MORDHEIM, CONTRAST AND SPACE MARINES

July saw an meet-up of epic proportions when twenty or so hobbyists clashed in Helsinki in a celebration of Mordheim's 20th birthday. It was an absolute blast and the terrain and miniatures on display had to be seen to be belived. Huge thanks to Alexander Winberg for arranging this crazy endeavour, and to Mordheim's daddies Toumas Pirinen and John Blanche for participating.

I managed to play two and half games over the day and my nefarious vampire Graf Sugismund did rather well for himself (though he lost an eye in the proceedings). The last game turned into more of a moody photoshoot than a proper game when Kari, of Iron Sleet fame, brought along his nifty smoke machine. And then we had to break for dinner and beers. Lots and lots of beers.

Here's a few of my cruddy pictures from the event, but there's many more and better ones at that, at various other blogs:

Head over to Echoes of Imperium to have a look at all the participating warbands: echoesofimperium

Greg Weir has a brilliant recap of our first game over at Between the Bolter and Me: mordheim-2019-witch-hunter-games and Eric does a more general recap of the event at the same site: mordheim-2019-recap

Tammy covers our last game, among other things, over at Tears of Envy

After event I needed to do something completely different, so back I went to the good old 41st millennium. I picked up a box of Intercessor space marines and started testing various colour schemes using the contrast paints. Here's two of them:

The process is rather simple. After spraying the model black and then with either grey seer or wraithbone, I sponge the model with dark brown to add texture and battle damage. Then I drybrush the whole miniature with pure white to provide highlights. After this the contrast colour is applied (in this case gryph-charger grey). This approach works for basically any colour scheme and due to the contrast paint's translucency the drybrushed highlight is subtly visible through the basecoat.

Just painting for it's own sake was a lot of fun, but after a few random marines like these I decided to go back to my beloved Metatron marines and see if I could replicate the colour scheme using contrast paints. It turned out I could.

Contrast painted Metratron to the left, original colour scheme to the right

As there's lots of new marine stuff coming out I'll try to turn these guys into a proper army, by adding more Intercessors, a few hellblasters, a dreadnought or two and perhaps some vanguard - so there's plenty of hobbying to do.

And then we haven't even mentioned Warcry...

THE COLOSSI OF RHOSSUM SECUNDUS

In the immortal words of Dr. Nick - Hi everybody!

As you may have noticed posting on this blog is becoming more and more erratic. This is actually only partly to do with the fact that I'm not doing as much painting and converting as I did a few years ago - though that's certainly part of the story. The main reason however is that google has more or less stopped supporting the blogger platform. I used to be able to do quick posts on the fly from my iPhone or tablet, which was quick, easy and worked great (or at least worked). 

But without updated apps this is sadly no longer possible. Which means posting nowadays means intentionally sitting down at a computer and writing a blog post. Which is less spontaneous. Which means it happens less frequently. 

We'll see what the future brings - I'll keep this blog for a while but I am toying with the idea of moving on to some other platform or simply starting up a convertorum facebook page. I do like the blog format though - it's easy to navigate and works as a diary of sorts. There's a sense of continuity to a blog that facebook and other social media lacks.

I have been busy though. This weekend saw a few scandiwegians - all of them, except me, named Alexander for some reason - travelling to Nottingham to hang out with Tim Molloy, Peter Hudson/PDH and the one and only John Blanche for a game we called "Colossi of Rhossum Secundus". Other hobbyists like Helge of WilhelMiniatures fame and The Polysmith (check out his outstanding conversions here: https://www.instagram.com/thepolysmith/?hl=sv), pitched in with some lovely miniatures, but couldn't make it to the actual game.

The game itself was all about a bunch of desperate warbands duking it out on the abandoned forgeworld Rhossum Secundus. A running theme was the inclusion of colossi - huge lumbering machines that the warbands had, or tried to take, control over. We played the game on one of the magnificent custom built battlefields at Warhammer World. It was crazy, amazing and a whole barrel of laughs, even though my Inquisitrix and her band of merry squats didn't manage to do very much at all except mildly annoying Pete's armiger robot. This won't be a write up of the battle but I´ll leave you with a few photos of the proceedings. More to come. Eventually...

Inquisitrix Snowe and her mining guild compatriots on the surface of Rhossum Secundus

The whole crew. Acteon assault servitor on loan from the Mechanicvm.

Inquisitrix Snowe of the Ordo Xenos

Her bodyguard, Battle Brother Desplat of the Deathwatch.

Brother Desplat next to two of the squat mining guild representatives, Skaeggi Skaeggisson and Yksi Kaksisson respectively.

And then some random snapshots of the mayhem. Did I mention the colossi were huge?
They. Are. HUUUUGE!!!

Next up will be some spooky new models that got sent to me by GW as part of the early reviewer scheme.

It'll be a post guaranteed to haunt you. 

At night.

*wink wink*

Chaos consume us

Time for our next Path to Glory special feature - this time focusing on Alexanders eclectic and downright bizarre warband devoted to She who Thirsts: 

Hi, I'm Alexander, the third member of our coven and sworn hierophant of Slaanesh. 

With my warband I want to explore the more extreme aspects of the Dark Princess (yes, to me Slaanesh is female). The God's Hand have travelled far down the path that are the circles of Slaanesh Inferno. They keep no slaves, every torture and sensation are reserved for themselves.

This was my first warrior, before I knew what this project was about. He is a ritualistic torturer and flesheater. The conversion combine parts from electro-priests, cultists and daemons.

I really struggled at first when it came to the Stormcast miniature. What to do with it. In the end I turned him to chaos. He is the unreasonable fury of jealousy. In his hand he carries the head of his lover, well aware that she will just grow a new body to keep tormenting him.

My lieutenant, chaos should be strange and take odd turns. I was very much inspired by Kingdom Death when it came to this conversion. The parts are from the empire, high elf and dark eldar ranges.

Since we are inspired by the classic Realm of Chaos books I decided to add a more nonsensical miniature, the fallen king.

For heavier hitters I rolled up a troupe of Hellstriders. As an other nod to older editions I included a centaur. 

This has proven to be a lot of fun. My warriors just need to be painted and based. Then I have a few more Hellstriders to complete, some more sculpting on my giant conversion and my chaos lord.

Till next time,

Alexander