Valhallan Ice Warriors - 90s Imperial Guard Army

I've always been a big fan of Imperial Guard, and there's something fun about having an army of ordinary men on the field in a future full of monsters and superhumans. I do have a Steel Legion force, but when I started playing second edition, I wanted to work on a force that would be styled classically and be bright as can be.

I always wanted a guard army in the 90s and there's always been a certain attraction to Valhallans. They remain great characterful models, and the old scheme with green cammo over white is nice and striking. I've never actually painted an army in camouflage before so that was new. Like the originals, I went with quite a bold pattern intentionally as I sort of don't want it to work - I've played with camo once or twice and have seen if it actually works it will blur the details and outli es which on a miniature, especially on a table view can leave them looking indistinct and muddy. 

So far I've painted about 750 points with more on the way. In old money, that makes for a command squad, psyker, 2 units of 10 men, and a Leman Russ Battle Tank. My commander is heavily converted from a battle sister using a mix of parts, and I am going to do a separate post with details of her build as it's a long story how she came about. I was tempted to use Chenkov, but I wanted something a bit more unique and it was happy to be able to use a model from the 90s that was around in the right era. 

I had a spare plastic Advanced Hero Quest wizard and as he was looking sort of like a suitable psyker he got drafted to the force. Actually I bought a batch of miniatures to get hold of an old metal cannoness and he came for free. As he looked the part and was from the right era, I figured he would work well. I added a little fur trim to his jacket just to sell the look and get him to match the force. 

The Leman Russ has the old metal tank commander in attendance - ready to wield that storm bolter wargear card in anger! 

Actually, I haven't mentioned, but I intentionally adjusted their colour scheme a bit. Original Valhallans had dark green casings on their guns, rather than the red and yellow parts. I wanted to lift the scheme a little bit more just to make them eye-catching on the field. Looking at old White Dwarf magazines, there's a great shot on the back cover of that issue with the blood angels Blasma Cannon guy on the cover with valhallans and Tyranids. It's very early 3rd and the Valhallans are done with tan/yellow coats much like Steel Legion. I think it was an odd choice in retrospect as they were already one of the more realistic schemes in the range with the main colours being white and green snow cammo with dark green guns and fatigues. It was in the era of making things more serious for 3rd, but looking back I'm surprised they weren't just re-based on less garish bases for the new edition. 

The other thing to mention is that out of necessity there are a number of repairs done to models in this force. I got a mortar crew with no mortar so the mortar seen is a pen cap with a few spares added. I used the pen cap as the main thing to making it look original for ke was the large barrel size. 

The missile launcher guy also came with only one arm - and no missile launcher at all. I used a space marine hunter killer missile and a cadian arm with a bit of milliput to build a suitable cuff on it. 

The sandbag scenery is just chopped up hard board for a base with a stack off original milliput bags built up on top. Basically forming little beans one by one, I stack them and use a paint brush handle to shape the tops so they look heavy and sort of uneven, then after stacking a bunch, I score around the middle of the visible sides to make a seam. 

Anyway, here's a full zoomed out shot of the entrenched Valhallan 94th - they became the 94th as that's what their metal tabs say - sculpted in 1994! 

Don't forget to check them out in the Battle for Bunker 111 - a battle report here on the blog featuring this force: The Battle for Bunker 111

 

2nd Edition Sisters of Battle, Order of Our Martyred Lady

Armour as black as a dark thing... robes also very dark black. Yep, I really didn't notice how GW changed the colour scheme over the years for the Order of Our Martyred Lady.I do actually really like the darker look though - very nuny ... nunny(?) ... makes them look like nuns. I like the few additional red trim bits too, but I've introduced a little yellow to lift the characters and vehicles. Everyone likes hazard stripes - even nuns. 
 

It's not a big force yet - 6 sisters, a classic Rhino, Cannoness (yet to be named) and 5 Frateris Militia. The militia back then were basically similar to imperial guard conscripts with a brutal WS 2 BS 2 profile. The only good thing is you get a plus to BS with some guns at short range which isn't bad for a meat shield... I mean valuable citizen that the sisters would surely not use as a meat shield every single game...

I've had the metal sisters for a number of years and picked a bunch of them up off eBay in about 2012ish for an old army. They army had fallen out of use a long time ago, and these were crying out for for a new life. I got the cannoness more recently in an eBay bits lot for a few pound, but she was missing her raised icon, so I gave her a power maul to replace her missing hand. 

The legendary Frateris Militia came straight from my junk box. Led by the famous Peter Crotchplate ... an old 90s Goliath ganger who had been rolling around the bottom of the drawer as the butt of a number of jokes. Next to the left is Greco - legendary Wardancer with a weird gun conversion who also was in the junk pile. Further to the left... a bretonnian archer with a 90s chaos warrior head and a few milliput additions. Added to them was an ancient catachan and a 90s Orlock ganger. Many if these had been converted as Diggas for a Gorkamorka campaign that never really happened, and now they've been pressed back into service on the front lines of 2nd edition.  They were quick to paint too. My new tip is that if you thin gore grunta contrast it makes a good skin tone contrast!

Official frateris militia models do exist, but they're pretty rare and expensive. At some point I hope to get a few to scatter in the units for good measure. 

Back to the ladies firing guns on a sunny day in the grassy green fields of what was once not quite such a grim dark future. That said, a full suit of armour on a hot sunny day would probably get grim pretty quick. No wonder the battle sisters were angry! 

I did my best to copy the freehand door designs on the side of the rhino and they came out pretty good. I'm not a huge free-hand lover (well, I like looking at good freehand...) as I get inpatient if a design is complex, but these were good fun.

The original lore for Sisters of Battle puts them very much on the front line - functionally being the first line of defence for imperial worlds. There's no mention of Planetary Defence Forces and while waiting for Space Marines or Imperial Guard, they were there to save the earth from the scum of the universe. It also explains why Militia were a thing. It was also amusing to read that Militia were made up in part of ecclesiastical admin workers and other hopelessly unprepared types - which also explains the less than shining stat-lines. 

Exactly what job Peter Crotchplate had in the ecclesiarchy was a mystery. Master of re-education would be my guess...

2nd Edition Tyranid Army (1000 points complete)

 

Finally, a project several years in the making has burst forth from the cupboard of shame - yipping  and dribbling with oddly adorable grins, they burst forth onto the battlefield ready to tear some imperial beakies limb from limb!

A few years ago I posted a hive tyrant and then a few years later a carnifex. I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition for several years now, and do love the old game I grew up with. Back in those days, 2nd edition was in full swing, but I couldn't afford to play a second game - the price or a new starter set was way out of reach, but I still spent hours staring at the old models. Actually I remember at about age 10 spending an afternoon with a piece of tracing paper building a picture of a cool space marine force by tracing out a range of different terminators and marines! Anyway, I also wanted some tyranids. I collected these over a few years, but about 6 months ago finally got a little inspiration and picked up the termagants and warriors to really get things started.

After playing so much fantasy, I'm no stranger to a huge pile of old metal slag. A bit of building work and an undercoat and they were ready to go. I find the trick to pai ting in a second edition style is generally to start with your brightest colour and then highlight that. These warriors were given a few coats of whatever you call Blood Red these days and then highlighted with s0me oranges to really get the colour as hard as possible. Love the metal warriors too. They're so different I  design to the Space Crusade type plastic ones that they would have passed as something else altogether! You need to have a venom cannon too! 

As a side point I should probably also mention the scenery as I built that too. Cliffs are the thing of the day and were in abundance back then - as was flock ... so both were built and used liberally. I made them stackable so for photos built a big pile of them to try to fill in the back. At some point I'd like to do a painting to fill in the open sky, bit for now a furry white blanket is masquerading as clouds. 

The classic carnifex is a must - as we're a number of termagants and genestealers. Actually the old metal hunter-slayers came from my brother who got them from someone else and they were already painted. They matched my scheme so well, I decided not to strip them and just kept the 90s paint as it was. At some point I will tidy them up a bit. 

The hormagaunts were the most difficult thing to paint in the arms - lots of pointy arms on there! I do love the old design though. You can just imagine them going to town with those ferocious looking spring loaded stabby-arms. Love the long lobe type heads too. Actually these are probably the models I deviated more from the official scheme of the day on.

The genestealers were painted in a single 24 hour period. I tried to keep them pretty classic looking and used a bit of drybrushing to speed them along. Their bodies were given a solid coat of Vallejo dark prussian blue mixed 50/50 with Royal Purple as a nice saturated base to work on. I gave them a quick drybrush of this same colour with a little white in it. I then painted transparent red in all the bits that were to be pink and slowly built them up largely by drybrushing vallejo magenta with ever higher amounts of white in the mix.

The army had their first outing today in a few skirmishes. Next up might be the old zoanthrope, although more terrain also looks like a possibility. 

Genestealers break from cover to ambush a Sisters of Battle patrol

Horus Heresy Blood Angels Army Showcase - 1150 points

After a week or so of posting photos of everything individually, it's finally time to unveil the army photos. In the week since these were shot, the force has actually grown with a unit of 10 assault Marines completed.

I first put paint to model for this force on 22/06/22 following the release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy game. It's now 10/08, so that puts this at about 6 weeks ish of progress. As I've said there are another 10 finished models now that aren't pictured, so the total miniatures painted is 47, which is pretty good. The pictured force is about 1150 points, and now the completed total is 1350. A good start and there are plenty of troops for a nice solid core. 

I've said it before, but returning to old fantasy changed the way I paint hugely and upped my output of quality models massively. Fantasy uses 20 man units most of thr time, so I had to master batch painting to get an army together at all, which was what made all the difference. 

I'm happy with the old school look of these guys that was heavily inspired by rogue trader and second edition. I even managed to sneak the old metal scouts and ancient rhino in there. Taking inspiration from older versions of warhammer really makes quite a lot of sense stylistically as well as there are a large number of heresy units that draw inspiration from older models for the look of things like guns, helmets, armour marks and even tanks. 

That about rounds it out - the photos probably get a bit repetitive as I dumped the lot on here. More future posts at some point when I can be bothered to get the camera, lights, scenery and models out... so could be a long time.

 

Warhammer Empire - Averland Army

Continuing the army showcases, today we have my old Empire army. This force has come together in quite interesting ways, as Empire models are now incredibly expensive to get hold of, so I had to be a bit cunning about waht to buy. Some models are still available from Games Workshop as they have been amalgamated into Age of Sigmar's free cities, so the Helblaster was easy to find, but most other things took a bit of effort. Handily, I was given a load of old Battlemasters models. I hadn't actually heard of Battlemasters before last year's forray into old fantasy. Essentially it's an old board game made with GW intellectual property that featured a range of pretty good plastic sculpts. In this army, the halberdiers, kinghts and crossbowmen are all Battlemasters sculpts.

I remember when the first pikes came out for Dogs of War when I was younger and how exciting it was to have a new weapon in the game. If you're not familiar with old fantasy, it would probably seem strange to think that at the time there were about a dozen weapons in the game shared between all armies (two hand weapons, hand weapons, double handed weapons, spears, halberds), so something new was really exciting. The pike regiment are Landsknechts by Warlord Games. I'm really impresed with the models, and I've been using them as an allied in regiment in games using the dogs of war rules. Pikes are mean too - fighting with 4 ranks is brutal when it's not uncommon for a unit to attack with only one rank. Actually, the pikes do have an interesting thing in there - my first paper bnner in a very long time! It turns out that the secret is to varnish the paper a few times before you start painting to stop it from curling up. 

The crossbows from the Battlemasters set are pretty good, but their bows have very triangular ends, so I shaved down the bow part to make them look better. Their faces are a bit lacking in detail too, but they do the job, and I like the feathers.

Handguns (below) are from the 6th edition box set. I'm not really a fan of the more modern plastics as I think the proportions for these guys are better. Handguns are a real mixed bag in old fantasy, as they only fire every other turn. With 2 ranks, you can fire them every turn by slowly rolling them forward, so a rank shoot each turn. In theory, I still think they're pretty shite, but being as they decimated a whole unit of Orcs in their first game, I can't complain too much. 

There are a few metal characters in the force - with a Knights Panther Grandmaster model being used as my general, metal wizard (below) and a Reiksguard captain leading the halberdiers. I was happy with the patterning on the Wizard's barding. I've done some patterning and stripes throughout the force and have been quite happy with the results. It's a lot of work though as I'm painting the yellow over a black undercoat. My one tip is that Balor Brown makes a good base for yellow as there's nothing brown about it and it's basically Averland Sunset, but is easier to apply!

I think the army is at about 1200 points so far, but 1500 is pretty close, as my planned list involves adding a great cannon and Outriders, all of which are built and 2 outriders are already finished. There's also a Steam Tank in the works. 

 

2021 in review - I painted 387 models!

Despite a distinct lack of posting on the Blog, it's actually been an incredibly productive year for me. More than any year I can remember, I could completely track my progress as I finished my first oldhammer Bretonnian Knight on 4th January 2021. Throughout the year, I made a huge comeback to Warhamer Fantasy with multiple armies in the works and models both old and new on the painting table. What you see is the result of all this effort - with several sizeable forces at good levels of completion. 

I got everything together on one table for photos and I have to say, I honestly don't know if I should be proud or scared. One thing I will say, is that 2021 was the year I completely mastered batch painting - often producing full 20 man units over a few days. It was also a year with a lot of time on lock down, although as I work in an essential role, I was still working full time through the whole pandemic. Despite that, I still struggled to get everything in shot. I did take individual army photos, so I'll post the armies properly later, but here's some shots: 

I also built and painted all of the terrain too!

I actually wasn't sure what the final numbers would be like as it was easy to lose track. If I was guessing, I would have said 200 models, not 387. That's including dragons, chariots and anything sharing a single base as one model, so there was no fiddling the figures! 

To break things down in the count, here's the list, with a rough idea of the points value in 5th Edition Fantasy (without magic items):

Skaven: 95 models complete - around 1500 - 2000 points depending on characters included.

Empire: 57 models complete, about 1250 points

Vampire Counts: 80 models, around 1250 points complete

Bretonnia: 17 models

Lizardmen: 37 models, Over 800 points complete

Orcs and Goblins: 31 models, 600 points complete with some extra models. 

Dark Elves: 25 models, 500 points complete plus Black Dragon 

Nippon: 23 models, 500 point army complete

Beastmen (still work in progress): 12 models

Total: 377 models complete in 2021! 

Oh, and aside from Warhammer, I painted Megumin from Konosuba by Klukva miniatures which makes the actual total 378...