New Ways to Decimate the Enemy: Blunderbussers

I'm back with some more Chaos Dwarfs goodies, and a what a special bunch of minis they are. Blunderbussers are one of the iconic troops of Chaos Dwarfs, dating back to very the old days. They are named after the handgun they use: Hailshot Blunderbuss.

Blunderbuss is a short range rifle that shoots fiery sharapnels to the enemy to decimate them into a pile of ash. Develeped to deal with the greenskin rebellions, they are horribly effective against hordes. In the Legion of Azgorh army list, it is possible to hand blunderbusses to the infernal guards. Upgrading the troops with these costs the CD general and arm and leg pointswise with questionable benefits. Although generally they don't appear on many army lists, I had to have some. Because they are blunderbussers :)

So, what are the models? There are two different manufacturers' minis you see here: Mantic and Scibor, surely sound familiar right? Mantic's Decimators from the Abyssal Dwarfs line look more like the classic blunderbusser, except the lack of big hats. Scibor's Strielecs however, make up for the different rifle design with the big hats and braided beards. In my opinion, they are both decent substitutes for GW's OOP blunderbussers, which would cost you a small fortune to get these days.

Here are some photos of the mixed regiment and some comparison shots between Mantic and Scibor minis, enjoy...

Projekt Core: Scibor Moscals

I have had some momentum with Projekt Core these days. This update is about more infantries; but from Scibor Miniatures this time. Scibor have this product line called Moscals, which are evil dwarfs in their own right. I already had some of their miniatures, like the Taurus Lord, a Shaman & Snails set which are used in my first destroyer's diorama and a hero. Although I am not a fan of resin and not comfy when working with it, Scibor's minis are just too good to turn my back to.

OK, so the miniatures here are a set of Moscal Boyars accompanied by a Knyaz of Boyars, a champion mini. They come with their own scenic bases and I used them here. As a Scibor tradition, the upper part of the axes were cast separately for the boyars. Knyaz's helmet's horns and shield also came separately. While working on them, I really had a hard time and ended up damaging a couple of axes when taking them out of their sprues, so be very careful when working on them.

I'm full of praises when it comes the quality of the models. They are highly detailed models with little to none flash. Although their poses are very much like the king of spades, god, they have the most awesome beard sculpts. Loved them... Speaking of the poses, some of the boyars' poses are so suitable for being a standard bearer, so make sure you consider them if you are planning to add some banner bearers to your forces.

I was not planning on doing conversion work on them, but since it was time to start the third dwarf regiment, I decided to convert one of them into a standard bearer as I mentioned above. I used a banner pole and flail bits from the WoC Marauder box and the bull icon was from Forge World's command set. I think it turned out OK.

When painting, I used my standard bronze scheme for most parts. The only parts I gave some thought were the furs on the cloak and the bull icon on the standard. For furs, I drybrushed khaki (heavy) and bone (light) over a black undercoat. For the bull, I basecoated with bronze, washed with black and highlighted with bronze and gold. The eyes of the bull have a green gem pattern; but I think the photos don't show it.

Overall, I am pretty happy how these guys turned out. OK, maybe I should have got rid of the furs, since they are basically standing on lava; but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The minis are very high quality; but their prices are also at 3,50 gbp per model range. That's almost FW pricing, so I think most people find it very expensive to draft these guys in their forces. But they came with their own scenic bases, which makes their prices a little bit more justifiable.

All the good words I said about their quality, I can't say for the box the minis come in. It's just a blister containing the bits and a piece of color printed paper with an image not even belonging to the product. Needless to say, there were no safety or building instructions either. I really think that Scibor should work on the packaging; but as I noted when I was writing about the Taurus Lord, Scibor products are not sold here in Turkey. So there is a chance that there are attractive packagings for hobby store shelves and what I got was just a version to be sold online.

Here are some photos of the guys and a comparison shot with a FW fireglaive guy. Enjoy...

Spreading the Word in Style: Sorcerer-Prophet on Great Taurus

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates. I was out of the town to attend to MetuCon, the biggest convention in Turkey. We played a mega-game with Mr.Lee there: A 6k pointer dwarfs vs his infamous green horde; but more on that later...

Now, here I have a sorcerer-prophet on great taurus figure for you this time. This kit is from Scibor Games and it's called Moscal General on War Bull. A truly awesome model, way better than Citadel's OOP great taurus model in my opinion. To be honest, I'd even choose Scibor's over ForgeWorld's Bale Taurus; but I've never seen it in person, so no more comments on this...

Let me talk about the miniature itself first. It's a no-brainer choice for any chaos dwarf general who wants to field a mounted sorcerer lord. It looks cool and affordable among the other alternatives, so I think that it is selling quite nicely. The packaging however, was very poor. Thrown in a box with no protection other than a couple of ziplock bags, the packaging neither does justice to its contents nor helps it to brave the dangers of international shipments. One of the legs of the taurus was broken when it arrived to me; but the packaging was so bad that I was just grateful that it was only a leg what was broken.

Rambled enough already... OK, this beauty stayed on my desk more that enough so I decided to finish it asap. Finished it on last friday and even managed to field it in a couple of games on saturday. As you can see from the stock photos, no conversion work done on the mini, it is beautiful as is... The building of the mini was fairly quick. Although there are 8 pieces plus the body, they caused no problem at all. Just a warning for you though: Be careful when removing the wings from the sprues. The parts which connect to the sprue might get damaged and you might lose some of the details easily otherwise.

As for the painting, I really can't remember how many layers there are... really... Basically what I did was something like this: For body, the "hottest" part is the inside of the taurus, right? So, I started with a white undercoat and then painted the mini to a very bright yellow. Then I highlighted my way up: darker yellow, orange and three different reds, the final being the mechrite red. For the wings, the hottest part is the parts which are closest to the body, so I used a phoenix-like painting there.  I think it turned out quite well, although I've never done anything like this before. Oh, and if you haven't done any Hot Wings or KFC jokes when reading this paragraph, gratz to you... :)

Remember I noted that I took this beast to a couple of games on saturday, right? OK, while I was playing, one of our club members noticed the figure, then came and asked me:

Guy - Is that a flying bison over there?
Me - Why, yes? Why are you surprised?
Guy- I find it weird for hairy animals to have feathers on them...
Me - ...? :: roflmao ::

So anyways, enjoy... Hope it was worth the wait.

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... :)

A Fistful of Infantries... and a Hero

Scibor Hero

İzmirCon is nigh... It is mainly an RPG event; but also hosts various wargaming activities. In the last two years, there were WHF tourneys. I only joined once because I was staff the other time; but generally, the tourneys in İzmirCon tend to be fun events.

This year, I plan to take my chaos dwarfs to the field; but it seems I'm still some way away from making it happen. With 25 days to go and only 30 or so infantry models are ready, I decided to turn my attention to infantries. I haven't prepared my list entirely yet; but either way this amount won't be enough for me to field a 2k force.

Long story short, I have 7 more infantry models ready. Mantic figures again, with some minor conversions here and there. Also, I painted a hero model from Scibor. This was also my very first resin model. I must say that I find it very interesting to work on resin. Since I had no idea about how to handle resin, like how to clean the mold lines, how to cut it even, I tried to work slowly with this model to prevent any damage. In the end, it turned out to be OK. It is light, even lighter then the plastics maybe; yet durable. But I think it needs to endure long years of gaming to fully earn it. I guess I will live and learn.