Warhammer World Photobomb pt2. Titans, dioramas and nostalgia

In the upstairs exhibition I went a bit snap-happy as it included plenty of Golden Daemon entries, most of which were int he last White Dwarf but you can still enjoy these shots with the added advantage of glass reflections! First up this Warhound Titan diorama. 

I love this crackle effect on the carapace.

Reaver Titan

Chaos Warhound.

Doctor Who figrues from the 80s

Dark Future cars - 'beyond the Thunderdome!'

Original Citadel miniatures packaging, even I don't recall these!

First miniature cast at the Lenton factory in 1997.

Old skool Citadel miniatures.

Old Skool Orks, we like primary colours.

Even more 'Playskool' Orks on boars.

Nobz

Space Hulk Stealers nu and old [in the background].

Space Hulk Terminators

Dioramas

Mordheim

Ork villages

Now this would make a cool Orky Bastion.

Those new plague flies.

Empire Flagellants, love 'em.

Attack in the court of the Lizard King.

Armies on Parade winner

Spot the Lictor. Trygon with Crushing Claws - awesome!

Ripper with a helmet.

Bill the Pony and his horsey mates

What can I say? It's Bill the Pony. I always planned to have him in my Empire Army and although he's been in this Humbrol Enamel state for decades he's been in the Dettol so he can be shiny and new some day soon.

http://www.solegends.com/citlotr/bme1fellowship.htm

Now this fella is indeed another Lord of the Rings figure but not from the Fellowship set. I think it's a Citadel Miniature and is one of the Black Riders mounts. Not sure where the Nazgul is but of note is the mistaken use of red poster paints on the hooves and eyes, y'see they're flaming right!

Partiuclarly mistaken in then using it on these elven chariot horses as no matter what I did the poster paint bled into the white. Successive coats still of white paint were left with an unearthly pink glow anywher in proximity to the red poster paint, which pretty much killed off all efforts to continue painting them. Except of course for ranomly starting again in black, which was sure going to solve that seepage problem.

http://www.solegends.com/citmd/md04elfchariot.htm

Anyway, check out the solegends site, there's plenty of old skool stuff that I remember/still own!

WFB - Dwarves

Dwarves - gotta love 'em. They were my first love, well there ninjas so they were my second love, OK so I could never knock a Ranger, so third, oh I had a thing for half-orcs... erm OK I really liked dwarves back in the day. I remember one Christmas ticking off all the dwarves I wanted and handing the list to my Great Aunt. She's 91 this weekend and back then she was awesome. She couldn't do enough for me and my brother. Whereas my grandparents, who lived next door to both my aunts could often be the disciplinarians Auntie was cool, even if as a child you couldn't ascribe coolness to someone in their 60's and 70's. Regardless Auntie indulged her nephews in whatever we wanted, for my brother it was RC cars, for me it was GW. And when it came to Christmas we all sat their in her lounge and I opened this little box to  reveal all the little lead [pb] men, my grandparents intrigued up to the point where I excitedly explained what it was for them to immediately lose interest.

Thankfully I still have some of those very first figures in particular below the dwarven knight on the left of the 'chaos' dwarf standard bearer is one of those original figures and one I still love to this day.

Here's the line up of the 10 figures I painted up to be an Allied contingent to my Empire army. The banner came from some Orc figures I got back in the day. There were around 50 orcs, with spears and swords from some independent figure company. The models were really poor but I was after quantity at the time.

First on the left is the plastic dwarf from the Warhammer box. Elves, Dwarves, Skaven, Goblins, Orcs and Dark Elves on a sprue that was in the shape of a Warhammer [clever, see what they did there?]

Not sure where some of these Norse Dwarves came from, I know they weren't in my Christmas box.

However the two on the far right definitely were. Christopher Eccelstone as a dwarf and the crossbow guy [who was my second favorite dwarf] with his nose peaking over the padded leather armour.

These guys didn't get finished, another 'chaos' dwarf pretending to be good, the guy in the middle with a Heroquest Orc's plastic Morningstar, a Dwarven Rat Catcher and another of my X-mas treats with kettle helm, padded leather armour and spear and shield.

Lastly, another five. The chaos dwarf on the left is the same as the standard bearer only he still has his axe at his feet. Another X-mas original next [why the long face?], a very 'Empire' dwarf, he's practically a pirate with his hat and flamboyant dress. Next up a dwarven assassin and this guy has everything, a cool helm, dagger, shield and a mini crossbow on his back. There may even be a coil of rope over his shoulder. As a child I always wanted a a rope and grappling hook, you cannot imagine how cool this figure was in my eyes. Lastly a dwarven berserker, yeah whatever!

WFB - Homemade Hellblaster volley gun

Another one of my home made Empire artillery pieces, a Hellblaster Volley gun. All that was needed was some copper tubing, some Milliput and some balsa wood. The copper tube was cut into nine equal pieces. The pieces were glued to a balsa triangle and Milliput was wrapped around the end and the middle to hold the pipes together.

A box was constructed for the breach [I think that's the correct term] and a Milliput cog was made. Although not in this picture this had a sprue crosspiece from between four slotta bases as a handle and a skull was positioned in the centre.

One of the plans for this was that GW ran some rules in White Dwarf to mount a Hellblaster Volley Gun on the back of a wagon and with my success creating the Empire War Wagon I thought I'd have a go at that, though ultimately never got round to it. If I ever find the rules to it I'll pop them online.

Tin Bitz

I don't know if you noticed but back in the day I was a fiend for metallic paint, insomuch as I always liked to contrast silver with gold and as evidenced with my Epic Ultramarines would differentiate units by metallics. Aside from silver and gold I had a shockingly bad copper that never mixed right and subsequently abandoned all usage thereof. Fast forward to today and I've the typical Vallejo Starter Game Colour Paint Set which affords me a Chainmail, Silver and polished Gold equivalent. With the additions of washes any set of Metallics can now be enhanced beyond all my schoolboy dreams, with shadows, stains or grime.

Saying all that I've a need for more metal! I'm in the market for a copper and a bronze but equally I needed to do it on a budget. Most of the art acrylics go up in price to GW equivalent as soon as you say the word 'metallic'. You do get about 3 times the amount of paint though so it isn't that bad. They have an awesome copper and bronze but I thought I'd go for Tin Bitz, just because. I'd been doing a pretty good approximation by mixing Mechrite Red and Chainmail but that's not sustainable when I need the red for basing.

With the Drop Pod in progress I decided the interior needed more variety than Chainmail and Gold. I'd also tried the Gold on the back of my Dreadnought with shocking results and needed a way to rescue this. In the mean time I'd seen this story on GW's website. Michal Gmitrasiuk had painted some awesome Blood Angels and I wondered if I could use the same battered gold/bronze effect on my Drop Pod...

So with Tin Bitz in hand I wondered what I could do? A simple dilution with water and as a wash it's awesome. Suddenly everything looks like it's coated with a stained oil. I'm not sure how well it shows up in this shot of my DropPod ramp but it's a nice effect that could be enhanced with more washes. As a dilution of paint you'll certainly get more coverage than using a wash to get the same effect though so it's a neat little option.

 Additionally it made a perfect base on the 5 uprights of the drop pod. Then a 50/50 mix with gold and there was a pretty decent bronze that when stippled in place was starting to approximate Michal's effect. With a rough 30/30/30/10 of Tin Bitz, gold, chainmail and silver the next set of stippling was even more effective. The end result isn't quite as good as Michal's [but then have you seen is painting?!] but his tutorial on CoolMiniOrNot [that I found after this] has a few more process involved and a lot more washes [which I wasn't about to shill out for].

Overall I really rate Tin Bitz as a versatile paint choice that can really broaden the options of what you can do with just a pot of chainmail and gold.