Big Blackie's Ultimate Black Chariot of Despair

UUUGHHHHHH.....We've all had our hobby disaster moments.  Up until now, the worst I've had, that I can remember, anyway, was the time I accidentally sprayed an entire rank of freshly finished Goblins with white primer instead of clear sealant.

Wreckage

This is worse.  I've spent the last two weeks working on Big Blackie's Ultimate Black Chariot of Blackness.  I'd used an entire spool of artist's wire and twisted and crimped it to make reins and tackle, and to secure the little gubbins I'd added on...skull stakes and shields and like that.  There was nothing left to do but finish the eyes on the Orcs and flock and edge the base.  Then an Hour or two to finish shading and detailing Big Blackie himself and...finally...it would be finished.

Carnage

I'd flocked one side of the base and was trying to turn it to do the other side when...somehow...I dropped it.

Dead Pig

Normally it wouldn't be a huge deal, but so much of the wire is bent and twisted and the paint is all flaking off.  I was really proud of how it looked, too.  I've tried to bend some of it back into shape, but so far it has seemed more inclined to fray and break than to re-align.

And yes, I get that breaking your stupid Orc chariot is a first world sort of problem but....God damn it, anyway!!

Well, that screws up the rest of my night.  I'm going to admit to defeat, have a drink and then retreat, snarling, to my bed.  I'll fight again another day.

RAFM's Miskatonic University Expedition to the Antarctic

An intrepid team of investigators heads for hair-raising adventures in cruel climes.  I've been feeling a little Warhammered-out and haven't made a hell of a lot of progress lately on the three projects I have left to complete my Orc n' Goblin and Chaos armies.  This wonderful old set by RAFM was just the thing to get me painting again.

 It's a great kit, clearly based on the classic Lovecraft story At the Mountains of Madness.  Such a great kit, in fact, that I'm starting to put together a wintry terrain set-up for pulpy adventures in the far north.  Or south.  Fans of Mountains will recognize the man-sized blind albino cave penguin which appears in the tale's final horrifying moments.

Investigator #1

Investigator #2.  

Note worried expression.

Invesitgator #3...examining some small token of an unimaginable lost civilization...

"WAAAGGAAAGARBLEGARBLEGARBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  

Horrendous, Shoggoth-y polyp-y thing.

"Tekeli-Li!!"

The Dance of Lost Souls - Chaos Baggage Train Part 1

"Bringing up the rear of any Chaos horde may be seen their hideous train of camp followers.  Foul beings including those mutants too far gone to be worth putting into the battle line.  They accompany awesome, creaking wagons of  horrific form, riddled with woodworm and decay, and drawn by pathetically deformed beasts of burden...

These weird wains are piled high with cages, cauldrons and sinister inlaid caskets, while implements of torture and insane ritual are hung about them.  A continuous, eerie sighing emanates from the sad, snuffling and cowled figures groping behind the wagons..."
                                                                                                                  -Warhammer Armies

Who among us was not mightily inspired by that passage, reading it as a kid?  Twenty-some odd years later, Nigel Stillman's words have finally resulted, partly, in this.

This baggage train section was quite a colossal kit-bash. The wagon model is based on a RAFM Skeleton War Wagon model.  I bought a pair of them very cheap from RAFM direct and I added some wheels from a new-school Skaven war machine kit, purchased separately on ebay.  The skeletal horse came with the Skeleton War Wagon kit.

Added some other plastic and resin bits from Armorcast and GW, including the cage in which our Devil Pig (I like to think of him as some sort of lesser daemon of the minor Chaos God of gluttony), is keeping a particularly tasty bit to eat later on.  The tasty bit is an old Ral Partha slave girl.

The Devil Pig himself, the whipping horse and most of the camp followers are from Eureka's delightfully old-school flavored 'Chaos Army'.  The line isn't so much an army as a mob of mutants with a very Bosch/Bruegel theme.  Very cool.

The Whipping Horse.  Poor Fellow.  It's a sad figure but I'm very attached to it.  When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of the Devil's horse in Albrecht Durer's The Knight and the Devil.  I found this illustration in a book on medieval warfare when I was a very small boy.  It has exercised a very powerful hold on my imagination ever since. Particularly that miserable horse.  I have no idea why.

The first of the 'sad snuffling and groping figures...a mutant too far gone to fight in the line but still rather scary.  Nice mini. Could easily be a Cenobite from Hellraiser...  A Eureka piece...

An old Citadel Witch.  Seemed like a good choice for a cultist model.  Careful inspection reveals that her personal equipment includes a flashlight/electric torch!  As good as a wand of light, I guess.

Here we have a miserably mutated creature...approaching being barely functional.  I think this is a Heartbreaker model.  I'm not sure.  I painted him a long time ago, you can see he is painted and based somewhat differently from the others.  I thought he'd fit in well, though.

 Bird/crab man.  Very Bosch/Bruegel flavored.  I like him.

Egghead.  Another Eureka  A fun piece.

Another shot of the wagon...

And of the section as a whole...

Still another RAFM cart and lots of Eureka mutants to fashion into a second baggage train section for Aulech Henschblut's Chaos raiders.

Nov 13 2015

Star Wars: Classic Rebel Heroes Part 4: Chewbacca and his Wookie Scouts

Unbeknownst to pretty much everybody but myself, the mighty Chewbacca recruited a small band of Wookies from his home planet of Kashyyyk during the mid-and-latter stages of the Galactic civil war.

When not hovering around Han Solo protecting Han from himself and others, Chewie led this band of scouts and jungle fighters in a series of raids and intelligence-gathering operations on a number of planets throughout the Empire.   The famed Wookie warrior is shown here with a detachment of this famed Kommando.

The unforgiving nature of Kashyyk's vast rain forests forged tough and resourceful warriors who could thrive in  environments where Imperial forces struggled, and the services of the Wookies proved invaluable in numerous engagements.

Who doesn't love Chewbacca?    Alas, as was so often the case with Grenadier's Star Wars line, we only get one generic figure for the species, armed with a laser rifle and power ax, and wearing a smock type garment.

 It's not a bad pose, and I dig that the figure is armed to the teeth with rifle, pistol and close combat weapon.

Would have been really nice to have even one or two more, though, with bowcasters and muskets, maybe, to represent wookies at home on Kashyyyk.  There was one more wookie mini made for the line, but it came along later, was not a Julie Guthrie figure, and doesn't look particularly great.  I'm trying to figure out something I can do with it.  It wouldn't have fit in well with Chewie's Commandos.  I may try painting up a few more of these guys someday, maybe with a conversion or two, but the pose is pretty solid, with no obvious points of separation to play with, so this may be it for wookies.

I thought that the smocks would be fun to do in camo, but now I'm afraid the scheme I used just makes them look like candy stripers.

Oh, well.  Can't win 'em all.

I do really like the Chewbacca figure.  Julie's lovely sculpting nicely captured his character, I think.  And he has the bowcaster, which is great.

So, that's it for Chewie.

One more thing.  For a while, the closing themed pin-up pic was becoming a tradition of sorts within my Star Wars mini posts, but through the last couple of posts, I've been slacking.  Traditions are good things.  Once we've started them, we shouldn't abandon them.  So here's a little Wookie-themed something to help you think warm thoughts as the season changes.

'Til next time, friends!

Bad Moon Rising

 An Orctober Post...

Up and down the great, dark river the word had gone out.   The word had gone north, where Willie da Wheela raced his Waagghh! Wagons over the brown hills;  "Big Blackie lookin fer a fight!"  "AAOOAOOOH-AH-OOO!"  barked Willie.  Willie da Wheela came a-wheeling.  

The word had traveled south, as far as the East Bank Toves, where Black Annie and her Troll-sons gnawed giant eels amoung the warty willow-bowels.  "Big Blackie gonna go git stuck in some place!"  "Don't Buvver me, I'm eatin'!"  Croaked Black Annie.  Black Annie did not come.

The Word had traveled east, across the waste.  It had found the Bad Moon boys boozing around their fires in their stony gullies, wired with drink, stoked up with hate, squinting at each other and feeling for their knives.  "Big Blackie gonna go south and have a bash!"  Clay cups were dropped and broke upon the stones.  "KILL KILL KILL!!!!!!" bellowed the Bad Moon Boys.  The Bad Moon Boys gathered up their gear and they began to run.

***

They had run all day.  The sun that had risen at their sweating backs fell upon the Thunder Mountains and bathed the shapes of the land in red. On they loped, untiring, westward into the deepening night. Nyunkel Pickscab shouted once, and they all raised their eyes to the sky toward which he cast a gnarled arm.  There, riding high above a bank of silvered cloud hung the moon, an enormous, sharp-horned crescent. It's pallid light silvered the moon-standard that hung from the great pole Nyunkel bore. The Bad Moon clan bellowed in approval.  A good omen.

The shoulders that bore up their hauberks and packs unyielding as stone.  The sinews of their legs as unwearying as steel...  

Nyunkel Pickscab

On, on, into the night. Hook up with Big Blackie.  Go somewhere, pick a fight.  Crush and break and kill.  WAGGH!  These were their only thoughts.  Why didn't matter.  Not too much, anyhow.  The rumour carried on stinking tounge from out of the West had said that Aulech Henschblutt, the Knight of Khorne, had come up from Lost Veguzz,had crossed over the bad, broken country that marked the border of the Orcs' territory.  He had burned the huts of a few Goblin Pig-herders and taken their stock, and was now camped on the very southern-most verge of Big Blackie's realm, munching on pig, his Chaos Hounds making the night hideous with their dreadful baying.  That seemed to be about the extent of it.

It wasn't much, as provocations go, but the bulk of the Black River Orcs wanted to fight, and Big Blackie knew it.  He could smell, or feel, or hear, or whatever, the WAGGH...that slow-burning fire, coming in like the tide slowly...slowly...so slow and steady you sometimes didn't even know it was there until you felt the air snap and pop with it, and could see the eyes of the boys catchin' the light of the campfire in that most peculiar, metallic-red sorta way.  The WAGGH came every so often, as natural as breathin...most Boys didn't know what it was.  But the Shamans knew.  Some of the Chiefs knew.  Big Blackie knew better than anybody.  The WAGGH was CHANGE.  The WAGGH was the Great Gods Gork n' Mork stirrin' the pot, makin' sure things didn't get too settled, didn't get quiet and sleepy and things go all to rot.  Things goin to rot happened a lot with the humans.  But not with the Orcs.  WAGHH kept 'em strong.  WAGHH was full of perils, sure. WAGHH could get a boy so crackling, tooth-grinding, hopping crazy stirred up mad, he'd kill his best mate over an old pig-rib had a little tit nit of fat still on it.  Kill him before he'd known he'd done it!  But the WAGGH was good.  It pruned away the weak.  Pushed the lazy down.  Gave the hard and the go-gettin' a chance to come up and lead.  WAGHH killed off old, bad bosses and brought in new, good ones.  WAGHH kept the whole world turnin.' Big Blackie knew it.  And he knew how to use it. No use lettin' the boys go at each other and spill each others' guts for no good reason.  Waste of perfectly good muscle, that.  Nar, best gang 'em up, spin 'em up n' turn 'em loose on the outlanders.  Which ones?  Didn't really matter, long as somebody out beyond the borders got taught a lesson...A WAGHH was brewing.  The Knight of Khorne had offered himself as a target.  The knight of Khorne it would be.

They came off the great plateau and poured eagerly down into the broken jumble of stony slopes and narrow gullies that ran down to the great river.  There she was, Black River, the bitter moon playing up and down her, striking silver fire off her great, smooth back.  Down there, near the water, they could see the big camp.  Bloody red camp fires blazing in the dark.  Big camp was where it always was, at The Skull Pile.  There, some years ago, Big Blackie had caught a pack of the The Big Baron's raiders with some Dwarves as they were trying to get in their boats and get back to the west bank.  Forty men and Dwarves had died on the river bank gravel, and Big Blackie had piled the heads up, with those of some Orcs and Gobbos who had died in the fight too.  The Skulls all looked west, toward the Baron's realm and the Dwarves' mountains.  Year in and year out they lay there, Autumn leaves drifted own on them, spring rain gurgled in their eye-sockets. "Waggh.  is what the skulls said.  Here's what you'll get if you come here, messin!  Waggh.  Red, red Waagh."

They could see that there were fires springing up on the west bank, too.  Little lights that soon grew to strong golden blazes shining out across the dark waters.  That would be the Baron's men.  The Rangers would have seen the Orc camp at Skull-Pile, and would be coming down to the water with bows and dogs, they'd build more watch fires and wait throughout the night, while the Sheriff's riders galloped from stead to stead all the way to the Refnsburg.  All over the Mittelmark, men would be waking and arming, preparing to march down to the river and fight the Orcs when they tried to cross.

They were wasting their time.  The Orcs were going south, not west.

The Bad Moon Boys came into the camp and reveled at the sight of the Orcs and Gobbos gathered about the bonfires.  The air was hot and savory with that WAGGH-ish wrath, a searing sort of joy, a wildly cheerful viciousness.  They saw Gobbos leaping over the great conflagrations, bouncing through the walls of fire; the ultra-exuberant, showing off for their mates. Sometimes they misjudged, fell short, were wrapped in the hungry flames and devoured, screaming horribly.  Their friends guffawed and cackled hysterically.  Best of times.  

Big Bad Moon, Chief of the clan, could see that not all the Orc-bands had come, not everybody was feeling the WAAGH like he and his boys were feeling it, but he saw his old mate, Scarffgagg Sorehead, sitting on a driftwood log, rubbing his jaw and muttering to himself, his red eyes stabbing the wildest sort of wrath.  He saw wily old Narchukk Tounge-cutter cursing and kicking savagely at a pair of his Arrer boys who were locked in one another's arms, rolling around beside a huge fire, trying to kill each other over some trifle. "OY!!  OY!!!  Leave it, you shits!  Save it fer...fer...fer dem uvver shits!!"  

He saw Willie da Wheela, the only Gobbo he had ever come close to having any respect for, go tearing by in his wolf chariot. knocking one of Oogie Spazzjabber's gobbo boys unconscious with the flat of his enormous great sword as he passed.  Just for fun, you know.  Willie's wild cackle trailed after him as his chariot rumbled away into the dark.
WAGGH...
WAGGHH!!!
"WAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" bellowed Big Badd Moon, no longer able to contain his raw exhultation.  Behind him he heard his boys raise their voices to the mad moon, echoing him.  All around them there now ran, like a rip-tide, a jibbering, jammering, wild wailing, tumult of response...
And then...
"OOOOO"S DAT???!!!!!"

Big Badd Moon

  It was a voice every Orc and Goblin in the Black River country knew well.  A sound like great stones grinding beneath the surface of the earth.  A sound like the iron gates of hell grinding ponderously open...Once a boy experienced that voice, he never forgot it.  You didn't so much hear Big Blackie's voice in your ears as you felt it in the pit of your stomach. Every other voice fell silent.  There was only the crackle and snap of fires in the dark, the slow thunder of the great river in her passage.

"OOOOOZAT, HUH?  ZAT ME MATE, BIG BADD MOON?  ZAT ME BAD MOON BOYS??!!!"
Not too distant was a great fire who's light was almost hidden by a great crowd of boys gathered around it.  Abruptly they gave way, a retreating wave of Orcs and Gobbos scurrying to clear a path, nobody wanting to be caught between the great chief and the object of his attentions.  Left outlined against the leaping red flames was an enormous Orc, a squatting silhouette more like to that of an Ogre than to a son of Gork and Mork.

Big Badd Moon felt a powerful quiver in his bowels.  He felt his marrow turn to water, but his cold, grey heart swelled and burst with pride that the great Black Orc would call on him direct-like, would speak to him like a mate.
"AYE!!  I, Da Big Badd Moon 'ave come, War Boss, and I brung all me lads!  Da Bad Moon is rising!"
The awful voice spoke again, a sound like thunder on the Dwarf-mountain, a sound like the waters of the great river rushing in flood...
"UMM!  BAD MOON RISING!  CUMMERE, BIG BADD MOON!  LESSEE YOU AN YER BOYS!"  And Big Bad Moon strode forward into the firelight, into the gaze of the great Orc...

To be continued...