Hobby WIP: Mounted Sons of Korgaan

I picked up a lot of Chaos Knight models back in my Warhammer days. The goal was to eventually paint them up to field them in GIANT-sized games, since they cost a lot of points, and a few larger units would be fun to see charging around the table.

That never uh.. never transpired. The only mega battle I got to play in (End Times themed) I didn’t have enough painted to really use in a grand fashion. But I'm hopeful I'll get in a mega battle for Kings of War sometime. This game scales up far, far better than Warhammer did, so I’m hopeful I can convince some people to play a big game sometime this summer. I’m having seemingly perpetual  troubles nailing down normal games though, so we’ll see what happens.

Anyways, my Varangur project stared out with two regiments of Mounted Sons... but this quickly ballooned into all thirty or so of my Knight minis, spanning untouched plastic, simple repaints, and stripped models. I have been trying to batch paint these, and have been slowly hobbying on them since early March. Thirty knights are a lot to paint up!

Progress! But it has been slow going. 

All my old completed Chaos models were hit the table Marked, and painted appropriately. I decided to largely step away from that for the Varangur, opting for a rather mundane scheme dominated by black metal and brass. Fluff-wise, my Varangur will be aligned with my arctic Herd (a project I hope to return to soon, now that I've got a few things figured out), so the Varangur horses are getting the chilly blue-skinned treatment. It will add a little more color to the unit, and I think will look pretty cool on the table, with our without their Herd buddies.

In the end I plan on ending up with three regiments and two troops. With the horses done, I'm going through all the knight bits now, priming, painting and assembling them by units. We'll see how long it takes to finish these up. They are still in progress.

I did take a few breaks while painting the Mounted Sons, and do have some table-worthy models to show off though. Hopefully by the time I get around to posting those, the Mounted Sons will be finished and ready to show off too.

Hobby Update: Varangur Bloodsworn

These are the units that got my nice little 1000 point Varangur project off the rails. For reasons unknown, after I figured out my desired list, and gathered up all those models, I started hobbying on these guys instead. I don't know just what I was thinking.

I seriously don't know what I was thinking. Repaints? Over fresh sprues? Sheesh.

Infantry units in Kings of War tend to have a lot of gradations, and the Varangur are no different. In looking at the army list and my available plastic, I realized that the Bloodsworn and the Sons of Korgaan would probably give me the most trouble, as I didn’t know which unit I would actually want to run, and all I had at my disposal to represent both were Chaos Warriors.

I decided that any Chaos Warriors with big weapons would be the Sons in some form, and anything else (sword-and-board, in this case) would be run as Bloodsworn. Since the Bloodsworn were less numerous than all my halberd-toting Chaos Warriors (and had a cooler name), I decided that they would get a special paint job.

I dabble very casually in Magic: the Gathering, and decided to use a favorite card, Elesh Norn as an inspiration. In my head, the fluff would be that the Bloodsworn are young, aspiring warriors, a step up from the vigorous warbands, but a step down from the blessed Sons. These warriors take a vow of violence, and set off in white armor. When the armor is sufficiently sullied (preferably with the blood of their enemies!), the survivors are reborn in their tribes as Sons of Korgaan.

I started repainting these in January, and finally finished them up in early March. They should stand out nicely from the rest of my army. And yeah… sorry, I’m just getting around to posting about them now. I still have a bit of catching up to do with blogging.

Ready to go crack some skulls.

Despite being unscheduled, and expanding the project more than I intended... These units ended up being nice test units. Multibasing is working nicely for the Varangur so far, and is something I want to continue with. All the bases for this endeavor are pretty much done (just need to add a snow effect and the models), so I think it will turn out nicely.

Additionally, I experimented a bit with two hobbying techniques. The first a different snow technique. My old technique doesn't hold up over time (the glue turns that pallid yellow after about a year and a half). I tried a legit mix of paint, glue and baking soda this time, cut it with a little water, and I gotta say I like how this turned out. I'll continue experimenting as I go, and will likely do up a revised snow-basing post after this is all done.

Highlights!

The second technique was exploring highlights, via the cloaks. A red and a pink paint, and a red shade effect. I don't normally fuss this much, but it turned out pretty nice this time around. I'll have to explore this more.

All in all, this was a good test unit to work on, as it turns out.

As mentioned above, these guys were done in early March, so... I have a ways to go before the blog is up to date. Most of March and April has been spent hobbying on the a bunch (30) Chaos Knights, to be run as Mounted Sons of Korgaan. I've have been trying to batch paint them... which has ended up being a lot of work.

Hobby WIP: Varangur Project

Way back in January, I was cleaning and reorganizing my apartment, and got distracted. I ended up inventorying a lot of old Chaos Warriors and related (abandoned) projects. After some number crunching, I decided to start a small 1000 point Varangur contingent, with an eye to using it for possible intro games.

This idea spiraled out of control quickly, expanding from a simple 1000 points to an amorphous project of possibly considering repainting all my old Warrior models. I didn't hobby regularly, nor did I make much progress on much. This, compounded by a lack of games, meant I didn't really have much to post about.

The last month or so though, I tried to rein in the scope of the project, focus my efforts, and make some real hobby progress, finish up a few odds and ends (like the General and the Militia), and try to get back in the habit of posting semi-regularly.

Lots of bases!

Above are all the bases for this Varangur project. It's down to about 2000 points. So, double the original idea, but way, way down from where it could have been. Most of the units will be Mounted Sons (Chaos Knights) and Warbands (Marauders), which will give me some flexibility in intro-level (1000 point) lists, and be a good jumping off point if I want to get more into repainting old Chaos units, or mix in some of the more distinctive Varangur units, like the Fallen, Magus Conclaves, or any monsters.

Will have some updates and WIP posts up soon! The blog is almost current!

Hobby Update: Militia Troops

As I mentioned in the last post, my hobbying has been all over the place this year. I am still trying to claw my way back on top of my various projects and get them documented. Here’s a step in that direction, though I intended to have this up weeks ago...

The Militia have been in process for many months now. They were essentially all painted up mid-November. I am quite happy to call these guys ready for the table.

This is everyone, in a somewhat disorganized pic. I think you can get the feel for the unit without pics of every troop.

The models are a mix of leftover Romans from Warlord Games and some Fireforge Games Men-at-Arms. I wanted the unit to have a kind of “hastily-levied” look emphasized by an assortment of armor and weapons. The Regnum is pressing anything they can get into filling these “chaff” units. The mix of models seem to accomplish this visual goal well enough. The shields tie the troops together as a unit despite the various weapons and outfits. The shields also tie the Militia to the rest of my army with the purple and white coloring.

Basing these guys was a pain though. I again used some Vallejo paste, and tried out two main avenues of application:

• Glue the model to the base and then pasting around it.
• Paste the stands of the model, then glue it to the base.

In both approaches, I painted the paste once everything was set. Unfortunately, I wasn’t disciplined in my approaches, and this mostly ended up a big bad mess, exemplified in the example below.

You can totally tell where the stands of these models are... bad basing. Fortunately, it got fixed!

It took another layer of paste (and more painting), but these are looking better. I still need to nail down a surefire technique for basing these models with stands… I still have a ton of infantry (100+ models) waiting in the wings for the Regnum. In the future, I think I’ll do a more tedious approach:

• Paste the models individually.
• Glue two models at a time to the base.
• Add paste only between the models.
• Repeat until finished.
• Paint the sand.

It’ll be a lot of back and forth, but this approach should give each unit a good flush foundation to be glued to the base, and make applying the paste between models as easy as it can be. I struggled a bit to navigate between all the legs with the paste. We’ll see how future units go I suppose.

While they could probably use a touchup here or there, I’m calling the Militia done and ready for action. I had a few prospective games fall apart on me recently, but I am hopeful these guys will see the table soon!