Thar's Gold in them thar Dungeons!

Hello our fellow plague bearers and welcome back to Nurgle's favoured cupboard of putrid delights. Now admittedly we have been a little slack of late with updates to the blog and there are a variety of reasons for this. For myself I have currently been busy with a number of things such as sorting out a new PC, playing Space Marine and Gears of War 3 and looking for a house.

I haven't completely slacked off in project work though, I just simply wasn't doing enough for a weekly update. I have a post for you guys next week that I hope you will enjoy, I don't want to give anything away you will just have to tune in next week. I have including a few pictures from two of the weeks we was gaming, one was with my phone as I forgot my camera.

If I can stop my babbling I can get on with this weeks post. Now some of you may be aware that myself and O'Shashar have got together with some guys at work for spot of Warhammer Quest. An absolutely fantastic game, that before now have only played once about 16 years ago! I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed our Questing. Our DM isn't using the standard rules and has gone for the more complex rules from the Role play expansion.

What this does is add an extra dimension to the rules and more or less means you can do what you want in the dungeon and it of course helps with a spot of role play during the game which adds to the enjoyment of the game. If you don't have Warhammer Quest then I would strongly suggest you go an seek it out either by buying the board game and rulebooks on Ebay or acquiring them by other means.

So far we have only done three dungeons, but one being turned into a two part dungeon so you could say four dungeons. Our Party consists on a Wizard, using the Dark Elf Sorceress from Games Workshop, a Dwarf, using the Dwarf Lord from Avatars of War, a Bretonnian Knight, using Finari from Reaper Miniatures and lastly the Elf from the original boxed game.

This seems to be a very strong party. Admittedly a party should always have a wizard for healing and other various spells. The Dwarf and Bretonnian knight do a lot of the combat and the dwarf I am playing I am starting to buff up as a Tank as he a lot of wounds and I have managed to get a ring of protection and some armour so he has a toughness of 7. This is more or less true for the Bretonnian Knight except they managed to get their hand on a very nice magic sword that add 3 attacks onto the base attack of the Knight. The wizard has a variety of healing, buffing and destruction spells that help in a variety of situations. Lastly the elf is an all rounder having managed to get his paws on a decent bow that increases his ballistic skill and two types of special arrows to help against certain foes.

I could go on in more detail, but I think I have probably bored you guys to death as it is. As I have previously mentioned I have a bit of a treat for you next week, so I am hoping that makes up for my latest slackness. Until next time out may the Plague Father bless everything that you do.

My Finished Justicar Finari

Good evening children of the Plague Father and thank you for making the perilous journey through the warp to join me in giving reverence to our lord.

Tonight my humble offering is my completed Justicar Finari from Reaper Miniatures and follows on from my earlier work in progress post. After the issues I had I was going to leave her as she was and hand varnished with gloss coat for two reasons, firstly I had become completely paranoid I was going to damage her again when I played my first game and secondly I didn't own any brush on matt varnish.

This made the armour look a little too reflective compared with how tarnished it was suppose to be, as well as her cloth, skin and hair looking unnatural. I decided I would pick up a pot of matt varnish and hope it evened out, the trouble was I had a very busy week at work and couldn't find the time to walk up to my local store. After I took some photos of my Necrons last weekend I was filled with motivation to paint and Finari got a little more work. I decided to work on her face, hair and to highlight the cloth.

So without further ado here is my Justicar Finari.

In the end I redid the sword as well as found it disappeared into the armour. It also gave me an excuse to use my Vallejo Gun Metal Blue, which I bought for no other reason than I thought it looked funky. I used it as a base then gradually added Mithril Silver, building up the colour with a mix of thin layers and dry brushing.

With her hair I added streaks of a darker brown to the recesses as they had been lost after the second repaint. For the cloth I mixed Hawk Turquoise with a touch of Enchanted Blue and used broad highlights. I then added gentler highlights using a 1:1 ratio of Hawk Turquoise and Enchanted Blue.

The base I was torn between adding a skeletal arm or some red lichen used sparingly. After speaking with my fellow adventurers during our first Warhammer Quest dungeon, they seemed to like the base as it was and thought that anything else would take away from the feel of the stark dungeon floor.

Now I know I am not going to be winning a Golden Daemon any time soon, I am however happy to have this model done and to a better standard than I was planning to leave it at. For my first attempt at highlighting I am pleased with how it turned out and I have learnt a few things, mainly I need to take my time, keep a steady hand and practice as much as I can. As without practice I will never improve and there is a lot of room for improvement judging by the quality of work I have seen others publish on their own sites.

On the subject of improving my painting abilities I welcome any criticism that you may have.

On a final note this will be my Bretonnian Knight stand in and will go by the name of "Sabriel la mort d'argent" which should be the "Sabriel the silver death" however if any of you speak/write French and this is incorrect please correct me.

Until next time remember you are never alone as long as you carry Papa Nurgle's pestilent blessings.

O'Shashar

Progress, Injuries and Distractions

Greetings followers of the Plague Lord. Today I thought I would talk about my last month's hobby activity which brings me to the title, 'Progress, Injuries and Distractions.' So first of all I would like to share with you a couple of photos of 'Progress' towards my 1000 point Skaven list.


So above are 20 Clanrats which I will mix into my Slave unit (and pretend they don't have shields). I will be mixing in some non-rat members as well as more poor looking wretches to the unit shortly in order to boost it to 40 strong.


The above are another 20 Clanrats, this time with spears and shields, so another 19 to add to this block and I will be getting somewhere with my ever daunting list.


Above is my 2nd Standard Bearer and my first attempt at a very simple freehand banner design, which I am fairly happy with.

Now onto the 'Injuries'. A few months ago I broke my toe while kickboxing, which allowed me to spend a fair amount of time painting. However this month I injured my hand while doing a much less extreme sport (washing the pots haha) and was unfortunately bandaged up for a week. However it was around this time that the idea of doing Warhammer Quest started cropping up. Which leads me to the 'Distractions'...



Here is my Warrior Priest that I have painted up for Warhammer Quest. I'm really happy with how the model has turned out as I have always wanted an Empire army from the Ostermark region and this model can be my first step towards that aim. Now if only I can find enough free time to get to one of these Warhammer Quest meetings...

Next post from me I will hopefully have some Stormvermin painted up and will have played some Warhammer Quest, so until next time friends enjoy the pestilent gifts of the Drippy One.

Justicar Finari - WIP

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Who are you calling short!?

Good day my friends of the decaying one. First of all a big apology for being off the radar. As O'Shashar has mentioned I have had a busy 4 weeks. I was on holiday for 10 days and I have been distracted with the new Space Marine game and the release of Gears of War 3. What can I say I have a weakness for visceral gore!

OK, as you may have heard from my esteemed colleague we are starting up Warhammer Quest with some friends. The last time I played this game was about 12 years ago when I was back in school at a local gaming club. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now I will be needing a miniature to take play in this Quest, which we are starting tomorrow. I decided to go for the stout dwarf for my character and I just finished him last night. I picked up Avatars of War Dwarf Lord on Ebay to represent my character (and to use in my future Dwarf army as a Lord). I have to say he turned out rather well for my first Dwarf.

The model itself was full of detail and I was extremely happy with the casting. It only cost £9.40 including postage and packaging, which admittedly isn't the cheapest, but they are very nice models. You can see there range here.

After some deliberation I decided to name my Dwarf Lord Hrothgal Thundergut. I was going to have Lohrek Foesmasher, but I think that suit a Slayer more. Now that Hrothgal is done and If I can manage to drag myself away from Gears of War 3 I will start painting another 5 Gobbo's that I have undercoated.

There should be another update from Dorn's Arrow about his Skaven army and a very nice Warrior priest soon. However O'Shashar is spoilt for choice on what to offer up for our loyal followers. Until next time my pestilent friends.

Which is Your Stripper of Choice?

Good evening followers of Papa Nurgle and thank you for joining me once again in our little corner of disease and rot. Recently I have found myself in possession of a few models which are in good condition but I would much rather paint them myself to tie in with their friends.

Now normally I have been using original Dettol as my weapon of choice with it doing me proud in the past, and Simple Green which seems so popular across the pond is not widely available here in the UK. However while on my trip out to pick up a bottle ( never a dull moment ) I remembered an article written by Karitas over on Excommunicate Tratoris ( which if you haven't paid a visit to I highly recommend you do ).

The article was about a couple of plastic dreadnoughts he had stripped back to the primer using Fairy Power Spray ( a kitchen degreaser ) and how it was quick, effective and more importantly didn't make the paint transform into sticky ooze.
So to give it a try with as little risk as possible I threw in a metal model. Originally it was going to be my Tomb King model I will use represent my Tomb Prince but decided on my reaper Finari model I picked up last year for a spot of Warhammer Quest which died out quickly when our DM got bored, though hopefully in the next few weeks a new DM is planning to take up the challenge.

She hasn't turned out bad for a test subject

This model was originally primed and painted but not sealed with any kind of varnish. Within an hour I could see spots of bare metal though I gave it 24 hours time in a jar and started clean up by running it under the tap. Surprisingly this took care of the paint which was exposed and only required minimum work to clean out the nooks and crannies. Within a few minutes I had her back to a cleaner standard than I have achieved with Dettol and wasn't covered in ooze or had any nasty reactions.
 
On a serious note I did strip a large biscuit tins worth of marines two years ago using neat Dettol without wearing gloves and for six weeks after my hands peeled every time they got wet . This was not a pleasant experience and did cause them to be uncomfortable for this time, so please make sure you always take precautions when working with any type of chemical, even ones you have used for years as a cleaner and think are harmless.  

Overall I am happy with the ease in which I was able to get these results and I have since throw in a couple of heavy painted models which seemed to be stripping nicely with a little stir now and then.

So my question to you is "Which is your stripper of choice and why?"

O'Shashar