First Bestigors

I didn't have much time last night but I got my first Bestigors finished. Only twenty six left to go! I am guessing a regiment of thirty or so is enough, I think forty is fairly excessive at a standard game level. These are really nice models to paint. The armour makes them a little easier to do than the standard Gors. Flesh is always more annoying to do than armour! I used another hound to fill the spacng base. It saves models and ties the regiment in with my Gor Horde. I have the standard bearer and musician basecoated so hopefully I can get them painted fairly quickly. Once these Bestigor are finished I have to decide if I am going to invest in the army more. The Bestigor are the last beastmen models I have left. It is very satisfying to clear something out of the massive stockpile I have built up. I don't want to start a big project at the moment to be honest as I have a few other things coming up soon, namely a Woldwrath and some SAGA warbands.

A Horde Arrives

I managed to finish my Gor Horde. That is the first purpose built regiment for eighth edition. Aalmost every other one I have built over the years topped out at twenty or so models, maybe I stretched it to thirty with Skaven and Goblins. There are a few spacers in there and if arranged poorly they look bad as they really look like a hole. I think it is best to put threee models on a base rather than the two I have been doing. At least that way they don't combine with any placed beside them. As arranged the regiment has a few too many gaps. Considering that I made the entire regiment from thirty models it isn't so bad. Adding in the hounds helped and I think I will do it a little more often with the rest of the regiments. I think the addition of a few themed pieces will also be goo. I went for woodland bases and as such I don't really know what to add as a filler. Some ruins might work or some small standing stones. The problem sometimes is that Beastmen on there own have a fairly weak background. As simple forces of destruction there isn't much to latch onto to add a lot of character to the army. It would be fine to have the character shown by what they have destroyed. Fillers consisting of fallen banners and corpses would be okay but in some way that distracts from the beastmen by bringing the focus onto a different army. I will paint up some of the Bestigor over the next few days and ponder what I can do with the bases.

Deamon Prince

I found this fellow lurking at the back of my storage cabinet yesterday. Wwhile I hadn't forgotten I had him I have forgotten what I wanted to use him for. I never intended collecting a Deamon army, despite having a fair few models for one. I am thinking he would make at minimum a decent giant for the beasts if not a Ghorgon. The detail is rather astounding and paiting him would take a lot of effort.... I am not sure if I should start him now I keep going with the rank and file of the Beasts of Chaos.

More Gors!

I am almost finished with my Horde. I got a good start made on all the remaning Gors on Sunday. Yesterday with some spare time and a good audio book I ploughed through four more models. This time no spacers though as you can see in the pic. There are only so many of those that can be used before it breaks up the regiment too much. I just need to get another spacer done and that is all for the Horde. I am starting to get enthusiastic about the army again. It would be nice to at least finish all the models I have bought for it, especially as that means only another ten or so Bestigor. I don't have any Hordes or Warmachine stuff outstanding except I suppose for a few Khador 'Jacks. I could just get the army finished, I made a list for the first time in years recently and while I still have about fifty models to paint for it it is now well within the realms of possibility. I would have to buy some more models which is annoying but I suppose that is the nature of the hobby.

Gor reinforcements

I took a break from painting last week. I still haven't got my motivation back and there is no point in struggling and achieving nothing. I usually just end up staring at the models for ages rather than painting them. Rome: Total War stole most of my time anyway. I am looking forward to the next one coming out. I should really get myself the second Medieval: Total War but that would completely stop me from painting. For some reason there is a great joy to be found in running down peasant revolts with heavy cavalry!

I managed to paint over the weekend and make some decent progress on the Gor horde. I am still not sure if I will finish the army but finishing the Horde would be good. I added a few hounds to the spacer bases as I have some spare and it stops the base looking so empty. I had a spare box of hounds for some reason. I have twenty already assembled so I don't know why I would have bought yet another box. I am tempted to someday run a proper regiment of hounds. They are not so much more expensive than Ungors and they are much faster. It would be an excellent deterrent for other fast cavalry and disposable regiments which seem to be very prevalent in Warhammer at the moment.

Beast Reinforcements

It has been a while since I painted anything for Warhammer Fantasy. I don't have much left to paint fr Warmachine and Hordes so I decided to pick something from my shelf of abandoned models. It was either the beasts or some Warriors of Chaos. These won simply because they were assembled already. I lost impetus with the Beastmen after I realised how many I had to paint to have a viable army. I guess well over a hundred models in the end. I don't know if I will ever finish them all but little by little I may. I have three more bases like this to do to add to my Gor regiment. Once they are done I will be up to thirty six models and with only four more to hit that golden number of forty I might go for it. At least then it is one regiment finished!

Gors finished - Tale of Three Gamers

Another month over and here I am showing that for once I hit all my targets. I have completed these Gors as part of the tale of Three Gamers I am participating with my two buddies from home. I managed to get the BSB done much earlier in the month. All in all it was good progress and while I do have to admit painting this many guys is beginning to drag getting the first twenty Gors complete is providing some sense of achievement. Now to get them to forty.

This month I am still sticking with core. I will be annoyingly bulking out my Gor regiment to forty models and I will do another chariot. I have some Circle models to finish first but fingers crossed they won't take me too long. After three months I have the following completed: 20 Gors, 25 Ungors, a Chariot, a Giant and the BSB. That is for me really good progress. After this month the army will be at the halfway mark which is suprising. I didn't realise how quickly the points all started coming together. I guess once the Gors are done I can get started with some of the more interesting stuff!

Beastman Battle Standard Bearer

I finally managed to get the Battle Standard Bearer finished. I wasn't sure what to do for the symbol so I kept it simple. A skull like the rest of the army seemed best. I also added a stylised chaos star. I didn't want to have the hassle of putting points on them so I just extended the lines to the edge of the banner. I like how this came out and I would have done it on the other banners if I had realised how good, at least in my opinion, it looked. I used a Bestigor body and banner arm. Hopefully I can manage to make the actual Bestigor standard bearer look different than this guy. I added a shield as I do intend to have one during the game. I made it look like the chaos armour in my mortals army. I kept the standard red armour colour on the rest of the armour though as I don't want the hassle of doing that armour on a regimental scale.

Gor Standard Bearer

Following on from yesterdays ungor standard bearer here is my gor version. The skull motif is a little more exotic than the last. I am guessing that they are based on a skull from the regiment they belong to. I hadn't done this deliberately but it works. I just need to continue this with the Bestigor when I come to it. I didn't get the horns balanced one hundred percent. I curved one a little more sharply than I had intended but it is fine enough! I should go back and fix it as in the photo it looks a good bit off. Well as I said my freehand skills are not that amazing. I am wondering now if I need some more definition between the motif and the background colour? Maybe some black lining would have worked or deeper shading somehow. I noticed to day that there are no variant banners for any of the beastman regiments which is poor! I am most likely going to have two gor regiments in the army and I really don't like the idea of having my two main regiments with the same banner. I will search through some alternatives. For my Battle Standard I will probably use a Khornate Banner from the Bloodletters. It at least is not festooned with skulls, suprisingly enough. It also offers a different banner so there is no doubling up.

With some luck I can have the Battle Standard Bearer done by Monday and up here. I currently don't have plans for the weekend so maybe I can squeeze in some extra hobby time!

Ungor Standard Bearer

Today I decided to take the plunge and work on the ungor standard bearer. As part of this months tale of three gamers I am working on my Battle Standard Bearer and as such I need as much practise as possible. I want simple designs on green cloth. I am thinking that skulls are the best. Pretty much in keeping with the imagery of the army. Everything is bedecked in animal skulls so why not the banner? I am not that good at freehand so the designs are still simple enough. Maybe as I progress with the army I can start to add some complications. The skulls on the pole are a little washed out in the photo. They are very white but they do have more depth than is apparent here. I am happy enough with the final result. It is a little simple but really I would only over extend my talents if I try too much at this stage. I am doing the Gor standard tonight and I think I will go for a slightly more complex skull shape. When I do get to the Battle Standard I should be able to do the Skull well enough to try for something else added. Maybe crossed axes or something? I am not sure if a chaos star would fit with the already quite pointy skull?

Anyway I am not the only one to have made progress on the Tale of Three Gamers. Gar managed to hit his deadline for December and here are the wonderful results. I didn't get the e-mail with the photos in time to put them with last weeks stuff so here it is now. Thats a quickly painted regiment. I wish I could manage to crank them out as fast!

Lazy photographs

So last week I was too lazy to put up a group shot of my Beastmen. Setting up the camera and lights takes a while as does getting the models out of storage. so here they are finally. I am not sure if the Gory can be fielded in regiments of twelve but if so these are two complete regiments! You will also note I managed to do the standard on the Ungors. I wasn't too inspired so I went with a standard skull motif. I think it came out fine and I will stick with it for the rest of the beastmen standards. Now I need to start adding to the Gors, the aim is to have forty in this regiment when finished. Eight more this month and then ten more in each of the following two months.

A Tale of Three Gamers - Month Two

So after my efforts before Christmas I have managed to get my second months target hit! That's six hundred points done, a full quarter of the target. I am pretty proud of that as I am usually lazy when it comes to painting, especially regiments. I have to say getting the Gors finished was a bit of a chore and I don't relish bringing them up to the full quota of forty. This month I will be doing a Battle Standard Bearer, eight more Gor and five Ungors. That builds the regiments up to a more realistic size and it gets a character done. Some time I know I will have to really sit and plough through a big chuck of models but this month I really want to get some Warmachine and Hordes done too. I also have some terrain to do so it will be a busy hobby month. There is a point I guess in most armies where you decide to quit or keep on going. I guess that comes with the biggest regiment where you just have to accept that it is going to take a long long time and get on with it. I know thats going to come eventually. Breaking the regiments down into chunks has helped though. I guess I still have about fifty Gor to do and thirty Bestigor. Getting them done will be the challenge.

I am not the only one to have hit the target. Al managed to get the Warriors done, no characters though. So thats a full three hundred done for him. These are converted to be a little more lightly armoured than the standard models. They are Greek themed and look great. Next months target for Al are the two characters, a mounted BSB and a disc riding wizard. It's not too high a target and I am looking forward to seeing the disc.

Ungors Finished

So two days and a restless night resulted in some progress! At the moment I am busy working away on my Gors. Four are almost done and the other eight are underway. These are the older models and I am hoping that the new ones are a little easier to paint.

So here are the Ungors done. Okay I do need a banner but I am thinking that I might leave off all the banners until the end and then do them together as that way they would be consistent. I am thinking of some type of a skull symbol similar to what they are like on the GW models. Its pretty boring but works well. I am not sure on the colours. I guess a drab green background with a near white skull. As I am intending to have a few regiments in the finished army I don't know if there is enough variability in that design and my talents. Freehand isn't my strong point.

I will add some more models to this regiment during a later month. The large spacing bases do leave them looking a little lean on numbers so another five models should bulk them out a little better. The spacing bases are fine a long as they don't have to be clumped together. That leaves larger holes than I want. So breaking up where they have to be placed helps a lot. With a rank of six in the front I can even place on in the front rank which would be nice. So back to the Gors now!

Based and Basecoated!

It can't last long... I once again made some good progress! There has to be a day where I fail miserably somewhere this week. Laziness is an ever constant friend along with his brother procrastination.

I managed to get the Gors completely base coated. These are the old models bought years ago and somewhat converted. I had intended them as a Beastman Warband for Mordheim but that campaign fell through and they have been sitting half assembled and painted for a long number of years. So I pulled them apart and cleaned them down a little. A lot of the heads were replaced as were the damaged arms. One model I had the idea of converting into a half dryad. I am not sure what I was thinking at the time. Rather than dump the model I will hide him in a back rank. Nobody ever sees the models there anyway. I did add a lot of armour to these models with greenstuff. I continued that with some marauder shoulder pads. The less skin to paint the better!

I also managed to base the Ungors. I am not sure why I only photographed half of them! Anyway they are looking good and I intend to progress with them today with the aim of finishing them early tomorrow. Getting the first few done is a good motivator so that I can see the regiment grow slowly with small batches of completed models. I guss the regiment will grow in later months to at least thirty but for now the target of twenty five is fine. I got some highlights put on last night so that has speeded up the process. I think I can get them done tomorrow!

Assembled and so let the Games Begin!

Yesterdays progress was good, everything is assembled and ready to go. I think I can get everything basecoated and based today. Having an airbrush really helps as I can spray them all khaki. This is the base colour for the skin tone and not having to paint on all that skin is good! I can immediately worry about the other surfaces and details. I am going to keep these the same colour as the test model.

These are the new Ungor models, I have to say I am a little torn between these and the older ones. The fur is going to be annoying to paint on these. It is much finer detail with each strand being much much smaller. The older models had coarser fur which was simple to bring highlights up with. I put the models on larger bases to stretch them a little further. It saves me buying a few more boxes which is great with the way the prices are, especially for Ungor. A few bases of 40mm with only two guys on them get lost in the mass of a regiment and nobody has yet ever complained. It adds to the disorganised look of a beastman mob!

So coffee is done and a Game of Thrones is playing... time to get the brushes wet!

Beast Week Begins

So it is the week before Christmas and I don't have as many beasts done as I need to hit the targets for this months Tale of Three Gamers. So this week is being given over to getting those beasts done. I have twenty five Ungor to do and twelve Gor. Thats a tall order but I do have some help in the fact that I managed to get most of them assembled last week. I am hoping that a days worth of basecaoting will see most of them done to a basic standard. Then breaking them down into subsets of six will see me get through about nine a day on average. It is a tall order but I think I can manage it.

I have almost all the books from a Song of Ice and Fire here as audio books so that should keep me distracted from the insanity of all day painting. I also have plenty of time but thinking on that I do need to do the Christmas shopping at some point. I am hoping to be done by Thursday evening so on the 24th I don't have to pick up a paintbrush at all, instead I can bask in the glory of a one third done army!

A Tale of Three Gamers - Month One

Hopefully there is no Mayan Dragon destroying the world today, if so I think you can ignore this post and see the more important issues! Anyway I haven't managed to get a post up on our Tale of Three Gamers for a while. Slow progress and being sick hasn't helped thats for sure. We all failed to meet the target but hopefully in Month two we can make up the short coming a little. Alan had too many holidays, lucky him. Gar damaged his wrist, unlucky him. I was too distracted, silly me!

Here is the progress I had made as of the deadline. The chariot was almost complete. I really under estimated how long it would take me to get everything done. I thought the model would be fairly simple. The chariot was really difficult to attach to the two hounds and took quite a lot of fur sculpting to get it done properly. I am still not 100% happy but it is better than the two Tuskgors. I would have liked to get a collar or harness sculpted on there but with the sheer volume of fur I assume that it would be next to invisible.I only had the two hounds to do and I will get them to match the hounds I have done before. I am pretty burned out on painting hounds but I have maybe twelve more to do for this army at some point so I had better get used to the idea that I am doing them soon. The crew were handy enough to paint. I followed the basic sample model I had painted before as far as the colour scheme. I am not sure about the red shoulder armour. The colour is nice and dark but I am not sure if it suits the green? I am not changing it now but I might not use it as extensively as I had intended. I wanted it for all the armour in the army, especially on the Bestigors. It would also be a nice colour on the banners but maybe the green suits that better? This month I will finish the chariot and then get into the meat of the army. I want to have at least one core unit done and therefore I have choosen to do some Ungors. I think 24 is a decent number to start with. I will eventually expand the regiment to at least thirty but that would be a bridge too far at the moment! To accompany them I will paint 12 Gors with additional hand weapons. That means I have two fieldable regiments and a good foundation to build upon in the following month.

Gareth will be catching up which is fair enough. Maybe next time he will watch his step on the stairs! So thats thirty clansmen for him. Alan has set a more ambitious target however. He is endeavouring, despite Christmas on the horizon, to get the Cavalry from last month, a wizard and a chariot done. Looks like chariots are popular! So stay tuned for a progress report and some photographs next week from us all!

A Tale of Three Gamers - Week Three

I am on a solo run this week again! Gar managed to fall in work and hurt his wrist badly. So he has been ordered not to paint for a few weeks. Al is once again off on holidays, this time to New York. It is good for some eh? So its just lonely old me for the third week of the Tale of Three Gamers. Hopefully this won't be a continuous problem, but I suppose nobody can stay motivated all the time. I think Skyrim is very much a reason for these delays too!

So this is the beginning of the chariot. Pretty much everything has been sculpted on. I wanted to add some detail to the plain body of the chariot. So I added a pelt on one side and a shield on the other. I felt that the quiver of arrows would suit so I put that on too. That makes the model look much better. I didn't do much of a conversion to the riders, a simple weapon swap for the Ungor is all. The hounds got some of my standard treatment. You can see finished versions at this link. I think I will keep their paint scheme the same.I just need to attach the chains to the hounds so it looks like they are pulling the chariot and I am all set to go.

Month's Targets:
Al: Five Tzeentchian Chaos Knights
Phil: A Giant and a Chariot
Gar: Twenty Five Dwarven Clansmen


Tale of Three Gamers:
Test Colours
The Beginning
Week One
Week Two

A Tale of Three Gamers - Week Two

So I am doing well so far! I managed to get the giant done. I thought he would take a little longer than he did but with the time off I have at the moment I was able to get him done pretty quickly.
The photograph is not the best. Once again I managed to over expose the model and wash out the detail. I kept him in the same scheme as the test model. It ties him in better with the army but I am worried he might blend in a little too much. However I guess that the size of the model will single him out especially as I don't at this point intend using any minotaurs. The new models are just too horrible. I haven't seen them in the flesh so to speak so I might yet change my mind. So hopefully my chariot arrives soon so I can get started with that and hit the target!

Al managed to get the basecoat on his riders this week while Gar only got the silver done on the Dwarves!

Month's Targets:
Al: Five Tzeentchian Chaos Knights
Phil: A Giant and a Chariot
Gar: Twenty Five Dwarven Clansmen


Tale of Three Gamers:
Test Colours
The Beginning
Week One

A Tale of Three Gamers - Targets Set

So it is week one, the challenge has begun. All three of us have set their targets and only Gar was ambitious. I am setting myself a modest target of a Giant and a chariot. Al is aiming for five Chaos Knights and Gar is going for thirty Dwarves! I am being lazy. I have time at the moment to make a good dent in some of the core requirements but I don't want to commit deeply and lose motivation. I hate painting big regiments as forty or so models really take a long time to make progress on.
Here is what I have managed to get done on the giant so far this week. Just a base coat nothing special. I am keeping him in the warm brown tones that the test Ungor had. I am not sure if that is really going to work out for the flesh but hopefully it does! I was going to use him, with some conversions, as a Ghorgon but really I can't justify it. I don't think I would be able to convert him enough. Adding horns and weapons really wouldn't cut it I think. For the chariot I do plan some conversions. I hate the boars that are pulling the chariot and I think I would be able to use some Chaos Hounds instead. They are almost as big and they are much nicer models. I wouldn't have to do much either to add them under the yoke, just chopping and resculpting some of the fur on their napes. Lets just hope my eBay source is prompt in sending the chariot out to me.

Here is Gar's test model. He already has a few regiments done for this army but he is using this challenge to add more to the army. First up is some great weapon armed clansmen, a regiment I really am not looking forward to facing on the battlefield. Gar has used a nice contrasting dark blue and bright silver scheme for the Dwarves. The shields on the clansmen is done with GW Ice Blue to make them stand out a little stronger. Getting these done within a month is going to be tough.I always lose my motivation on bigger regiments. Especially when they reach above about fifteen models. I usually try to paint them in batches of five or six so that I don't have an endless line of thirty or so to do. When it takes a few hours to get something like the silver done thats when I really start to get annoyed. That is one of the benefits of Wwarmachine maximum units sizes are ten so you feel like you are making progress much more often.

Al is going to be holidaying this month (lucky him) so he is committing to a small regiment. So while we are slaving away for our corporate masters he is having cocktails on the beach. I still think it is a push to get these done as cavalry take a lot of time. There is a large surface area on those horses and painting them takes longer than expected. You can see here clearly a greek theme with hoplon shields and corinthian helmets. I have no idea on what the colour scheme is going to be yet, hopefully Al will make some WIP shots so that they can be put up here next week or so. I intend putting a post up every Thursday showing or at least discussing the progress made by each of us. I guess that will include quite often a lack of progress too! At the start of each month we will all present what we intend to do. It is going to be around 300pts in total though it will vary a little depending on what we select. The hope is that we will get 2400pts completed within eight months or so. We might even manage to get some terrain done along the way!


Month's Targets:
Al: Five Tzeentchian Chaos Knights
Phil: A Giant and a Chariot
Gar: Twenty Five Dwarven Clansmen


Tale of Three Gamers:
Test Colours
The Beginning