Blood Bowl Orcs

The Green Streaks

I finally finished my Blood Bowl Orc team, The Green Streaks. These were meant to be done for Eucalyptus Bowl in April, but that got canned due to COVID-19. I really struggled with these due to the multiple stages. The shoulder armour trim, for example, is dark grey then white then dark grey then metallic. Repeat times a million...

The figures are resin, from RN Estudio.

Orc Blitzers are some of the best players in the game. Unfortunately, they've all been sculpted with the same face.

Blood Bowl Orc Blitzers

The Black Orc Blockers are on 30mm bases.

Blood Bowl Black Orc Blockers

I like both these throwers, and can't decide which I prefer. Maybe the mad scientist goggles, by a whisker.

Blood Bowl Orc Throwers

I don't mind the orcs with hair.

Blood Bowl Line Orcs

As a rule, I don't add blood to weapons- these are the exceptions, using Army Painter Glistening Blood Effect.

Blood Bowl Orc Star Players

I've filled out the team with some cheerleaders from Shadowforge, and some squigs.

Blood Bowl Orc Cheer Skwad. Hubba hubba!

I think squigs are a great GW invention. Three are from GW, and the helmeted one is from Goblin Guild. I plan to use these as game markers and tokens.

Blood Bowl Squigs

I'm very glad that these are finished now.

Balrogs have wings- a proof in three parts

The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm.

JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring. (1954)

"Do Balrogs have wings?" is the question that tears the Tolkien community apart. But I have proof that they do:

The Balrog from Lords of Middle-Earth:

The Balrog from Journeys in Middle-Earth:

The Balrog from GW's Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game:

The Balrog family

Q.E.D.

The GW/ Weta Balrog is a massive beast I'm very proud of. The new FFG one is a poor cousin, but I gave it a good shot with the painting and 40mm basing- and I’m very happy with how it came out.

I started from a white undercoat. I painted up from yellow through orange to red, as shown here. I wanted the chest to be blazing and the extremities less so, with the eyes and mouth white-hot. I left the weapons a pale yellow.

Then I slapped on a lot of Vallejo Burnt Red, leaving the flames in the recesses. I then mixed in a bit of black and went over it again, in a reverse-highlight up to black. A light targeted drybrush of grey brought out a little detail.

Then I painted all the flames white, and brought them up again with the yellow-orange-red-black sequence.

It wasn’t as challenging as I thought it would be. My GW Balrog took much longer when I painted it about fifteen years ago, using a similar sequence but without the deep red. My new one is more of a dark brown than a black,  and it looks fine.

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

Ennio Morricone died this week. The first spaghetti western I saw was A fistful of dollars, and I couldn't stop whistling the tune after that.

These figures are from Artizan, and are lovely sculpts. I painted them about 10-15 years ago, but never finished the bases. I have aspirations of doing a vignette around a grave, like the climax of The good, the bad and the ugly.

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

Il buono; 'Blondie'

Il cattivo; Angel Eyes

Il brutto; Tuco

After diving into Sergio Leone's films I bought a CD of Morricone's classics; it is great music and I'm listening to it again now. Vale!

I've been neglecting the blog a bit recently. I have plenty of projects on the go, but I don't like doing work-in-progress posts. Regular posting will resume imminently!

40K GSC Sanctus and ruined statues

After getting my 'stealer cult out of the shadows recently, I was inspired to paint up a character.

The Sanctus is an assassin, armed with a rifle or blade. I was able to magnetize both options.

I did an angular sandy grey camouflage on his cape using Vallejo Model Color 70.821 German Camo Beige, VMC 70.830 German Field Grey, VMC 70.819 Iraqi Sand, and Army Painter Ash Grey.

The figure is poised on a ruined statue, so I painted some ruined statues as practice. Here they are with some Chaos cultists for scale.

The white marble is GW Apothecary White Contrast on a white undercoat, with shading from AP Soft Tone and some thinned AP Uniform Grey to give some veiny contrast in big plain areas.

How I paint genestealers; with group cult shot

Here's how I paint my genestealers. I've refined this over a few years to give reproducible, reasonably quick, good-looking models in the classic indigo-lilac scheme. Of course, character models can have more care and attention applied.

Eight I finished this week

Preparation

Assemble, undercoat black, complete the basing. (I do the basing before the figure because it is easier to tidy up the base afterwards than to get bits of basing off the figure.) Here, I've used 32mm bases which are more stable.

Carapace

• Heavy drybrush Vallejo 70.899 Dark Prussian Blue
• Drybrush Army Painter Wolf Grey
• Selected edge highlights AP Ice Storm

Just highlight the bits that catch the light- speed and roughness are OK here because the lighter skin tones later will deflect attention from any mistakes made during this step.

Skin

• AP Toxic Boils
• VJ 73.204 Flesh Wash

Highlights:

• AP Toxic Boils
• AP Toxic Boils/ AP Elven Flesh
• AP Toxic Boils/ AP Elven Flesh/ VJ 70.820 Off White

I paint the skin lilac and wash it with VJ Flesh Wash, which is magic. Then highlights mostly on the face and eyes.

Claws

• AP Matt Black
• AP Ash Grey
• VJ 70.820 Off White to the absolute tips

Eyes

• AP Phoenix Flames. Less is more

Temple veins

• AP Blue Tone

Tongue

• AP Barbarian Flesh
• VJ 73.206 Red Shade

Teeth

• AP Corpse Pale

Final touches

• Base rim
• Matt varnish

These are the colours that do the heavy lifting

I haven't posted my cult on here for a while- Millsy and Paul OG made me promise to do a group shot of my cult, so I've been putting off this sobering moment.

The Guiding Hands

Are you happy now?

40K Galvanic Servohaulers

These accompany my supply dump. I struggle painting vehicles, but these were somewhat fast to get the basics done with a yellow rattle-can spray (AP Daemonic Yellow) and a homemade wash of craft paint and detergent. I then sponged on some brown rust, and I'm pretty happy with the results. There's a lot of grimdark details that took me a bit of time to get done- it is very easy to fall into a rabbithole of decreasing returns with painting all the details.

The crane is removable from the trailer

The claw!

I added a bit more brown and a small amount of water before applying this liberally

Skull-o-meter™: 11

Soviet NBC troops

Is there anything more terrifying than Soviet gasmasks?

I painted ten of these Eureka figures over ten years ago and really liked them, so I got another five riflemen to round them out. I finally got around to painting these five last week- shame on me! I took the opportunity to finish off some details on my originals, and to rebase them. My paints and painting style have changed, but these were refreshingly quick compared to a lot of the GW stuff I've found myself slogging through lately.

GP-5 gasmasks

Leader has a GP-5m with 'voicemitter'

PKM machine gun

SVD marksman rifle

DP-12 Contamination Survey Meter. This figure is a ringer for art in Osprey Elite #12

Osprey Elite #12 Inside the Soviet Army today

AT-3 Sagger operator. Minimum range 500m!

So now I've gone and ordered a copy of Zona Alfa... I can see some sort of subterranean Stranger Things/ Delta Green thing coming on... The bear came over the mountains of madness?

PS: If you haven't seen HBO's Chernobyl, it is superb.

PPS: Oh no, I just saw Eureka has more figures in this range... may need to get them...

PPPS: I would love these in 15mm.

PPPPS: I really need a BRDM or a BTR...