'Mercenary' from SamuliS: Wizard for Hire

You might think what on earth does a single lonely wizard do in the Mercenary bonus round. If something they'd normally be the ones to be hiring a bunch of goons to protect them and do the dirty work. But in comes the wizard of the Blood Bowl pitch! Never recruitable in his own right, rather you'll have to hire him prematch as an inducement from the slightly more qualified crowds loitering around the pitch making him basically just a mercenary!

Clocking in at 150,000 gold pieces he is definitely not the cheapest hire especially considering he's good for just a single fireball or lightning bolt. But boy can he throw a wrench in your opponents plans at a critical moment. The best use actually being not using him at all and forcing your opponent to fear bringing his guys too close to each other or caging up on a ball in the fear of getting hit by a fireball catching half his team.

Anyways he was a quick side project in an effort to get a few more points by participating in the bonus rounds as I haven't really been able to keep painting as much as I wanted. Willy Miniatures like the Chaos Pact team that he will be associated with. A pretty nice sculpt and one that could definitely see use outside of Blood Bowl as well. I tried doing some OSL on him from the fireball that he's starting to cook up, but it didn't turn out as well this time compared to the Vader I did previously. Maybe a tad bit too stark and too red. But fixing it would require repainting the skin beneath and I wouldn't have been in time for the bonus round. OSL is definitely something I need to practice more to properly get the hang of it.

'Reconnaissance' from SamuliS: Racing into Action!

My entry to the reconnaissance theme round is bit duller version as I didn't end up picking anything special for it, instead sticking to projects already in the queue. So to continue from my first entry I give you two pairs of 74-Z Scout Speeders for Star Wars Legion. At least speeding hover bikes, ranging ahead of the main forces scouting out enemy positions and then harassing them before the main body makes contact, really fit the bill perfectly!

These are far better casts than the basic Stormtroopers I painted previously. Details were far sharper and no real loss of details like in those. Still I continued with the same quick painting style. Light grey basecoat followed by white covering most of the armor. Then simple highlights on the black and brown parts to make them pop. And all finished up with some chipping especially on the front parts of the speeder bike.

'Monstrous' from SamuliS: Eldritch Horror

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtan 

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn 

Cthulhu R'lyeh fhtagn

 

 Reaper Bones Eldritch Daemon, 50mm tall.

'Childhood' from SamuliS: For Whom the Bell Tolls

My first bonus round for the year! I didn't really have any projects on going that would have had suitable minis for any of the previous ones, but through some weird perversion I figured I had the perfect mini for this one with the theme of Childhood!

 Now how on earth is warpstone crazed rat riding a Bell prophetising doom and death for all somehow relevant to childhood? Having been born in the latter half of the 80s I found out about wargaming sometime in the mid 90s when one of my cousins introduced me to Warhammer Fantasy. He used to play Skaven and when I saw his army for the first time one miniature in particular really caught my attention almost immediately, the Screaming Bell! It's been more than 20 years and still this particular miniature really holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the minis that really captured my imagination and got my hyped about Warhammer Fantasy and it's world. Eventhough I never played Skaven myself, my Wood Elves, Vampire Counts and Chaos armies fought them on many occasions and I remember the Screaming Bell and it's accompanying unit causing havoc on more than one occasion.

Don't ask-ask for whom the bells toll man-thing! They toll-toll for you-you!

- Ernest Ratlingway

I always wanted to start a Skaven army, but realistically speaking my attention span at the time was limited and there was no way I was going to paint hundreds of ratmen. That didn't stop me from trying though and not surprisingly due to my early encounters with this particular mini it was one of the first Skaven units I bought. In the early 00s the whole project quickly died down and I don't think I ended up painting more than a handful of rats.

With Total War Warhammer 2 introducing Skaven my old love for all things ratty quickly rekindled and I went around digging through the few old minis I had from my childhood and luckily I had kept the old screaming bell. My old paint job was done with all the care and love of a hyperactive preteen so it quickly got dumped into paint remover and taken apart to be properly reassembled with green stuff to fill gaps etc.

As a nod to the 90s GW painting style I wanted to incorporate some brighter colours even if otherwise I try to stick to more muted and natural shades even in Fantasy minis. One shade that to me really defines the 90s GW paintjobs is red. Every model seemed to have some bright red areas whether it was clothing, jewelry, bows or bolters. And it really made everything pop rather nicely. So that was a pretty clear choice especially as it pairs rather nicely with green tones that my other Skaven will have.

Another memory from childhood is listening to a lot of Metallica. Being a Finn I've been quite a metalhead from a rather young age with my primary school music listening including a ton of punk and trash metal. Since then my tastes have maybe been refined a bit and nowadays I don't really listen to Metallica that much, due to it being pretty darn repetitive and a bit dull. But thanks to this I've probably listened to more Metallica in the last couple of days than in the previous few years combined. Not surprisingly Ride the Lighting has been played through multiple times with For Whom the Bell Tolls getting even more plays. It's a pretty special song as well because one of my childhood idols, especially when I played ice hockey, was Jere Lehtinen who had a pretty epic career in the NHL and Finnish national team. When he retired his jersey was also retired by his old team here in Finland, which I'd played for as a Junior as well. As he is a massive metalhead as well the song that he'd chosen for the occasion was For Whom the Bell Tolls. That was pretty darn epic to watch...

'Armour' from SamuliS: Here Kitty Kitty

Being the boring engineer that I am I'm going with the obvious choice for the Armour themed round. Still to mark the occasion I couldn't just go with any old tank, but had to have something special. So the biggest and meanest of them all Jagdtiger. 128mm gun that could punch through anything and everything and armour that could withstand nearly any shots from the front. Also far too expensive, too heavy, too few and not very practical. What's not to love :)

I haven't taken part in themed rounds the last few painting challenges, but with a house renovation having me painting walls instead of miniatures I need any extra points that I can get. I still don't think I'll take part in all of them, but rather take part in those that fit into my ongoing projects. As I need some big kitties for a tournament coming up in a few weeks these were the perfect choice for the first bonus round.

I painted dark yellow with modulation in a few shades to make them pop followed by camouflage. I want to do all my big kitties a bit different to show the haphazard way units were put together in the last desperate months of the war, with vehicles pulled in from everywhere they could be found. The simple green stripes turned out rather nicely, not too happy about the other one though. The camo patches ended up a bit too large for my tastes, but going back and repainting it would have meant I would not have gotten it done for Sunday. Still after the washes it's looking a bit better now. I like my vehicles quite worn looking so heavy enamel washes were used as well as some streaking effects. All of this was topped of with liberal coating of a couple of mud effects. With a tight schedule these guys are actually still waiting for all the mud to dry so I can apply a final varnish layer. It's nearly midnight here and it'll probably still take a few hours so I'm taking pictures already and applying varnish later. Darn enamels and their massive drying times...

'Comedic' from SamuliS - 'Cut the Crap'

Finan was starting to get tired of tagging along with Ser Heinrich the Pious and his fellow Paladins. He'd gone with them in the hopes of getting a boost for his fading career as a palace Bard entertaining fine ladies. Ser Edward was on a quest to rid the land of evil and Finan had figured that writing great songs about Edwards deeds would grant him a renewed contract within the bard industry. He should have known to stay away from them from Edwards epithet, but he was getting desperate. The last straw had been when Edward had turned away two elven sisters who had asked to join the group, because they would tempt him to lead an evil life of lust and joy. Finan couldn't believe somebody would actually be so foolish, after all it was the bards job to make everyone look mightier than they were. Even his fighting was devoid of any elegance. It was deadly efficient, but didn't offer much to be sung about as there was no finesse as Finan saw it.

Still there was some relief as the evil sorcerer had fortunately had the decency to install a proper toilet in his tower that they had just cleared. The shape was odd with clawed feet and a face on the water reservoir, but after having to do his business in bushes on the way the feel of porcelein on his bottocks was sweeter than he could ever have imagined. He could spend hours here dreaming, but the darned paladin was calling again to continue their journey. Reaching for paper one of the toilet's hands moved in to give it to him. "Ahh... the wonders of modern sorcery", thought Finan as he reached to take a piece. At the same time he started to feel a slight tingling sensation in his manhood as water splashed into it only to be followed by a horrible grab as he was pulled into the bowl... 

So let's cut the crap (pun intended) and move to the hard facts...

Going old school for this bonus round with a 80s Citadel Chaos Toilet sculpted by the great Aly Morrison. This is probably the most random miniature that I own (and all the other random stuff also seems to be from Citadel...) I'd seen some pictures before and when I saw one going cheap on eBay last summer while hunting for Oldhammer Chaos Warriors I knew I'd have to buy it. It's been sitting on my desk since summer waiting for inspiration to strike and what better than the Comedy portion of the challenge :)

Sculpting is decidedly 80s styled and way over emphasized everywhere, but hey it looks great. Too bad Citadel has started to function like a business and crazy stuff like this doesn't get made. There's actually two more toilet themed sets from Citadel and I figure I have to get them too to join this one.

There is also a semi-historical aspect to this with everyone whose been in the military knowing what the toilets look and smell like after coming from a longer training period and everybody is embracing the sweet porcelein. The smell would suggest something like this is coming after you after devouring the previous guest.

I wanted to stay with more Candy colours for this partly to have some change to the decidedly dull colour schemes of WW2 historicals and also because everything in the 80's was extra bright. I did take a slightly more modern approach by applying some of the newish Citadel effects paints to create blood splatter and some seeping slime. The base was a simple green stuff affair with some stone floor tiles sculpted in.