Word Bearers Helbrute or Dreadnought

I have to confess, I struggled somewhat with this one.

I glued it together ages ago, and I will readily admit that I wish somebody had suggested binding some bits of  this thing together with rubber bands (or elagi bands if your are that way inclined - the North...) while the glue dried to stop them coming a bit apart.  Luckily though, you can't really tell too much between the crap photography and the amateurish paint job.

One of the pleasing things about this model is that (having put one together and handled it hour after hour while painting it), I think it offers tons of scope for interesting conversions, both major and minor.  Not that I bothered on this one, though.  I do have a second one that I picked up for absolute peanuts (thanks to a £5 off Ebay voucher) which I am intending on doing some conversion work on at some point. When it's done, it'll be painted up in Death Guard colours, though.  Once I've given myself time to block the annoyingness of this one from my mind, at any rate.

Anyway, back to the model.  It took ages to paint, and I'm not really mega happy with how it turned out, to be honest. But I don't think it looks absolute toss either.  I did realise something about myself while I was working on it. And, that ladies and gentlemen, is that I don't seem to enjoy working on larger models. Somehow, I managed to forget how much working on that Death Guard predator ages ago totally pissed me off.  In the grand scale of life, this one was realistically less annoying than the predator, though.

One thing I do know, though is that next time around I may well look at doing the majority of the base coating before it gets glued together... although that may not be so great if I'm going to use rubber bands on it while the glue sets...

Ye Skaven of thee vile Clann Cheeseboarde - part 1

I was having a bit of gander (a "look" for the non-Northerners) at my external hard drive the other day, and I stumbled across some Skaven that I painted a couple of years back.  So I thought I'd share them with you few that are following / lurking on this blog.  Plus, I think you probably deserve a break from the Death Guard stuff...

Therefore please meet some rat ogres, by the unlikely names of Klaus, Heinrich and Schnitzel.

Klaus unfortunately went blind after biting into a discarded warpfire thrower, which as you might expect exploded in his face. Overwhelmed by a level of pain and frustration his tiny mind just couldn't cope with, Klaus has become very belligerent and has to be goaded carefully in the correct direction whenever his handlers take the field.

Klaus is a very large and powerful rat ogre and often breaks his restraints.   On one  rather memorable occasion he burst free of the sewers & ran amok in the gunnery school of Nuln. Non were left alive, and several drunken guards were hanged for dereliction of duty.

Schnitzel is quite possibly one crazy experiment too far.  Having  a comparatively  agile mind  for  a rat ogre, Schnitzel  has time and again shown an almost calculated taste for simplistic cruelty.  His higher level of intelligence can probably be attributed to the mutating essence of the huge lump of warp stone that has been implanted in his shoulder.  Having said this, it unlikely he could surpass the typical village simpleton in most tests of rudimentary intelligence.

Schnitzel has a warpstone and steam powered enlarged surgical blade affixed to his arm.   He is able to distinguish the difference between beating man-things into greasy paste with his fist and slicing them asunder with his blade.  Both of these outcomes please him immensely.

Heinrich is somewhat sedate for a rat ogre, although far from mild mannered - until threatened!  It is said in the vast corridors and tunnels of the Under Empire that  he has become the personal steed of a certain powerful Grey Seer...

I think my painting has probably improved a bit since I did these, so don't, like, judge me maaaan and all that jazz. But I did have good fun messing about with these.  If they were dogs, they'd probably be described as "big, lovely, chunky pups" or something.