Saturday 23 January 2016

Behold the clan battle standard

My usual snail's pace of hobbying has continued I'm afraid. In the last post I said I was going to spend some time on my dwarves - I did a little bit and finished off my gyrocopters and gyrobomber, but then stagnated again. Over the festive period I really lost my hobby mojo and didn't have any inclination to be doing anything. Annoyingly, since going back to work and having loads of marking from mock exams and coursework, I've rediscovered a drive to paint and model - right when I have very little time for it! However, I've used that as a bit of motivation to get through my dull marking - reach a milestone and then spend a bit of time painting. As such I have painted my Fimir battle standard bearer.




I really like this model as there's so many different bits involved in the standard itself - from Ogres, Skaven, Empire, Lizardmen, and Ravenwing. The axe is from a Warriors of Chaos kit, but with one blade cut off, the full axe was just too big. I wanted him to stand out a bit as a hero, so added a bit of shoulder armour, using plates from the Lizardman Saurus kit. I've used a couple of these pieces on the tails of normal warriors, but I think they help to bulk up the warrior.

In terms of painting it, I'm quite happy with how the brass looks with the Nihilakh Oxide on it. I used this paint on my Fir Bolg to make them look old and corroded, but I used it over more gold based colours, so this was the first time using on a dull brass. Whilst I wanted it to look quite heavily corroded, so I pit it over the entire brass bits, I especially tried to think about bits where water would collect and the corrosion would build up more. This is pretty easy to achieve by simply painting it on, and then wiping the excess away with a bit of kitchen roll. It leaves it suitably built up in the crevices.

On the two papery bits (one on the front and one on the back) I wanted to be able to echo the curly patterns that are on my unit standards, as well as take the opportunity to get a bit more blue (the clan colour) onto the model. So the long twisting one simply echoes those patterns. The one pinned to the board felt more like a warning notice, so I included scribbled writing, but still had a pattern to tie it into the running motif.

I have also bought some more of the Forgeworld Fimir Warriors. I already have a set and converted a standard bearer and champion, though they were reasonably simple projects, I now needed to convert one to become a musician. I had an idea of what I wanted - a set of drums hanging around the waist of the warrior as a large model needs a suitably large musical instrument. I rummaged through my stash of bits and found the drums from one of the dwarf kits that looked suitably like a kettle drum. Three of these together would make an excellent drum set. Owing to the pose of legs of the Fimir warriors it was quite hard to get them to sit right, but found one of the three models that they would work on. I had to change the pose of the arms so that they were at a better angle for a drummer so the green stuff had to be broken out again. I still need to do a bit more work with the green stuff as there are a few holes in the back of the drums that need filling in; I didn't do it before as I wasn't sure how much would be visible. I'm looking forward to fielding a unit of 6 of these guys - hopefully they'll smash things!