Thinking Big: K'daai Destroyer

K'daai Destroyer with
a summoning diorama

I must admit that this article is kind of embarrassing for me. I'm about to write about and show off a model which I commissioned out to Mr. Lee to build and paint for me. There are certain services, for which gentlemen must not pay money; but since I don't have an airbrush, I had no choice but to hand it over to him. Although I am perfectly aware that he will torment me every day and night for allowing him to paint for me, I am more than happy with the job he has done on it.

According to the ForgeWorld guys, K'daai Destroyers are supposed to be on 150x100mm bases. Currently, this is the biggest base size in WHFB and very few models, including the dreaded Arachnarok Spiders are mounted on those bases. The would-be K'daai model should be big, that's granted; but with such a big base, it was almost mandatory to populate the base with other miniatures, creating a diorama in the process.

So, what was used in this project? The base model for the destroyer is the Titan Overlord of Crocodile Games. This 4.5" long beast is completely metal and as heavy as a beached whale... almost... The summoner guy (which is removable) and the snail are from Scibor's Shaman and Mutant Snails set. As for the stones and menhirs, they are from Fenris Games, bought long ago for a reason that's long forgotten...

Since I was not the one who painted this, I can't give you recipes; but Mr. Lee has a project journal in which you can see the progress, the recipes and his whines. Make sure to check it out too.

Below you can see more photos of "DA BEAST". I don't want to drown the page with the images, so I added just a few of them here. You can see them all in this album. Oh, and also there is a size comparison shot with one of my Mantic infantry. Have I said that this thing is huge... :)

İzmirCon WHFB Tournament Review

Last weekend İzmirCon took place. As usual, my buddy Mr. Lee made an appearance too, driving all the way from İstanbul. The event I was looking forward to was the Warhammer Fantasy tournament which happened on sunday, where I fielded my Chaos Dwarfs first time.

What was your list, you might ask. Well, it was a little different than the list I prepared during the countdown to IzmirCon. Here is the breakdown:

• Sorcerer-Prophet (General)
     Level 4 Hashut
     Enchanted Shield
  

  

  A shot taken during the second games

     Blood of Hashut
• Infernal Castellan (BSB)
     Shield
     Dragonhelm
• K'daai Destroyer
• 6x K'daai Fireborns
• 5x Bull Centaur Renders
     Additional Hand Weapons
• 25x Infernal Guards
     Standard
     Musician
• 24x Infernal Guards
     Standard
     Musician

Totaling to 2000pts. As you can see, it was a very weak list with only 61 models, mostly because of the limited number of models available at hand. In fact, there were still super glue stains in my hand when I was rolling the first few dice in the tournament.

Anyway, if the first highlight of the tournament for me was to be able to finish my miniatures on time (I had to take the friday off to make it happen btw), the main one was receiving my destroyer. I commissioned that job to Mr. Lee and he made short work of it. If not for his efforts, I would have entered the tourney with my regular dwarfs and most likely win it, heh... Some of you might expect some photos of the monster I guess; but it deserves its own article, so, a little patience...

When I ranked up my army before the games started, people who saw my force were generally full of praises. The lava bases were their favorite, as was the destroyer; but the comments I cared about most was that they look very coherent as an army. This was big for me and I had my doubts about that since I have been gathering miniatures from different manufacturers. I was pleased to hear I'm doing ok on that front.

So, how did I do in the tourney? I came second among 8 players, losing only to the Dark Elves player who won the tournament. I must admit that I was very lucky with my match-ups through the tournament, as in the two games I won, I played against inexperienced players. Hence, I don't think that this result actually represents my skills as a general, the strength of my list or the Legion of Azgorh army list at all. On the other hand, I bagged the sportsmanship award again: Three times in a row now... The most important thing about this was I got this award while placed 2nd in points. As you know, generally it does not happen this way... at all...

Being named as the best sportsman guy allowed me to brag around a little more, right after finished bragging about my new career: A pro-painter. Also, I think I found the name of my army now: Zharr Naggrund Gentlemen! Only fitting in my opinion; but will see if it becomes a thing.

Look Who is a Pro-Painter Now

Stock photo from
Heresy Miniatures

Quick update time: I'm a pro-painter now :)

I was on facebook today and then I saw Heresy Miniatures' facebook page. I went on and I liked the page, since I own the Colossus figure from them and I'm using it as a K'daai Fireborn in my Chaos Dwarf army. Then I thought I should post the photo of the painted miniature there. Not an hour later, I received a notification that they liked it and would like to put the photo on the product's web page, it is second from the left under the description of the item with fiery paint job on it.

Time to go show off for me now. Oh, and also I need to update my eBay auctions as a pro-painter and inflate the prices. Because you know what, I'm a pro-painter now, hee-hee... :)

Countdown to İzmirCon

So, as I mentioned before, our local gaming convention, İzmirCon will take place at the end of this month. I'm keen on fielding a chaos dwarfs army for the WHF tournament which is scheduled for 1st of April, so I decided to take it a little seriously and built a roster to see what I need to paint. Here's what I'll aim for:

Daemonsmith (General, Level 2 Fire, Enchanted Shield, Dispel Scroll)
Infernal Castellan (BSB, Dragonhelm, Talisman of Preservation, Shield)
25x Infernals Full Command
24x Infernals Full Command
6x Bull Centaurs (xhw)
6x K'daais
5x Hobgoblin Wolf Riders (Bow, Musician)
K'daai Destroyer

I'm at 1999pts here with this setup. I know this is not the best list to play, it's very sub-optimal to be honest; but I'll have to field what I have in hand. Let me talk about the list a little.

So, with only 65 models, I think I will be outnumbered in every single game. It is just too low for 2k games. Too add more to my woes, I will only be able to field a level 2 for my arcane needs. There will be many difficult magic phases waiting for me, I'm sure :( I just could find enough points to fit a level 4 in. Maybe I'll drop the bull centaurs to swap the daemonsmith with a sorcerer-prophet; but at this time there are more pressing matters for me: The lack of infantries...

I have only 35 infantries ready right now, which means I'm 14 models away from fulfilling this list. I also need to build and paint 5 riders and finish the BSB which has spent way more time on my desk by now. Of course, I'll still need the destroyer and the daemonsmith painted by Mr.Lee, who will also make an appearance in the tournament with his filthy goblin horde. The destroyer and the daemonsmith miniatures already have 3 colors on them so, they can be fielded as-is even as a worst case scenario.

I ranted enough I guess. Please let me know what you think about the list and the bull centaurs I finished recently. I also added some group shots to show off what I have currently.

First Complete Regiment: K'daai Fireborns

Hunchback of
Hashut

Time passes so quickly fellas. I just noticed that it has been 3 weeks since my last update and I was like, wow... Now I won't claim that I am not a slacker; but this time my laziness was not the sole factor for the lack of updates. I spent more than half of the last 3 weeks out of town for business trips, so I am just glad that I managed to do this many.

While my work on the infantries goes on in the background, I decided to go on and finish the k'daai unit once and for all. There were still a couple of them left on my workbench, which made my k'daai regiment 6 strong. Just about the right size I believe...

Bragging Guy

These two miniatures are from two different manufacturers. The hunchback guy is Eastern Front Studios' Lava Elemental miniature from Dungeon Crawl line. The bragging guy is Colossus from Heresy Miniatures. Both are multi-part metal miniatures: Only fitting for a metal head like me, heh... There were minimal flash on them and the pieces fit together fairly well. As a result, it was not a big pain to put them together. Guess I was lucky this time...

The painting for these guys was fairly straightforward: Start with black undercoat, then wash with Blazing Orange first and then with Golden Yellow. Just make sure that, after washing, both of the colors show in the cracks. Then drybrush with a mixture of Chaos Black and Fortress Gray. After that, I just picked a few points which were the deepest parts as "really hot spots" on the minis. I needed to touch this spots with a mixture of yellow and white. That's pretty much it. The base though, I painted separately, following the method I explained in lava base tutorial.

Rock Smash Guy

When I used this painting method for the first time, I had used pure black as drybrush color, which made the miniatures look very dark and dirty. Hence, Mr. Lee offered me that lightening the drybrush color may do wonders there. Going from there, I adjusted my drybrush color and in the end, I was so happy with the results that I also repainted one of other k'daai models I painted before: The Rock Smash Guy.

So, that's my first complete regiment: Six fiery k'daais to fry the enemy alive. Enjoy...

I Bring Fire: More K'daais

Ta-daaa... Yeah, changed the looks of my blog a little. I hope you like it that way. I just thought it was time for a little change so, bear with this theme for some time... please...?

So anyways, back to business, which is the k'daais... I'm not exactly sure what's wrong with me, painting special stuff before even finishing the core infantries of the army; but here they are, three more k'daais.

As you know, even though the k'daais are in the The Legion of Azgorh army list which is presented in Tamurkhan book, there are no models released to represent them as of yet. Hence the chaos dwarf community accepted the challenge and got cracking, either by converting stuff or using alternative models for the task. Being as lazy as... umm... well, nothing comes to my mind to describe the laziness level I have, anyways, so I decided to take the latter route and searched for miniatures from different companies, which could be proxied as k'daais.

First, let me say that it was a very hard and painful task to look for these kind of miniatures. It is not easy to find the correct keywords for such a search. Then, even when you think you found a suitable miniature for your taste, you will notice that it lacks necessary scale information, which is kinda dumb in my opinion. I mean, it is not that hard to put a small ruler next to the model when taking the photos, right? Last, but not the least of your worries will be to see how the miniature looks painted. You can easily find yourself browsing through the galleries of Cool Mini or Not or a similar website for a glimpse of the end product. You've been warned...

OK, I guess I bitched enough. The three k'daai models here are from Reaper Miniatures. This US based company offers a wide variety of metal miniatures, so if you are a metal head like me, make sure to check their website whenever you need anything. The miniatures I bought from them are the Incarnation of Flame and Lesser Earth Elemental from Warlord line and Fire Elemental from Dark Heaven Legends line. As you can tell from my selections, I opted for fire and earth elemental figures to represent the k'daais: Perfect combination of Hashut's flames and the dwarves' affection for the earth and stone.

With these three are done, my k'daai regiment is four strong now and two more are waiting for me at home in blisters. I think six will be enough for my army for quite a while. I also prepared a kind of marker in the process. I intend to use it to remember the "blazing body" rule of the k'daais or an important spell i placed upon the enemy. It looks useful now. I just hope I don't forget them in my games. God, I hate that when that happens.

PS: Ran a search on Google about how to finish "as lazy as..." and here are a couple of alternatives: "as lazy as a preacher on Monday", "as lazy as a dog on a hot day", heh...

New K'daais

Manburner joins in

Scaling, oh and the marker

Incarnation of Flame

Flame Elemental

Lesser Earth Elemental

FAQ and Errata for Tamurkhan is Available

Still haven't got a chance to read the Tamurkhan The Throne of Chaos book thoroughly except the Chaos Dwarf army list; but the guys at Forge World were quick enough to publish a FAQ & Errata. This three page document is intended to clarify some of the vague points on gaming aspects, like what weapon does a daemonsmith carry or can a K'daai destroyer be wounded always on natural 6s.

The document appears to be released due to huge demand from the chaos dwarfs community, since it only contains stuff about the Chaos Dwarf army list section and nothing more. If you are interested, it is available from Forge World website.

Monster Madness: K'daai Manburner

In my last article, I hinted you all that I had stuff under my sleeve, right? Here's what I promised: A K'daai Fireborn.

K'daais are lesser fire daemons, which are bound by daemonsmiths to serve a Chaos Dwarf army in battle. In The Legion of Azgorh list, there are some troop choices that do not have models released to represent them and K'daais are one of them. Although the Chaos Dwarf community sees the lack of the models as a chance to build or convert their own miniatures (most probably because of being used to be neglected, heh), I went on to look for suitable models to be used as K'daais.

The model I'm talking about is a fire elemental from Rackham's Confrontation line. It is long out of production so I had to pay a small fortune to get a hold on to this model; but it is worth every single penny. Being completely metal, this beast is 6.5cms (2.5") long and was an absolute bitch to put together. However, I must say that I am very happy the end product. Since it's a very cool looking (and very expensive) model, I'm thinking of using this as a K'daai Manburner, the unit champion.

Ok, as I said, it is a heavy, metal model, which came in 10 separate pieces. Hence, I needed to pin the shit out of (or into) it. I started with the head as it was the easiest part. Then, I moved on to the arms and attached each of the three claws to the joints. Once they were cured, assembled it all for good and pinned it on the base again. The effort was easily over three hours, phew...

When painting the K'daai, things were simpler. Basically there were two areas: Armor and fire. I did the armor parts the same way I did the normal troopers, no problems there. For fire, I started with white and then washed with gold yellow, blazing orange and baal red, in this order. For some glows, I applied a little ogryn flesh once the washes dried. After this point, it was all highlights. First with %50 white-gold yellow, then with the same mixture; but with more white.

After I finished painting the miniature, I added the basing elements. Yeah, I did the basing after I finished the model; because I thought it could be extremely hard to reach certain parts of the model. Added a few rocks here and there, which were built from balsa, and some grits to make up for rubble and molten rocks. Pretty much that was it.

Photos anyone...?