So I Painted Some Warhammer...

So a couple of months ago I dived headlong into my very first tabletop war game miniatures painting project. I painted pirate battle game Dreadfleet and enjoyed it immensely - even though I'm still yet to play it. You can read about the completion of that here.

At the time I hinted that I was going to jump into a real Warhammer box set next, namely Island of Blood, which contains two small starter armies (over fifty miniatures). And then I went silent and never updated my progress. Well, I'm back now and let's just say I've sunk my teeth into quite a few projects. I've still never played Warhammer, and still know very little about it, but damned if I don't enjoy painting tiny plastic men!

I've tried most nerd hobbies at some time or another (I figure if a lot of people are into them there must be something fun there) and this is probably my final frontier. When I was a child I bought the odd miniature and had dreams of painting them, but never had the ability. So it's kind of cathartic now to pick up some of these things that fascinated me in my youth. But most of all I find painting incredibly relaxing. It also means I've been catching up on a lot of TV.

So to get a glimpse of some of my recent attempts join me after the jump. Let me warn you in advance... this is VERY image HEAVY. Make yourself a coffee while the images load! And don't bother opening it if you're on your phone.



Okay, I'll stress that this is just a sampling of what I've done, and also that I'm still have a lot to learn. I'm kind of clumsy with the tiny stuff (some of this stuff is way smaller than it looks in images) and I'm trying to pick up techniques as I go. But - like most things in my life - I've kind of skipped all the theory and am just giving it a go.

I think the idea is that you choose an army and then expand upon it, but I found it really hard to choose. I'm kind of concurrently working on ten armies at the moment, which is impractical, if not dumb.

My first my though are the skaven, who are basically filthy rat man. I really dig them, the gross organic stuff is far more fun to paint, and I intend to continue to expand upon them. Here's the hellpit abomination Frankenstein rat thing that I teased before the jump...

You can't see in this picture but he has a hamster wheel built into his back legs. The skaven have all sorts of weird contraptions going on. Like this badass doomwheel. You may have to squint to see the driver in the centre...

Here are some rat ogres which were a ton of fun to paint. I want more of these guys...

And these are the regular infantry. I have twenty of them here...

... and I still have another 20 to paint. I am so sick of painting these rats, but they come out pretty cool. Here's a clearer view of one of them. They're all a little different though....

Oh! And these guys are fun... I don't know what they're called. You're going to notice that I have no idea what I'm talking about with a lot of this stuff. I'm like your grandfather trying to name the cantina aliens in Star Wars...

So that's some of my rat stuff... but my real favourite at the moment is my most recent acquisition - my Vampire Count army. It's also my biggest at the moment...

Here's one of their leader guys...

And this monstrosity is the Coven Throne. It's three hot vampire ladies (which I failed to photograph properly) sitting on a throne borne by ghostly horsemen. It is the craziest sculpt ever and might be a little difficult for you to work out...

Here's a better look at the ghost horsemen...

The other big model in this army is the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon. His spine was a bitch to paint. I had trouble getting a great angle on this one...

Here's his profile if that helps...

I've got three of these big bat guys whose name eludes me...

And check out this happy customer...

He drives the corpse cart which is full of messed up bodies...

I painted 20 skeleton warriors and 10 ghouls, but instead of showing you them I'm going to show off my zombies!

Zombies are great fun to paint and I went for a wide range of skin tones to show various degrees of decay. Here's some closer looks...

I still have unopened Vampire stuff I haven't even assembled yet. Have some cavalry who are skeletons covered in GREEN FIRE! Holy crap!

What else...

Ogres are a lot of fun. I've painted about seven of them, plus their minions but haven't photographed them for you. I do have this picture of the giant creature they ride though...

That thing has the greatest face ever...

And here's a better look at the ogre riders...

Another army I enjoy are the Orcs and Goblins. The goblins ride around on this massive spider...

And I also painted 10 mini spider riders. Here's a couple of them...

The orcs ride kickass boars...

And here's some run-of-the-mill orc infantry...

My least favourite army to paint are the High Elves because they're neat and have a lot of white on them. They're really difficult for me, and I find their infantry boring, but they have some neat creatures and stuff to play with.

Boring infantry with blurry models in the foreground:

A prince guy on a huge dragon...

These crazy guys ride griffins!

And they have chariots pulled by LIONS.

Here's a glimpse of their mage too, in a tower I painted...

I have quite a few buildings (a tower, a house, and a graveyard with three mausoleums) but they barely fit on my over-stuffed board. The regular board is 4 x 6 feet, and I just don't have room for that at the moment. My board is 2 x 4 and is already a problem.

WHAT ABOUT SOME LIZARDMEN!?

I like these guys but I'm not very good at painting them. I need better techniques for their skin. Here's one of the ten cavalry I painted. Looking at him know I can tell exactly what wash I need to put over him (one that I didn't own when I did him)...

Far cooler is this big dinosaur the little skink warriors ride on...

This is a controversial colour choice because the skinks are supposed to be blue like all the other lizards but I made them pink so I wouldn't get bored. That's their shaman or priest or something at the top there....

Home stretch now. I have some dwarves...

This first pic is the leader guy. The two assistants on either side of him aren't Warhammer miniatures but I added them to boost morale...

And here's the infantry guys...

And finally I'm also working on a Chaos Daemon army, and this is just a little hint of what I've done so far...

That's only nine different armies right? The tenth is a work-in-progress. I bought a Warhammer 40K Dark Eldar Battleforce so now I'm foolishly trying out the science fiction stuff too. Which is going to be an issue!

So there you go! A very belated update of my current hobby. I have ZERO idea of what I'll end up doing with all this stuff, but I could always learn how to play the game, right?!