Da Green Horde

My last entries for this year's edition of Dave's Season of Scenery challenge are these two terrain pieces from Polish manufacturer Mini Monsters. The model on the left is an Orc Totem (quite similar to the old one by ForgeWorld), the one on the right is an Orc Ritual Rock. The Ritual Rock makes for a great Idol of Gork (or Mork), it looks like it could become animated anytime and wreak havoc as a Rogue Idol . Painting was a lot of fun, like scenery always is. I worked a lot with drybrushing and washes, the red and white colours on the totem and idol head were applied with a sponge to achieve an irregular pattern that makes it seem like they were painted by orcs or goblins. The flames inside the Ritual Rock were painted white, followed by Striking Scorpion Green Contrast paint to resemble Waaagh!-Energy.  After applying the usual Dirty Down rust and moss as well as Vallejo lichen effect paints, I added some tiny tufts to make the rocks look even more natural. The models were e...

A few colleagues at work and I decided to give AoS Spearhead a try. We're currently in the process of building and painting our forces (I'll be fielding my Ogors). In addition to the miniatures, we also need some pieces of terrain. Spearhead has some special requirements for the number and size of terrain pieces. Instead of buying the kit from GW, I decided to look up the measurements of the pieces and craft them myself. While the original terrain pieces represent ruined walls and rubble, I went for a different look and made some stake barricades and palisade walls. The palisades are made from different types of cocktail sticks and chopsticks, since I did not want them to look too uniform. To make the sticks stand upright, I added some Miliput to the plasticard bases and simply pushed them in (the putty was later covered in earth texture paste to make it look like a mound). After everything had dried, I applied a layer of watered-down PVA glue to give it more stability and fill...

A few weeks ago I went to an arts & crafts shop and found some paper mache trees, which I thought would fit in well with my miniatures. They are manufactured by Decopatch and are normally meant to be used for interior decoration. Getting them ready for the table was quite straightforward: I painted them brown, added Iceland moss as leaves and put them on 50mm bases. To give them some variation, I added uncoloured (white) lichen instead of green to one of the trees - it'll look perfect on a snow themed table, but I think it'll work for other settings too. These trees are my first contribution to this year's edition of Dave's Season of Scenery . This won't be my only entry for the challenge, next up will be some scratchbuilt terrain.

I recently finished three Ogor Leadbelchers, together with the one I painted last year I now have a full squad. I'm currently pursuing the goal of painting a whole Spearhead force (Tyrant's Bellow), and I'm only missing four more models now. Painting the Ogres was again a lot of fun and quite quick, I really enjoy the simplicity of their sculpts - mostly flesh and cloth, not a lot of annoying detail work. For the skin of two of the Ogres I used a recipe by Vincent Knotley , who recommended mixing Magos Purple into Darkoath Flesh (or other skin tone Contrast paints), and I must say I really like the result.  Next up is some terrain for Dave's Season of Scenery challenge.

It's may, which means it's Monster May(hem) , so of course I had to join in and paint a monstrous miniature. As teased in my last post and correctly guessed by Dave, I chose to paint another one of my Squiggoths. The model is a Gnawzilla from Kromlech, a large chunk of resin, that's beautifully sculpted and quite fun to paint.  The painting process was quite simple, the Gnawzilla is mostly skin and armour. The skin was done using Orruk Flesh base coat (over black, which worked quite well), followed by diluted Ghillie Dew Speedpaint and drybrushed Ogryn Camo for simple highlights. To make the armour more interesting, I painted some metal plates in red and added Dirty Down rust effects as well as some decals and checkers.  The howdah is magnetised, so it's detachable and the model already had holes for the magnets which is pretty neat. Since the mini is meant to be used in WH40K, I decided to make some adjustments by adding wooden planks and animal pelts to make it better...

I recently finished another conversion - a combination of the Orruk Megaboss and the Blood Bowl star player Varag Ghoul-Chewer. I had to chop off the iron jaw as well as the beast skull on the pauldron of the Megaboss, the rest of the conversion was quite straightforward. All I had to do was swapping the head and putting the ghoul trophy of Varag on one of the pauldrons. I quite like the result, the kits work really well together. Additionally, the head with the large tusks has the same style as the new Ardboyz (Black Orcs), making the boss a fitting leader for them. A fun detail is the impaled ghoul/zombie, who somehow seems to still be alive (undead?), I imagine he regularly tries to free himself. Varag Ghoul-Chewer must have his name for a reason, so I guess he not only sees the ghoul as a trophy to intimidate his foes, but also as a snack.   I've also started working on my entry for this year's Monster May(hem) , here's a little teaser on what's to come:  

When GW announced in spring that they would discontinue the Bonesplitterz (Savage Orcs) faction in AOS, I decided to get a box of Savage Orruks while they were still available. The box included two Big Stabbas , which is an overly large spear carried by two Orcs, and somehow I got the idea to combine them and kitbash a centrepiece model for my Bonesplitterz  - the Savage Orruk Palanquin.   Games Workshop never produced a centrepiece model for the faction, Orcs are either on foot or riding a boar. There are no giant beasts, which makes sense lore-wise, as the Bonesplitterz are monster-hunters that hunt the largest enemies in order to gain their might. I remember that Savage Orcs could use Boar Chariots in some editions of WHFB, but that never made sense to me, as a chariot seems too "high-tech" for them. They refuse to use metal or armour, so I assume that they also distrust the wheel. So this is more or less my interpretation of a Savage Orc Chariot. The build was quite...