The Lost and the Damned and the Stunted

 Goodbye 2021, hello 2022. (And bugger you ‘22 for bringing along a sodding beginning of the year head cold!) 

No end of year round up here, I pretty much bumbled along and managed to get up 24 posts - not bad for a year’s worth. My only pledges are to try to get up more posts than that for this year, buy fewer minis and paint more to reduce the Dreaded Lead&Plastic Mountain (And in turn complete a project or two). Should be simple enough, right?

On to the pics! 

A bit of painting done recently. Strayed a little from the Burrows and Badgers kick I have most recently been enjoying and so a mixed bag to show off today. 

First off a late 90’s (I think) Games Workshop offering, this is a Necromunda Ratakins gang Shaman. My very good friend Derek gifted me a small collection of the original Necromunda minis a while back and I got the bug to slap some paint on this fellow last weekend. I thought he’d be pretty straight forward but bow was I wrong… so many (in a typical GW fashion) sculpted details to pick out! Took me ages. Still, the finished effort will work and gives me a place to start off with for the rest of the Ratskin figs in my collection.

I felt a pale skin colour was more logical and less cheesy than the American Indian style studio paint job. The denizens of the Underhives don’t get to see the light, so it doesn’t make sense at all to me that anyone would have tanned skin in those areas with false light and polluted time-and-again-refiltered air.

With so many sculpted details to pick out, I didn’t have the energy to try to add previously planned tattoos. Seriously, painting this guy was exhausting!

Second in line is another Burrows and Badgers miniature, the third Holy Mouse I mentioned in my last post, Sister Tomasina. Like her brothers (Both in the cloth and by blood - see last post), she helps maintain and protect the church. Her Holy magics are as potent as her quick temper, woe betide the brigand attempting to thieve from the church coffers!

Sunday saw the end of my 7-day break from work. Most of that time was taken up dog sitting for 5 raucous and annoying dogs, so not at all restful. But! As my previous 3 or so posts have shown, I've had a bit of time to work on my unpainted mountain, so not all bad, eh?

So to the subject of this post's title, after seeing Dave's own painted Space Ork on his Blog, I was suddenly inspired to (finally, I've only had this mini for almost 20 years or something) get this big bugger off my unpainted mountain as a palette cleanser type effort. He's an older metal Games Workshop Space Ork Nob (A larger, leader variant of the violent alien species). I'd originally picked him up to join as a mercenary-type character for one of my Rogue Trader teams for an old INQ28 project. Now, strictly speaking, the typical merc within the Ork faction are of the honourless Blood Axes Clan, but this fellow didn't fit the "Blood Axes" aesthetic, nor (My personal favs) from the Evil Sunz, so I painted him up to be from the Goff Clan. So black with black and white chequers. He had a lot of detail, so it took a LONG time to get him done, but looking at the finished result, I'm pretty happy how he turned out. No idea when or if he'll ever see time on the game table, but I'm glad he's finished.

Ridiculously huge weapons make for a comical figure. I decided that the little pet (A Squigg) on his banner pole should be a garish colour to contrast well with the otherwise dull rusty metals and dark skin and black clothing. The sculpt does have eyes under that helmet, but they were so damned small I felt that if you were peering that close to look at them then you can paint the flippin things in.

                                                 

Curious place for piercings.

Not the back banner he was supplied with (No idea where that went.), luckily had a selection of plastic options as a replacement and this one was the most fun I think.

I cheated a bit with the chequers, using a very fine Micron pen to draw the lines, then filled with paint. End result after a quick gunmetal sponge are some "good enough" pauldrons!

Those big arms should have been pinned, but I had to paint him in pieces, so I hope the Gorilla Glue holds!

Lastly, I also got this simple resin effort off the table - named a "Water Container" and from the now OOP Warlord Games "Project Z" range. I've seen these things in real life on the farms where my in laws live, but they are used for chemicals and not water, but whatever. I based it's colour scheme off one of those though, with a little murky looking wash in the recesses as though it's been left out and alone for a while. It'll feature as a small scatter terrain piece for my Zombie Outbreak project game.

 Today is my second entry for a fun little challenge that Dave over at Wargamesculptors Blog has run during Summers called "Season of Scenery" - an effort to help motivate hobby bloggers to get some of their backlog of terrain pieces done during these hot and sweaty (At least it's hot and nasty where I live in the world) Summer months. 

My last post featured my first entry as vehicles are allowed and this one will be completely different from that!

Nice Statue of Saint Celestine, patron saint of white chocolate and skulls.

Earlier this year, Games Workshop released a new range of plastic miniatures for their Adeptus Sororitas range (Battle Sisters/Nuns to the older Warhammer 40K gamers reading this). Lovely sculpts that like much of what they design these days command a high msrp. A terrain model was part of the release which included this statue as part of their "Battle Sanctum" kit. I didn't want to shell out for the whole model as I have plenty of 40K buildings in my unpainted mountain waiting to be assembled and painted, but I saw that statue and thought.... "That would make for a cool terrain centerpiece for my Genestealer Cult project (That has sat long neglected *cough cough*)...." So I hopped on Ebay and found a seller selling just that part of the kit and for an affordable price. 

Now, although the stock sculpt is a very nicely designed piece, my image in my mouldy ol' head of the statue for my army was a different image. So once the kit arrived, I pulled out my Greenstuff and got to sculpting!

And.... enough waffling on! Here's the pics:

Pre-primer. I wanted her to pretty much look as if the Cult members took a treasured statue

 of the Imperium and corrupted and changed it to represent their own hero/idol. I changed the sword with some spare Genestealer claws instead of the standard winged crossguard, snipped off and replaced the Sisters of Battle Fleurs de Lis here and there with little skulls and added a spare Genestealer skull on the base of the statue where you're supposed to glue the little candles. I thought it would make for a nice little altar to a fallen family member.

The head and arm were sculpted from scratch. Now, I'm not going to say I'm ever going to be producing miniatures professionally as from this pic is all looks like turd. But I wanted them both to be a bit rough looking, rough hewn sculpting- my Cult are not known for their artistic talent!

For the scheme I went with something similar to the Studio scheme, but wanted the "added" parts to look as though they DEFINITELY do not look like they belong there.

This is a rather large model and I am sure I could've painted it to a higher standard, but oof.... that's a lot of alabaster/bone and I got bored quick! So tabletop standard is good enough for me.

Have to say, those wings are lovely.

Her 3rd arm was based off of a Genestealer fan art I found online. Didn't want it to be all splayed out to show the claws as I didn't feel that it looked natural. Gave me a small task to try to make a 3-finger-fist which I think I did well enough.

Close up of the face all painted and pretty.

The sword is the standard sculpt with a couple changes. I like it.

Close up of the base. Red candles for some spot colour and the nice white skull of ol' Aunty Bess the 1st 'Stealer to land on the planet and start the Cult "all those years ago"...

I have another piece to post up on probably later this week and maybe some more. Has been a nice excuse to get some long unloved terrain off the unpainted pile.

Forgive also if I haven't commented on your blogs of late. For some reason my Reading List isn't populating with ANYTHING and I don't know why. Waiting to see if it fixes itself, but if not in the next few days, then I'll reach out to Blogger to see what can be done.

Stay safe out there through Covid Delta folks!

- Dai

A Mobile Office also in mdf by Sarissa Precision. Trickier to put together with those vertical struts, but looks good on the table. Same as the helipad, kept the paintjob very simple which also got it off my table swiftly. Thinking some day in the future to make a white board and find office furniture for the interior.




These two are a couple of Warhammer 40K ruins scatter pieces. Very simple drybrush paintjobs. I have another 7 or 8 pieces to go with these two recently primed. The Statue is from the now out of print Urban Conquest Warhammer 40K expansion and the ruins behind it are the last of the 3 piece also out of print Honoured Imperium scenic set that included the previously posted Statue and giant Aquila that I'd painted up.


These two small 28mm resin WW2 stockpiles can be used as either objectives or scatter terrain. They were a kind gift a long time ago from the estimable Stew (Click his name to see his very cool blog) after he ordered the Chain of Command rules and realized he had no intention of playing in 28mm! I have two others in the painting queue as well.





I tried to add a little interest with the poorly painted signs, but otherwise they are very simple paintjobs and based to be suitable for both winter or greener seasonal games.


Did you see the two Brit troops in that first pic? Yeah, I painted those up too. Here's some better pics.

 Old 1980's Imperial Guard plastics mixed with more recent plastic Cadian bits and Genestealer Cult heads and nicknacks. Now I have three of these squads assembled, they just need some gap filling here and there and I can get to their basing so they can be primed.

Fat Willum is the team's dedicated long ranged specialist. He doesn't care at all about being called fat as e'always claims he's the warmest when it's cold.

The red Fleur de Lis on a black background is the symbol of royalist troops. This symbol carries through on all the team's members.

Ellista Shorttail, a fearsome mouse warrioress and leader of The Searchers.

Gorman Shorttail is both second to Ellista and her younger brother.  He has quested across the lands for the mythical lost  Grail of Saint Melchior the Squaloured.

This is Manfred Grimm, a massive hound and the muscle of the Searchers. Not very intelligent, but he's a very handy fellow to have in a fight.

The Searchers all together with Friar Fullmouth.

I also got another Burrows and Badgers mini painted, originally sculpted to be a Starling, I instead felt it'd look better as my favorite bird, a Jackdaw. Originally he was slated to be a member of The Searchers, but I switched out some of the members and now he'll have to fit in elsewhere.




This CORVID-19 business has had us stuck at home so I've had loads of time to keep painting my backlog. I got the second part of the Honoured Imperium terrain set painted, the Fallen Aquila. Simple piantjob, but it'll work fine on the tabletop.

 These three Warlord Games Mastiffs were previewed a while back in PIP form and now are done. They'll work well for a number of settings I think.


My Face-to-Face role-play group are understandably unable to meet for our regular games, so we've started a game on a message board. I decided it would be fun to find and paint minis in my large fantasy figs backlog for each of our characters. Only two finished thus far though.

Gotfried, Paladin of Ragethiel, my character.

Freehanding Ragathiel's emblem on the shield  was a pig and I'm not happy with the result, but it will do .

This is Saucy Jack, a Swashbuckler.

I also  got a Light Mortar team painted for my WW2 Dieppe Commandos army. I have a Bren Gun team on the desk for this project next.



These two are some RedBoxGames minis that I ordered a long time ago but never painted. These naked musclebound brutes I think were titled as Giantkin. Forgive the nudity.

This chap got a weapon transplant after finding his original axe was missing. This huge club was a bit in my bits box that I think originally belonged to a Marauder Miniatures Beastman.

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy out there!