goblins. 

I noticed a few fit problems setting up the first picture, but it's just sand or flocking overhanging the edge that I'll have to remove. 

The stands will help define groups in Seven Spears too, and hopefully make it easier for people to know what is what.