Undead assault: Emerald Dwarf progress

S'up dudes and dudettes?  A quick iphone snap of tonights undead assault 'emerald dwarf' session.

Work In Progress.  Fantasy Tribes Era, Pre Slotta Dwarves from a more civilized age.

   Thanks to BridgendSteves disc of reference photos, I can confidently move forward on details.  Steve had closeups of the rooftop and sally port dwarfs- plus angles on the undead horde that threw up some priceless clues to their identies.  Sadly the diorama needs a good dust and better, diffused lighting, if you work at warhammer world get thee to a supermarket for a static duster and restore this treasured part of gaming history!

   Matching colors is tricky as this diorama dates firmly in his enamels stage, however I did go old school by popping open a goblin green from the 1980s I aquired off ebay (yes that sucker is still good!).  Mmmm... smells like mullets, space invaders, rubik cubes and clannad albums.

Cheers Steve!  Support the man in thanks by visiting his ebay store and procuring more lead!

I am gonna need to offload all my doubles on ebay to help pay for the remaining undead.

Thanks also to all you weirdos emailing me with undead assault minis!  Keep em coming... I need lots of skellys still, sword swingers, spearmen and ghouls. Oh plus that ballista.

I am going to have to dremmel off the champions weapon to fit a ballista bolt... seems a shame to damage a perfectly good figure but I guess its for a great oldhammer cause.

Greeble heep!

Undead assault: Sveta Patchmaiden

First Emerald Moon Dwarf off the blocks...  Sveta Patchmaiden next to her photo.  The base echos the set she is standing on in the diorama with cunning use of cocktail sticks.

Sveta Patchmaiden, Pre-slotta era Dwarf adventurer (Perry Sculpt?)

 

 

I just got a disk of photos arrive from BridgendSteve, (cheerz mutchly good sir) haven't had time to look at it yet, but oooooh, so exciting!  Gonna get me some large prints!
Hopefully if there are some good shots of the banners I can digitally flatten out, undistort and clean these up to make some printable banners to scale.  (Though I plan to then graphite transfer and handpaint my own. Just to be hardcore).

I plan to assemble a digital checkoff list from Steves pictures to help track, ID and trade each and every figure.  By the end I should be able to give you a complete shopping list!  It would make a dandy collectors page on ccmwiki!

I had the heartstopping realisation that the ballista is a mini not scratch built as I had previously thought.  Fortunately I had a set of defibs in my car and mi6 on standby to fix me long enough to win the card game.... wait... no that was casino royale... I get so mixed up with my exciting life and bond movies.  Where was I?  Oh yes... The dwarf ballista used to come with the stretcher crew.  Now I have to hunt down yet another mini!

My Ral Partha jabberwock arrived too... not certain I want to saw him up to get him coming out of the water...  anyone got a broken one?

Speaking of which, I am also looking for the wings and tail of the Orc Wyvern that was used by Pete Taylor to build his infamous yellow chaos spawn.  I got me a bust umberhulk and scorpion- just need those missing parts.  And yes, the umberhulks mouth is destined for a three headed minotaur belly.  Bonus points for oldschool cool if you spotted that one coming.

I am sick with flu at the moment (where is mi6 when you need them?)  So I probably will be getting some hobby stuff done in the next few days whilst I recover.  It will be good to get a few more wins on the project board!

Enjoy. 

Undead Assault on maths

Its time to start planning my tower... so I did a quick bit of finking and used the measurements of the minis in the picture to extrapolate rough proportions for my keep.  9x14 should do the trick, though I may adjust this for playablity... after all, my models are on 30mm bases... so they will have to have room to stand.  My cunning plan is to make the upper floor of the keep to take the bases, then work down the front wall down to the sally port, then do the front where the bridge connects.

Extrapolating lengths based on known variables.... kinda.

I have yet to get me some of those pillars, but already have the sally port and front door, so the bridge will have to be stage 2.  I am thinking about taking a mould of these and casting these in resin simply to reduce the weight and allow me to make the doors open-able for gaming.  I will go with the authentic models to start with, then explore this avenue later.


For the table, I am planning something a bit special.  Instead of digging down for the river, I am planning on building up from it.  The gaming table boards will be entirely made up of glossy, murkey green water.  The ground sections will be individual island modules that are placed ontop of the water.  I ordered a tub of magnetic responsive paint- basically enamel house paint with micro iron balls in it.  I am going to try this as a layer below the glossy water effect and see if I can get magnets to adhere to it.  That way any islands I place on will stay put!  I am planning on doing this with a dungeon board as well.

The keep, cliff face and sally port will all be one module, the bridge will connect to this with magnets.  The stone archway, mushrooms and hill will be seperate peices mounted on MDF, and these will sit on the islands.  I have already started the giant mushrooms using wire on heavy washers and magic sculpt.  The caps are shaped over citadel paint tubs.

The major change I will be making is the ground texture.  To be honest I always thought the one John used looks jarring and ugly.  After painting the Undead leader with the exact matching colors on his base... yeah... uhg.  Not really going to make me happy unless I do something more modern and natural.  I will be using a mix of mosses, flock and leaf scatter for a more natural look- keeping towards the catachan / camo greens I used to use a lot on my bases.

The stonework is a concern to me.  I will be making my keep from foamcore, so that expanded foam cell look will have to be sculpted on- perhaps with a thin layer of magic sculpt.  I may have to carve it from EPS now I think about it.  I may just modernise it a bit with pencil carved eps and give it a slightly different, more detailed look- as, even as a kid... it always looked like foam packaging to me.  Not sure yet.  What are your thoughts?

Undead assault: new arrivals

These tasty little morsels arrived today,  a couple of vital missing members of the John Blanche Undead assault project.

Barring this project, I am cutting way back on my collecting this year to focus on painting and enjoying what I already have.
Though assembling complete sets of things is dead satisfying (especially arranging them all together for the first time) it will be more satisfying having the figures done and varnished rather than dwelling in storage.
The time I spend scouring ebay, posting feedback, opening packages, stressing about late arrivals and filing away figures can be better spent this year.  I am dead exhausted most days- time management is now really critical to my mental brainythinkyproper wotsit...  so setting aside one part of my hobby will help immensely.

My current painty time has been marred by bad weather with bad timing... either too hot to work in my studio or too wet to spray or varnish.  I have done a few minutes here and there- but nothing worth posting yet.  Three members of the emerald dwarfs are base coated and one eyed Brunhilda is mostly done.

I desperately have to finish my new Darkling Bederken minis so I can get them up on the site, and I have an elf army from Splintered Light I still need to prime up for Skulldred.
Busy, busy...

I cast resurrect!

I spent this evenings hobby time blocking in colors on the undead I currently have for the assault project- and have spotted a few of the missing figures on ebay that I will land with any luck (you can help by not bidding on fantasy tribes undead or skull faced preslotta chaos warriors for a month or so ;).
I found VMC german uniform dark brown perfect for the cool browns of the cloth, and adding citadel dark flesh got the warm highlights.  The greener zombie flesh is parchment liquitex and catachan green.  For the guts, john goes for the complamentary orangey red- a pairing he uses even today on his space marines.
These figures are really quick to paint- and it strikes me that John would have taken far less time to complete the diorama than I first thought.
I decided to base the hordes on a mix of 40mm round bases (poker chips) in batches of three, and some singles on 25mm x3m rounds.  Champions and necromancers are getting 30mm bases to differentiate them from the rotten rabble.
So far I have twenty of the horde moving along nicely!

Whilst I had the putrid skin colors mixed, I blocked in another wave of figures not for the project- some kev adams zombies, Malifauxs bette noir, a few chaos thugs and my female nurgle gun conversion of the nurgle lord- which is exciting because she has been loitering on my desk since xmas.

I also managed to get the bases painted up on twenty or so minis... a bizarre mix of repainted Dreamblade figures, heroclix and DND plastics that I have been itching to game with.  I rebased them all on mdf rounds yo match the rest of my hordes.

Its nice to feel some progress happening.

Undead assault pt2

Just a quick post whilst I am on my way to work...a quick and dirty smartphone snap showing the dwarf warband so far.

The double handed weapon adventurer is not in the best condition as his sword is mostly missing and he was very tarnished so I still need of a replacement.

Behind the sally port door you can just make out the dwarf thief that is pictured on the watch tower in a tasteful floral green number.

Sneaking in on the right is the Tom Meier Wraith that was zapping the door.  The figure is dated 1976- which if I check my own base... yep... its as old as me.  Its one of the first dynamically posed models as far as I can tell, and a masterclass in drapery.  This puts it firmly in the most influential minis of all time in my opinion.
  It, like a handful of the undead minis pictured are Ral Partha imports.  Citadel handled the license in Europe at the time.  You can still buy these from the pleasantly perky folk at iron wind metals.

Which reminds me... must find a broken Jabberwocky too.  I already have one done up in the same colors (previously blogged) but a submerged undead munchy one would be brilliant.

I am thinking I should make some 40mm multibases of undead, and make sure my bridge and arch can take that width.

Thanks all for the support so far!

Undead assault hunt

The John Blanche undead assault project is starting to take shape- thanks to the very special arrival of the Nottingham Dwarf previously owned by the late John Garland and donated to the project by J. Fulford in his memory.  A very special figure indeed- not only rare, but rare because it marked a time and a place in our hobby- the opening of The Nottingham GW store where John picked it up. More on John and his dwarf as I dedicate a post to its restoration.  Cheers JF!

The robin hood dwarf fills the biggest gap in the recreation of the diorama that has held me back from dedicating time to the project- and now bristling with energy I gathered together all my bits so far.  Pretty darn close!

So do any of you lovely folk have any of the pictured minis?

Two dwarf adventurers (halberd and twin weapons), the guard and armorer from the kings court on roof, a skull headed chaos fighter with mace and
I also need the fantasy specials pillars used on the bridge.

I have both the fantasy special doors ready for the castle, and have based and primed most of the figures so far.  I had to lay them all out like the diorama to check I had the right variants... gosh that was cool.  I cannot wait to paint these all up!

So my plan is to have two warbands complete with correct banners and a modular table that features a copy of the castle, bridge, hills and shrooms.
The undead force will feature key characters first, expanding to get as many as I can match done.
I was already mostly done with the ray casting wraith at the door, chaos lichelord on the hill, FA necromancer, ral partha samurai liche, two ghouls and ten of his horde.  It wont take long to get those to a photographable state.

Exciting stuff!

If anyone has any photos they took of close up details of the diorama please drop me a line.  I am keen to get a good shot of the dwarfs on top of the castle so I can see their colors, and what looks like a spear thrower the armorer is working.

Thanks!