Affun's lead-pile - 24/6-22 - Northerners of many ilk!

[Globlin]

Lovely! The gladiator makes a good chaos thug stand in.

[affun]

Thanks 

Here's a bonus pic. Just finished the crone/shaman as well as the Orcuebusier, and thought they fit well together.
They are sort of turning into a whole little warband.

"Oi', get that one git ouva ther'"

[affun]

Preparing for an experiment into a homebrew "big battle" SoBH in a couple of weeks, I've added to my greenskin forces, making this small warband.
They'll form one of 3 subdivisions in the overall force.

As 'ard as dey get, at least according to Torkborg himself. A claim he backs up with a bloody big mace.

The warband comes in at around 200 pts for SoBH (Well, actually I need to paint 1 teeny goblin more), relying on some very low-cost low-quality troopers to swarm the enemy, aided by just the right amount of magical trickery from the shaman. Looking forward to putting them on the table.
They also represent, at the current stage of planning, the only actual piece of firepower, packed into (along with a copious amount of gunpowder) the Arquebus of the mercenary orc.

The Goblin Squad - Good at: Loitering, snickering and dying in horrid ways.

The lesser goblins are the latest models painted for the warband. They are fun little sculpts, painted by using a glaze of Vallejo Desert Yellow over the grey underpaint, and washing over it with first Army Painter Strong Tone, then a very thinned down glaze of Citadel Thraka Green (possibly out of production now?)
Final highlights where applied with Vallejo Model Color Pale Sand.
This is propably my favourite method of painting greenskins; it gives a very nice, understated, brown-green.

Thats all for this time, and thanks for reading and commenting!
Next up - Some nurgle stuff, maybe?

~Affun

Adventurers are attacked by goblins while investigating a recently burned out hamlet.

[DeafNala]

The minis are UBERCOOL, AND they areBEAUTIFULLY painted & based...the noses are works of art. VERY WELL DONE!

[Moshes]

Oh heavens above! These are lovely, lovely minis indeed. Full of character and with a nice and clean paintwork. Congrats, mate!

[affun]

The minis are UBERCOOL, AND they areBEAUTIFULLY painted & based...the noses are works of art. VERY WELL DONE!

The minis are UBERCOOL, AND they areBEAUTIFULLY painted & based...the noses are works of art. VERY WELL DONE!

Thanks to both of you. I do feel I've improved a bit over the last few weeks, and having a not-atrocious camera to take pictures with again is great.

All of the noses are subtly different; no goblin alike 

***

I finally put the last bit of work into this nurgle warrior:

It was, for some weird reason, completely impossible for me to get a propper, in focus, shot of the front, so this'll have to do.
He's a conversion using plaguebearer arms, chaos warriors and some greenstuf. Pretty damn pleased with how he turned out.
Im only a bit uncertain wether he really should be on a 30mm base, rather than the 25mm he's on now.

(out of focus) free-hand on the shield. Motif should have been moved a bit to the right, bit I kinda feel like my freehand practice is starting to pay off. It's pretty good fun to paint details on shields anyways.

I've also experimented a bit with both Tamiya Clear Red and Gloss Varnish, to get a nasty finish for the boils. Also added in a little bit of turqoise to the red, for contrast. I think it works decently enough.

Cheers!

[Globlin]

Those are some disgusting boils - well done! I've a few chaos warriors in my own lead pile and like you have been considering going with 30mm rounds instead of the usual 25mm. I think I might try it out as it'll give them a bit more "presence" on the table top. Torkborg's boyz are great too!

[.:Gunslinger:.]

Very nice!

I'm glad to see you back, I really dig your painting style  But writing a masters thesis is of course something else ... I hope you can enjoy the summer and your freetime for a bit now!

I really like the new miniatures, this technique gives great results and has that classic 80s feel to it

[kaiser]

Man, your pace is getting incredibly fast! They look great!

[affun]

During a campaign in the buzzing south, a young mercenary suddenly fell ill. At first, and for many weeks, it merely manifested as boils in the crevices of the body. Painful if touched but discrete enough to go unnoticed by his comrades. But then came the fever, and the young mercenary spent more and more of his time retired in the wagons or in his tent. Until there came a time when the company had been camping for a week and he had not shown his face but once.
At last, his fellow soldiers grew worried. What they found as they entered the tent was as repulsive as it was horrifying. Sitting, hunched over and draped in ragged cloth, was a pale wretch of the young mercenary, surrounded by the rot and filth of numerous dead beings.
And he turned his head and spread his arms wide:

“I welcome you, my brotherssss.”

From the filth crawled forth numerous demons, cackling and grimacing.

I finally managed to finish this guy. Pestifex is a champion of plague, and starts out with the following profile (for Song of Blades and Heroes):

Quality 3+ Combat 3
Hero, Leader, Squishy, Spellcaster: Wall of Worms

He has been generated using my own "Of Gods and Glory" fan supplement, which I have been working on for quite a while. It obviously draws inspirations from a lot of different places, and we are set to start playtesting it next week.

Using the tables, I rolled up a human veteran soldier, choose to align him with the Plague-Father (as that is the part I've written so far), and then rolled for both a mutation and deity-specific reward. This resulted in his mind warping, turning him into a spellcaster, and his body bloating, granting the Squishy-trait. (Something I've only mildly modelled by making his skin diseased and/or covered. Rule-of-cool etc.)

For the rest of his warband, I rolled up a Minotaur, a Chaos Warrior (Who ended up gaining the same mind-mutation, turning him into another spellcaster - quite ridiculous odds) and 4 little plaguelings.
More on these as I get them painted over the next few days, hopefully.

The system comprises of a series of charts, and obviously takes a lot of inspiration from the old and venerable Path to Glory (Or Realm of Chaos or Lost and the Damned). I feel SoBH is ripe for this sort of thing. It has a plethora of Traits to draw from for weird effects, and I feel the game plays best when players are forced to work with "sub-optimal" forces of varied quality and combat-ability. It adds a lot of tension and risk-managing.
It is also a hobby-project generator, in the sense that you can roll up some wild and varied ideas for miniatures that you probably wouldn't have though about otherwise. And that's always fun.
Besides, we love both SoBH and PoG so much, a fusion inevitably had to happen.
Of Gods and Glory is still very much a work in progress, needing both proper playtesting and development (ie. writing of more glorious tables).

Pestifex is made using a Mantic Orc-body as a base, a head and arm from Avatars of War Corrupters, a Plaguebearer-sword and copious amounts of greenstuf. Honestly the biggest conversion I've ever undertaken, and I think it turned out pretty well.
Kaiser is working on some glorious agents of Change (in particular look out for the man-horse) that he'll hopefully be able to share soon. I know that I am looking forward to smashing them into the soil as Pestifex marches to glory (or more likely fail miserably and die)

Thanks for reading.
~Affun

[Hobgoblin]

Both those chaos warriors are superb! I love the maggot shield.

SOBH does sound an ideal fit with a Realms of Chaos-type approach. The wealth of detrimental traits really helps, I imagine.

[affun]

Both those chaos warriors are superb! I love the maggot shield.

SOBH does sound an ideal fit with a Realms of Chaos-type approach. The wealth of detrimental traits really helps, I imagine.

Thanks - I think it turned out quite well too.

And indeed. Its both that there are so many traits, and that the system itself is so easy to moddify. What started out as just a simply table of mutations (traits) has grown into this huge d66 monstrosity, simply because ideas kept flowing. I'll be sharing some of it in the future, but I need to do a bit more work on it first.

[von Lucky]

As others have said, some lovely (and disgusting) painting; really impressive.

[Pappa Midnight]

Loving the chaos warriors ( especially the gory one) and the free-hand work on the shield.
Excellent stuff.
Regards
PM

[affun]

Thanks y'all

Moving on, the next element of Pestifex' retinue. I managed to roll up a whopping 4 Plaguelings; small and mischievous demon-children of the Plague-Father.

These are made mostly from greenstuff, with a few plaguebearer bits thrown in (mainly the heads).
I'm still pretty much a rookie when it comes to greenstuf, so I these didn't quite end up like I envisioned them. Still, I think they are decent for the effort. In game, they will have the following profile:

Quality 5+ Combat 1
Demon, Gang, Gregarious, Poison

They are, honestly, pretty shitty. If separated, they'll quickly get murdered and driven off. Used wit ha bit of finesse, though, they can be dangerous as they pile on the outnumbering modifiers. Should be fun to use. Or at least provide entertainment as they get brutally slaughtered.

***

In writing the retinue-tables I had two design-goals.

• Make a means to generate varied and interesting warbands, with a bit of deity-specific flavour.
• Keep it simple and streamlined

And as I thought about the system, one more goal was added:

• Allow an amount of player-agency, without compromising the general "random" nature.

In the end, I settled on a system based on d6 rolls: A champion starts out with 5 rolls on the basic follower table. They can also choose to spend 2 rolls on the elite follower-table. A 6 on the standard follower table allows a roll on the elite follower table instead.
This way players have a bit of agency over the generation; Roll 5 dice straight away, and hope for 6'es or a horde, or go for a smaller, more elite band. Personally, I tend to do 3 rolls on the basic follower table, and if no 6'es show up, a roll on the elite table.
I quite enjoy this mini-game, even if it doesn't have an amazing amount of depth. It's fun to roll up warbands, and see what the system spews out.

I've found that this generates generally interesting warbands of 4-7 characters. The size of the warbands are just enough to allow some sort of emergent theme, without drowning it out in the static of randomness.
Every deity has their own retinue-tables, though they all follow a standard formula with small tweaks. For example followers of Pestilence might have undead (Plague-zombies and skeletons) in their warband, while agents of Change have a higher chance of demons and spawns.

The pestilence retinue-tables look like this:

(I realise that there's a mismatch between the table-names and the explanatory text. The Rare Followers of Pestilence-table is the Sworn to Pestilence-table. As I've mentioned, it all still needs some work. Right now I am mostly focussing on getting the core ready for playtesting)