The Gouged Eye: Blood Bowl 1989...

As something of a test for painting my Marauder Orc army I've just painted up a second edition Orc Blood Bowl team in an attempt to recapture the style of the original (Old-bowl) style of bright colours that typified the game in the late 80s and which is a world apart from the grimy style I've tended to favour over the past 10 years of so (who knew I had a style!). Here's how they turned out:

There were a few basic ingredients for what I considered to be Old-school enough:

• A white undercoat
• Bright colours
• Black lining
• Black base edges (I could have gone for Goblin Green but that didn't work for me)
• (perhaps most important) painting fast, as a 16 year old in 1989 I'd generally finish whatever figures I bought on the same day as I got them home. For this project I allowed myself five days.
• Oh, and I found one original pot of citadel paint, a bright yellow that I used to dot their eyes!

The paint scheme was very simple indeed:

Red: GW Khorne Red, GW Mephiston Red, GW Mephiston + GW Wild Rider

White: GW Space Wolves Grey, White

Flesh: GW Warboss Green, GW Thraka Green Wash, GW Warboss, GW Skarsnik, GW Skarsnik + Screaming Skull

Metals: VMC Oily Steel, GW Badab Black Wash, VMC Oily Steel, GW Mithril Silver

Browns: GW Scorched Brown, VMC Saddle Brown

Black Lining: VGC Black Ink

Bases: here I used BlueinVT's basing method - VMC Khaki, AP Strong Tone, VMC Khaki, VMC Buff. The grasses are GF9 Parched Straw and Spring Undergrowth. There's a really excellent description of basing on Blue's blog here: http://bluesmarauders.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/hello-all-over-last-couple-of-months.html

As a treat, and as a partial gift from one of my earlierst BB opponents, I got hold of a second edition pitch and painted it up in the same colours as the bases:

I'm still wondering if I should paint up the skull in the centre. Feedback so far seems to say... maybe!

Flames of War North Africa: Games of War Desert Buildings Review

One of the many things I like about Flames of War is the availability of relatively cheap pre-painted terrain. I'm a fan of the Battlefield in a Box range and have a fair bit of their terrain already but with plans to build up a North African town I felt the need to branch out a little in order to avoid it looking too like a series of identical new-builds...

Google took me to Games of War who make a range of prepainted resin 15mm buildings that look to complement the Battlefield in a Box range pretty well. They were the only 15mm buildings I could find that were prepainted, reasonably priced and which have removable roof sections. There's a pretty positive video review of their European buildings on the Model Dad's blog so my hopes were fairly high. As postage is free I've tested the water with just a couple of buildings from a range of five buildings, going for the Small and the Large Desert buildings, priced at £5 and £8 respectively. 

Valhallan, erm... Astra Militarum.

Valhallan Sniper. Image from: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Valhallan_Ice_Warriors.

With a trip to Warhammer World in their very near future, and a new codex just out, it's time to start thinking about just what the Valhallan's are going to look like in the new edition. The army, which has survived two editions of Warhammer 40,000, and several ruthless culls on the toy cupboard, now has a fresh codex to contend with and, to make matters even more confusing, they're no longer the Imperial Guard but the Astra Militarum (presumably the result of an intergalactic battle with intellectual property pirates from beyond the stars). My regular irregular opponent has asked for 40K and so with much pleasure I find myself returning to the game after a fairly lengthy absence. The first job is to work out whether what I have will make a playable army...

Waaagh the (Oldhammer) Orcs!

As a relative newcomer to Oldhammer (is that a contradiction in terms?) I've been spending some time looking around the at the various sites that are out there and generally engaging in insane levels of virtual shopping.

The Stuff of Legends website is the go to place for information on what's out there. Here's the Marauder Miniatures page that's occupying much of my google-time. If things go to plan I'm aiming to get my hands on pretty much everything that appears in these catalogue pages but as I'm hoping to get some third-edition gaming in I'm going to try to start by aiming to get a playable list sorted. That means starting with a smattering of heroes, 20 Boyz, 20 Arrer Boyz, 20 Gobbos, 20 Stickas, and a Skull Crusher. I'm at the mercy of ebay I suppose!

Oldhammer Orcs!

Oh dear! Just as I thought I'd broken the spell of Games Workshop's toy-magic (under which I've been held in thrall for over 25 years) it seems that I've suffered a major relapse. And that relapse is called Oldhammer! Capturing everything I enjoy about the hobby (collecting, nostalgia, painting, and perhaps even playing for fun with a ruleset I'll enjoy) the world of Oldhammer caught me off-guard and has reeled me right back in to the GW hobby... Curses!

Having stumbled across various blogs and the Oldhammer Forum I quickly gave way and it didn't take me long to settle on the idea of collecting a Marauder Orc army. This image is to blame: