Human Slaves

The Warhammer Armies entry for Human Slaves

As the inset text says, these are lobotomised eunochs used as auxiliary troops for the Slann. I stuck to earthy tones for these guys with a contrasting bright blue for the woad style markings. I either used wooden style shield sculpts or painted on wood grain effect on the old citadel shields.

Labotomised Human Slaves Led by a Slave
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The Human Slaves were assembled from a combination of Perry Mahdist Ansar plastics, old citadel thug and a couple of Katsina miniatures. The Slaver boss is called Grandpa and is one of Doti’s sculpts. The grisly totem is from an old Kroot Carnivore squad.

Forward you pink brutes!

In games these can be used an inexpensive reserve unit or simply to catch cannon balls.

Bubbles and his Giant Spiders

Warhammer Armies 3rd Edition Slann Animal Handlers

Bubbles the spider trainer commands some of the most fearsome fighters in the army by use of special control crystals implanted into the spiders heads by means of some techno-magical secrets known only to the spider trainer cult.

Bubbles with a quartet of giant spiders

These spiders are two different sculpts of a giant spider by Doti for Katsina miniatures. She has managed to combine some cute features with some real menace – the large size of the models helps in this regards.

I have painted them with very bright threat style markings that warn other creatures that this creature is deadly. It can afford to advertise it’s presence so any other creatures better watch out!

Bubbles is of course also one of Doti’s sculpts. He has been designed alongside the spiders and shares some of their creepy cute menace vibe. They are no slackers on the tabletop so far and have already sacked the shrine of Rigg at BOYL 2019. I expect great things from my spider force going forward and will probably have to get Doti to make some more of them as they are such great fun easy models to paint.

Slann Warrior Priests

I had a test model for the Warrior Priests done ages ago and only recently actually finished the unit, such is the way with these things.

Warrior Priests unit entry in Warhammer Armies (Warhammer 3rd Ed.)

The Slann Warrior Priests are the elite warriors in the army and are limited in number. A unit of 10 is all you got in 3rd edition for your army, with the exception of the 4 Warrior Priests who guard a war altar if you took one.

Slann Warrior Priests

They could can a 100pt magical standard, so I have represented this on the snake banner with some lightning bolts to represent a Divine Icon of Wrath spell. They can also carry a 25pt magical instrument and so I have given them a guy with the elaborate horn from a Citadel plastic goblin as the hands are about the same size.

In games they are fun, being subject to frenzy. It’s hard to get these guys to frenzy as their cool value was so high it was rare to fail the test. Mages have a better cool bonus than heroes so are a better bet to lead the priests if you wanted to get them to frenzy.

I painted them with sinister looking black war paint with red palms and feet to evoke the hands being drenched in blood. Most of them are carrying enormous hearts and sacrificial daggers. They have no pupil so they look more like glowing magical orbs that are the same colour as the highlight on the dagger.

Sea Reiver Raid, Rivers Run Red

Recently I have made some new additions to my growing 3rd Edition Warhammer Slann army project.

I managed to paint up many copies of my own Bizaza blowpipe trooper sculpt and added in a couple of the vintage Perry Twins sculpted Citadel Slann models to break the monopose up a bit.

The colour scheme is straight outta Warhammer Armies ;P

I got the enthusiasm to finally finish off 5 Bob Naismith sculpted cold one riders. The riders themselves are Trish Carden sculpts, although I think the leader, who is a 40k Slann, might be a Perry.

Bull Slann Riders

I have heavily modified the basic cold one by adding on a fur saddle, an idea coming from Steve Beales blog. This helps me to fit the rather oddly posed riders on convincingly. That era of Slann were designed with wide open leg stances to be used as either riders or foot infantry. I also added a banner pole onto the back using brass tubing and brass wire to detail. Finished by sculpting a feather onto the top. The banner bearer is done similarly. Shields have had feathers sculpted on also. I made the long spears using brass rod, with some green stuff to simulate bamboo. The spear head is from an old Slann spear top.

Here we see our lady elf from the recent #makeatrish painting competition recently on one of the popular Oldhammer friendly Facebook groups.

Dark Elves are expert sea raiders, marching up the beach in a tight protective armoured formation, supported by fast firing repeater crossbowmen who use the main block for cover

Fast moving armoured missile cavalry

Dark Elf beach head

Cold ones surge forth in a frenzy

Bull Slann Rider Champion

Bull Slann Riders with Standard

Citadel Perry Slann

Jungle Warfare

The Venom Tribe

El Jefe waits for his moment….

….and strikes

Hail to the King Baby!

The Temple of Painted Bizaza Masters

I painted these using the master castings so the details are much more crisp than previous efforts.  They  are very straight forward to paint as they have very open stances.  I find painting the 2 handed weapons separately and attaching them later is a good idea.

I tend to use lots of shading and glazes on them.

I like the copper and leather basic equipment colours on these guys, they benefit with bright contrasting colours as spot colours.  I have used a jade green colour on the stones and jewellery tends to be gold.

The eyes are basically like cats eyes with a vertical black oblong.  Lots of purple and red washes work well around the yellow eyes to give them some warmth.

 

 

I knocked this thing together last week.  Basically layers of polystyrene and some foam card for the rails.  I created a stone face tile and made a siligum mould to pour plastic resin castings.

 

El Jefe

El Jefe is the leader of my new Frostgrave warband.  He is a heavily converted Slann Animal handler model from Citadel.

 

Here is the actual warband…

The Armour of the Moon

Back in March Axoim via the Oldhammer forum came up with the idea of running a challenge where people would paint a single model under a common theme and then the entire collection of figures would be awarded randomly to one of the participants.  The theme was basically a force of multi-racial lawful warriors sworn to seek out and destroy the forces of chaos.  The name for this warband, “The Dogs of Law”.

I duly volunteered to paint up a Slann for this, someone gotta represent for the frog people, can’t have the dry skins getting all the glory!

The simple approach would be to just paint up a suitable Slann model from my collection but being me I can’t just take a simple approach, ideas come and demand expression or they will just bounce around in my head irritatingly for years.  The idea which appealed to me the most was one rooted firmly in proper Warhammer cannon.

Antiriad is a corruption of Anti-Rad suit

The Slann of the Warhammer world are the remnants of a once mighty spacefaring species and so I wanted to create a character which gives a tip of the hat to all that jazz.  There were a couple of notable influences on this, Homer Simpson and the old computer game The Sacred Armour of Antiriad.

In rod we trust

So that leads to this chap who is based off an old Eagle Warrior from 3rd Edition Warhammer:

Slann Power Suit Conversion

Side and rear detail

“Moixa’remoh was once a humble servant of the Temple of the Moon at a time when the temple was set upon by raiders, devoted to the chaos god Tzeentch. During the course of the battle a great miscast of magical energies by the chaotic sorcerers directed at the temple had the curious effect of reactivating the warp reactor of an artefact of incalculable age.  As a high Slann artefact, it was much more than a mere machine.  The suit was symbiotic,  autonomous and intelligent and aware of the impending threat.  It reached out to the closest Slann mind, the mind of the servant Moixa’remoh who was drawn to it, and into it, bonding with the spirit of the suit.  A new prime operational directive was instated, enforce order, annihilate chaos…”

The Armour of the Moon

The colour choice for this one was to be more or less limited to olive and bone.  I wanted the suit to look ancient so I used a good deal of weathering on it with the exception of the mysterious glowing green weapons, the gold visor and the edge where the visor would have been clamped shut for aeons.

Rear details

Right side

Left side

Elevation

It is a space suit after all 🙂

Now don’t forget who’s planet this is!

Demon Frogman Eagle Warrior

No update in a while but fear not loyal reader for I have been relentlessly working on a sculpt for a Demon Frogman Eagle Warrior.  This is but the beginning my spawn-kin, when I get enough frogmen sculpted I will surely do a professional production run if you wish to get your hands on copies.  Rather than have a text heavy post I will point you to the discussion about this project in on the Oldhammer forum if you are interested.  I will paint up the prototype and post it up soon.

The (almost) finished green

Quick and dirty prototype casting

Size comparison

Right side view

Left side view

 

Rear right

Rear left

Cold Blooded Killers

Finally made some headway with the Lizardmen, huzzah!  This selection of 14 models will be added to the previous 10 Lizardmen I painted earlier on in the project.  Mr. Saturday was kind enough to supply me with a bunch of these classic citadel plastics which I think fit in a lot more nicely with the Oldhammer vibe than the current range of  Lizardmen – who look like bobblehead dinosaurs to me.   They fit in nicely with the Bob Olley venerables which I had  painted previously.  So that makes for 24 Lizardmen….which is too many really.  So with 24 of them done I now plan to take the biggest 4 lizardmen from Bob Olley and rebase them on a 40mm square base to make me some Troglodytes.

Lizardmen Warriors

 

The keen eyed among you will note the presence of a Snakeman in there.  It’s great to be able to work in a classic and unusual model like this fellow.  I think the original model had a little damage on the neck but I just painted over it and made it a feature rather than do complex green stuff restoration.  Of note also is the use of parts from the Savage Ork kit.  I thought that the original weapons were a little on the weedy side for double handed weapons or spears.  The aesthetic is somewhat shifted to modern with these conversions but then that’s me, one foot in the past and one in the present, like a navy seal carrying a broadsword.  The effect of using the oversized weapons is to make the Lizardmen feel crazy strong like this chap mightily wielding a massive polystyrene boulder against the greatest actor in the world:

A Gorn from Star Trek The Original Series – and if by some miracle he happens to be reading, f*** you J.J. Abrams, or “The Butcher of Star Trek” as I choose to refer to you as, although I am sure that will be changed to a more generic “The Butcher of the Stars” when you butcher Star Wars.

I used the weapons, along with the hands in many cases.  There is a difference in size between the hands but I doubt you noticed that.  I opted to paint the flint stone weapons black and then highlight the extreme edges and gloss varnish the blade.  This is to give the impression of them being made of obsidian (volcanic glass) rather than stone.  And to finish up (and keep Cheetor happy) here is what they might look like in a skirmish based system:

Lizardmen in a dispersed formation more suited for Sci-Fi gaming

So next up with these guys is to make them a movement tray and amalgamate them with their scaly brothers.  I may add some shields from the savage ork kit at a later time – did I mention how much I like that kit?

 

L8RS

A Sabre Tooth Tiger? In Lustria?

Time for an update to the Slann army project.  With the August Oldhammer 2014 meetup fast approaching I really need to literally get the lead out and get cracking on more units for the Slann army.  So far I am locked into Eagle Warriors, Warrior Priests, Lizardmen, Jungle Braves, Human Slaves and a Spawn Bands unit, so lots of work is pending.  Add to this some character models and cavalry and also some of my favorite troop types in any army list, animal handlers.

Warhammer Armies 3rd Edition Slann Animal Handlers

You can have up to 4 handlers who can control 2 – 6 animals.  In 3rd Ed. missile hits on the unit are randomised so if a handler gets killed and there aren’t enough handlers to control the animals, the excess of animals gets lost.  A ratio or 1 handler to 4 animals is about the sweet spot.  Options for the animals are excellent in the Slann list with access to some very nasty beasties indeed.  Even the cold one warhounds at the lower end of the spectrum deserve respect.  Spiders and Scorpions are nasty options but my heart belongs to the Sabre Tooth Tigers.

The Favorite

“The Favorite” is what we call our cutest feline at home, stuff you could never get away with with children gets great mileage with cats.

 

So today I present for you the first pair of Pan Tangian Tigers which I think you will agree make for some nice looking Sabre-Toothed Tigers.  No idea of who sculpted these but the are some righteous cats.  I will add in some more tigers to this unit at a later time to bulk them up to at least 8 models.  You will note that one of them is painted in the livery of Battle Cat from He-Man (crossover with the Mastorks of the Ooniverse project right there 😉 )…

 

Cringer/Battlecat

…and one in the livery of the Pink Panther…

 

The Pink Panther – as requested by Erny

 

So we end up with this:

Sabre-Toothed Tigers

Slann Animal Handler’s are known for their magical cosmetic breeding alterations apparently

So expect more celebrity cats on this journey, requests will be taken seriously. 😉