Da Green Horde

Normally I don't post unpainted miniatures, since I prefer to showcase finished projects. Today however is an exception, since I'm taking part in a challenge which has the simple goal of assembling miniatures. The challenge is hosted by Anne of Anne's Immaterium , check out the details here . When building the Ironblaster a few months ago, I noticed that there were quite a few bits left on the sprue, as the kit can also be used to build a Gnoblar Scraplauncher. The only parts missing for a complete Scraplauncher were a chassis and a Rhinox to pull it. Luckily, I own an old metal Rhinox that I ordered from mail order ages ago. You could also easily convert a Mournfang to a Rhinox using the left over Rhinox head if you want. To build the chassis, I searched my bitz box for useful components. The base of the chassis is a Small Stone Entrance by Spellcrow, which was included as a freebie in one of my orders. The wheels are from Mini Monsters, I deliberately used two different ...

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 March again, which means it's time for Swordmaster's annual Monster March painting challenge. As regular readers of this blog may know, I quite enjoy using toy animals to create large warbeasts for my miniatures. I already created a Squiggoth from a toy hippo and a war tortoise for my swamp goblins. Now I present to you the Mega-Rhinox, an enormous beast for my ogors of the Red Maw Tribe. The model is an Elasmotherium, a prehistoric rhino from the fantastic CollectA range. Although the standard paint job was quite good, I decided to repaint it since I wanted a darker look. I wanted the beast to be able to carry a few ogors into battle, so I built a howdah from chopsticks and wooden coffee stirrers. The design of the howdah was inspired by the GW LotR Great Beast of Gorgoroth . I added a lot of ogre bits from various kits including two crow's nest with gnoblars, one of which was scratch-built. The howdah is not glued on, so the model can be used as a wild...

The theme for October's #mortalcitizens challenge was Clergy and as the priests of the greenskins are their shamans, I decided to paint the forest goblin/spiderfang grot shaman from Shieldwolf Miniatures. Toxeek has had visions of the Spider God ever since he was bitten by a particularly venomous arachnid as a yoof. The miniature was painted in the quick Slapchop style, as I don't have a lot of time to paint minis at the moment. This is my second entry for Dave Stone's Paint What You Got Challenge .

As I said in an earlier post, I'm still committed to finishing this years #mortalcitizens challenge even if I'm not able to do it in time. Sadly it seems like the challenge is more or less dead by now, I only noticed one other hobbyist posting their miniatures in the last months. The theme for September was Entertainer and I decided to use a night goblin/moonclan grot from The Chase vignette which was released in 2009 (sculpted by Thais Mariblanca López). Flipgrot worked as a jester at Skragrott's court until one of his jokes went too far. Eversince, his job is to distract the squigs during the famous squig rodeo. To the Loonking's disappointment he has survived more rodeos than any rodeo clown in history. This miniature is also my first entry for this year's Paint What You Got Challenge hosted by Dave Stone.  

During my recent painting sessions I also found time to paint a conversion that I built a while ago, inspired by the classic (and very rare) Squig Racers as well as the kitbashes from Squig Wrangling . The grot is an old Gorkamorka sculpt and was part of the amazing Rebel Grot faction, a group of grots that started an uprising againts their ork oppressors (for those that are interested, the name of the miniature is Big Lugga Grot Crank Crew 1 ). The squig was once attached to the arm of an ork warboss, the old metal version of the Ork Warboss with Attack Squig to be precise. The cart was made by combining a piece of a chopstick with two old Citadel shields (looted from some dwarf rangers). This is also my second and final entry for IRO 's Orktober challenge. Together with Nazgrub and friends , this leads to a total of 5 points. Nothing compared to IRO and Wudugast , who painted an astonishing amount of minis this month. Be sure to check out Dave Stone's orks as well, he als...

  After a short hobby break I'm back with a few greenskins just in time for Orktober . I'm still planning to complete the #mortalcitizens challenge for this year, so here's my entry for August (even though it's already October). The theme for August was Smith/Industry/Chemist/Alchemist and as I already painted a Smith in March, I decided to go in a different direction. Nazgrub wanders around the realms, always on the search for realmstones. He sells Bones of Amber to Wurrgog Prophets and Chamonite to orruk smiths, who feed it to their Gruntas to create pig-iron with special properties. He's always accompanied (more or less voluntarily) by Pik the snotling and Pak the grot. While Pik's job is to crawl into crevices that are too small for Nazgrub, Pak has the "honour" of carrying the stones they found. The orruk is actually a special character from Gorkamorka known as Nazgrub Wurrzag, Scrap Prospector . It's another one of those models tha...