Helga, Queen of the Dwarves

Well, I do confess I have a thing for short hairy bearded axe-wielding maniacs, but I'm equally a sucker for a short, hairy, beard-less axe-wielding maniac. So when GW at the end of the nineties released their first female dwarf figure since before the slotta-base was invented, I had to buy her.

"My, what big... braids you have."

And now for something completely different

I've been having a couple of games of Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition which have rekindled my interest in Warhammer. At the same time as I'm revamping my dwarf army (which includes figures from 2nd edition right up to the current) I'm also enjoying a guilty side pleasure painting something very different.

'Ello Darling. Fancy a cuppa tea and biscuits?

My goal is to someday field a small Chaos Warrior army dedicated to Nurgle, the Lord of Decay.

Doing new stuff the old way...

Well, last week I put up a short guide on how to quickly paint the Dust figures. Thomas, the cheeky sod, answered: "Good, now do one to the best of your ability." Bastard. Well, I painted not one, but two figures to the best of my ability. At least I tried to paint them as best as I could, but there are some things I'm not happy with that I could improve, I think.

Notice the error in the English title, "sturm" has been omitted. Maybe because "Battle Assault Grenadiers" sounds daft.

I bought a box of Kampf Sturmgrenadieren Squad (sic!), as I wanted to try out some figures without gasmasks, to see how good the faces were.

Random ramblings and musings

Well, not much to tell right now, but I want to let you know that I still live, at least. I keep flitting to and fro on a bunch of projects so I have nothing completed to show. Strangely a lot of the work has been done on various terrain pieces for very different subjects.

First, I painted five soviet houses from Pegasus, in three evenings or so. It was a rush job for the WW2 convention game I mentioned earlier. You know, the one which I painted these Panzer IV's for. The scenario depicted the vanguard of a german Panzer division racing towards Stalingrad, trying to take and hold a bridge in a russian village, while the soviets have lots of infantry but few AT weapon except for a smattering of PTRD rifles. The germans were supposed to have only panzer II's and III's but I painted the IV's up in case we didn't have enough light tanks. In the end the Panzer IV's sat on a table the whole day, but they did recieve a lot of attention and positive comments. I haven't had the time to photograph them, but the photo below is courtesy of Jocke who has some snaps and a very good AAR on his blog.

The wooden houses and the ruined brick building were part of my speed-painting frenzy the week before the game.

Dust painting

So ok, I have shown you the Dust figures, and I have even started to paint them. That must be a first, painting figures withing weeks of buying them! What's next, actually playing a game? Anyway I thought I'd show you a little bit on how you can paint them, and that the fact they are pre-primed saves a heck of a lot of time.

The figures come primed in grey. This one has had it's weapon painted with Vallejo Gunmetal.

Before I started painting I experimented a bit with the pose; twisting the torso and raising the arms a bit, as well as turning the head to look in the same direction as the gun. I then dribbled a little glue into the neck and arm joints. This figure had a slightly worse fit than the other figures where I only had to glue the waist, so I  filled the waist with a little liquid green stuff.

From Dust to Dust...

Well, I have been oogling all the nice Dust: Tactics figures that Fantasy Flight Games have been releasing the last year. I mean, what can go wrong: World War II with giant walkers and laser guns? Apparently a UFO was found just before the outbreak of World War II, and technology gleaned from it enabled the germans to win the battle of Stalingrad. By 1947 the war is still not settled, with the soviet and allied forces falling out with eachother the conflict has escalated in a three-pronged affair with all sides having access to alien technology.

Dust Tactics is sort of a board game with miniatures, that is based on the comic by Paolo Parente. I have not read the comic, but judging by the pictures on the official site, the mix is further enhanced by adding bad-ass busty babes controlling the walkers.

Oh my, what a pair of great... guns.

Sadly -- or perhaps fortunately -- the game focuses on the combat between the walkers and their supporting infantry.