Grav Tanks

This years last post, showing all my tanks!
First, all the mouse tanks I made up to now.

And another picture showing also the skiff, a big hovertank and two eldar tanks.

Grav tanks, Hoverers and Rust

The social media are great for the instant gratification of sharing pictures anc collecting likes, but then the pics get lost in that mire of visual overload. For that I'd better put the last months' photo's together.
Here are a few pics of several little projects I've been working on:

Another grav tank built from a mouse.

 A desert skiff, made with a mouse and a plastic tray.

Rusty scenery for Dogtown, a hive of scum and villany on the outskirts of the space-port city of Oltremare on Tishtya IV.

Cuckoo

"This is Cuckoo, amusement park renegade with attitude. Originally he was a purple bear named Bubbo, but lost his head during the attack of the Deadbuggers gang. He grabbed the head of Mr. Eagle and became the infamous Cuckoo."

Cultist murder junkies looking for thrills in the night

 and two new pictures of old miniatures: Darth Kraut and a young insurgent moisture farmer

Freikorps Rorschach and archeologists

As was to be expected I got distracted. From Frostgrave to Rogue Trader I returned to the Back of Beyond. I even started a Facebook group dedicated to the period.

Two and a half years ago I made a start with Freikorps Rorschach, but only recently I decorated this car.

Major Rorschach and his Freikorps is send by his financer to travel through the recently collapsed Austro Hungarian Empire to meet an aqcuaintance in civil war torn Ukraine. From there the road goes to central asia to investigate terracotta artifacts. At least, that's the plan.
 

In the works (but for quite some years already) more Freikorps (with Copplestone, Brigade Games and Great War Miniatures), Red Sailors and revolutionary citizens and the notorious Ukrainian anarchist Makhnovichina. 
I'm waiting for a parcel of Brigade Games' austrians to make a unit of Hungarian POW bolsheviks.

Here's Hauptmann Rorschach and the comittee of silly hats of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut: his trusted leutnant and an archeologist and spiritualist who joined the expedition. Troubled by unexplained disturbing dreams der Hauptmann has an unkempt if not savage appearance.

Two of these are based on Copplestone Castings' Turks with substituted helmet and cap. I'm supposed to do this with an entire squad of Turks and pressmoulded putty stahlhelms. The guy with the Bergman gun is a simple headswap with a Grenadier Half-Orc.

Genestealer Cockroach Cult

I'm working on my genestealer cult. I've decided for a cockroach theme. At first only because I thought it would be fitting. Lately though, a dose of Naked Lunch is creeping in. I'm referring of course to  Willian S. Burroughs cult novel and the film adaption by David Cronenberg. 

Mugwumps and insect typewriters are replaced by genestealers.

The hybrids will be painted like some nasty mix of human and insect, but still following the inspiration of the miniatures, the Navigators Guild from David Lynch's Dune film adaption.I'll post pictures when they are finished.

Enter Doctor Benway.

Doctor Benway, rogue surgeon, arms trader and Tox dealer. Shown here with his bodyguard of tox-heads.
This unscrupulous entrepreneur is suspected of illicit dealings with warlords, cartels, terrorists and religious sects.

I immagine tox to be a highly addictive sedative that, amongst other side effects, causes the  addicts body to slowly rot away.

Doctor Benway sells his services to the highest bidder and in this case he organized weapons and mercenaries for the genesteale cult. In some cases he may join battle if getting attacked while closing a deal or delivering goods.

One of the fascinating parts of genestealer cults is the Lovecraftian side of it. A hidden cosmic menace, masses of cultists ignorant of the true horror of their degenerate religion.

For cultists I probably opt for Spanish Civil War Moorish soldiers.
I think Morocccan warrriors fit the theme.  The cult's homeplanet Tishtrya IV being something between Tatooine and Tangiers.

Medieval Tiles

Places like the Lead Adventure Forum or the Frostgrave facebook group are good for something. They definately help create a fantastic community. The main reason I put my tile designs here on this blog was because of all the positive reactions. A couple of weeks ago I was made aware of medieval north-european tiles. A subject matter I had always completely ignored! As usual it took a few days to sink in but at a certain point the designs reappeared at random in my google image searches. Apparently my algorythmic metadata got somehow teleported into the V.A.L.I.S. mainframe and I found even more nice pics. 
In the end I found a suitable picture to do my trick and I made this:

Not bad at all. But way to symmetric.The arches and the faces pop out in an unnatural way so I mirrored some parts and covered some other parts. The end result is this: 

And a quick frosty blue version which I haven't printed yet.

Feel free to save and print them out if you like them.

I also did a little bit of modelling these days. After a few evenings of desperate searching in various boxes with old lead I found one of each Mordheim hairy head to make this little nordic band. It works quite well even though the Frostgrave bodies are slightly smaller than the old Mordheim ones.

Frostgrave (Mordheim) Possessed

Frostgrave got released. Apparently it's quite a hit and all copies sold out. The book is very well produced and the miniatures are marvellous. The resin tokens that came with the Nickstarter are very nice as well.
I didn't sit still waiting for release in the meantime. I've been digging up many forgotten fantasy figs I had stored in boxes.
First of all I'm repurposing some old Mordheim gangs. When I that game was released in 1999, I cherry-picked quite some figures I  always had wanted ind ordered them through the local GW store. This possessed gang was one of the best efforts. The Chaos Sorceror magister is  the wizard of course. The possessed will subsitute soldiers after a succesful possession spell. Furthermore a knight, several soldiers and men-at-arms, a bowman while the boar counts as a dog.

 

 North Star has simultaneously released these two 'elementalists' in their Fantasy Worlds range. Sculpted by Mark Copplestone these are not an official Frostgrave release though. The similarities with Elsa and Anna from Frozen are striking I'd say. 

 
Last but not least some Heartbreaker dwarves and Crocodile Games' Yetis.

Graven Images Late Romans

A small unit of late Romans. Unreleased models by Jim Bowen for Graven Images.  
These are rather big 30mm miniatures and fit very nicely with my Grenadier barbarians. Which is more or less what I hoped they were as I want to use them both as roman saxon foederati and LotR warriors of Arnor and as such the bodyguard of my Copplestone Gandalf, an equally big miniature.

I do hope these will get an official release eventually. Apparently there are sculpts of early saxons and franks as well. I absolutely love these  miniatures.

skulls and bones

Today some undead skeletons, stalking the ruins of Frostgrave. These are Grenadier walking dead done by Copplestone. They look like they came from an exotic southern land, with ancient Libyan or tribal Carthagene haircuts and interesting designs of the swords. I believe this little range were among the last Fantasy Warriors released by Grenadier before they closed and in fact you will not find them in any catalogue. They came with slot bases. [edit: I got these from Mirliton, who  stil sells them]

I also found this nerdy t-shirt in my closet. By Johnny 'Prison Pit' Ryan from a few years ago. To get in the mood.

Tiles!

A few people asked me how did the tiles on the ruins I made last week. 
I've been restructuring my house a few months ago and I discovered the world of encaustic cement tiles. A technique of coloured, pressed cement from the beginning of the 20th century with the most amazing patterns. 

While it's a modern technique, many of the patterns in reality are based on much older Islamic tile and mosaic designs.
While planning various options for the house I made and printed some wallpapers to see if it worked. Using pictures from various online catalogues.

Inevitably, at a certain point I tried how it looked with some miniatures having Arrakis meets Marrakech in mind.
Some of the test prints were blue tiles, and had a somewhat icy aspect. Then I had the idea that there must be tiles that looked like snowflakes that would be great for Frostgrave. And indeed they exist!

I also found some antique Moroccan ceramic design. So here a few of the designs a did, for you to download and print out. I print two pictures on one page, using Windows, for the right size. I recommend heavier, semi-gloss paper for the best effect.

Edit: more tile designs:

 

 

Frostgrave Ruins and Henchmen

I finished my first ruins. I've been obsessed with encaustic tiles for months for my own house and it was only a matter of time to trickle into my miniatures projects...
I've found several designs that resembled snowflakes and I think it works great. Frostgrave is supposed to be a wizards' city, so elaborate designs would be common.
These ruins are extremely simple. Blocks of high density foam with a stone pattern carved in. A bit of sand, printed tiles and that's it.

I would love a box or two of plastic LotR Osgiliath ruins, but they are out of production! 
In the meantime I painted more warriors. These Evil Henchmen where originally intended as dark ages Chaos Warriors. I figured full body chainmail would be something only elves and chaos warriors would wear. I painted these as a team for the Lead Adventure Painters League. Crusader Miniatures' teutonic knights with headswaps:ancient german and saxon, and West Wind arthurian separate heads.

Frostgrave Snowmen

Frostgrave goes on. There's no way back. That dark night, when I saw which cannot be unseen, included a snowman. An Evil Snowman by Copplestone, a monstrous magical construct or maybe an elemental. 
For years I had been eyeing the set, but I never bought them as I wouldn't have any use for them. But now I had.

One is decidedly vicious while the other two are a bit more silly. 

The one on the left got his hat replaced by a toupée of reindeer moss I did with superglue and sand. The other snowman got himself a Dark Age Finnish scarf. Oh yes he did.

Frostgrave warbands

I've been rather obsessed lately with the upcoming Frostgrave game. A Northstar/Osprey production. I admit I actually don't know anything about the game apart that it's about about rivalling wizards and their henchmen searching for treasures and battling in the ruins of an ancient snow covered stone city. Mordheim meets Osgiliath. Open air dungeoncrawl in the snow. The game will be released with bunch of very nice miniatures. Six or seven of them are by Mark Copplestone. I accidently saw some previews on google one friday night and I instantly was hooked. I dug up some of my old Grenadier and Copplestone miniatures and started selecting my warbands. 
Most Grenadier barbarians are half-naked, but I selected the ones covered with furs.

I've seen a pic of two frostgrave wizards with a Copplestone evil snowman. It reminded me I had a pack of unpainted inuit.

So here is my inuit snow-seer:

I imagine he went down to the frozen city with a war party to recover some ancient magical artifact.

The snow seer's apprentice:

and two henchmen: