A kitbashed chaos warrior

 

Here's a quickly kitbashed chaos warrior with a similarly rapid paintjob (lots of wetbrushing all over with a reddish brown to start with). I put a few of these rogues together the other night to use up various bits and pieces from the bits box. 

I much prefer Citadel's original chaos warriors, with their weird variety and Moorcockian vibe, to the later almost uniform armoured behemoths. So this fellow's a bit of a callback to that sort of thing.

Slightly better shots of that little Grenadier orc (auto-enhance be damned!)

Since I got a new phone (because the camera in the last one was in very poor nick), I've been somewhat dismayed by the photos I've taken of miniatures. Depending on the light, they've been ending up almost "rasterised", with the brushwork looking a lot cruder than it does to the naked eye - as in the bottom photo in this post and in all the photos in the preceding one.

I noticed that when I first looked at a photo, it looked OK, but then an automatic "enhancement" kicked in and made my highlights and shading look a lot rougher (as below). Apparently, this is because of an unstoppable iPhone feature called Deep Fusion. For the two photos above, I got round this in slightly convoluted ways. For the first, I took a screenshot of the photo as soon as I'd taken it - before Deep Fusion had its wicked way. For the second, I took a "live" shot and then went into the breakdown of that and selected a still (Deep Fusion leaves it alone). 

The focus isn't great in either case, and I've downloaded the Halide app to see if that will help. But even the slightly unfocused shots above are better - and more true to life - than the unnaturally sharpened image below.

 

A tiny Grenadier orc

This tiny fellow is from Grenadier's Orcs of the Black River boxed set. He's on a 20mm base with plenty of room.

An odd thing about Grenadier's orcs is how often they changed design. Even those designed by John Dennett (as here) vary considerably. The Black River orcs match up with much larger horse-mounted orc chieftain, a couple of wagon drivers, the dragon rider and the orcish giant, and there are also a couple of blisters of converted Black River orcs. But the other Dennett orcs are a bit different, with longer muzzles, in line with the Orcs of the Severed Hand. And then there are the ranges by various other designers, including Cliff Linton, Andrew Chernak and Nick Lund, all of which are different again.

In any case, they're all good. The photo below shows the Black River orc against one of Nick Lund's later orcs for the Fantasy Warriors range - quite a contrast in size.

 

Another hobgoblin

My mixed force of Chronicle and Dixon hobgoblins (bakemono and oni in the latter case) is growing.

 It's quite liberating to follow the example of Japanese goblins and ogres and disregard any consistency of colour entirely. After all, D&D (and hence Warhammer) hobgoblins are, in their original conception, creatures of chaos.

A Dixon bakemono goblin

 

Dixon Miniatures' Legends of Nippon range is a marvel - especially the superb oni and "bakemono goblins". I gather these figures were designed by Mark Copplestone; they certainly hold up well today.

As far as I can tell, the "bakemono goblin" concept is essentially the creation of Western games designers; Japanese goblins - bakemono or yokai - are weird and wonderfully varied beings, not the smaller oni-like creatures of Bushido and Oriental Adventures. 

But no matter! The Dixon figures are terrific and are perfect for the oni-inflected hobgoblins of D&D and Warhammer's Old World. 

Weekend round-up: dwarf, hobgoblins and orcs large and small

Despite a fairly busy weekend in various regards, I got a fair bit of rebasing and repairs done. I moved eight of my larger Nick Lund orcs onto the sandy-coloured square bases I now prefer for larger skirmishes, RPGs and rank-and-flank (I keep some figures on GW-style rounds for small-scale skirmishes). I also got eleven of his small Chronicle orcs rebased, along with a brace of Chronicle hobgoblins, and I painted a Citadel Northern dwarf berserker.

The orcs give me a unit of six "brute orcs" with great weapons for Nordic Weasel's Elf, Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde, plus a hero and a herald. I also now have a unit of eight "horde orcs" with a range of character options (leader with bodyguard, wizard, herald, champion, etc.)

These lighter-coloured bases never look great in photographs, but I really like how they look on the table. They blend in nicely with dungeon tiles, gaming mats and terrain. I'll probably add the odd tuft to them here and there, although I'm not really chasing a natural effect with them.

 

Night elves and dark elves

 These are Citadel dark elves from the early 80s. The two on the right are sufficiently ancient to be night elves, from the boxed set that was the first Citadel release for these malevolent sprites.

They are lovely miniatures, by the Perry brothers, but absolutely tiny; the night elves are only about 25mm high. These are part of a project to paint up some units for Nordic Weasel's Elf, Knghte, Pyke and Sworde, which uses units of three or six figures, along with individuals. I'm planning to get six witch elves done and six crossbow-elves, along with a cold-one rider or two.