Happy New Year!

Just a quickie to wish all my friends and family around the world a very happy (and safe) New Year's celebration, and a wonderful 2012 full of all the things that make you happy.

I'll be back around the 3rd or 4th of January for a "blog birthday" post and recap of 2011, along with some thoughts about hobbying for 2012.

Cheers
Dave

Happy Holidays!

This time of year is for spending extra quality time with friends and family, wherever they may be.

To all of you who have shared with me on this blog during 2011, I wish you happiness and fun hobbying throughout this holiday season and 2012! 

Cheers

Dave

And don't forget you could buy yourself a fully-painted army with your hard-earned Christmas cash: Grey Knights or Lost and The Damned ; )

For Sale - The Grey Knights

The second army up for sale is this Grey Knights force. I painted the core of this army back with the original Codex: Daemonhunters release in 2003 (I think). They've been doing a whole lot of sitting around in the intervening years, but the latest release for the Grey Knights finally spurred me into action. The army was originally very Inquisitorial Stormtrooper heavy, but every non-GK model has been pushed to the side and the army has been fleshed out with a lot of the new models.

Obviously the army lists can be written any number of ways, but this army has anywhere up to 2,500 POINTS! worth of value in it. The power armored squads contain a mix of new and old models, and the Terminator squads are almost entirely the 2003 figs, while the Paladin squads are completely new.

It seems that most folks like to have Kaldor Draigo leading their army, so here he is, complete with detailed force sword. The model is Finecast, the blade is plastic (to replace a Finecast sword that was irreparably damaged at the tip.)

A Terminator Librarian, built from the new GK Terminator plastics.

Paladin Squad number one.

Paladin Squad number two.

Terminator Squad number one, with psycannon.

Terminator Squad number two, with incinerator.

Purifier Squad, with two psycannons, a mix of exotic weaponry, and a Rhino.

Strike Squad, with two incinerators, and a Rhino.

Interceptors, with an incinerator and daemonhammer.

Dreadnought with twin-linked lascannons.

And a Land Raider.

I'm not a big fan of going through Ebay, so I'm offering up this army to a serious collector at US$1200. If you are interested, please contact me via the email address in my contact details in the right column on this blog.

If the buyer is in the US, shipping is included in the price.

If the buyer is outside the US, then shipping will be via UPS, or FedEx, or DHL, so that tracking can be done by both parties, and will be charged appropriately.

Cheers

Dave

For Sale - The Lost and the Damned

One of two armies up for sale at the moment is my "Beasts of Khargor" army that I put together back in 2003 using the Lost and the Damned army list. I've played with this list quite a bit and even took it to the 2004 Grand Tournament in Vancouver, Canada (I have no recollection how I did, so it can't have been too bad, or good). This army also appeared in a US WD Battle Report in 2003 (or 2004) where I beat the stuffing out of Jeff Smith's Space Wolves on a gorgeous table built by Chad Mierzwa.

The next three shots show the army in its entirety.

Back then it was around 1750 points, but of course the LatD list is no longer "legal" for GW GTs. The army has a lot of conversions or kitbashes, using a lot of the Beastmen, Cadian, and Catachan plastic kits. These Big Mutants are a great melange of almost entirely metal kits. A lot of fun to work on.

Two units of 16 Mutants.

Two Exalted Champions.

Eight Bloodletters.

Two units of eight close combat Traitors.

Two units of eight "shooty" Traitors.

Another unit of eight "shooty" Traitors.

One modified Defiler.

Two Leman Russ MBTs.

Two units of eight Warhounds.

And the army commander, Khargor (with a Beast in the Woods).

I'm not a big fan of going through Ebay, so I'm offering up this army to a serious collector at US$800. If you are interested, please contact me via the email address in my contact details in the right column on this blog.

If the buyer is in the US, shipping is included in the price.
If the buyer is outside the US, then shipping will be via UPS, or FedEx, or DHL, so that tracking can be done by both parties, and will be charged appropriately.

Cheers
Dave

New Post up on Guns Of April

Haven't had much of a chance to get too much done on my current projects thanks to the joys of assembling half a dozen pieces of IKEA furniture for my daughter's new "big girl" room, but I did manage to wrap up construction of the British Commanders for our Guns Of April project, thanks to a delivery from Dragon Forge Design and Perry Miniatures.

You can check out that post here.

Cheers
Dave

Proof Of Concept

After almost three weeks with my lights packed away, I finally had the opportunity last night to get them out again and snap a few shots. It has been a while since I've actually made a few "proof of concept" models. I'm not really sure why. I've done quite a few of them in the past.

Anyway, for those that haven't worked with them before (or given a name to them), "proof of concept" (POC) models are the ones you do at the very start of a project, to see if your thoughts and ideas (concepts) will work out in 3D. It's all well and good sketching things out on paper, but I much prefer to sketch things out with plastic and putty.

First up is the Corpse Handler concept (based on the Dave Gallagher sketch below). A Flagellant body and arms (with weapons removed) with quite a bit of greenstuff. The hat is from the Greatsword sprue. I'm thinking that I'll have around 15-16 of these as artillery crew and associated hangers-on.

In the Uniforms of the Empire book there's a Knightly Order shown in there - The Order of the Black Rose. Obviously these guys are devotees of the Death God, and here's my POC model for their Order. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out, and I like the massive bulk of the Chaos Knight horse.

If I end up going with this approach I'll need to pick up a few things, such as a dozen 'skull helms' from the Chaos Warrior sprues, and almost the same number of Empire Lord lances. For these I'll be heading to my friend Alex's revamped bitz store at Battleroad Games & Hobbies. He has recently uploaded around 250 different 40K bitz and will be adding Warhammer bitz very soon. If you are looking for 40K or Warhammer bitz, and a bunch of other miniature ranges, check him out.

Let me know what you think of my POC models.

Cheers
Dave

My oh my, what a busy time!

Thank you to all of you who congratulated my family on our new addition. Things have been crazy hectic, as we now have two youngsters to feed, clean, and entertain. I'm sure that without the help of my mother (visiting from the other side of the world) we'd have completely lost the plot by now, rather than just slightly losing it.

Congratulations to all those other new parents, or new parents-to-be, out there in the blogosphere. Life changes dramatically. I sincerely hope you make it change for the better : )

Anyway, I've had a few moments here and there to post some stuff on the other blogs I'm currently involved in. You can check them out here:

• Guns Of April - British Brigade Commanders
• Celebrity Dreadfleet - Basing the Black Kraken

Cheers
Dave

Sleeping Beauty

Well, she's here! My second daughter, Lucy, arrived on Wednesday to our extreme pleasure.

Lots of sleeping and eating for her, and not much of the same for my wife and I. Wouldn't trade it for anything : )

Cheers
Dave

Warriors of Morr -- Starting the planning process

I've been doing quite a bit of thinking about my Warriors of Morr over the past few weeks, and my plans are starting to coalesce. I've decided that my "list" will be something like this:

• 12 Knights of Morr (refurbishing models I built and painted ten years ago)

• 30 Flagellants (I've had the plastics for a long time but haven't painted any up as flagellants, I'll focus on the bell-ringing and hourglass accessories)

• 30 Spearmen (the rest of this post talks about my thoughts for these soldiers)

• 2 Cannons (I can't get away from them)

• 1 Mortar (you saw the beginnings of it in my last post)

• plus a few very characterful commanders, a massive rolling altar, and a few more hangers-on/onlookers.

For my Spearmen, I want to have them marching in column, on their way to war. As soldiers of Morr, they'll be in black uniforms, so I want to have a few things that can really push the look and iconography of Morr. To that end I hope to sculpt up a few pieces and have them cast up (for my own personal use only) that will help with that goal. Above are two ideas for heads for the Spearmen. Both are half-masks, the first is obviously a skull, while the second is more of a Venetian-inspired, beaked-nose mask that could echo the hoods worn by the Corpse Handlers (who will be my artillery crewmen).

Which do you think I should go with? I'd sculpt two variants of the design I eventually choose, and then cast the rest.

The arms of the Empire Spearmen are arranged in an "advancing phalanx" fashion, none of them are at ease or on the march, so I'm going to have to sculpt some new arms. At the moment I'm thinking I'll work on arms that'll provide me with the four poses above. If I do them right I can use sturdy brass rod and the spear shafts that will slide into the waiting hands. I can also then create a few different spear tips, halberd blades, and perhaps even a few scythe blades.

And the final step will be to create four or five different shield designs. At the moment I'm leaning towards a "coffin-lid" look, but could be swayed. The sculpted icons would focus on the symbols of Morr: the hourglass, the black rose, and the scythe, with a smattering of bells and skulls too.

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Cheers

Dave

PS. I think my posting might be a bit spotty over the coming weeks as my second daughter is due to arrive any day now. There'll be a lot of rushing around, a lot of adjusting, and very little time for hobbying or blogging.

Well, it's been a mixed bag...

I realized last night that it had been almost two weeks since I'd taken a photo of anything I've been working on. Well, It's been a mixed bag of stuff. On my painting desk at the moment I have six or seven different projects I'm working on. No wonder I can't get anything finished...

Anyway, work continues on updating my Grey Knights in preparation for sale. Above is the Grey Knight Librarian I built from the new plastic kits. Below is the first Paladin unit I've been working away on. A little more work and I'll have that banner finished off.

I got a little bit of time to mess around with the base for the Black Kraken. I'm painting this up for the cool charity raffle at Adepticon next year - Celebrity Dreadfleet. Click here to check out the blog! I used the GW recipe, which was quite interesting to see come to life. I'll have a post up soon on the CD blog about that experience.

Back in July, at Games Day Chicago, my friend (and crazy awesome painter) Todd Swanson handed me a very cool base. It was a cast of the base he used on his Golden Demon-winning entry (seen here). It has been kicking around on my desk since then and last weekI finally got the urge to stick a model on top and get painting. I've added the Ghoul King from the Zombie Dragon kit (I bought that kit to add the wings to my Jabberslythe conversion) and I've started painting it up. I'm thinking I'll paint him up as some kind of underhive mutant or possibly daemonhost. Let me know what you think.

And finally (for this post) here's the first model I'm starting on for my Warriors of Morr army. It will be crewed by a bunch of Corpsehandlers who'll be pushing and pulling it to war. The smartass in me wants to call it a Morrtar ; )

Cheers
Dave

What the hell is Desert Bus?

So a week or so ago I was contacted by some folks from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, concerning a charity event I had never heard of. They've been running this annual charity event for the last four years (this year being the fifth) and are looking to expand their geeky audience into the tabletop miniatures realm. Unfortunately I'm too busy at the moment to have helped out, but I'm sure I'll jump in next year!

Anyway, back to the original question, what the hell is Desert Bus?

Well, you can check out their website here, but essentially it's a great bunch of folks from the lovely city of Victoria (on Vancouver Island) who sit down and play a video game for hours (24 hour shifts apparently) on end and stream the excitement online. Thousands of people around the globe tune in and place donations that all go to the great charity Child's Play.

Desert Bus is apparently a super-crappy game that was never released in which you drive a bus from Tuscon to Las Vegas. You don't get to stop to pick up or drop off passengers, and you don't have to avoid any roadkill, you just have to drive forward. Oh, and the bus occasionally pulls to the right.

So, head on over to the site, check it out, take a look at the cool stuff they're auctioning off, see which celebrities they're talking to via Skype, and so on. In just under 24 hours they've already raised over $33,000!

Next year, myself and a bunch of other miniature painters will be providing models that will be auctioned off during Desert Bus 6. Should be good to join up with more folks doing good things for kids : )

Cheers
Dave