A little bit lost, a little bit damned

[Gallivantes]

Here's the dragon I'm working on. He will have a rider when done but I figured some people might enjoy WIP shots. (It is the WIP section after all)

He was an Ebay find, missing his tail and one leg and I got him for a song. Being the Undead dragon he fits in well with the nurgle theme. I ran with the idea of the missing leg and I have fashioned him a leg stump. I gather this solution tells more of a story than if I had gone for making him a whole new leg.

The tail is indeed a work in progress and currently just the main mass created with Milliput over a tin foil armature. I plan to carry on the scale texture going down the spine and add some tissue damage like what he has on the body. The tail is in fact a separate part still as can clearly be seen from the rear view. I have yet to tighten up that seam and improve the flow of the tail shape into the body but I plan to keep the tail separate to facilitate transport.

The wings are a press mould cast and originally belong to the Grenadier Dragonlisk. I didn't have a problem with the original wings but liked these better. I also gathered that not having metal wings would lower the center of gravity considerably which could be useful for such a tall piece. A third reason is I've set aside the Undead dragon wings for a nurgle Daemon Prince and this way I avoid two models in the army being equipped with the same wings.

I also ended up lengthening the neck section by 3/4". After building the base and mounting the body on it the head posture wasn't great so I put a long pin in between head and body. This let me bend the head into a spot that balanced out the pose better and also lengthened the neck to balance out the elongated tail. When I was happy with it I filled the empty neck segment with plastic sprue and gave it a final layer of putty.

 

[Jeff McC]

Dragon and Ogre borne platform both coming along very nicely; can't wait to see them painted!

 

[inchmurrin]

Dragon is coming along well. I know they're a long way back in the thread, but what did you use as the base for the chaos dwarfs.?

 

[Plaiecivile]

I like where you are going with that dragon, keep up the good work!

 

[symphonicpoet]

I thought those wings looked a touch familiar. That old Grenadier Dracolisk is one of my favorites. That's coming along really really well. Going to be a heck of a piece when it's done.

 

[Gallivantes]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Inchmurrin, chaos dwarves have different bases but I used mostly 4th edition plastic Warhammer starter box monopose goblins and Mantic Dwarves combos.


More specifically (going by the pic on the first page of this thread)

1 and 4 are both based on goblins and their shields. They both have spare dwarf heads from Mantic.
3 is a torso with head from same Mantic dwarves, married to set of legs from the goblins.
5 is again a Mantic Dwarf body joined to the set of Mantic dwarf blown off leg stumps that came with the war machine. Head is a Mantic orc.
2 is the upper body of the Chaos Champion riding War Griffon with oh so fancy hat from Marauder Miniatures. The legs are goblin legs as a frame, completely greenstuffed over with armour.
Weapon parts come from Old plastic monopose Chaos Warriors and Beastmen, plus a mantic dwarf hammer.

I really grew fond of the little guys, got so much mileage out of cheapo monopose plastic spares.

 

[inchmurrin]

Thanks for that.

Absolutely brilliant I am greatly impressed by how much you can get out of these parts. I will have to try harder as I think this approach is the essence of oldhammer - and they look really cool!

 

[Gallivantes]

Too kind

Yeah I find it's a real kick to turn unloved miniatures and bits into something cool. There are many happy accidents once you start mucking about so I encourage having a go. For Realm of Chaos type stuff anyways, maybe not so much Empire Knights. Chaos is very forgiving.

Blu-tac is great for holding bits together to assess an idea.

 

[Gallivantes]

https://youtu.be/Qkuu0Lwb5EM?t=16

Chaos hounds, gotta have them. I've not been able to justify splurging on a throng of proper Oldhammer ones. One day I will, until then I make do. Now don't despair, there will be old lead in this post before it's over.

I had a unit of 90's chaos hounds sitting around and I wasn't entirely pleased with how they looked, all a bit samey. I had converted them years ago but they're mostly the same bodytype and posture. I rebased them at different angles but they still didn't blow me away.



I reasoned that variation is your friend when you put a chaos unit together so off I went to jolly old Ebay. Fast forward a few weeks and I had now procured some more candidates. A batch of the newer chaos hounds from 2002 according to the almighty internet. I had also gotten my hands on a unit of flesh hounds for my Khorne army. Five of which were 80's but also five from 2012 according to the same internet. These looked a good fit for my hound pack. Add these in, rob two goblins of their wolf mounts to complete a rank and I now had twenty pups of four types. There were pitbull types, mastiff types, lupine types and hyena looking thingies, spikes and barbs and the odd scorpion tail and twin head mutation, bounding and leaping forward in a flood of dogness. Variation:check.



Also, enough dogs to send a decent unit up either flank, should they ever see battle. Going from five to 20 felt satisfying. Army lists: check.

Now for that Oldhammer touch. I always loved the chaos beastmasters, and to me they always really sold the idea of using dogs in an army. The way later editions treat them like an autonomous unit sent to secure a strategically important goal independently and reliably felt... farfetched, to say the least. Trained police dogs can do some neat tricks but how do you make a pack of rabid mutant murder beasts follow complex orders like "go around their flank and attack the artillery, then attack their heavy cavalry in the rear. See you back at camp for snacks and debriefing". Most dogs I know struggle with "sit" if there's something distracting around.

Enter the beastmaster. Of course you need some evil guy to whip the mutts into a frenzy and sic'em on the right enemies. Now it all made sense. As it happened I had a Jes Goodwin ogre, sans weapon. Perfect. Some wire and greenstuff later he had a whip. He looked the part too, dressed in fur cape and armoured up with scale and plate and shield he looked like he was in the habit of handling dangerous things and had a certain bestial air about him. Oldhammer brownie point: check.



More to follow...

 

[Gallivantes]

The final element came from two angles: one, the ogre looked hard pressed to handle all twenty dogs himself (in spite of his attire). Two, I wanted to complete the rank he had started. That way I could basically "count as hounds" his entire rank in any system that didn't treat the ogre as having stats of his own, and still have a fully ranked unit. He needed help.

The bits box and some crappy plastic ungor came to the rescue, bolstered by a couple of weedier metal ungor and a metal gor. The project had kinda grown legs a bit so I thought in for a penny, in for a pound and decided to convert them to fit. Most of them have shields (to keep the dogs at bay) and poking prodding things (to goad them forward). Two of them are supporting the unit by making noise instead. Hence the bifurcated bass flute rocking gor and the hells bells swinging ungor standard. For armour I copied some of the style cues of the ogre to tie the unit together. Funky conversions: Check.



And there you have it. Besides a few bases the modelling part of this unit is done so I decided to post.



The handler rank is a bit hard to see in the whole unit shot so here's a closeup of them.



Oh and please excuse my crappy temporary photo setup. It really wasn't adequate for the whole unit shot.

 

[Gallivantes]

It turns out one of the beast handlers is a Chaos Champion. You wouldn't think it at first sight but I suppose he's at the early stages of his career.

Some closeups and backstory can be seen over at this thread, check it out. http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3057&start=198

And check out the whole thread if you haven't already, it's amazing

 

[inchmurrin]

As always great concept, great execution and conversions.

 

[Gallivantes]

Thanks Inchmurrin, glad you like it

Next up is a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.

 

[Cassarus]

Looking good!
Nice use of the old chaos ogres as the body, and thats old fellbat wings right? Are you gonna do anything else to him?

 

[Mr Papafakis]

Really looking forward to seeing your creations painted up Gallivantes

Sent from my SM-N910G using Tapatalk

 

[Gallivantes]

Thanks people hope I can impress you half as much when it's painting time.

Cassarus, the wings are from a Cthulhu "Hunting Horror of Nyarlathotep". I bought it some 25 years ago so I can't tell you what the original make was but Mirliton has it now (in the 28mm Nightmares section). Not a bad guess on the old fell bat, they are indeed quite similar.

 

[Gallivantes]

Painting update!

I mentioned earlier in this thread that I had a plan for my Nurgle Marauders. The idea was to go for more of a lightly armoured rabble of various misfits and forgo the raider-from-the-north look.

There are a few reasons I want to try this:

One: To illustrate the idea of cultists, renegades and other inhabitants of the Empire who have been suckered into throwing in their lot with Chaos. The dirty, the downtrodden, the hapless victims of the (mis)fortunes of war. A spoonful of the good old pathetic aesthetic.
Two: To add as much visual randomness as possible, something I think works wonders for Chaos units.
Three: Having humans rub shoulders with some notoriously repulsive groups like goblins, beastmen, mutants and even daemons. This to reflect the rather revolting and abhorrent nature of a Chaos horde.

So, I recently acquired a batch of Empire flagellants, something that I had earmarked as a perfect fit for this unit. I just painted them up and arranged them with the old goblins, a few plaguebearers and the odd beastman and hey presto, Marauder stew. It's not a finished unit but I like where it's going. Definitely the direction I had in mind.



Another thing I would like to incorporate are some men-at-arms or similar as they would fit perfectly. More visual mishmash and reinforce that theme of turncoats and deserters mingling with the chaos beasties. I had ordered some men-at-arms from Wayland Games during their January sale but I just got word back that the order is a month overdue. Perhaps I have to look elsewhere.

 

[Bane]

Holy shit there's some amazing stuff in this thread, I should really visit this forum more often. Your conversions have loads of character and really have the Nurgle vibe that I strive for - oh and your use of bits is very creative! Looking forward to seeing the painting progression, you've certainly inspired me to get back to my Nurgle kitbashing/converting. Excellent!

 

[Gallivantes]

Thanks Bane. You run one of my favourite Nurgle projects out there, I have been gawking in amazement at your blog many times. "Rasham's Forgotten Bandits, aka "The Blotted"" and their tragicomical walking fish banner has to be one of my favourites amongst a gallery where there are too many greats to mention them all. Your conversion work is really inspiring, I love your colour palettes and the basing theme you're using is ingenious.

Yes please do get back on the Nurgle train, I'm sure many out here will be eager to see what you come up with - I for one certainly will.

 

[twisted moon]

gallivantes, your own banner is great.