Space Lizards! Completed!

Over the Christmas period, I've had a chance to do quite a bit of painting and modeling, and the my Space Lizard alternatives I was working on have been painted!

Here we have the entire squad of five Space Lizards:

When painting them, I initially thought about throwing in loads of gold, bronze and other bright colours, along with green or blue skin. But I thought that would look too cartoony, or at least just look like Saurus warriors that had been handed guns. Then I saw a picture of one of these little critters:

It's a Desert Horned Lizard (or something) and I decided that's the kind of lizard I want mine to be!. I also avoided lots of golds and went for a much more militaristic iron with practical red harnesses. The only rich metal colours they got are the copper bands that they have around their wrists and legs.

These are the two troopers with carbines:

The guns are pulse rifles from Hasslefree miniatures

This next lizard is armed with a Plasma Gun, an old Ork variant, possibly picked up by the lizard after a battle somewhere:

Then we have the squad sniper, armed with a rather exotic looking sniper system. I've also thought that this could serve as a either a anti-tank gun or even a rapid firing squad-support weapon:

This of course, is the leader. He's wielding a pistol (of similar origins to the carbines) and a rather dangerous looking close combat weapon. I'd probably give this the same profile as a chainsword, as it looks like it could easily deal the same kind of damage:

Lastly, here's a shot of their backs, showing the harnesses I sculpted on and the equipment attached to it:

 
They all have knives as a backup weapon, and some of them have ammo clips too. The lizard on the far left also carries what might be a communicator or scanner of some kind.

So, that's my Space Lizards! They've been a lot of fun to build and paint, so I'll probably do some more to round out the force. But in the meantime, I'm also dabbling with making my own Space Zoats...

Rogue Trader Lizardmen!

Recently I've been thinking about these guys:

The Ancient Slann!

Yes, the Slann! I love unusual Rogue Trader aliens, and these are possibly some of the most unusual. There are not only no modern models for them, but (after extensive googling) no real alternatives from any other manufacturer either. The old RT minis are difficult and expensive to get hold of and, if I'm honest, they're rather ropey looking figures anyway:

Ropey Slann models

As such, I starting thinking about what I could do as some sort of alternative. Then I realised I had a part built Lizardman Saurus regiment on the shelf, and the creative juices started bubbling! Then, I got even luckier and found an unopened box of saurus warriors in the cupboard! Even better! These were the leftovers from my aborted lizardman warhammer army that never really got started.

So, after about two weeks of cutting, chopping, shaving, test fitting, gluing and green stuffing, I have these:

Lizardmen with plasma gun, random basic weapon and some sort of exotic sniper weapon system.

The plasma gun is an old Ork variant, the battle rifle is a 'pulse rifle' from Hasslefree Miniatures, and the big gun is a Necron 'Synaptic Disruptor' normally used by the Deathmarks (that one needed a LOT of modification and test-fitting!). Since lizardmen are basically naked, and because I wanted to think of these guys as a much more sophisticated space faring race, like the Slann are (rather than savage beasts, like Saurus usually are) I also decided to green stuff on a sort of harness onto each of them. This they could use to attach their shoulder armour, combat knives and various other items of equipment.

Because the saurus kit doesn't contain any open hands, I also had to cut the closed fingers off the left fist, drill and glue in some wire 'fingerbones' and green stuff some new fingers to the hand, so they could hold their guns properly. This was one of the most difficult things to do, as greenstuff doesn't stick to tiny bits of wire very well!

Since I took this photo, I've made two more of these, another one with a battle rifle and a leader model with a pistol and close combat weapon. Now, to the painting!

Silver Skulls!

Since painting the retro Blood Angels space marines, I wanted to make the single Silver Skull marine I'd painted into a full squad. I've now got five of them done, including a sergeant and a special weapon.

Silver Skull space marine squad.

Sergeant with bolt pistol and power axe.

Special weapon marine with plasma gun.

Marines with bolters.

Although I'm pleased with how they turned out, the photos make the paintwork (especially the drybrushing) on them look a bit grainy. They do look much better in reality!

While the beaky marines never cease to be fun to build and paint, I think I'll have to take a break from them for a while, and perhaps concentrate on building them some more enemies to fight! I've still got a box of Mantic Marauders that I want to finish converting into some more Space Ork raiders.

80s Combat Cards!

Inspired by Orlygg's recent article about Citadel Combat Cards, I decided to add my own thoughts about these great little GW products. For a long time I only owned the Chaos, Goblinoids and Dwarfs decks, but this year I decided to acquire the rest. So after some months of Evilbay scouring, I managed to buy the Warriors, Monsters and Space War decks for reasonable to moderate prices.

My original three decks at the top, with my recent acquisitions below.

I've spent many long moments looking over the beautiful images on these cards, and since I started buying some of the old school miniatures, I've also painted some to match the ones on the cards. I know some people might wonder, what's the point of copying them? Why not just paint them your own way? Well personally, I really like the way most of these models have been painted, and it's just my homage to these legendary miniatures. But also, while my painting standard is reasonably good, I quite often struggle to think up colour schemes for some models. So rather than just leaving a model on the painting desk for months (or years!) I just paint my own version of the scheme that's already been created. Two of these are shown below:

Jakun of the Claw

Ulrich Elfeater

But there is one other thing I'd like to cover while on the topic of Combat Cards. I also have a pack of some later cards released, I think, in about 1999...

I think they made decks for several races, but I only picked up the Chaos Warriors set. Incidentally, I never had to buy these, I got them for free! Many years ago, my local GW was having a clear-out and they had a whole box of these decks that they were giving away. Obviously they hadn't really sold many, and from the look of the actual cards, it's not hard to see why:

Unlike the unique models and multiple stats on the 80s cards, these look, well, relatively bland by comparison. The models are just some of the generic chaos models from the period where all creativity and colour was removed, and there's only one stat that doesn't even have a name! The "Top Trumps" rules were abandoned and some rules involving creating "warbands" consisting of several cards of the same border colour were introduced. All in all, much less exciting. I don't think there were any other attempts to make combat cards after these, probably owing to the failure of these ones to sell.

So anyone else got any of these later cards? Were there any other attempts by GW to make combat cards that I don't know of? Anyone else managed to complete their sets of 80s cards? Or did you have them all when they were sold in GW shops?

Blood Angels!

Having completed quite a number of models for my retro RT Crimson Fists marines, I've decided to also build a squad of Blood Angels and later, a unit of Silver Skulls as well. So far I've completed five Blood Angels, with a goal of having ten each of the Blood Angels and Silver Skulls.

This is the squad so far:

Sergeant with the traditional bolt pistol and chainsword:

Brother marine with Bolter and chainblade attachment:

Brother marine with Bolter and combat attachment:

Finally, two more marines with Bolters:

I've got four Silver Skulls currently in the works, and then I can think about putting together the rest of the Blood Angel squad, including special and heavy weapons!

Oldhammer Day - Realms of Chaos picture report

Better late than never! Real Life managed to get in the way of doing this earlier, but finally, I'd like to share some of the photos I took of the Realm of Chaos battle that raged during most of saturday. I'm not going to comment on all of them, just the ones where I can remember what was happening!

The warband of Herzog Spinecleaver prepares for battle!

The battlefield as the warbands line up.

Herzog's warband advances.

Jason's warband meanders across some nice fields!

Gorox the minotaur bravely charged the troll, but sadly it was tougher than expected.

Herzog's beastmen hold out surprisingly well against a pair of ogres.

The troll joins the fight against Herzog and his men.

Charged in the rear by some cowardly Slaaneshi git riding a scary horse, the beastmen leg it! This was effectively the end of my warband, as everyone else was dead and the beastmen were herded off the table by the enemy beastmen. :(

Khorne and Slaanesh troops fight on the left flank.

Khorne forces advance.

I think these Orcs were on the Slannesh side, but not sure.

Warlord Paul of The Black Hole blog moves his troops.

The RoC battle in full swing!

What looks like a huge brawl is in fact Slaaneshi troops who have been entranced and drawn in by the magic axe of the Chaos Dwarf in the middle!

The battle draws to a close, with the Slaaneshi deviants in control of the field. (Boo!)

And that was that! The Khorne side was entirely wiped out by the end (we wuz outnumbered!), but hopefully we might get some revenge next year! Also, note to self; bring fire to kill that f****ng troll!!

Completed Realms of Chaos Warband!

With only two more days to go before the greatest event of old skool gaming, 'Oldhammer: Bring Out Your Lead!', I've finally completed my Realms of Chaos warband for the open participation event.

The final warband roster:

It'll be interesting to see what property his chaos weapon ends up being!

The Beastmen:

Herzog Spinecleaver and his armoured Human fighters:

Gorox, the minotaur:

The entire warband:

Finally, a closeup of the two shields with the face designs that are present in the two units of my warband:

Couldn't be more pleased with them!

Herzog and I are very much looking forward to Oldhammer day!