The Wizard has moved in

As soon as the first rumours of Skullvane Manse appeared I knew I wanted one.  It’s a fantastic looking item and looked like a great addition to the tabletop.  Ordered mine as soon as it was available on the Games Workshop site.  It arrived a while back and I immediately set about assembling it.  The kit itself is massive, but offers little in the way of customisation out of the box as it is mainly made up of several large pieces that just fit together.  I say fit, but even with lots of glue and hard work the fit is still quite poor and results in a number of large gaps.

After the application of some greenstuff (I need to practice with this stuff as it is currently difficult for me to use) I undercoated it and put it to one side.  My intention was to follow the painting guide in the December ‘11 issue of White Dwarf but the first step suggested spraying it with Charadon Granite.  I’d been contemplating buying an airbrush for a while now but thought this would be a good excuse to buy one and use it.  The choices, however, were vast and being a complete beginner I had no idea what to look out for.  I did some reading up on finally decided on a model that was on ebay.  A few days later I had it in my hands

Good or Bad?  Who knows? I love it though!

It was time to give it a try.  I thinned some Charadon Granite, got the manse out and got down to it.  Wow – wish Ihad bought one sooner – what a great way to quickly paint.  If I’d done this with a brush it would have taken me ages, but in no time I had a thin even coat on the entire model – I’m converted!

Anyhow, with the main basecoat on I could get down to the rest of the paint job.  Didn’t take too long – completed the entire thing over two sessions and I’m happy with the results.  Not as stunning as the version in the marketing materials (pfft! my paint jobs never are!) but looks good.

A worthy lair for any astromancer

Plan to get the airbrush out again this weekend and use it for my Dreadfleet Shadewraith ship.

As you can probably tell, I’ve finally cleaned the camera lens!

Welcome to my abode

Finally got my hands on the Fortified Manor House and have to say I was even more impressed with this kit than I was with the chapel on its own.

Lots of sprue fluff and a whizz to assemble.  I’ve painted everything up now apart from the fences and dry stone walls.

Terrible photograph of it – but I’m really pleased with the paintjob – especially the brickwork effect which I got from a very good blog that detailed a more realistic method of painting them than that detailed in the GW guide.

Next in my sights is the recently announced Skullvane Manse, Lair of the Astromancer – as well as something a bit older, but more on that later.

Do you feel inferior?

Another bits of scenery added to the collection.  Scenery is my great love, and I prefer building and painting it doing anything else.

An elf way stone and a Chaos warp stone – and a girly wood elf betwixt them.

Failcast, FineCrap and other names…

You’ve probably heard them all and I have too but I was trying to avoid them until the reported problems went away.  However, on a recent trip the rest of the clan bought me one as a gift and so I was off on a rollercoaster ride.

Took three attempts to get a model that was usable – not good for the price – but I can’t fault GW for the customer service.  In each instance they unquestioningly replaced the faulty model.  I say replaced – they actually just sent me a new one so I now have a few spares!

The detail is great (difficult to judge in the dreamy picture above – must clean camera) when you finally get one that isn’t full of holes or just badly miscast.  Looking forward to painting it.

Mrreegghehllleeebluergh

“Aha”, I hear you cry.  “There was also some Chaos Spawn in that pile!”  And you would be correct.  Assembled one and painted.  Not a lot to say about it really.  The kit has an awesome selection of components so these beasties can be customised in a bazillion different ways – such is the will of the gods of Chaos.

My little darling took on the visage below – and he thinks Papa Nurgle was kind!

I'm watching you!

Down from the frozen North

You may have seen in my last pile of purchases a box of Chaos Marauders.  The plan was to beef up my current small band to a mighty war host – well at least add another few ranks anyway.  Well the latest models have been assembled and are standing in line ready to be painted.

At the same time I also went to the effort of magnetising the movement trays for the whole of my Warriors of Chaos army.

After reading a few tutorials on the ‘net I came to the conclusion there was no right and wrong way to do it.  So I just ordered a load of flexible metal sheets and a bunch of magnets – the really strong rare earth ones (I won’t attempt to spell the name – I’d only fail!).  Really pleased with the results.  In the end I plumped for a ‘hidden’ look – so you can’t see the edges of the movement trays – makes movement measurements much easier to do.

From the 'What the heck is this' files

Over on the right it says I am a relative newcomer to the Warhammer world - but that's not entirely true.  Back when I was a kid I dabbled in both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer fantasy.  Back then I had nobody to play with - none of my friends were the least bit interested, and the web - not having been invented - meant I didn't have an easy way to meet up with like minded individuals.  All this meant that my initial foray into the hobby was pretty much relegated to painting the small number of models I could afford and setting up small dioramas in my bedroom.

As a result I have a small number of models from my childhood that are either unpainted or painted badly.  The majority of these models, however, are no longer available.  Some I have been able to track down on the websites that list the Citadel/Games Workshop back catalogues.  A couple though have proved elusive to identify.  Once such model is this:

Glorius though he is - what, or who is he?

It's obviously some kind of chaos demon, and I'm assuming it's from a fantasy game, not 40k.  Definitely from Games Workshop circa 1993 as the tab at the bottom says (c) GW 1993 I think!

The front of the tab has some text which I believe is Rangor - but I've been unable to turn anything up by searching the web.

Rangor - I think!

If anyone has any further information I would love to hear it.