THE ENORMOUS UNCLEAN ONE

Hello boys and girls!

It sure took some time but now I'm finally finished with the Great Unclean One which GW kindly sent to me as part of their new early reviewer scheme. As the model's been out for quite some time now this is hardly an early review, but there you go.

The thing is absolutely massive and not being very used to big kits, the process of painting it was something of a start and stop affair. It was fun though and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The kit itself is great and was surprisingly easy to put together.

I think the design works pretty darn well, though it does suffer from the same overly cartoony look that's common to almost all recent Nurgle kits. Nurgle is supposed to have a certain wry sense of humour, but that should also be tempered by malevolence and unnerving body horror. The sculpt is just a bit too jolly for my tastes. But all in all, and like I said in the precvious post, the GUO is a worthy kit none the less.

Here my take in all its putrid glory (and sorry for the so-so photos - the thing is hard to photograph properly with an iPhone):

 Did I mention it's really, really big...?  It's really, REALLY big.

I´ll be back soon with some new squats for the Colossi of Rhossum game. Stay tuned!

SOMETHING PUTRID THIS WAY COMES

Happy new year everyone!

I hope 2018 is treating you well so far and that you didn't gain too many extra pounds over the holidays (or kilos, if you happen to live in the civilised world).

I'm hoping to do a bit more hobbying this year - especially since I've been granted the great honour of being part of GW´s newfangled  ”early reviewer” scheme. Basically they´ll send selected models every now and then to me and a bunch of other hobbyists, just to see what we can make of them.

A few weeks back the the first model reared it's ugly head - the new Great Unclean One - and I set to work, gluing the "mini" together. It is insanely huge - almost too big if you ask me. But that, of course, is a matter of preference.

I'll be building it more or less straight out of the box (not really being used to big models such as this). There’s some minor alterations however - added more prongs to the horns to make them more tree-like, spines on the back and re-sculpted the corners of the mouth to get rid of those cartoony tusks.

A great model all in all - I really dig the "standard" jolly variant and the the cowled wizard. The cyclops version... not so much. But there you go.

The rest of the new nurglies are a bit of a mixed bag (I'm looking at you Beasts of Nurgle) but at least the big guy himself got a praiseworthy treatment.

I've been toying with the idea of adding a nurgling on his neck (just love it´s air of delusions of grandeur), but I'm worried that it might distract from the head too much. Well see.

We'll get back to this once I start painting the thing. 

But there's more - I've actually completed a model as well! 

A sturdy hammerer, based on the Kharadron dwarfs (Dvaergar...? Duardin...?) for a new squat gang I'm putting together for a game this summer. More on that later on...

Rotstalker II

It certainly seems I´ve got my hobby mojo back! Haven´t been this productive in a long time, and though much of this creative energy is focused on the slowly expanding primaris astartes force there´s a back log of finished or semi finished conversions that also deserve some attention.

For example this rotstalker for my long gestating plagueborg gang who´s been sitting on my desk for at least a year. This weekend I finally found the inspiration to give it a lick of paint.

Here he is with his counterpart, painted two years ago. No1 is among my favourite models so it´s hard to beat. But, while Rotstalker no2 isn´t perhaps quite as effective an conversion as the first one, I do like his creepy withered tiny arm...

The plan is to field these guys in the Tor Meggido game in october. The minis has been produced a model here and a model there over a period of about four years but I find them surprisingly cohesive despite of this. Guess my style hasn´t changed that much.

Plagueborg

I've got a huge and rather different Nurgle project in the pipeline. 

More on this soon, but as a warm up I cobbled together this plagueborg for my long gestating nurgly dark mechanicvm gang. He/it came out slightly more saturated than his fellows, but I'm still pretty pleased with the result. 

The vile warband of Lord Mawgut Gloop

Yesterday finally saw mine, Alexanders and Eriks extensively converted chaos warbands clash in glorious battle in the warped landscape of the chaoswastes (also known as the kitchen table in my offices basement). 

We'll get back to the two battles we fought once Alexander is finished writing up the battlereport and we have sorted all of the pictures. 

What I can say straight away is that this was the first time any of us played a game using the Age of Sigmar rules and that we - all being casual gamers - found it to be quite fun. There's some certainly some issues with the game if you're a "proper gamer" - I can imagine the battles getting repetitive quite fast if you play several times a week. 

But for someone like me, who only play a few times a year, it was refreshingly straightforward while still retaining some strategic challenges. Also any game would get repetitive played every week as far as I'm concerned... 

Anyway, today I'd like to properly present  my warband - the nurgly followers of Lord Mawgut Gloop. 

Mawguts warband

The head honchos: Blightking champion Spleech, Lord Mawgut Gloop, Plague Sorceror Nergal

Six Blightkings led by Spleech

Ten Chaos Warriors with mark of Nurgle led by Aspiring Champion Morbus Gravis

Two Biletrolls

All in all I'm quite happy with how the warband turned out and how they performed in battle. The blightkings are BRUTAL - they may not be fast but they can both take and dish out absurd amounts of punishment if the dicegods are with you. 

In the future I'd like to add a unit of chaos goblins, some plaguebearers and a big monster of some sort. 

That's it for today. I'll be back tomorrow with a tutorial for how I painted the Blightking champ and a closer look at the  biletrolls. 

Morning Glory

Today's the day for our glorious Path to Glory game!

The plan is to run a small three-game campaign, but as none of has has ever tried out the Age of Sigmar rules there's really no saying how long the battles will take. We'll come back with some sort of battle report after the dust settles. 

I spent last night in a frenzy painting the final model for the warband - a sixth blightking, converted from the classic plague lord. For once I managed to document the process:

I'll be back soon with better pics of the trolls and coverage of the forthcoming  battle. 

Tick-tock

Rushing to get the warband completed. Here's the "ticktrolls" halfway finished. The proverbial clock is fittingly ticking...

Race to the finish!!

With less than a week before the Path to Glory game I'm struggling to get the warband finished. 

The chaos warriors are all about done. This weeks been spent batchpainting the last five of them. The paintjobs are a bit rougher than the first three but they'll suffice. 

I'm missing two - it's supposed to be a ten man unit - but to save time I've decided to make up the numbers with two old converted plaguebearers. Obviously the bases aren't quite done yet. 

This because the last unit - the chaos trolls - has proven to be a whole lot of work. In the end I decided to convert them from plaguedrones, creating some sort of chaos spawny arthropodic tick-trolls. Here's the first one:

And the second one: 

Five days to go! The race is on!

New recruits

Work has been slow lately - real life suddenly reared it's ugly head, so my focus has been elsewhere. 

I have cobbled together two new chaos warriors though. The plan is to batch paint these guys, along with the others I showed a while ago, and then move on to the chaos trolls. 

Two weeks to go...

 I can still make it! Willpower Hal Jordan!!!

On a sidenote - the Convertorum turned 3 last week (which completely slipped my mind at the moment)! Hooray for me!

Foul magicks

Well this one sure took it's time! 

I've been working with the Nurgle sorceror in shorts bursts for more than a week. Somehow I had trouble finding the  zen-state that usually allows me to sit engrossed with a mini for an entire evening - this was more of a "an hour here, an hour there" affair. Perhaps it's due to all the tiny details - there always seemed to pop up new little trinket I'd forgotten to paint...

Calling this one done (only thing missing are the oregano leaves on the base) - time to move along to the chaos warriors. 

Rotbags

To cold to spraycoat today, so I glued together a couple of chaos warriors. 

That's it for today folks. Move along. 

Wizard of Ooze

While slowly amassing the chaos warriors - trying to create an interesting diversity within the unit - I took a break and cobbled together this Sorceror of Nurgle. 

There were tons of different ideas for this one - I had plans on basing him on everything from the trusted cairn wraith to the goblin shaman. In the end though, I decided to put my extensive bitz box to use, and based him on an old stormvermin/ork torso splice I found at the bottom. 

Quite happy with the end result!

Morbus Gravis

After a quick trip further north for some brisk ski-related activities, I'm back at the painting table and more leisurely endeavors. 

Last night I painted up the aspiring champion for the chaos warrior unit. As the deadline for the project is drawing closer I didn't want to spend to much time on him, so this was a fairly quick paintjob of about 3-4 hours. 

Pretty pleased with the result all in all (though he's perhaps not the most inspired model in the warband).

He does work rather well next to his underlings though. 

Also, on popular demand, here's a better picture of the standardbearer and his moldered plaguebanner:

Next up - plague sorceror!