Warcry Goblins: Squiggly beasts!

So after last time, I've decided to keep on using Mechanicus Standard Grey as my undercoat, which leads me to my next two models, who are adorable...

Their names are Basha and Nasha.

Adventures in Contrast: Squig Hopper

Just a quick one to post the latest model I've painted, this time going back to experimenting with Contrast paints but combined with some traditional base+wash+highlight.

These are gorgeous models, with this squig's pose and face being the most vanilla of them all and still full of energy. The customisation and dynamic poses of these are really something special, and show that GW can do some amazing work these days.

My painting started from a base of Mechanicus Standard Grey rather than the off-whites that are usual for Contrast paints, inspired initially by this guide and further reinforced by this video guide. However, it's clear that the video's zenithal highlighting with Grey Seer made his colours a lot lighter, as the red on mine in particular is very dark (in the flesh it looks even darker than in this photo).

For the other Contrast areas - the gums, robes, shoes, and the wood - this was fine, as I could highlight back up and get the look I wanted. But the darkness of the red means they don't have the visual pop of the classic squig hoppers.

'Eavy Metal-painted squig hoppers

So now I'm not sure whether to carry on as-is, or try another one using Wraithbone as the primer.

Painting: Stormcast Eternal Liberator

I'm a sci-fi person by default, be it Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, or 40k. Fantasy settings are fine, but they just don't get me as excited unless they're the Discworld.

Bearing that in mind, this is the first Warhammer Fantasy model I have painted in probably 20 years or so. I painted two Saurus Warriors when I was first starting, and they are now very outdated models and were very basically painted by me (they're in a box somewhere and I can't be bothered to hunt for them to prove this point).

So here is everything bang up to date, with a new-style GW fantasy miniature (got free from the front of the White Dwarf when Age of Sigmar first launched), and my improved painting skills. Unfortunately my camera skills are still shit, as I swear he looks better in person!

It has to be said that I generally hate Stormcast Eternals. It might be the fact that they're usually bright gold (never a good look, especially in a post-Trump election world), they're supposedly super-lawful good, or their obvious spess-mareens-but-in-fantasy-omg design aesthetic.

But this guy was a lot of fun to paint, and he came out even better than I hoped, as I really like this scheme. It's how I'd always intended to paint a Sister of Battle if I ever did one, and it's nice to know it works.

He's not as grungy as I'd considered going (see this guy for a source of inspiration), but as the metal is muted I think he avoids the too-shiny look that I personally dislike (see this guy as an example of that, but which was otherwise a very helpful bit of inspiration for me).

Adventures in Contrast: Círdan the Shipwright (first use of Contrast paints)

With my Orc Blood Bowl team completed, it's time to do something a little different.

The biggest painting news this year was the release of GW's new Contrast range of paints, which apparently paint your models for you whilst you listen to Black Library audiobooks. Or something. So I thought I should give them a try.

The background

Now, I'm not a naturally good painter (I got a D in my Art GCSE). I paint very slowly, and could do with some tuition from a good teacher to start improving my technique. But whilst I am slow, I do get there in the end. This is because I am neat, and have a very "colour by numbers" approach, making sure the base colours are all blocked out. Then I shade, sometimes layer, highlight, and sometimes highlight again, and the end results aren't bad. I might drybrush if I'm feeling fruity.

An example from a few years ago of my typical style

That means my technique typically starts dark and the model gets lighter as I highlight up, leading to a rather crisp look. This is great for power armour or other hard edges, but means I can struggle with more naturalistic models.

A dirty Space Knife-Ear I painted from around the same time

This means that for models with a lot of flesh - like my beloved orcs/orks - the flesh can be a bit blocky. Dark in the crevices, with blocks of much lighter green on top, like a form of cel shading. This looks good and vibrant, but isn't very natural-looking.

My hope is that Contrast paints can help me with this, so I don't have to resort to drybrushing rough things like fur to get a decent effect.

The model

A while ago GW did one of their Made to Order collections, and within it was the lovely Círdan the Shipwright model for a relatively cheap price. I have never painted a Lord of the Rings model before, and have no interest in the game, but given it's such an understated model I thought it would be a great thing to paint that is outside of my comfort zone.

Since then Contrasts came out, and this seemed a good place to test them out whilst also trying some speed-painting.

I added highlights to the front, but the back is pure Contrast/wash/glaze

How did I do him?

• Wraithbone undercoat
• Snakebite Leather for the jacket
• Black Templar with an Eshin Grey highlight for his shoe
• Asurmen Blue (old shade) and Guilliman Blue (old glaze) for the robe, then highlighted with Thunderhawk Blue and Fenrisian Grey
• Gryphonne Sepia (old shade) on the belt, with highlights of Ushabti Bone and Pallid Wych Flesh
• Darkoath Flesh on the skin, with Kislev Flesh, Flayed One Flesh, and Pallid Wych Flesh highlights, with a wash of Reikland Fleshshade to knock the colours back to something less Joker-faced
• Gyphonne Sepia (old shade) and Lamenters Yellow (old glaze) on the hair

This was a very interesting way to paint. I think I'd have done a better job using my usual approach, but it would have taken a lot longer. This guy took about two hours of brush time, ignoring waiting, and that includes the basing. That is frankly unheard of for me.

I'm disappointed in how the cloak turned out. It has a lovely colour and texture, but is wrong for something like this. Note I did use it undiluted out of the pot, which might have been a mistake.

So will I use Contrast paints again? Yes, I already have some other ideas for how to use them, but I need to get practice in as these are very different to what I'm used to.

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The finished team!

Orcsenal are finally finished, and just in time for Orctober!

The best photo of the front row

Here the back row are in focus

I love painting orcs / orks in this scheme (it's an update of the scheme I used for the small force of 40k orks I've painted), but I have only painted Blood Bowl models for the last year or so, which has lead to two full teams with spares. Therefore I need my palette* to be fully cleansed before I paint anything else Blood Bowl-related. So expect the next models to appear on here to be a little out of left field**.

* Pun not intended, but I'm leaving it in anyway
** Ditto

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: Final Lineorc

The title speaks for itself!

Left has no flash, right has flash

So now I just need to add their numbers and varnish them, and then this team is done! :¬D

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: Goblin #2

My initial intention had been to only paint one Goblin for my Orc team, but the model I chose is the least interesting of those in the kit, and for a 'full' roster I might eventually need two. So I decided to suck it up and paint a second one, who will probably become the one I will field because he looks awesome!

One Orc Lineman to go, then it's just a case of sticking on numbers and varnishing them and this team is done!

Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. My Little Warband half 2

So, over two months after this happened, we finally got to play the second half. In that time summer happened, democracies descended into anarchy, empires rose and fell, and I got married.

Previously, on the Imperial Cabal Network...

Things weren't looking good for our plucky Goblin 'heroes':

• They were down 1:0 at halftime
• Due to referees who followed the rules there would only be 10 players starting the half, none of those being non-Troll positionals
• The Chaos Chosen team were receiving

And now for the conclusion...

I deployed pretty conservatively, with my two Sidestep Gobbos on either flank and the meat in the centre. His deployment was asymmetric, although I'm not sure why.

The ball scattered back onto the dead centre of his half, after he got brilliant coaching (so we were now both on 4 re-rolls), and the half began...

His turn 9 saw him push some of my players around, but no one went down. In my turn I came up with some plans, but then this happened very early on in my turn:

Stunned Troll, fine goat :¬(

He then capitalised on this and pushed forward some more, bringing his ball carrier up as well. However he didn't spot that I could get a 1-die blitz on his ball carrier with my #14, Tokey Mokey. But unfortunately I rolled a push, and I was too scared to re-roll so left it at that.

It's starting to look like a mess

But Tokey Mokey got to blitz again next turn, again getting a push, and again I chickened out. Meanwhile my opponent was starting to get very annoyed with my #9, Gobo da Gobbo, who was using Sidestep to keep a tackle zone on the ball carrier.

At this point my opponent gloated that he'd surrounded my Trolls. But I pointed out that it was actually his team who were surrounded by my Goblins!

By the end of his turn 12, this is where we had gotten to.

What happened next completely made the game for me.

Tokey Mokey made his third blitz on the carrier, and "third time's the charm" proved to be true as he knocked the Beastman down and got a KO!

Sprokkit, the green Troll, then CASed the Beastman in front of him, smashing his collar bone (-1 strength). The silver lining for my opponent's team is that at least there'd be steak on the menu after the match!

How things looked, post The Smashening

After this the match descended into an exercise in how many tackle zones could be put on the ball at once.

Gobo da Gobbo, he of the infuriating Sidestep fame, carefully explaining to the Blocker what his Troll mate will do to him

The next couple of turns maintained the violence: on turn 13 a Goblin was badly hurt and Fish Stikz (the blue Troll) blitzed and KO'd a Blocker, and then in my turn 14 Sprokkit managed to get his second CAS of the match (this time only a badly hurt).

I regret nothing!

After that nothing much happened other than a bit of jostling, leaving us like this at the end of the match:

Post-match interview

Given how badly the first half went, that was pretty good! OK, yes, I lost, shut up. But after getting no removals in the first half I managed four this half (to my opponent's one), didn't concede another touchdown, and nobody died. And I got my first two casualties!

My opponent played well, but was hurt by the lack of Block and facing a Dodgy opponent. He also spent too much time focusing on my Trolls (which he noticed independently), rather than going after my soft, green, gooey centre. In other news: he learnt to hate Sidestep :¬D

Admin

My MVP went to the Fanatic, as for the third time (out of three games) my MVP didn't go to either of the two Trolls, even though I always nominate both of them :¬( That's a 1/27 chance...

My opponent got 60k from the gate and gained one Fan Factor, whilst I got 70k and lost one Fan Factor. That leaves me with 150k to either spend or hoard in my private vault. Decisions, decisions...

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The Troll

'e's done! Here is the Troll for my Orc team, who shall be named: Goona.

A lot of people really don't like this model, and whilst it's not my favourite in the Blood Bowl range it was actually a lot of fun to paint due to all the little details. But they in turn meant it took me ages to paint him ;¬)

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The final two Black Orc Blockers

After painting up my first two Black Orc Blockers, I've now done the last two!

This means that, once I add the numbers to their kit, I'll have a decent starting Orc team to go a-krumpin'!

 

Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. My Little Warband half 1

With my fiancée off on the first of her two hen dos, my best man's 6-year-old son invited me to a second stag do of my own. So on Saturday I made the trek to Guildford to see what he had in store for me: it was playing on the Wii, two games of chess, about 10 minutes of painting before he got bored, and "the fighting game" (a.k.a. "Uncle Ross getting jumped on"). I brought a couple of beers with me to numb the pain.

Pre-match

Once the two kiddiwinks were in bed we started the game of Blood Bowl we'd planned. My opponent had nearly finished painting up his Chaos Chosen team (one Beastman was still grey plastic), dubbed My Little Warband (motto: "Violence is magic!"). For my Goblins I'd hired a new Looney to replace Kutta Monsta and a Fanatic named Waaagh!-nimal. This left me 30TV higher than him, so he induced a Specialist Assistant Coach.

Was me starting the game with no inducements (such as BRIBES) a good idea? Maybe not. But compared to playing Goblins at all it was relatively sane.

He had 10,000 fans in attendance, and even though it was an away game for me I had 12,001 (the extra due to his eldest thinking my models had the better colours, a.k.a. a moral victory).

Given I was playing Goblins I expected to lose, but I saw two things in my favour:

1. His models were all freshly painted, and so destined to fail horribly.
2. One of his models was unpainted, and so would only be able to roll 1s.

Evidence for both of these universal laws can be found in point #5 in this link.

Drive 1

I won the toss and so elected to receive, but then we rolled a riot so I was down a turn already :¬(

I set up ready to cause as much damage as possible

The opposition were staring down some scary (mostly) greenskins!

The Fanatic went first, blowing a re-roll on his first block, but managed to cause a mess and knock down his first target and base another one. One troll blocked, another blitzed, and the Looney fouled, and so I had one prone and two stunned Beastmen. But then a bad thing happened: my Goblin who went to pick up the ball failed, giving my opponent a turnover, and I realised I'd left a one-square opening in the centre of my line. Oh bugger!

Can you spot the hole on the left of centre?

My opponent duly exploited this, and before he knew it ol' butterfingaz had two Beastmen and a Chosen running at him. I worked out this probably wasn't good, so decided to make my first dice roll of my third (although really second) turn the pick-up, so I could use a team re-roll if needs be and amscray out of there. Fail. Re-roll. Fail. Turnover. 1/27 chance of failing all three pick-ups. One sad Goblin.

At the end of my opponent's third turn things weren't looking great for me

Things hadn't changed much by the end of my fifth turn

It was my opponent's fifth turn when he eventually scored, and I won't provide a blow-by-blow account of the journey there, but here are the key points:

• By this stage I had broken armour a lot, but hadn't getten one single KO or CAS, which was crippling given I needed these to stay in the game after this drive.
• My opponent had trouble finding the Pows! on his dice, even when rolling 3 or 2 with a re-roll. The Goblin who failed the pick-ups must have been positively smeared in butter as he never went down.
• The Beastman who eventually scored was Beefy Blond, the unpainted one!

Convinced I'd done something to upset Nuffle, we went into the second drive on my turn 6 with no Goblins in reserve and a full Chosen team in front of me.

Drive 2

Even though I was disappointed in my heavy-hitters, the fans must have enjoyed the violence as their cheering brought my re-rolls back up to 3. And then I had some good luck: the ball landed in the paws of the Goblin on the far right of the LoS!

My set-up for the second drive

Hmm, how could I use this to my advantage...

My play was executed as follows:

1. Goblin in the left of the picture above dodged in to provide an assist against the Beastman in the centre of the LoS.
2. Green Troll passed Really Stupid.
3. Green Troll 3-dice blocked the Beastman to push him back.
4. Blue Troll declared a pass.
5. My opponent looked at me as if I was crazy.
6. Blue Troll passed Really Stupid.
7. Blue Troll moved next to the ball-carrying Goblin.
8. Blue Troll was not hungry.
9. Blue Troll fumbled the throw on a 2.
10. I looked at my re-rolls, and had three to use in three turns: "Re-roll!".
11. Blue Troll failed Loner on a 3.
12. I was sad.

How the pitch looked after my failed TTM

My opponent moved in to threaten me and made the TTM landing harder, but avoided basing my trolls

I tried to TTM again on my seventh turn, again failing with a fumble and rolling a 3 on the Loner roll

And on my turn eight? I yet again failed the TTM with a fumble and rolling a 3 on the Loner roll

My opponent ended the half with a traditional gang foul

Half-time punditry
That did not go well. I messed up at the end of my first real turn by leaving an opening, but other than that I don't think I did anything really wrong. Things just didn't go my way, Nuffle-wise:

• Failing three 3+ pick-ups in a row.
• I must have broken armour through blocks and fouls at least 6 or 7 times, and didn't get a single KO or CAS.
• I failed three TTMs on a fumble and rolling a 3 for Loner.

We called it there as we needed to sleep, so we'll play the second half another day. But being 1:0 down with only 8 Goblins (stupid not-blind ref!) and 2 Trolls versus a full Chosen team does not bode well...

My Little Warband: 1
Da Fragile Rokkaz: 0
Nuffle: 1 broken heart

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: Goblin

This is just a small update (geddit!?) to show off the Goblin for my Orc team.

I may eventually add a second one, but for now one will be enough.

So now I've painted 11 players for this team, but it's not a good starting roster. To get that I need to paint the two remaining Black Orcs. Then to have a 'full' team I will paint up the Troll, and a third, just-in-case, Lineorc.

It's so close to being done!

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The first Black Orc Blockers

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm using the actual Black Orc Blocker models as Blitzers. The role of my BOBs has instead fallen to the rather sexy Orruk Brutes from Age of Sigmar, the first two of which are complete.

These photos really are awful!

These are lovely models to paint, with lots of nice detail to pick out.

The only issue is they're about the same size as the official BOB model - if anything they're smaller - which means that they may not be distinctive enough. I'll see how they look when all four of them are done, but if needs be what I can do is add the trophy pieces that come with the kit to their shoulders. I originally didn't want to do this as it's not very Blood Bowl, but it is the simplest way to mark them out as different, plus that little bit more brutal (pun intended).

Blood Bowl Underworld: Conversions!

Once my Orc team is finished I have a choice to make: Boring Humans or Underworld next.

...
...
...

Of course I'm choosing Underworld!

So for the last week I've been building my players, and as mutations are a large part of the fun of the team I've decided to do some converting. And this is actual converting. I'm a pro at kitbashing, but for the first time in my life I've been using greenstuff of the non-liquid variety.

So what have I done?

A horned Linerat, with horns kindly donated by my previously-Necromantic, now Chaos-playing opponent

A Blitzer with a claw from the old Chaos mutations sprue

A Thrower with an extra arm. But where did that come from?

My conversion to represent Glart Smashrip (Jr.)!

Now that the disgusting Skaven are out of the way, it's on to the real stars of the team...

This one's not mutated, but I gave him the spare punch dagger from the Blitzer to differentiate him from the other player with the same body

This guy is growing some spikes / tentacles (TBD) from his neck

This is the mutation that they'll actually get on levelling up: Two Heads! Most people convert both of these looking forward, but that's too hard for my first go and this means he can see in all directions

And finally: Horns! My opponent doesn't know yet that he's donated another set of horns ;¬)

So that's what I've been up to, alongside painting my Black Orc Blockers (the first two of which I'll share when they're done). The non-BOB Orcs are all painted now, I just forgot to post them when I finished them.

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The first batch

With my Goblin team finished and most definitely blooded (RIP Kutta Monsta 😭) I'm moving on to my Orc team from the main game's box.

So in relatively record time (for me) here are the first batch, all of which look a little better in person than in these pictures (where the armour looks a little too pink). They're not 100% finished as I'll add the numbers at the end once they're all painted, but they're otherwise complete for now!

A Lineork

A Thrower

A Blitzer

A Black Orc Blocker (which I will use as a Blitzer)

Comments and criticism are appreciated!