Thursday, March 20, 2014

Skaven Blood Bowl Team Conversion Part 2


Alright! Since last time, the boys have been based, given arms, and primed! Normally I go for a black primer, but since this is a sports team I really want the colors to pop.

These guys need to take a green stuff bath before they can be primed with their mates:

Hey... why are we in here?

AUUUGH! *Glub* 



Here's some shots of the team:

Linemen in the front, Gutter Runner and the Blitzers in the back.
Close up of the Blitzers. They have empire cannon dude arms.
I'm pretty stoked on this guy! He's ready to get to the pitch!

I was going to go for a dark red and yellow color scheme, but I tried it on one of the linemen and he looked like a McDonalds ad... He's joining his friends in the green stuff bath.

Another lineman is getting upgraded to test rat! What an immense honor.

I reorganized my painting table today and am super excited to get painting these guys!

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Skaven Blood bowl Team Conversion Part 1!

Another Blood Bowl league is happening at Phoenix Fire, and if I get paid in time to enter I definitely plan on playing again.

Last time, I chose to play goblins. I had never really heard of Blood Bowl, and just picked goblins because my friend Bradley had a old, kickass goblin team he wasn't going to use. I didn't listen when anyone told me goblins were a more advanced team, and would probably suck. Even though they were a lot of fun, I don't want to run them this time. I want to run a team of my own, so I'm returning to my first love, Skaven!

Now, I definitely don't have enough money to buy one of the old skaven teams, so IT'S CONVERSION TIME. (Like clobberin' time? get it?) I have a bunch of random old Skaven bits, and I picked up the Skaven half of the Island of Blood set from my friend Kyle, so I've got plenty of rats to mess with.

So after some bit box digging, this is what I'm going to start with:

Bits!
I know starting with a Rat Ogre isn't always the best plan, but I've really wanted to do something with my old metal one, so I'm starting with a Rat Ogre.

He's missing an arm, poor guy. Also, cacti.


This is what I'm thinking of as far as a team list goes:

1 Rat Ogre
2 Blitzers
2-3 Gutter Runners
1 Thrower
4-5 Linemen
2 Re-rolls?

I'm not for sure if I want to cut a Lineman for the third Gutter Runner, but Gutter Runner's are sweet so who knows. I'll have a more solid plan together for part 2.

I know that's not a football, dude thinks he's playing rugby.

Badass old Gutter Runner.

This guy is getting upgraded to Gutter Runner!


Thanks for checking this post out, go forth and conquer!

First model in years, and some old Skinks!

I finally started painting models again several months ago, so I thought I'd share some in progress pics of the first one in a loooooong time!

I decided to slowly acquire pieces for a 40k Ork squad, and my first new purchase was a box of Grots that I had been eyeing at Phoenix Fire, because I love goblins and Grots are just gobbos in space.

Here is my slightly kit bashed Runtherder:

I need to fix my real camera. I guess the cell phone isn't that bad though.

His body, legs, and pole arm are all bits I found in my bit box, from some old Warhammer Orc set.

RAWR

The rest are the extra bits from my Runtherder sprue. Since this was my first model in years, I felt better starting with my random parts guy first. I guess I wouldn't feel as bad screwing it up. I still need to finish him up, but I've been hopping around from model to model. I'm pretty pleased with it though, it's a marked improvement from ten year old me's skills.

I'll be posting pictures of the whole grot crew as I make more progress, but for now here are some of my old skinks I found in a box!

These are probably the best painted minis I've found from my younger years.



Monday, March 17, 2014

A Bit About Me and My Minis

It's hard to pinpoint when I first started collecting minis, but I believe it all started when I was around 8-12 years old. I was at my good friend's house, and him and his little brother had gotten one of the starter box sets with lots of orcs. I think? He swears I was the one who got them into it, but it's all kind of fuzzy!

Any way, something happened and I started obsessing about building an army! For some reason, I seemed to be good at earning money off of my parents, and they would take me to the local hobby shops so I could pick up minis and paint. I was set on a Warhammer Fantasy army, and I picked up lots of orcs and LOTS of Skaven. I also picked up lots of random discounted metal minis just because they looked cool. I read all of the Gotrek and Felix novels, and became kind of obsessed with the Skaven.

I'm not really sure what young me was going for here. Those spikes are scary!


I was really, really pretty bad at painting. I loved it though! I spent a ton of time in the garage planning out my armies and painting them and acting out battles with them. My friend and I tried to figure out how to play, but we never really grasped it. I spent a lot of time reading the rule book and looking at the pictures though. I slept with the thing! I kept saving up money and buying minis (mostly Warhammer), and one day I just kind of lost interest. My friend wasn't really in to it anymore, and I didn't have any one to play with. My mom helped me pack them all up and I pretty much forgot about them. I always wanted to pick them back up, but my wallet had become empty, my paints had dried up, and I had no one to play with. So there they sat, in the garage, all alone. Getting moved around, broken into pieces, and separated from their friends.

Random Skaven dudes!


Fast forward ten or so years. I had been playing Magic the Gathering at my local hobby shop, Phoenix Fire Games, and they also had a pretty large stock of Warhammer minis. I spent a lot of time in between rounds gazing fondly at their selection and sighing. It turns out one of my new friends at the shop was super into collecting minis (He totally started an Old Hammer blog - which convinced me to start this one), so we began talking shop. He invited me over and showed me his massive collection and offered to teach me how to play 40k. Needless to say, this ignited the spark in me again and I decided I had to try and rescue my old collection.

A metal Screaming Bell! 


Unfortunately, time has taken it's toll. Most of my plastic clan rats have disappeared, just leaving random limbs behind, and a lot of my goblins have suffered the same fate! I have found a bunch of random minis I didn't even know I had, and I've slowly been building up my paint collection and trying to save the minis I can.

The best looking one of these is on the far left. I'm pretty sure my mom painted it for me.


I've got several projects I'm working on currently, but for this post I'll just post some pictures of my old collection throughout this wall of text, because walls of text are boring. The pics are kinda cruddy right now because I was using a cell phone, with one hand, while balancing on my haunches and holding a lamp. I'll post more pictures of my random collection later!

Random Orcs!
Thanks for checking this post out. Go forth and conquer!