Halos' Hoarfrost Hearteaters (Custom Bruiser/BSB)

Hi folks,
I'm a newcomer to both the Ogre Stronghold and the world of WHFB. I haven't made an introductory post 'cos I never know what to write, and besides they say 'show don't tell', so instead my first post will be to start off this coverage of my fresh Ogre Kingdoms army.

Hobby wise I'm mostly coming from a 40K background, I've played that game for quite a while with both Tyranids:




And Dark Eldar:




Plus other miscellaneous hobby things:



But anyway, the point is I enjoy painting and building and generally getting a little bit creative.
I'm not a huge fan of the way the rules and game of 40K have gone of late, and I don't have much time to play anymore anyways, so I have started the beginnings of an Ogre army for WHFB, the details of which will be covered in this blog as it develops.

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I chose Ogres as my first WHFB army for a few reasons; firstly on account of it being somewhat cheaper than other options given you don't need like 50 spearmen for a single unit, secondly because I dig the aesthetic of the models and range, and also because nice big models provide more scope for conversions and painting things.

Additionally I figured Ogres would be the easiest army to make with a 50/50 gender ratio, which I personally consider pretty important (hence my choice of the agender Tyranids and the equal opportunities DE in 40K). The lack of female representation in most miniature ranges irritates me, and I'll be damned if I'm attempting to sculpt like 50 lady faces for elves or whatever, so Ogres it is!

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My first purchase for the army was an Ogre Kingdoms Battalion, I generally prefer to start with a Battalion anyway for the plethora of bits it provides, but the Ogre one seems pretty good value as an added bonus so I'm not complaining!

Rather than bore anyone still reading with further chatter I'll just throw up some pics first and then talk about them afterwards. (I should note however, that I only have a phone camera for taking pictures currently, so these will not be of the highest quality...)











A little blurry on the close-ups I'm afraid but hopefully you can make out the general gist of things.
With the Battalion I have made up 4 Leadbelchers (obvs), 11 standard Ogres with full command options, and a Butcher so I can actually play some games.

The units are all 50/50 on gender ratios, or close-enough to anyway. I figure there's not going to be all that much in the way of sexual dimorphism between Ogre males and femals, given that they're entire society is geared towards whoever is the strongest and whoever can eat the most, so for the most part my lady Ogres are pretty similar to the guy Ogres but wearing rough tops.
The actual GW female Ogre has a beard, and I did consider leaving some facial hair on mine to match, but in the end decided it looked better to clip off the various moustaches and leave them bare-faced; whilst I doubt an actual lady Ogre would care overmuch about the state of her beard in this case I will conform to human gender norms to make things clearer. Similarly I sculpted a bit of rough hair onto the female Ogres, again I doubt they would particularly go in for scalp hygeine but it makes it more obvious what I'm trying to do. I did endeavour to give them generally scraggly and unkempt hair to match their overall appearence, plus a few long braids and more 'tribal' styles like mohawks and shaved heads and such.

My ability with the old green stuff was never all that good to begin with, and I am rather rusty, but hopefully these next few pics will provide some extra detail:
(Apologies again for the poor quality).






On the one hand I find the basic Ogre sculpts to be disappointingly mono-pose, with little scope for reposing without an awful lot of cutting and sticking (although perhaps that is for the best lest I get dangerously imaginative and have nothing able to rank up anymore). But I do like how the various components can be used on any of the models, and the wide variety of extra heads and accesories available means you can a decent range of individuality amongst the ranks.

Since these pictures were taken the Ogres have been based with some sand and stuff, and are now awaiting spray primer before I can start painting. Although that will have to wait til the weather is rather less damp and cold I think.

Also I have no real experience in painting any of the essential fantasy materials, ie. clothing, metal, wood, rope, etc. etc., which should make this upcoming project something of an experiment...

I won't be purchasing anything new until I've finished up with this lot, on account of having not a whole lot in the way of spare cash. Plus I intend to glue all the various decorative Gnoblars from the Battalion sprues onto square bases in case I ever decide to run some Gnoblars.

After that my future plans are somewhat flexible. At some point I will certainly be picking up a second Battalion, which will probably become 4 more Leadbelchers and 12 Ironguts. A box of Fenrisian Wolves is on the table to be used as Sabretusks. And beyond that, well, I like the look of most of the range so I'll see what takes my fancy when it comes to it. There will probably be an Ironblaster and some Mournfangs at some point, and I have quite the weakness for large monster kits so doubtless some of those will show up eventually, we'll see.

Until then I'll keep updating this with my painting progress, and probably a few tiny battle reports too to keep things vaguely interesting.

If you read this far, congratulations! Hopefully you enjoyed at least some part of my ramblings. Do feel free to comment or whatever, as a new WHFB player I'm always open to suggestions from more seasoned players.
 

Welcome to the Stronghold! Hope you enjoy your stay!

And on to business: The 'Nids and the Dark Eldar look amazing, not to mention the Dreadfleet models If you've got any extra pics or close-ups of them, I'd love to see them!

The idea of having a 50:50 gender ratio is an interesting one. But as you said, Ogres are the way to go if you don't want to go for the dozens of conversions The conversions you've done so far look really good. Can't wait to see them all painted up

- Loran

Love 'nids. Played them myself for years. Not as familiar with the DE.

OGRES LOOK GREAT! Nonsense about the not being great at green stuffing as it's far better than I can manage haha!

Importantly...welcome!

BB

Welcome to the Stronghold!  Looking great so far!  Dread fleet is awesome! Also massively hilarious when you get a ship with burning magazine like 3 times or something!  Just amazing.

Your ogres are looking great to be honest.  Those green stuffing skills are better then you think.  I would love to see some close ups of that hair on some of those guys and some detail on how you went about it.

Keep up the good work.

Kind regards Zolas.

Hah, well, thanks everyone!

It's still raining unfortunately so there'll be no undercoating done today, maybe I'll stick some gnoblars together.

I suspect the low resolution photos are making my GSing look rather more competant than it does in reality, but I appreciate the complements all the same.
Close-ups of any variety could be a problem given the state of my camera, looks like this is the 'best' I can get:




Not exactly stunning photography work, hopefully you can at least recognise key features. These photos illustrate the two main types of hairstyle/technique I've used so far, which I will explain as best I can in this little tutorial:

--/ Sculpting Hair \--

Alright, so I'm using Green Stuff to make my hair, standard two-part epoxy resin, you can get it from GW, or from other places.
If you've never used it before it can be a little tricky, and I'm probably not the best one for giving advice. But basically just cut off a strip of roughly equal parts blue and yellow resin, knead them together until they're fully mixed and then importantly set the mixture aside for ~10 minutes or so to dry. If you don't do this it'll be all tacky and sticky and a nightmare to work with.

You're also going to need something of a work station for sculpting, and tools for same. I just use a plain white ceramic tile, same one I use for mixing paints actually, whatever you use make sure it's a clean, smooth surface which won't matter too much if it gets messy. Tool-wise I have one of the old GW GS sculpting tools, I dunno if they still sell them but it's basically got a little blunt blade on one end and a rounded pad on the other; essentially it's identical to clay sculpting tools, which are cheap enough to pick up from art/craft shops.
You'll want your surface area and tools to be constantly wet, so make sure you've got a pot of water nearby. GS will stick to most surfaces but it won't do so if there's a layer of water in the way, so make sure to keep things wet.

Phew, alright, that was a bit waffly, I'm sure most of you know how to use GS anyway. For hair I like to start by rolling out my lump of GS into a thin sheet. Actually I like to do this for most sculpting jobs, but whatever. You can use a rolling pin, or even the handle of a paintbrush, keep them wet and just roll the GS out like you would dough until you get it to a suitable thickness. A thin sheet is more manageable for sculpting as you can cut it into what shapes you need, or use it to build up layers.

For hair like I've done I start in one of two ways. The first, and easiest, is to cut a piece of GS such that it wraps over the Ogres scalp. This doesn't have to be super-accurate but it helps to look at reference pictures to see what sort of hair coverage you actually want. This is true of any sculpting, but hair and fur in particular, once you've put your GS where you want it leave it be! Let it set and bond for a few minutes, otherwise it'll just pull away when you try to sculpt it.

Once it's dried a little you can start sculpting. For hair I use the 'blade' end of my sculpting tool, but if you haven't got one of those you'll want something like tweezers, or nail scissors, or maybe a bit of wire. Whatever you're using keep both it and the GS wet whilst you work. The actual sculpting is pretty easy, all your going to want to be doing is scoring the GS over and over to make peaks and troughs which roughly resemble hair. Again it helps to have reference images here depending on what style you want; if you're doing ponytails or topknots most of your sculpting is going to be away from the forehead/scalp towards the point where the hair is pulled backwards. If you're doing a fringe you need to be scoring away from the crown of the head towards the forehead etc. etc. Just score the GS in the direction the hair would fall in reality. Doing lots of straight scoring in the same direction will result in neat looking hair, like it's been brushed, for messier hair you should angle your scoring in a few directions to get a rougher look.

Once you've got your GS sculpted as you want it you'll need to trim away any excess and make sure it looks good on the head. Scoring the GS will inevitably result in the resin being pulled in various directions, which can sometimes look alright, but other times will need you to trim the edges down to an appropriate shape or size.
Once you've done this you should use the tip of your sculpting tool to mess up the edges of your hair sculpt; it's pretty unlikely an Ogre is going to have a perfectly straight fringe so cut bits out and shift bits around until it looks good.

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The alternative method is better for longer or more elaborate hair, and can be combined with the above method for more voluminous hair.
If you tried to sculpt long, flowing or loose hair with the above method you'd likely end up snapping your GS off of the model.
To prevent this instead roll a number of GS tubes slightly longer than the length you want the hair to be. Lay them flat on your sculpting surface. Then, grip at one end and score down the other to make it look like hair as above. You'll have to be careful in doing this that you don't get fingerprints all over your previously sculpted segments however!
Once your happy with your hair strands you can trim them to size and stick them onto your models heads as you like.

As a final tip my models have a lot of long braids.
At first I achieved this by literally braiding three strands of GS together, but this took forever, was pretty messy and ended up with unnaturally bulky braids.
If you want to put braids on your models I've found it easier to just make one long tube of GS, loop it back on itself and then hold it at both ends and twist it into a spiral. Leave it to dry for a good 10 minutes or so and then score some hair lines into it and it looks good enough at WH scale.
When you're making braids, or ponytails, it's best to stick them to the model first and then sculpt the rest of the hair around them to both make them fit and ensure they stay stuck down. Although if you were doing, say a topknot, or similar, you would of course have to do the hair first. In which case I would probably use a wire armature to make sure the top-tail stayed in place.

Ahem, well, that was a very long-winded explanation for 'stick GS down and score some lines into it' but there you are; hair. Hopefully that interests at least some people.

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@Zolas: Hah, yeah, I don't dig Dreadfleet out very often 'cos it takes up a ludicrous amount of space and can drag on a bit but it is quite fun. Mostly I just like the models, which are pretty cool.

And because @Loran asked so nicely I have found some old close-ups of my other work, although I am loathe to post too many on account of this technically being a blog for my Ogres, but I'll stick a few in here for your perusal:

Models are looking really good! It'll be interesting to see how your female army develops. Maybe you could even emulate nature and use fur colours to paint male and female tusks, rhinox etc? Typically bolder for males and more muted for females, although I admit that's less prevalent in mammals.

Oh, and Elves are pretty equal opportunities in WHFB too. If they arent, then plenty of my Dark Elves models need to hit the gym and burn their moobs off!

That is not a bad idea, but as you say mammals tend not to carry too much in the way of sexual dimorphism, and as mountain animals coat colour is more likely to vary with season than sex I think. We'll see. I suspect having a mix of fur colours in a single unit might look a little odd, but I can at least play with patterns or something.

And whilst the elf ranges tend to have a mix of both male and female models they're normally sort of segragated into units, like, Witch Elves are all female, and Spearelves are all male, or whatever, which is not really equal opportunites...

Mammals exhibit sexual dimorphism, but it's typically size based rather than colour based. Males are larger. You do occasionally get aesthetic differences in mammals though, think of a lions mane. It's typically reptiles and birds which have different colourations between sexes, but for gaming purposes I'm sure it could be borrowed/adapted.

Yes, Dark Elves have their Witch Elves etc, but my Dark Shards certainly have a spattering of models with breasts (it's really the only way to tell, you can't pick male/female faces from under their helmets). They are the same models that make dread spears and bleak swords. Can't be certain without checking, but I seem to remember my Executioner and Corsair units have female models too.

Yes I'm aware of that, but considering all the mournfang models are the same size that's not very useful! Plus environmental factors play a role in size determination as well, so it's not the best of identifiers.
But anyway, they're magic cat-dog-wolf things anyway, there's no harm experimenting with the colour on them!

Fair play with the Dark Elves then, I'll take your word for it; I only looked at the box cover + website images but all the models looked male to me, glad to hear they are not. The Dark Eldar infantry kits do a similar thing with a mix of male and female torsos + androgynous heads.

Those Dark Eldar and Dreadfleet models are awesome! Really like the contrasting colours, like the blueish cold weapons and red/black clothes

And thanks for the hair sculpting tutorial. It's always fun to read how other people go about their hobby stuff
Keep it up!

- Loran

Thank you kindly, glad you like them.
Truthfully those sorts of icy-blues are my favourite colours, and I will likely find some way of including them on my Ogres too (which, given their general ice-age theme, should be fairly easy really).

Anyway, a slight update on the hobby front in that I have just undercoated all my Ogres and will be able to get painting soon. Although given I am rather out of practice and ill-experienced with painting fantasy bric-a-brac my initial models may not be all that spectacular, we'll see.

Additionally I have glued the 22 decorative Gnoblars found in the Battalion box to a bunch of square bases. From a hobby perspective I cannot necessarily recommend this as a good idea; the Gnoblars from the Ogre sprues are limited in pose and position, making them both difficult to rank up and almost identical in appearence, but with a bit of clipping and chopping they'll serve their purpose, and hey, saves me buying an actual Gnoblar box, so whatever.

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I have also gotten my first game of WHFB with my Ogres, although given I don't have all that many Ogres this was a tiny, 600pt affair which I will recount below for anyone interested. Normally I would draw up a little map for battle reports, but given the low points count I don't think it's really necessary here.

Ogre List
Lords:
-Butcher (Maw)
--Level 2
--Magic Weapon (+1 to hit)

Core:
-9 Ogres (Crusher, Banner, Bellower)
--Iron Fists

Special:
-3 Leadbelchers
-1 Sabretusk

WoC List
Lords:
-Some sort of Chaos Champion guy
--Crown of Command
--2+ armour

Core:
-10 Warriors of Chaos
--Mark of Nurgle
--Hand Weapons and Shields

Rare:
-5 Putrid Blightkings

Apologies for any errors with the various magic items, unit names or general rules, it would be a lie to say I know them off by heart yet.

My opponent is a good friend of mine with a strong knowledge of the rules, which you may note by his frankly ridiculous list considering this is my first game. He is something of a power gamer and I doubt he could resist bringing the best possible list for this points level from the model he had to hand. But it's not a big deal; a loss is as good as a win when learning the game after all.

So, I'm not going to do a full turn-by-turn account for this game considering there are basically only 4 units on the board, instead I will just do some relevant highlights.

-With so few units deployment was straightforward. The WoC and Ogres deployed centrally facing one another, with the Blightkings and Leadbelchers off to one side to assist when it came to the crunch. I put the Sabretusk in position to harass the Blightkings and stop them going where they wanted to go. The Butcher sat in with the Ogres and the Chaos Lord with the Blightkings.

-I won the roll for first turn but let the WoC take it, as they had no shooting or magic, hoping they'd dare close enough for an early charge.

-The Butcher rolled Trollguts and Braingobbler, which is pretty nice! But it didn't actually matter, as the first spell she cast, the first spell I have ever cast in WHFB, resulted in a double six followed by her forgetting all her spells. An auspicious start!

-I moved the Sabretusk up in front of the Blightkings as bait to draw them closer, which the obligingly took, charging the Sabretusk as soon as they could. I let it run away, hoping to rally it using the generals Ld, but instead it just kept on running. Ah well, it did it's job.

-The WoC moved towards the Leadbelchers, who had been showering them with generally ineffective long range shots, fortunately for me this meant I wouldn't get flank charged when charging the Blightkings.

-As such I charged at the Blightkings. Blightkings are pretty tough, in a bigger game it would perhaps be better served ignoring them, or at least softening them up with some shooting first, but in this case I'd rather learn how combat works. I didn't get an Ogre charge alas, but the few impact hits I do get at least bypass Mark of Nurgles -1 to hit nonsense. The resultant combat involves me rolling an unprecedented number of 5+s and my opponent failing an unlikely number of saves, which has his Blightkings fleeing; their single rank no comparison to my bulky horde of Ogres. Sadly I fail to catch them this time and the flee safely.

-Now that the WoC have drawn closer to the Leadbelchers the Ogres cannons are able to get clean hits without suffering for shooting through terrain. As a matter of fact as soon as the WoC get into close range I roll up a full 18 shots and proceed to kill half the unit in one volley!

-This tremendous firepower has clearly dampened the Nurgle Warriors spirits, as when they finally get to grips with the Leadbelchers in combat they fail to cause a single wound and are cut down in return! Very embarassing for the followers of the dark gods, but it pays to bear in mind that a Leadbelcher's cannon works just as well as a club as it does as a gun, and in some cases better...

-The Ogres once again charge the freshly rallied Blightkings, although still no Ogre Charge, but once again they beat the odds and manage to send the Blightkings packing, this time managing to catch them as they flee and cut them down, winning the game.

So, yah, pretty fun, if not exactly representative of how it should have played out mathematically. Hitting on 5s and wounding on 5s is not exactly playing to the Ogres strengths, and without some truly abysmal saving throws on my opponents end I had little hope of victory. In fact I suspect once the game got underway her felt a little guilty and began using the paired hand weapons on his Blightkings over the more beneficial hand weapons and shields to give me a fighting chance at actually causing any wounds.

A win then, for my first game, but a lucky one.

Gratz on your first win!

2 things I noted. 

1. Sabertusks cannot use generals leadership.  This is due to "Their masters voice" rule which allows them to only use leader of a Hunter.  So unless they are with a Hunter their leader will always be 4.  Just for Future reference.

2. Glad you beat up the blight kings!  Nasty fellows.  One thing to remember.  These guys are NOT mounstrous infantry, hence why they are cheaper then you would think and despite their base size.  This does however, allow you to STOMP attack them as Ogres are Mounstrous.  So don't forget those next time.  Another way of getting around the -1 to hit as you just roll to wound. 

Otherwise good stuff for your first outing.  Hope the above helps.

Kind regards Zolas.

Gratz on your first win!

2 things I noted. 

1. Sabertusks cannot use generals leadership.  This is due to "Their masters voice" rule which allows them to only use leader of a Hunter.  So unless they are with a Hunter their leader will always be 4.  Just for Future reference.

2. Glad you beat up the blight kings!  Nasty fellows.  One thing to remember.  These guys are NOT mounstrous infantry, hence why they are cheaper then you would think and despite their base size.  This does however, allow you to STOMP attack them as Ogres are Mounstrous.  So don't forget those next time.  Another way of getting around the -1 to hit as you just roll to wound. 

Otherwise good stuff for your first outing.  Hope the above helps.

Kind regards Zolas.

Hah, yes, I actually did know Blightkings were just regular infantry, and did indeed Stomp on them as such, just didn't mention it. If they were Monstrous Infantry they would be pretty insane I think!

Thanks for pointing out the Sabretusk thing, hadn't noticed that, not that it mattered much in this case but it's an important thing to note.

On the sabertusk front, you do not need to flee for them to be effective. Angle them in such a way that when a unit charges they are suddenly facing in a direction that is harmless to you. They will either overun when they win into a place that is awkward for them or they will just reform in a beneficial direction; in which case they are now a turn of movement behind the rest of there army.

I hope that all makes sense

Yeah, I'm aware of that technique in theory, just not so good in practice and I rather messed it up when trying to redirect the Blightkings.

Of course now that I know Sabretusks are stuck using their own Ld most of the time I can see it's an even more critical tactic then I imagined.

Ahem, double post but I have done some painting so I think it will be fine.

Once again I am limited in my choice of camera to 'useless' and 'near-useless' so these pics are not exactly stunning quality:





Monsieur Muttonchops up there had the dubious honour of being my test model.
I keep wavering on whether or not to give all my models the same colour pants; on the one hand it makes more sense for Ogres to have different coloured outfits, nor do I suspect they particularly care much for messing with dyes. But on the other hand it does produce a more unified scheme, and saves me time.

Not entirely certain what I want to do with the bases yet either.
Probably just rocks and snow.

Looking really good so far, the skin looks really good and has a unique quality to it. Nice.

Greenstuff work looks great too. For variety in the bases, and to give a bit more of a "real earth" feel; when ever you have any tiny blobs of greenstuff left over, just bang them on a base and smooth down the edges leaving a small mound/ molehill.
When you go to add basing materials to the base this undulation in the base will add some depth and texture to the bases that requires little effort and makes the bases look a bit more interesting, even if all you are doing with them is adding sand/ stones and snow.
Just a thought.

G_H

I've been using my leftover green stuff to make extra braids and hair bits for later, but yeah good idea, I have stuck it to bases in the past.

I think in this case I might try and find some tall modelling grass or something and go with a vaguely taiga looking thing with the bases.

The skin is pretty simple, because my painting techniques don't extend much past basic layering, but I have added some scar marks to help break up all the grey, which you can't really see in the photos, but whatever, they're there.

A quick update as I have now finished painting up a 'full' unit of Ogres, that is to say, 6 models:





This includes a full command with the Champion denoted by her beartrap arm, which I guess is supposed to be used for the champion model? There's only one in the box anyway. I also used an Irongut head and shield to make her stand out a little more:



Bellower, terrible picture but he's pretty standard, although I did slap some blood on his metal skullcap thing as if he'd been recently headbutting folks:



And the Banner, again pretty standard stuff. I originally planned a more impressive banner, with the maw daubed in blood over a looted tapestry or something, but I couldn't get the colours to work. Maybe for my BSB when I get round to making one of those.



Plus these other chumps:



As you can no doubt tell I have picked up a couple of GWs 'technical' paints, mostly in order to distract from my inability to paint metal. I quite like them, although it's pretty easy to go nuts with both the blood and verdigris and take things too far.

Still not sure how to do the bases. I think I'll just base them in black and then drybrush a bunch of browns on there, followed by some grass and snow or whatever.

More things what I have done!

I've been updating this blog somewhat infrequently as, frankly, I haven't been doing anything massively exciting. Mostly just plodding along painting basic Ogres.
These models are an unusual size for me, being larger than gaunts (ie. small enough that no one cares if they're painted bad) but smaller and Monstrous Creatures (ie. big enough to draw the eye from across a table) as such it takes me a little while to paint each one satisfactorily.

Regardless here are a few more pictures of what I have done so far:




Three more basic Ogres, bringing the painted total up to 9 models (with a full command).



My custom Butcher is also painted up, using the traditional technique of over-using blood-effect. I tried to be somewhat moderate with the gore, as it is all too easy to overdo it, but it is hard to resist just slathering it all over the place.
I'm not super-pleased with the white apron look, whilst it is pretty standard for Butchers, and certainly helps the blood stand out from the model (and the model stand out from the others) it is a colour which is not present elsewhere in my paint scheme and I think it washes the model out somewhat, but it's fine for now.
Also apologies for these awful pictures, I am on the lookout for a proper camera sometime soonish so hopefully I'll be able to replace all these dreadful pictures with better ones then...





I also got fed up of proxying skeletal cavalry as Sabretusks so I picked up a box of space wolfy wolves to use instead.



Whilst I do like the Sabretusks in both design and model, big hunting cats is an interesting stylistic choice which you don't see all that often, buuut the actual sculpt is both kinda old and kinda bad, plus finecast and mail-order only, whereas the wolves are both cheaper and plastic, plus nice dynamic models.
Not to mention my Ogres are vaguely sorta-kinda Scandiwegian looking, with the blonde hair and cool greys and such, so it kinda matches.

I have played a few more games since my earlier battle report, but nothing really worth writing up, seemedly everyone at my club plays Chaos Warriors in some form or other so mostly my experience with the game so far is getting stomped on by various quantities of chaos-y nonsense.

These fellas are looking great! I really dig the colour of the skin you've chosen, as it's something that isn't seen that often (at least over here) and looks amazing

As for the colour of the pants, I went for the same colour just for the unified look. Despite Ogres probably not being all that interested in how they look, it goes for a bit nicer look on the battlefield
Keep up the good work!

- Loran

Hmm, I would imagine grey-skinned Ogres to be fairly common, given that it is the studio scheme and all.
Normally I prefer not to follow the official scheme, but in this case I do quite like the grey skin; painting them in human skin tones I find can just make them look like out of scale humans (also I am exceptionally bad at painting human skin).
Plus the neutral grey works to reflect the other colours in the scheme and tie everything together quite nicely.

I have been painting dags!




Fur is not my forte, on account of neither Tyranids nor Dark Eldar having much in the way of it, but I did my best. Realistically I should probably have darker fur down the wolves backs, but I kinda dig the fully white/grey look and I don't want to ruin it with anymore haphazard drybrushing.
These models are pretty nice, I think they'll look just fine as Sabretusks, of course I only technically needed to paint three of them, but I hate having unpainted models, and who knows, maybe I'll feel some bizarre urge to field a Hunter + Sabretusks at some point in the nebulous future.

Once that canine painting diversion was over with I have switched back to clumsily daubing actual Ogre models with the first of four Leadbelchers:



I like the big, ornate cannon on this one, although she certainly has inherited more than a few of the Ogre ugly genes, which granted is a fair few of them.
I have perhaps over-sold the verdigris on the gun, it looks more like it came up from a sunken ship than just simple weathering I think, but eh, it works well enough for my tastes.

Just three more Leadbelchers to go, plus 22 Gnoblars, but they're on the back-burner, 'cos who cares about gnoblars? Not me.

In an additional stroke of good fortune I managed to snag an opened Stornhorn/Thundertusk kit for a nominal fee. Most of the decorative bits and the base are missing, and the previous owner has built some of the components with a questionable regard for the instructions provided, but for the price I payed I'm not complaining.
I've salvaged it as best I can; all of the major bits are present. The rider is made up of a strange mix of hunter and regular rider parts, but he looks alright, I kinda like the Hunter's big spear more than the fragile chain-trap thingy anyway. In a similar vein I have opted not to use the long, slender Stornhorn tail; it looks to make the model a major pain to transport, whilst the stumpy Thundertusk tail is much more manageable. Additionally I've made the rider and his chair removable so they don't get snapped during transit.
Currently it's sitting in pieces waiting for some paint, and a base, before I glue it together, but that can wait til the Leadbelchers are done.

Another double post, but I come bearing updates so hopefully I shall be forgiven.

Firstly I have finished all four Leadbelchers:




I'm not a big fan of how most of these models have little flames on them, I don't particularly want oranges and reds as part of my colour scheme, but I can't really paint fire any other colour without it looking strange. On the next batch of Leadbelchers I will probably just snip the little wicks off.

Also, and perhaps more excitingly, a model which might actually be big enough for my phone camera to photograph properly! I have finished painting the Stonehorn. It is still baseless, and indeed I still don't actually have a base for it, but other than that it is finished.
Fur and stone are two materials I am not super confident in painting (making my choice of Ogres perhaps a little questionable) but I think it came out alright:






The rider and his fiddly little saddle/trophy rack thing are detachable so I can actually transport the thing without it snapping into a million tiny pieces.
Because of this I have left the reigns off, rather than try and figure out some way of connecting them whilst the rider is elsewhere, which does leave the Ogre holding a disconnected handle thing, but I didn't build him and hopefully no one will question it.
It doesn't show up all that well on the photos but the Stonehorns mouth, and any other areas beneath it's stoney exterior, are painted up all blue and glowy, again mostly just because I like the colour.

And finally a full shot of all the models I have painted so far, that is to say, everything I own apart from the Gnoblars, which I guess are next on my list by default.

A fresh, christmas update.
It was my birthday recently and, whilst I did receive a gift of the Ogre-ly persuasion in the form of a Firebelly, more importantly I also received a new, working, digital camera.
This means I can take some proper photos and you no longer have to strain your eyes looking at them! On the negative side this does mean you'll be able to make out all my sloppy brushwork.

I'm going to be checking through my previous posts and replacing the old, poor quality, images with nice crisp ones where I am able to do so, which will hopefully make things rather more aesthetically interesting.

And for anyone still following below are some actual new models, including the aforementioned firebelly.

First up some Gnoblars. I have expressed my general disinterest in Gnoblars on multiple occasions; I didn't start Ogres to have to paint a bunch of tiny runty gits! So these models are a little less detailed than I would normally do, being just a basic base, wash, highlight affair for the most part.
Also I would like to voice my alarm at the fact that one of these Gnoblar sculpts has a pie on it's back; I don't have a paint recipe for shortcrust! I had to scramble something suitable together and hope for the best.






There are still 12 Gnoblars left to do, but frankly they can wait.

And my birthday gift:



This is a great model, one of my favourites, and I had the good fortune of a pretty much perfect finecast sculpt, a little twisting required to stick the head and arm in place, but beyond that no trouble at all.






I went with blue fire, as you can see, to better match the rest of my scheme. I threw in a tiny bit of lighting effect, but less than there really should be because I am rather bad at it.
I love how dynamic this model is, most of the Ogre heroes have pretty static sculpts, but this one is great and I'm pleased to have one in my collection.

Oh, and because I can't quite squeeze this pictures in context into prior posts, here are some more pics of my general Ogre horde.







That's all for now, and probably for the forseeable future, at least til the new year I suspect.
Happy Holidays to you all!

Hello again everyone!

I haven't posted anything new in some time on account of having nothing new to show; I'm kinda of waiting for these 9th ed rumours to settle before comitting to any more major purchases. But we'll see how my willpower holds out...

Anyway, until then I did receive a Giant kit for christmas, from a friend who found it under a pile of stuff and had no use for it, I have good friends! It is actually one of the original giant kits, with the landscape box and old, pale plastic. I don't think giants are all that good rules-wise, but it's a nice model and should make for a fun project regardless.

Following the vein of my 'equal opportunities' Ogre army I have attempted some, perhaps overoptimistic, GS modifications in order to make a lady giant. The WIP steps for such are seen below:

Initial shape sculpting. This is pretty rough and finger-printy, but I'll be putting clothes on top of it, so it's not a big deal.




Cutting out some clothing elements:


Initial positioning of clothing and straps. I'm using one of the armour pieces from the Stonehorn kit to make a gutplate of sorts for the giant, hence the extra GS around the midriff.



Detail work. I stuck the head on at this point too, in practice it would be better to leave it off til the torso is painted, but I need to sculpt hair down the shoulders so I'll just have to live with it glued in place.



Hair! I've just done partial, scraggly hair covering for now because I also have a bunch of braids and such to stick on once the body is painted which should cover most of the gaps.




And the 'final' product. I need to do some more poking and prodding once everything has cured a little, but that's the bulk of the modifications in place. Nothing too complicated, but I think it works out alright.

That is some pretty good greenstuffing. Gonna be one ugly lady giant, but I guess that's just fitting

Giant's looking good there And thanks for the numerous WIP pictures. This really shows well how you've done the sculpting, thus helping other people learn! Great stuff, can't wait to see her painted up!

And the rest of the Ogres look great as well! Your painting style works very well with the Ogres, as I mentioned earlier. Keeping it relatively clean and crisp, while still getting that Ogre grittyness etc into the model. Amazing stuff

Keep at it!
- Loran

That is some pretty good greenstuffing. Gonna be one ugly lady giant, but I guess that's just fitting

Thank you, I am a little rusty when it comes to GS, but if I stick to simple shapes I can get by.
And I can't imagine giants go in much for beauty regimes regardless of gender, but yeah, that's like the most 'feminine' head in the box, and a quick search didn't turn up any suitable 3rd party alternatives, so it'll have to do. But like I say, it's a giant, not a supermodel, she gets more fun from stomping on things than moisturising I'd imagine.

Giant's looking good there And thanks for the numerous WIP pictures. This really shows well how you've done the sculpting, thus helping other people learn! Great stuff, can't wait to see her painted up!

You're quite welcome, I mostly did the WIP pics because, considering the final result is all green and grey, it can be a little unclear just what has been added without the build-up. But with any luck someone might be able to dredge some hints from it.

Paint wise I'm actually gonna need to pick up some more paints before I can start on that. I can't just paint her the same as my Ogres, given that a giant is a different species she needs to look different. So I need some new base skin tones, although which skin tone I haven't decided on of yet, probably something fairly pale to blend with the grey scheme of the rest of the army? We'll see.

Love the idea behind the Giant project. Can't wait to see the finished article.

Despite everyone's interest in the finished Giant I have actually shelved that temporarily, despite picking up the paint and brushes necessary to complete it. I have poor project management skills.

My reasoning is a good one however; I picked up an Ironblaster kit and figured that would probably see more table-time than the Giant in pretty much any scenario, so I'm painting that first:



Unfortunately that is only, like, half the total bits of the model...



Seriously, this is the only GW model I've seen which actually recommends you paint it before assembling it, though I can certainly see why; lots of individual components in varied materials to attend to.

I do appreciate that the IB chassis is literally made of a wooden door and some fenceposts and yet is considered Toughness 6. Clearly an example of Ogre handicraft at its finest!

Also whilst I was painting the sky-titan cannon I did a little step-by-step thingy, it's pretty basic stuff but hey, someone might be interested I guess?


Basecoat Rhinox Hide (or Scorched Brown in my case, but same deal)


A coat of 1:1 Rhinox Hide:Auric Gold, doesn't have to be neat, as evident here, just slap it over everything.


Brown wash, heavy in the recesses, keep it off the flat areas as much as possible.


Here I threw some Nihilakh Oxide into the recesses. Obviously if this were real gold it wouldn't be suffering from oxidation like this, but it creates an ancient look, lowers the warm tones of the cold with the blue-green which better fits my scheme and helps to break up the metal, so whatever. You've gotta be a little careful with this stuff I find, here I tried to dump it in the recesses where water would pool.


A highlight layer of Auric Gold to hit the upper surfaces.


And a final extreme highlight of mithril silver to bring out the edges.

Hopefully I'll have the rest of the IB done and assembled by sometime next week, then I can start properly looking at the Giant,

I ended up rushing through the final painting steps of the Ironblaster to get it table-worthy in time to play some games this week.



And assembled:









And some close-ups, just to demonstrate my poor-quality brushwork I guess.









Now I'm free to continue work on the Giant.

The giant is now done, ish.
I have come to the conclusion that I do not really like the Giant kit. To my knowledge it was the first of GW big monster kits in plastic, and it is showing it's age a little, some questionable part joins and textures. Regardless it is done for now. Can't say I'm 100% happy with it, and will probably do some more work on it at some point, but it's good enough for now.

That giant is genuinely disturbing. Like the gut plate idea idea also. Good stuff!

I'm glad you think so actually.
I find the giant model to be a little, uh, goofy? in some aspects, so if you consider mine disturbing instead I'll take that as a success!

I personally think the giant kit is standing up quite well and easily beats more recent kits like the ghorgon or hydra. Plus the extra stuff on the sprue is nice. Anyways it looks great. Looking forward to seeing what's next.

Well, I mean, sure if you pick two terrible kits the Giant is gonna come up on top! If you compare it instead to models like the stornhorn or carnosaur or whatever I find the giant a little lacking.
Although part of that is perhaps that I don't find the sculpt really fulfils the design concept of 'grossly inbred hill-person', I can see what they were going for, but I think it falls short in some key areas and winds up looking a little dumb.

Anyway, I picked up a second Ogre battalion box, mostly because I was fed up with being limited to 1600pt games, but also because various people were moaning at me to get more Core. I am weak-willed when it comes to peer pressure.

This gives me 16 more Ogre bodies, enough to basically 'finish' my army up to a reasonable standard.
One will become a Bruiser BSB, and another a proper Slaughtermaster model, so I'll have four characters overall which should be plenty for now.

The remaining 14 models I'm not so sure on. Originally I planned to turn 4 into Leadbelchers and the rest into Ironguts. But thinking on it it might be best to make just 2 Leadbelchers (giving me a total of 6) and 12 Ironguts?
I'm not sure which would be best. I will probably end up running 12 Ironguts more often than 8 Leadbelchers I guess?

Also, Ironguts seem incredibly annoying to put together, I'm having to leave both arms, weapons and gut plates off in order to paint them separately. What a pain.

Oh, and so this update isn't just text, here is a quick concept sketch for my BSB:



I figure Ogres, valuing strength above everything else, would probably more appreciate some sort of massive, highly visible weapon as a battle standard, as opposed to some posh flag.

Really interesting idea about a massive weapon as your bsb's flag. My only concern would be how you clearly define that it's a totem as well as just a big weapon. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Looking at your break-down of the assembly for the Ironblaster has really helped me prepare for my own.

That giant is utterly gorgeous, btw

Really interesting idea about a massive weapon as your bsb's flag. My only concern would be how you clearly define that it's a totem as well as just a big weapon. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Yes, that is a concern of mine as well, looking at what I've built so far it could conceivably be confused with just, like, an Ironguts champion or something. The banner/weapon is not quite as prominent as I perhaps would like, hopefully the paint-job will help in that regard. If not I'll just have to stick some gubbins on there.

Looking at your break-down of the assembly for the Ironblaster has really helped me prepare for my own.

That giant is utterly gorgeous, btw

I'm glad to hear it, I've found a lot of the Ogre kits, despite being fairly big and chunky models, benefit greatly from being painted in sub-assemblies. My desk is currently a mess of irongut and leadbelcher arms waiting to be painted before being stuck to torsos.

Pics to come at some point soon probably.

Alright, my BSB is ready for painting, but I figured I'd best do the Slaughtermaster first because it was sitting in a thousand pieces and I was certain some were going to go missing if I didn't get it stuck together soon-ish.










So, yeah, this is a pretty basic kitbash, with a little GS work to bulk it out and make a quick apron/skirt thing.
The base is not done yet, and it's not even glued to the base as I am positive it will rank up incredibly poorly so I need some scope to adjust the positioning.
Also, whilst the stumpy bonesaw hand is a classic Butcher look I'm not sure I like it very much here, I might rip that arm off entirely and just have it with one good arm. Not sure.

Next on the painting line is my custom Bruiser/BSB.
I guess 'custom' goes without saying as there is no official model, but whatever, here's what I ended up with:










Not an overly complicated model. I had to sculpt a pointing hand, and re-do the shoulders, armpits and neck in order to accomodate the posing. I was planning on chopping at the legs and shifting those a little as well, but thankfully that didn't prove necessary.

For my Banner-Weapon thing, after some deliberation, I've gone with one of the weapons from the Giant sprue, and added a big blade to make some sort of glaive/axe/club thing, perhaps I have been playing too much monster hunter. It's not quite as prominent as I might like, but I think the dragon skull makes for a suitable trophy and all that red gore against the otherwise cold colour scheme should make it stand out well enough. Plus, of course, she has that classic signature of importance in the form of an extravagent hat.

Also added a sort of, shield-skirt-thing to justify Heavy Armour and to make her look a little less rank-and-file.

I think you save go the scale right on the bsb weapon. It looks large (and painful!) without being so oversized its impractical. Good stuff. What's next?

Thank you! I am quite pleased with the result myself.

Next up is pretty boring busywork; I just have to paint up 10 Ironguts and 4 Leadbelchers, and I guess a bunch of Gnoblars.
Progress will be slow but continuous, so I'll post pics as and when seems necessary.

I do like that helmet, is it converted? I do not recognise it

It is slightly converted, the base helmet is from the Ironblaster kit, but I thought it was way too cool looking to just go on there so I put it aside for the BSB.

Then I just glued some horns onto it for the prerequisite 'giant hat' which is essential for important characters. The horns themselves I believe came from the Thundertusk kit.
I was going for a slightly, arthropodic, look like a giant, menacing insect or something, so it's already got the multiple eye-holes and the mandibles and such, I added the big horns to resemble maybe something like a stag beetle or similar.
But yeah, it is a pretty nice hat, the Ironblaster kit has a bunch of neat components in it.

A few new pictures. It takes me a fair while to paint even a single Ogre, so I have only done 3 Ironguts so far; the command models:



I don't really like the Ogre hammers and clubs, I vastly prefer the swords and blades and things, not least 'cos the clubs are normally more annoying to paint. As such most of these Ironguts will have swords. So, to make the Champion stand out he has the only hammer in the squad, and I have painted up as some sort of ice crystal thing to make it more obvious who's in charge.



There are no one-handed great weapon arms, so presumedly the standard bearer and musician are just supposed to use Bull arms and pretend they have great weapons, I did a bit of chopping and gluing to rectify this so now they both have weapons which could be considered 'great' despite their one-handed nature.




And a banner close-up, I like this banner piece, it's practical and decorative!



---

I have played a fair few more games now, although currently it's mostly just me getting shafted by whatever End Times nonsense is floating around this week with no way to retaliate.
Last week it was a 'cult of pleasure' which mostly just seemed an excuse to pair Witch Elves with Chaos Warriors; pretty pointless even rolling the dice in that case.
And this week it was Stormfiends where, frankly, the two units of Stormfiends could basically have dismantled my entire army by themselves, ignoring the giant unbreakable skaven hordes backing them up.
At the very least it gives me a list of things I can comfortably walk away from if I see them on the table :p

Thanks for the quick reply Halos.

From what I have heard it seems that Dark Eldar have gotten more forgiving with their new codex. They are still the hit and run, think on your feet army but better chances to pop FNP and other necessities. However, I'm not an expert on the citizens of Commorragh so I could be wrong.

Secondly, thank you for the info on female minis. I'm looking for some models to go with my Imperial Guard force and alot of searches I have done yield models that won't look part of a certain unit or fulfill a certain role. However, I recently found a female mini that might fit into my army. She is a Dark Elf Heroine from Gamezone Miniatures but she looks surprisingly able to pass off for a commander in any wargame setting. Here is a link showing her:

https://www.nobleknight.com/imagepage.asp?image=GZM0602.jpg&name=Dark%20Elf%20Heroine

What do you think of her? Will she look the part in a Guard force? I would be interested in your honest opinion so reply when your able.

Lastly, your Ogres are looking good. Keep up the good work and don't fret yet about Warhammer's future. We still are supposed to get a new rulebook for the up and coming 9th edition. At least thats the what the rumor mill is printing out right now but you just have to wait and see with these things.

By the way lovely Amibos.

"TTFN." "Ta-Ta For Now."

It is a little hard to see  the detail on that model without some paint on it.
It could work fine, but she is wearing pretty fantasy-looking armour, and I think that's a LotR style helmet under arm? The pose is good though, and with the right paint job and some 40k accessories she might look the part, and of course if your guard army is from some backwards, feudal tithe-world then there's no problem at all!

For the record I believe both Pig Iron and Victoria miniatures produce a range of alternative heads, torsos and legs scaled to match the GW Cadian guardsmen so you can mix some guardswomen into your squads.

I am not so certain we will see a 'rulebook' proper for AoS, I think it is very likely we will see a host of End Times style campaign/scenario books seen as those sold very highly as far as fantasy is concerned. I am not overly concerned, AoS, whilst poorly written and questionably balanced, is pretty fun considering how often I play, and if they keep releasing cool models then they shall have my attention at least.

Hah, and yes, good spot on the amiibos, I just grabbed the characters I liked and ended up with some sort of princess action team.

My oldest little sister really wants a Rosalina amiibo so I plan on buying one for her as a birthday present. She will really excited when she finally has it.

Thank you for your opinion on the Dark Elf Heroine. I'll still buy her but from what you have said I might need to do some conversion work. She shall end up looking the part of a sci-fi commander in no time.

Good luck on the amiibo hunt; some of them are pretty hard to come by, though they do some to be coming back in stock in greater volumes.

Anyway, as mentioned I had two generic armless torsos left over from the second Ogre battalion box, originally destined to be Leadbelchers. In the end I decided I did not really want more than six Leadbelchers though, that seems a reasonable number to me, so, with some chopping and spraying my armless torsos become:



A spare banner holder!
In AoS a unit can have more than one banner, and Ogre Bulls can take two banners with different effects, seems a no-brainer to build up another banner ogre if my group is going to stick on with AoS. It also means that I can split my Ogre squad into two smaller ones and still give them both banners if I feel so inclined, just generally adds a little more flexibility.



A Hunter!
This is just made of spare bits from the Stonehorn kit, no GS or anything, all just plastic gubbins. I don't think Hunters are hugely great in either WHFB and AoS, but they have a cool aesthetic and are always fun to put on the table. Plus my considerable obsession with Monster Hunter pretty much ensured I would be building the Ogre equivalent at some point or other. I've always felt that Hunters should get some sort of bonus against Monsters, it would give them a bit more of a distinct battlefield role.





I also picked up a second Stonehorn kit, with the intention of making a Thundertusk out of it. Firstly because I like monsters, and secondly because it is pretty funny in AoS, and alright to decent in WHFB.

So, just a quick update there, I guess I'll see you again once this Thundertusk is off the sprue. Or I might try and so some AoS battle reports if that would interest anyone.

Catch you later.

Some AoS battle reports would be nice to see. It would help others to see how Ogres fare in this new world. As for your new models I love the Hunter. He looks amazing and it goes to show that having left bits always comes in handy. Hopefully, Hunters will get some bonuses against monsters considering that they hunt huge beasts in the fluff. Can't wait to see your Thundertusk. It's going to be a great model to build and paint.

Hopefully, Hunters will get some bonuses against monsters considering that they hunt huge beasts in the fluff.

They do, it's the "A Hunter of Beasts" ability (admittedly it's not great though). You can re-roll hit and wound rolls of 1 when targeting a Monster.
Add in the "Mighty Throw" ability and they do some damage to Monsters with their throwing Spear

Thanks mpdscott. I didn't realize that they had any bonuses for monster but thats what you get for being new to an army unique rule set. They still should get a better bonus than just "reroll 1's" and be stronger against the beasts.

Hopefully, Hunters will get some bonuses against monsters considering that they hunt huge beasts in the fluff.

They do, it's the "A Hunter of Beasts" ability (admittedly it's not great though). You can re-roll hit and wound rolls of 1 when targeting a Monster.
Add in the "Mighty Throw" ability and they do some damage to Monsters with their throwing Spear

Huh, so they do, I completely missed that. Re-rolling 1s is not bad, I might've preferred +1 to hit and wound vs. monsters like the Great Name, but it's a nifty, fluffy bonus none the less. Kinda makes him into a budget Ironblaster (especially considering that the IB is considerably worse off in AoS).

Wel then, it seems that Hunters have found a reason to be taken now. I guess we will be see ing more of these guys on the field of battle soon.

B.T.W. Halos, I'm going to be start a small Dark Eldar army very soon. I'm going to try to make them allies for my Imperial Guard then when I get enough of them maybe a full army of their own. Any list tips that you give to a new player like me? I would appreciate any advice you can give.

Umm, well, I have not played with the new Dark Eldar codex, nor have I played more than a handful of games of the latest edition of 40k, so I don't know how much help I can be.

Back in 5th ed when I had Dark Eldar the flavour of the day was to load up on Venoms and Trueborn and paint targets with Splinter Cannons and Blasters til they went away, but I believe that is no longer all too valid.
Honestly I'm not really sure how DE are supposed to work anymore; they are extremely fragile, their firepower is not that good compared to say, Craftworld Eldar or Tau, their combat stuff suffers from the usual combat problems in 40k (ie. it is impossible to get into combat without being shot to death), and their Power from Pain rules seem contrary to their 'gotta go fast' intended play style, as the DE units get stronger the longer they wait, but cannot afford to wait because they are too weak in the meantime.

Umm, I believe the Haemonculus stuff (Grotesqes mostly) are pretty good as they do not suffer from the fragility problems of the rest of the book. Mostly you'll want to be looking at ways to keep a bunch of AV10/11 skimmers safe til you can strike, which is rather tricky given the wealth of ignores cover/deep strike stuff in the current game. I believe there is a DE website similar to this one, with forums and stuff, which might be able to guide you in the current meta better than I.

Thank you Halos for answering my post in an expedient fashion. I guess I'll try to find a Dark Eldar forum to see what builds are good right now in 7th ed. I certainly hope I can make DE & IG work together somehow. They are vastly different play styles but who knows they might do well with each other if done properly.

I just wanted to tell you about my future plan because it was largely your army that got me interested in Dark Eldar. So thanks for putting up those photos of your old army. It helped nudge me towards picking up a box.

Hah, you are quite welcome. I would imagine IG and DE could work fairly well together, what with IG being fairly static and defensible whilst DE are aggressive and maneuverable. The only issue would be whether you could find anything the DE elements do which the IG cannot already, you could perhaps try and use the DE as rapid counter-assault elements in case anything tries to get close and make a mess of your tanks.

And yes, even if they are not necessarily super-powerful right now, the bulk of the DE models are very nice and a lot of fun to build/paint.

Well, I did play some AoS yesterday with the intent of writing up a report, but it wound up being pretty unexciting; I'm not sure much would be gained in reading about a bunch of Ogres walking into a wizard-y gunline for three turns. My take home from it is that the game works best with smaller numbers of units, somewhere between 5-8 per side would probably be perfect. Also I would suggest perhaps experimenting with alternative game types beyond the suggested 'kill each other'. We put an objective in the center of the board, which helped to reduce the overall effectiveness of the gunline-style build by forcing some units to advance into smashing range if they wanted to not lose on points.

Anyway, I have started painting up the Thundertusk. Here is how it looked as of yesterday morning;



And at present:









I don't like the Thundertusk as much as the Stonehorn, visually speaking, it's messy up on top with the two riders, and the tusks are really just too big for my tastes, I actually prefer the look of the head without tusks stuck on:



But a Thundertusk without tusks is, well, just a Thunder really, not quite so imposing, and it's still a pretty decent sculpt all round, I just like the Stonehorn head more.
I'm painting it in stages, so the monster is done, next I'll do the seats and accessories, and then finally the riders themselves.
Unfortunately I ran out of black wash, so I'm stuck mixing up my own til I can get to the store, which is always a little dicey.

Here is a quick mock-up of all the pieces together:

Remove the tusks or make your next one without them attached. I think Thundertusks look better without the huge tusks as well. Besides, those tusks would make some great conversions on another model.

Hmm, I don't own one of these models yet but maybe chop off the majority of the tusks so it looks like the ogres have used them elsewhere? That or just leave them off

Just ideas being thrown out there.

Nice work so far.

It's not like I hate the model, I just think it's a little out of proportion! If I were to modify the tusks I would probably just take one off part-way down, as if it had been snapped off. But yeah, you could probably do something just by not using the main tusks at all (you could even use them to make a chassis for a scraplauncher/ironblaster from the spare bits in that kit if you were feeling particularly creative.

Anyway, the Thundertusk is now finished as far as I care to do so. It does look more balanced with all the bits in place and it has a lot of fun components to it, even if that does mean a lot of fiddly little bits to paint.















Both riders have a crossbow, this is not represented in the rules of course, and I actually originally painted up the second crossbow to stick on the Hunter somewhere. But in the end I decided that, seen as I was not using the reins for the Thundertusk rider,  she needed something to occupy that now-free left arm.
I am not using the reins as, once again, the riders and base are detachable for transport purposes.



And here is some sort of Ogre hunting party. I imagine that for an Ogre 'big game' is something in a rather different scale!



---

Next up I want to make some Gorgers, so that I have something to counter-deploy if I wind up facing an irritating gunline/mage bunker.
I'm planning on using the Crypt Horrors/Vargheist box, some GS rags to cover up the more obviously undead areas, maybe some less claw-like feet, and they should look the part of feral, ravening Ogre outcasts I think.

That said I have a new job, and a new schedule, so I can't say exactly when I will feel the inclination to do any further hobby work. We'll see.

My store is running some sort of AoS campaign style thing, apparently one in which you will fight across all eight realms.  Currently all the boards are set up with lava lakes and the like to represent the Realm of Fire.

There is a simple system in place to ensure a degree of equivalency across all armies; any one army may include a maximum of 100 models, or 125 wounds, whichever comes first.  This includes summoned units.

So, here is a quick and pretty rough battle report of how my first game in this format shook down.  Some of the details may not be quite correct, it was a few days ago now.

--------

My opponent was using a Khorne-themed chaos army, very nicely painted.  It is always great to see two fully painted forces hit the table.  They were using the following array of Battlescrolls:

-Khorne Lord on Juggernaut
-Khorne Exalted Hero:  Demon Axe of Khorne, Runemarked Shield
-Bloodsecrator
-4x Skullcrushers of Khorne:  Ensorcelled Axes, Standard Bearer, Hornblower
-20x Warriors of Chaos:  2 Chaos Hand Weapons, Mark of Khorne, Standard Bearer, Hornblower
-Gorebeast Chariot:  Chaos Greatblade, Mark of Khorne
-Chaos Warshrine:  Dedicated to Khorne
-Chimera
-Slaughterbrute
(Total models: 31  //  Total wounds: 122)

Whilst my Ogre force consisted of:
-Tyrant:  2 Hand Weapons, Brawlerguts
-Bruiser Standard Bearer:  Ogre Pistol
-Butcher
-10x Ogres:  Iron Fists, Bellower, Great Beast Skull, Tribal Banner, Look Out Gnoblar
-9x Ironguts:  Bellower, Rune Maw Banner
-Stonehorn:  Hunting Spear
-Thundertusk:  Chaintrap
(Total models: 24  //  Total wounds: 122))

As you can see both armies had an identical wound count, conveniently enough.  Of course wound count is far from a perfect metric for determining partisanship between armies in AoS, but they looked close enough.  The chaos side was exactly one model too small to grant the Ogres an outnumbered bonus, so the sudden death objectives were not in play.

We were using a 2' x 2' board using the terrain rules as outlined in the main rules.  The chaos deployment half had featured four terrain pieces, one Arcane, one Sinister, one Inspiring and one Damned, none of which came into play over the course of the game.  Whilst the Ogre table half contained two terrain pieces both of them Mystical.

The Ogre General was the Tyrant, whilst for Chaos the Exalted Hero stepped up to the plate.

Deployment-wise we basically just lined things up. The Chimera and Slaughterbrute were on the right flank across from the Stonehorn whilst the right flank held the Chariot, Skullcrushers and Thundertusk.  Everything else sat in between.  The Ogres finished deploying first, unsurprisingly, and thus took turn 1.

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Turn 1
Ogre Battle Round

-Hero Phase
At the start of the first Hero Phase all of the Ogre units were under the effects of mystical terrain pieces, a ruin on the left in which the Ogre units was lurking, and a forest to the right which concealed the Stonehorn.  Each unit had to roll a D6, on a 2+ they got to re-roll all wounds for the turn!  But on a 1 they would be rendered entranced by the mystical aura and find themselves unable to take any actions at all.  In this first turn both the Butcher and Bruiser were stuck staring dumbly at nothing whilst the rest of the army advanced.  The Tyrant slapped the Ogres up a bit to make sure they knew who was boss.

-Movement
I had no interest in taking a Khorne charge to the face so the Ogres advanced with uncharacteristic trepidation, many units not even taking advantage of their full movement.

-Shooting
Not many guns to play with here, the Thundertusk was just out of range to snipe out the Chaos General, but it was still able to hit the Skullcrushers, and did so with aplomb, killing one outright and wounding another with a blast of ice and snow.

Chaos Battle Round
-Hero Phase
The Exalted Hero used their command ability; granting all Mortal Chaos units within a certain radius +1 melee attack for all of their weapons.  Pretty good, kinda scary.

-Movement
The chaos forces, no doubt buoyed by their thirst for fresh-spilled blood, advanced rapidly, pressing towards the board center with a clashing of axes and a braying for skulls.  The fast moving cavalry was able to get right up into Ogre territory with some strong run moves.  The Chimera and Slaughterbrute advanced towards the Stonehorn, hoping to keep it occupied before it made a mess of softer targets.

-Shooting
The Chimera doused the Stonehorn with it's boiling breath attack, but the mountain beasts sturdy body kept away the worst of it, suffering only 1 wound.

Turn 2
In turn 2 the chaos forces, the fervent need for bloodletting clearly answered by the dark god, stole the initative.  Things were going to get messy!

Chaos Battle Round
-Hero Phase
The General used his attack boosting ability again, which effected the Khorne Lord, Chaos Warriors and Juggernauts.  The Bloodsecrator then planted his standard proudly, which does, uh, something pretty good but I can't quite recall what...  It definitely makes units in range immune to Battleshock, and I think it also gives them an extra attack too?  The Warshrine laid Khorne's devotion across the Chaos Warriors, driving them into a berserk frenzy.

-Movement Phase
Everything advanced, as far as it could go, right up into the face of the enemy.  The Stonehorn and Thundertusk in particular were in some real danger as the stared down a whole host of unpleasant looking spiky objects waved aloft by maniacal fanatics.

-Shooting Phase
The Chimera once again blasted the Stonehorn, but again managed only a single wound.

-Charge Phase
The Chaos Warriors, gibbering and frothing, crashed into the Ironguts, their General attempted to join them but fell short.  The Chimera and Slaughterbrute both laid claw and talon against the Stonehorn whilst, on the other flank, the Thundertusk was the target of the Gorebeast Chariot (which managed such a successful charge as to double it's attacks!), the Skullcrushers and the Khorne Lord. So devastating was the impact that the Thundertusk immediately lost 2 wounds!

-Combat Phase.
Reasoning that the Stonehorn got weaker as it was damaged the Chaos side elected to strike with the Slaughterbrute first, this proved reasonably effective but the beasts stone skeleton warded away the worst of the damage leaving it with five wounds remaining.
This was actually something of a boon for the Ogres, as it meant that Ironguts would not have to suffer the full force of the Warriors, who currently had 4 attacks each with re-rolls to hit; more than enough to leave a nasty scar.  The Ironguts went next and, with help from their re-rolls to wound from the Mystical forest, killed 15 of the brass-clad warriors in a devastating strike.  (That's 30 wounds for those keeping score at home).  The Juggernauts went next, who also had +2 attacks each (including the attacks of their mounts), and so dealt a nasty blow to the Thundertusk, leaving it with only 4 wounds remaining.
Next I chose the Stonehorn; it is the stronger melee combatant and, with 5 wounds left, could still be pretty lethal.  It retaliated violently, swinging it's great head about, slamming it's bulk into the Chimera, leaving the unnatural monstrosity with but a single wound.
The Khorne Lord struck next but, to the surprise of everyone, he was vexed by the frigid aura of the Thundertusk, leaving the beast alive on 2 wounds.
The Thundertusk was then the last remaining Ogre unit in combat.  It directed it's attacks against the Gorebeast Chariot, causing 6 wounds but unable to kill it before it struck back. 
The Chariot, or more specifically the Gorebeast itself, were successful in finishing off the Thundertusk.
The remaining Chaos Warriors then had their turn, and even with only 5 remaining were able to cause 6 wound to the Ironguts, I am very fortunate not to have had to deal with 4 times that damage!

Ogre Battle Round
-Hero Phase
The mystical ruins held their grip on the Butcher, perhaps his magically-attuned mind particularly susceptible to their call, or perhaps it was Khorne himself, keeping any magic from sullying this blood-soaked battlefield.  The Tyrant used the generic Command Ability on the Ironguts. The Bruiser planted her standard in the ground, imbuing the nearby Ogres with a fierce resolve.

-Movement Phase
The Ogres crashed from their hiding places in the Mystical ruins, sprinting bodily towards the champions of Khorne who had felled the Thundertusk.  The Tyrant decides to take matters into her own hands, pushing past the ranks of the Ironguts, striding towards the enemies General with murderous purpose.

-Shooting Phase
All my guns are dead!  Actually the Bruiser has a pistol, but I only realised this after the battle, no matter.

-Chare Phase.
The Ogres manage to make their 3" charge, you may mock but rolling that dreaded double-1 has stymied many the battle plan.  The Tyrant also makes her charge, grinning as she towers over the Exalted Champion.

-Combat Phase
I activate the Ogres first; they are in range of so many units that they are going to need all the help they can get.  This also means that their attacks are spread pretty thin.  Also I forgot about the effects of the Maw standard.  And then they barely managed to hit anything.  All in all not a good combat round for the Ogres.  They did manage to kill the Chariot however, and deal 2 wounds to the Skullcrushers.
Next up the Chaos Warriors take their turn to strike before they are smashed apart, dealing a further 2 wounds to the Irongut (and thus killing a second).
The Tyrant roars a challenge, the Chaos General of course upsets hefting his bronze axe with a supernatural skill.  It proves little use against the living mountain of an enraged Tyrant however, and the Exalted Campion is reduced to a fine red smear (6 attacks with re-rolls to hit, wounding on 2s thanks to Brawlerguts and re-rolling those thanks to the Mystic ruins, with rend-1 and 2 damage a piece; it doesn't provide much leeway for failure).
The Slaughterbrute goes next, succeeding in slaying the Stonehorn before it gets a chance to strike again. 
The Ironguts polish off the Chaos Warriors, I remember about the maw standard this time, but it hardly matters; those Warriors were dead no matter what.
After this there are no Ogre units left to activate and the Khorne Lord and Skullcrushers bawl and bray against the Ogres, killing two of them.  In the process however, the Ironfists prove their worth, the retaliatory strikes killing a Skullcrusher!
The Warshrine has the space to move into the Tyrant and manages to deal 3 wounds.

Turn 3
In turn 3 the Ogres take back the initative; time to turn the tide of blood!

Ogre Battle Round
-Hero Phase
Confident in their defeat of the Khornate Warriors the Ironguts swagger towards the Slaughterbrute.  But as they do so their eyes glint with a strange reflection; the Ironguts are mesmerised by the Mystical forest!  This is bad, the Ironguts are easily the strongest unit on the board, I had hoped to use them to crush the Slaughterbrute, but now they can't do anything at all!  The Butcher attempts to cast Enchanted Shield on the dumb-struck Ironguts to keep them protected, but fails the roll.  The Tyrant uses Inspiring Presence on them, just in case.  The Bruiser keeps her standard rooted firmly in the ground, I'm going to need those bonus wounds.

-Movement Phase
The Butcher, now that he can finally move, heads to a more commanding viewpoint in the ruins.

-Combat Phase
The Ogres go first, with the aid of the Maw standard (and re-rolls to wound from the Mystic ruins), they carve a heavy toll from the flesh of the Chaos-kin.  After their carnivorous onslaught only a single Skullcrusher remains in her saddle, and the Khorne Lord has lost 2 wounds.
The Warshrine strikes next, but causes only a single wound to the Tyrant, who then hits back; she no longer has the re-rolls to wound from the Mystical ruins, nor the 2+ to wound from Brawlerguts, but she is still a Tyrant and she manages to knock 4 wounds off of the Warshrine.
Then the Khorne Lord and remaining Skullcrusher take their turns.  The Khorne Lord has proven disappointingly pacifistic all battle, and remains so here, between them the manage to kill a single Ogre, and both suffer a Mortal wound in the process thanks to the Ironfists. 

Chaos Battle Round
-Hero Phase
The Bloodsecrator lifts his standard, fixing the mocking Tyrant with a blood-red glare; he has work to do.
The Slaughterbrute, cautious as to why the Ironguts have halted in their tracks, lurks in the edges of the forest but in doing so it to grows entranced by the strange place.  The Slaughterbrute is also trapped for a turn, haha!  The Mystical forest giveth, and it taketh away!

-Movement Phase
The Chimera, with 1 wound remaining, decides it best to avoid any further conflict, perhaps find a nice home in the mountains.  It flies out of the forest towards the Chaos home board edge.

-Shooting Phase
The Chimera is now basically just a flying platform which can cause one mortal wound a turn.  It does so to the Tyrant.

-Charge Phase
The Bloodsecrator, bellowing incoherently, dashes towards the Tyrant as she toys with the Warshrine.

-Combat Phase
The Bloodsecrator makes his presence known in the only way Khorne knows how, driving his blade ferociously at the Tyrant.  I brief and bloody duel has the Bloodsecrator stand as champion, the Tyrant dead at his feet!
Though this is, of course, a devastating blow to the Ogres it does provide them a chance to take some swift retribution, and they make it count, striking against the Khorne Lord and remaining Skullcrusher with fist and blade, and even teeth when the opportunity arises.  In short order the Skullcrusher is tugged from his steed, and both rider and mount crushed underfoot in a startling display of brutality.  Only the Khorne Lord remains, and he succeeds in taking out one of the Ogres, but in doing so his last wound is stripped away by an opportunistic punch to the face from an Ironfist.

-Battleshock Phase
Thanks to the untimely death of the Tyrant the Ogres are back to suffering from Battleshock check as normal.  Of course as they only lost one model I only have to avoid rolling a 6.  Inevitably I immediately roll a 6, but the units tribal banner allows me to re-roll it, preventing further casualties.

Turn 4
Turn 4 sees the reins of victory back in Chaos hands; they have lost many models in the previous turn, can they put the Ogres in their place?

Chaos Battle Round
-Movement Phase
The Slaughterbrute, freed from the forest's enchantment by the victorious triumph of it's master, advances on the still befuddled Ironguts.  The Warshrine and Bloodsecrator set towards the remaining Ogres whilst the Chimera lurks in the background waiting to snipe out choice targets.

-Shooting Phase
For now the Chimera settles on knocking a wound off of an Irongut

-Charge Phase
The Slaughterbrute rushes down the column of oblivious Ironguts whilst the Bloodsecrator and Warshrine pound across the gore-slick earth into the Ogres.

-Combat Phase
My opponent makes an elementary error and forgets that the Ironguts cannot attack this turn; he selects the Slaughterbrute first, which causes 6 wounds to the iron-clad Ogres.
This allows me to swing with the Ogres before they get too badly beat up.  Unfortunately a number of embarrassing whiffs ensures the Bloodsecrator takes only 2 wounds.  The Warshrine proves a more valid target however, perhaps because it is large; more room for stabbing, it suffers another 4 wounds.
Both Chaos units can then hit back with impunity, killing another Ogre and, doubtless wary considering the Khorne Lord's fate, avoiding any extra wounds from Ironfists.

-Battleshock Phase
Once again I manage to roll the only result which gives me a failed Battleshock test for the Ogres.  Fortunately the Tribal Banner saves me; don't leave home without them!

Ogre Battle Round
-Hero Phase
The Ironguts are no longer paralysed!  Unfortunately the Bruiser is...  Strictly speaking the Mystic terrain rules do not say that a befuddled unit cannot use Command Traits or plant standards, but the intent of the rule is pretty clearly to prevent effected units from doing anything, so we decided that the Bruiser's standard was now out of commission.

-Combat Phase
I select the Ironguts to go first; the Slaughterbrute is still in full wounds and I would greatly prefer it not be by the next time it goes to attack.  Their 3" Pile In only allows three of them to get in range, but with their re-rolls to wound from the Mystic forest this is not a massive problem; slicing away 9 of the beasts 12 wounds.
The Bloodsecrator hits next, causing several wounds to the Ogre unit.
Then the Ogres strike, they makes sure not to leave the Bloodsecrator alive this time around crushing him, and the Warshrine for good measure, into the dust.
The Slaughterbrute gets the opportunity for some farewell shots, killing one Irongut and leaving another on one wound.

Chaos did grab the initative for turn 5 as well, using the Chimera to snipe off the wounded Irongut and the Slaughterbrute to do a bit more damage, but then the Ironguts put it down and we called the game there.  His severely wounded Chimera versus a heavily diminished, but still quite fearsome, Ogre force was something of a foregone conclusion!

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So, there you have it, I probably went into more detail than was strictly necessary but there's a battle report for AoS.
Despite it's many flaws I do find the game strangely fun, and this game exemplifies that, we both had a blast as the game twisted and turned and threw 'sure things' into long shots with the throw of a dice.  Certainly we both had a giggle at the dubious timing of the Mystical terrain pieces and the fact that not a single spell was cast all game, which was only appropriate I suppose.

Hopefully next time round I will be able to use the monsters to better effect!

I also picked up a box of Crypt Horrors to turn into Gorgers, I've stuck bits of them together already but they're going to need a little bit of GS work to suit my vision for them, I'll probably through together a quick tutorial or something.

I was planning on getting some crypt horrors/vargheist to make into a Corpseclaw attachment for my Haemonculus Coven force and some crypt ghouls for my wracks. Seems we are getting the same set but for completely different reasons.

Crypt Horrors would probably make better Grotesques than they do Gorgers to be honest, certainly they would require less conversion; all you'd need is a few choice DE bits and a head-swap.  (Pro-tip: the Talos/Cronos kit comes with a wealth of spare Coven-appropriate bits, including several masked heads perfect for Grotesque conversion, as well as being a sweet, sweet model in it's own right.)

I've seen zombies used (with limited success) as Wracks, but Crypt Ghouls would probably work better imo, they have a nice hunch-backed lab assistant look to them and, again, would only really require a smattering of DE bits to make them fit in nicely.

---

Anyway, I spent last weekend doing some cutting and sticking to the Crypt Horrors and came up with what I hope will be some reasonable-looking Gorger's after a coat of paint, and once they actually have arms.

Here's what I came up with:

The base Crypt Horror box is a little disappointing; there are no head options, few arm options, and the arms are designed to fit only with certain torsos so there's no poseability outside of the neck-join either.  The actual sculpts are great but if you want more than three you're going to wind up with some very similar looing models.  The alternate gargoyle-looking models are just plain bad looking to my eye.

Anyway, first I clipped out the torsos and stuck them together.  There are three separate bodies in the box, one with spikes, one with enlarged vertebrae and one with an exposed spine.  Which are cool but not exactly suitable for Gorgers!  I left the spikes off, trimmed down the vertebrae and covered the more un-dead looking areas with some patches of GS.





Next up the legs, all three pairs of legs have patches of fur on the thighs, I clipped these off, fairly roughly truth be told.  There's also a patch of fur at the groin which I trimmed down a little so I could fit a loincloth on:



Finally for the 'hacking up' stage came the feet.  The models have elongated, digitigrade legs which end in clawed feet.  This was no good for something which is supposed to be basically just a feral Ogre.  The ideal solution would be to trim the legs short, adjust the posture, and sculpt on some manky Ogre feet, but I didn't have time for that.  Instead, for now, I just roughly cut the claws into a vague 'foot' shape:



I clipped the arms out too, none of them really need any alteration. I just trimmed the claws down into a more reasonable size.



Next up was the GS stages.  I used this much:


Extremely useful image with no scale reference...

I rolled out a sheet and cut it into thin straps like so:



I then wrapped these straps round the thighs, covering the rough patch from the removed fur.



Then I cut out some small squares of GS, and some more straps.  Using a wet tool to rag up one edge of each square. 



The squares became bits of loincloth whilst the extra straps I wrapped around each foot, like crude bandages for an individual who moves tirelessly barefoot over jagged terrain in search of food, the main goal in this swaddling was to cover up the claw-like toes of the Crypt Horror and produce a shape which might plausibly conceal a normal, albeit malnourished, foot.







I also used the left-over GS to add some scraps of hair to their heads, my reasoning being that Crypt Horrors don't have hair, whilst Gorgers do, so a little bit of hair should help to make the silhouette a tiny it more distinct.

And there you have it, three Gorgers without having to use any of the original, awful, Gorger models.  A little bit fiddly for not much gain perhaps, but given a suitably pallid paint job I think they'll look the part well enough.

Wonderful conversion work on the Crypt Horrors. At this rate they will be looking like Gorgers in no time.

On another note, I wanted to show you the pictures that gave me the inspiration about using ghouls as wracks.

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?281767-Dark-Eldar-Wrack-Conversions

http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?10558-Starting-a-new-Dark-Eldar-army/page3

I have also included the color scheme I have decided on for the Kabal. The white & brass scheme was chosen because the army will be named the Kabal of the Alabaster Caress. A Slaaneshi aligned Kabal that has dealings with a Slaaneshi Astartes Warband called the Angels of Eloquence. This Warband consists of former Sanguinary Guard, death masks and all.

I was originally going to have both the Kabal and Warband share the white and brass color scheme to show their alliance. Is this a smart choice or bad in the long run?

Generally speaking I am not a fan of allies for balance reasons, and also cos Tyranids don't get any...
But if you are planning on including some allied forces then it would be a good idea to match the colour schemes, yes, otherwise you tend to end up with something that looks like two separate armies on your side of the table.

You don't need to use the exact same scheme, the DE and SM models feature very different materials after all, but they should probably share some key elements, certainly at the very least the spot colours should be the same.  Experiment a bit and see what works.

Sanguinary Guard should work well as Slaanesh-dedicated models though once you shave off the BA iconography, they're already most of the way there to the 'Sigvald the Magnificent' school of Slaanesh-based design.

Sigvald could easily look the part in a slaanesh marine army with sanguinary guard bits. I may just try that if I could get my hands on a cheap model of him.

Before I saw those pics of your former Dark Eldar army, I never considered creating anything related to them. Yet here I am, starting on what will be my second 40k army (IG being the first). In a way I'm starting this because of your work and I hope to make something that both you and the Stronghold can enjoy in the future.
 
So thanks again for taking time to answer my questions on your army blog and I'll be looking forward to your hobby progress in whatever you make.

Well, it is nice to be an inspiration to someone, an unfamiliar feeling certainly.

If you are still looking for DE lists I saw an interesting one recently which looked pretty decent, not sure on the points value but it combined two formations from the Coven book with a regular DE combined arms detachment.

Combined Arms-
HQ: Succubus (Archite Glaive)
Troops: 2x5 Warriors (Blasters) - Venoms (2x Splinter Cannons)
Heavy Support: Ravager (Dark Lances)
                        Razorwing Jetfighter (Dark Lances, Monoscythe Missiles)

Dark Artisan Formation-
Haemonculus (Nightmare Doll, Scissorhand, Webway Portal)
Talos (Ichor Injector, Heatlance)
Cronos (Spirit Syphon, Spirit Probe)

Grotesquerie Formation-
Haemonculus (Scissorhand, Sindriq's Sump)
3x Grotesques (Aberration) - Raider
3x Grotesques (Aberration) - Raider

The CAD is basically your anti-armour, which is desperately needed, and can pull double duty as anti-infantry with the monoscythe missiles and splinter cannons as necessary.
The Grotesques are tough bruiser squads, able to hop out of their raiders and punch things (the Succubus should join the Grotesque squad without a Haemonculus.)
The Webway portal allows the Talos/Cronos to arrive wherever they please and cause a real headache, with the Nightmare Doll making them deceptively durable.
Fun stuff I think, and with the Coven formations bonuses the units are small but get harder to shift as the game progresses.

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Anyway, Ogres.  I have painted the Gorgers.



I did have better photos but photobucket has decided that it won't let me upload them, so this is all you get for now.  They still look a little too much like Crypt Horrors for me to consider the conversion a total success, but I think they look the part well enough, certainly they will do the job.

I for one think that they look really good as Grogers. It will take a good eye to realize that they are actually built from a vampire counts kit. Take your time uploading those pics on Photobucket. Programs and websites can act weird at times so what I do is to be patient and kept trying. Your uploads will work eventually.

As for the Dark Eldar list, I will definitely try to build this list. It has a low amount of models and therefore, a low price entry. One box of Kabalite Warriors will complete the troops choices and buying a Wyche box will take care of the Succubus and give me some bits for future builds. After that only two boxes of Varghiest/Crypt Horrors and one or two Talos/Cronos kits and the Coven formations are done. Someday I'll try to get or scratchbuild the Venoms/Raiders and the Ravager/Razorwing but for now I'll focus on the footmen.

Thanks again for going above the call of duty in helping me. I hope to help you out in a similar way in the future.

I did once see some papercraft templates for DE vehicles which might suit if you're looking for cheap alternatives, though compared to some DE lists that particular one is fairly skimmer-light I suppose.

Anyway, after some trial and error here are the remaining Gorger pics I took, just individual shots, nothing too exciting:







I have played in a couple more AoS games too, though one was rather one-sided (it turns out Stormcast Eternal's main gimmick of powerful, small units is something Ogres do rather better), it might write up a battle report of the other one though which was quite fun if anyone would be interested in that.

I also might write up some army fluff, I like making army fluff though it seldom gets written down, an excuse to stretch my writing arm a spell.

As for new hobby stuff, I don't know, I have a fair few Ogres now so I'm in no particular rush to add more right now, though no doubt I will find something to add to my collection in the future.

I feel that writing fluff and battle reports should be apart of an army blog. The only reason why battle reports are not mandatory is that some people can't get a game with another person. So go ahead and write that backstory and batrep down. It will be interesting to see what makes this tribe tick and how they fair on the field of battle.

If your unsure of what to accomplish next on your hobby table maybe you could focus on another army of yours or start a new force for a different gaming system you are interested in. It's not necessary but I would personally finish my remaining Ogres off while I'm in the mindset because our hobby interests shift around from time to time. Then again you are not me so your work method/groove might be radically different from mine.

Also do you remember where you saw those papercraft DE vehicles? Anything that can make building an army easier is valuable.

P.S. Nice to hear that Ogors are doing well in the new world of fantasy battles.

All right then, but don't forget you asked for this.

As for papercraft stuff, I don't have a link or anything and I'm only vaguely remembering from back in 40k 5th edition, but just google 'Dark Eldar Papercraft' or something and you should find some templates I think.

Anyway, Battle Reporting.

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As I mentioned earlier I played one game recently against Stormcast Eternals, but I'm not going to write that up properly cos it was pretty uninteresting.  My opponent was fairly confident that they're big squad of Retributors would be enough to make a mess of my Ironguts, but even though they got the chance to swing first this was not the case, I think they killed 3 guts, which is pretty good, but then the remaining ogres smashed about 6 Retributors in an unfair exchange.

Regardless, I played most recently against the forces of Chaos championed by my good friend who is something of a power-gamer.  My store is playing an AoS format which permits only 100 models (or 125 wounds worth of models) to be played in a sort of mini-campaign thing, I was confident that their 125 wounds would be crammed full of the nastiest models in their collection, here's how it shook out.

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Forces of Chaos

Khorne Lord on Juggernaut
Chaos Sorcerer
Rotkin Sorcerer (Or something, some Nurgle-themed wizard anyway)
Demon Prince of Tzeentch

5x Blightkings
5x Skullreapers (Or something, the Khornate big-huge guys that came out with the new Bloodthirster)
6x Juggernauts
8x Ironguts

Hellcannon

So yeah, pretty nasty stuff.  You may note the presence of some Ironguts tucked away in there, I believe my opponent has noticed the effectiveness of my own Ironguts and decided to grab a slice of that sweet, sweet foe-crushing pie.  With AoS of course there are no real army restrictions for mix-and-matching, and it's not like Ogres have never worked with Chaos before, so I can't say I blame him.

Ogre Forces

Golgfag Maneater
Butcher
Bruiser Standard Bearer

8x Ironguts
9x Maneaters
2x Gorgers

Stonehorn
Thundertusk

With the gorgers painted I had little choice but to  actually put them on the table of course, my hope was that they could deal with the Hellcannon before it made too much of a mess.  My standard Ogres were proxying as Maneaters for today, I had heard good things about them and wanted to see for myself, with Golgfag tagging along for the sake of the look of the thing.

---

Deployment

We were using a 4x4 board with a smattering of realm of fire themed scenery, the random scenery effects provided nothing exciting, pretty much everything was either Sinister or Inspiring; basically irrelevant throughout the game.

The Ogres won the roll off to deploy first, withholding the Gorgers so that they could use their special deployment option.  The Ironguts, Maneaters and characters huddled in the board center, whilst both the monsters settled behind a rocky outcropping on the left flank.  Golgfag had brought along a suit of particularly shiny armour today and, with none of my models having unique command abilities, I made him the General just because it seemed appropriate.

The Chaos deployment was a little more strategic, my opponent knew full-well the first-turn danger of the Thundertusk, and so deployed everything only 9" onto the table, ensuring it would not be able to use it's icy breath in the first turn.  The Ironguts surrounded the Hellcannon to prevent any Gorger-based mishaps.  The wizards hid behind the cannon.  The Juggernauts, Skullreapers and Khorne Lord (also the General) stamped their brass hooves along the right flank, hoping to sweep across the Ogre lines, whilst the Daemon Prince and Blight Kings skulked on the left.

Round 1
The Ogres finished their deployment first and opted to go first, whilst the Thundertusk couldn't do much of anything this turn it was still better to close the gap quickly and avoid losing too many wounds to the Hellcannon.

Ogre Turn
The Butcher attempted to cast Enchanted Shield on the Ironguts but failed to do so.  Golgfag made the Ironguts immune to Battleshock for the turn (The Maneaters already enjoyed that particular boon from their mercenary experiences).

The Gorgers showed up, I couldn't really do anything fancy with them as my opponent had their deployment zone pretty much locked down, I just placed them as a speed-bump on the left flank.  Everything else advanced.  The Stonehorn got a low run roll and so there would be no lucky first-turn charges today, perhaps for the best.

In shooting the Thundertusk was out of range with it's best weapon, but still managed to knock a wound off the Hellcanon with it's Blood Vulture.

Chaos Turn

The Khorne lord brayed to all available Khornate units, granting them faster movement and a greater first for blood.  The sorcerers worked their wicked magic, my opponents general strategy was to combine Enchanted Shield with the Chaos spell which allows units to re-roll saves (and hits and wounds) of a 1, something which makes the Ironguts, or Juggernauts, even harder to kill.

The Blight Kings moved forwards with the Demon Prince lurking behind them, the Khornate units were less cautious, riding out towards the Ironguts, hoping to neuter the powerful unit before it could do any real damage.  The Chaos ogres shuffled slowly, shifting forwards a little whilst keeping themselves out of range of a counter-charge.

The Hellcannon belched forth it's fearsome payload, searing the Thundertusk with a white-hot spray of clinging flame, practically slaying the beast outright and leaving it staggering on only 2 wounds!

The Blight Kings try for a lengthy charge, worth it to stop the Stonehorn charging and doing extra damage, the risk pays off and their rotted, armoured forms crash against the braying monster.  The Khorne units fail to reach the Ironguts with their charges.

The Blight Kings rusted blades prove of little-use against the crusted hide of the Stonehorn, causing only 2 wounds, though the beast itself demonstrates an embarrassing lack of self-preservation instinct and only manages to crush a single Blight King, the Gorgers pile into the combat but fail to leave much of an impression.

Round 2
The Forces of Chaos win the roll for Round 2, which puts the Ogres in a bad spot.

Chaos Turn
The winds of fortune favour the warriors of Chaos as they surge with desire to slay the brutish Ogres who seek to harass them.  Dark spells are woven, imbuing the corrupted Ironguts with unnatural strength.

Seizing the second turn is often a major deciding point of the battle, and my opponent is quick to press the advantage.  Recognising the danger the Ironguts pose, from experience, the Juggernauts, Skullreapers, Khorne Lord and chaos Ironguts all march out to face them.  The Daemon Prince moves to assist the Blight Kings.

In shooting the Hellcannon seeks to weaken the Stonehorn, but only causes 2 wounds thanks to the beasts stone skeleton, still enough to knock it down to the next wound threshold and limit it's combat effectiveness.

All charges are successful except for the Khorne Lord, who is trapped behind the eager bodies of her own warriors.  The Daemon Prince aims for the Thundertusk, but rolls short and redirects into the Gorgers instead.

The chaos Ironguts swing first, though this is a tactical misstep; the Ironguts had to charge at an angle to reach their target, and even with piling in only a handful can make their attacks, still re-rolling 1s to hit and wound makes those few attacks plenty potent!
My Ironguts then take the opportunity to swing, before they are all cut down, unfortunately by nature of the complex combat they find themselves at the center of they have to split their attacks amongst their attacks, greatly reducing their effectiveness.  They do manage to kill an Irongut and a Juggernaut however, but cause no wounds at all to the Skullreapers.
The Blightkings then strike out at the wounded Stonehorn, but only manage to cause 3 more wounds.
I then hit out with the Gorgers, again to little effect, not very impressed with their output so far!  They kill 1 Blight King and put 2 wounds on the Daemon Prince.
The Daemon Prince then puts 8 wounds on the Gorgers for their insolence.
The Stonehorn lashes out, leaving only the Blight King champion left alive.
Then back with the Ironguts the Juggernauts have their turn, impact hits and stomping hooves prove highly effective, and I am bad at rolling saves, killing most of three ogres.
The chaos Ironguts, in their rush to charge their kin, have strayed too close to the Maneaters, who pile into melee, only a few can reach to attack but they soon prove their worth, 4 attacks each, 3+ to hit, 3+ to wound (with re-rolls thanks to Golfag) with damage 2 and rend 1 is pretty good!  Even with their enchanted armour two of the Chaos Ironguts fall.
Finally the Skullreapers get to attack, surprisingly they are the most damaging of the Khorne units this turn.  At the end of the combat their are only 3 Ironguts left alive, and one of those is heavily wounded.

Ogre Turn
All in all that could have gone worse; I expected the Ironguts to be fully wiped out in that powerful charge, but they survive long enough to hold the Chas forces in place.  Golgfag makes them immune to battleshock again, just in case any survive this turn.  The Butcher gives the Maneaters +1 save.  The Standard Bearer plants her standard, the embattled Ogres need all the help they can get.

Most everything is locked in combat, so their is little movement to be done, the Thundertusk shuffles backwards a little.

In shooting the Thundertusk is greatly reduced, now causing only a single mortal wound on a 2+, but it can still annoy the enemy and knocks a few wounds off of the Daemon Prince.  Golgfag and the BSB miss with their pistol shots, the Maneaters prove more effective, managing to kill a Juggernaut.

In combat the Maneaters go first; they still have all their wounds and a raring for a fight, piling in they are able to surround the chaos Ironguts and deal a deathly blow, by the time they are done only a single one remains.
The last chaos Irongut goes next (another mistake in my opinon, but vengeance is hard to deny).
I leave my Ironguts to their fate and swing with the Stonehorn, which finishes off the last Blight King but cannot reach to attack the Demon Prince, more's the pity.
The Skullreapers decide to reap some skulls, again proving most deadly as they leave only a single Irongut left alive.
We then have a little Irongut duel, my champion crushing his corrupted fellow with impunity.
The Demon Prince snacks on the last Gorger, oh well Gorgers, maybe next time.
The Juggernauts find themselves caught at the edges of the combat, only one of their number can reach to strike at the last Irongut, and fails to cause any lasting damage!

Round 3
The Ogres go first in round 3 which, as you might imagine, twists the tide back against the suddenly over-exposed forces of Chaos.

Ogre Turn
There are no more targets for Golgfag's command ability, and the Butcher once again fumbles his spell casting.  The Bruiser keeps her standard firmly planted however, that thing is useful.

Golgfag advances across the broken ground to face against the Demon Prince.  The brutal casualties of the last combat actually left the Maneaters outside of the 3" restricted movement bubble, allowing them to march round the blood-hungry Khorne units to a better position.

In shooting the Maneaters kill a few Skullreapers whilst Golgfag once again misses, the Thundertusk lands a couple of wounds on the Demon Prince.

In combat the Maneaters go first again, charging back into the fray, wicked blades flashing in the smoke and flame as they carve apart the Skullreapers with a vicious efficiency. 
Golgfag fails to charge the Prince, which the Prince takes as an opportunity to attempt to finish off the Stonehorn.  It is a wasted opportunity however, as he fails to cause too much damage.
The sole Irongut reminds everyone that he's still here by knocking an unfortunate Khorne rider from his saddle and sitting on him.
The Juggernauts pile in and cause a few wounds to the Maneaters.
The Stonehorn crushes the leering Demon Prince beneath granite hooves.
The Khorne Lord is finally, just, in range to pile in, and begins reaping a deadly toll on the Maneaters (although truth be told her daemonic steed does more damage than she does...)

Chaos Turn
The wizards attempt to use their magic to twist things back in their favour, but it seems too little, too late.

There is little movement, the wizards and cannon back away from the maelstrom of violence before them.

The Hellcannon attempts to finish off the Stonehorn but rolls the always amusing double 1 for damage, causing only a single wound, leaving it with but 2 remaining wounds.

In combat the Juggernauts pile fully in and begin doing what they do best to the Maneaters.
The Maneaters, perhaps unsurprisingly, do not prove huge fans of having serrated axes swung at them, and so they show the warriors of Chaos just how it is done, tearing apart both the Juggernauts and their Lord-General.

Round 4
Round 4 is pretty much just mopping up; Chaos only has 3 models left, the Hellcannon falls to a little bit of shooting followed by a damaging Stonehorn charge, whilst the wizards are left facing down the wrath of the final Irongut, backed up by a whole bunch of Maneaters.

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All right, so that's that basically.  Mostly I think this report demonstrates the importance of not over-extending your forces; you can have the most powerful units in the game but if you let them get surrounded they're in for a rough time.  Getting that turn 2 initiative can be really important, but you need to know where to strike for the best effect. 
Also always bear in mind that, when charging and piling in, you should try to avoid coming within 3" of an unengaged enemy model unless you want to deal with more incoming attacks than you bargained for!
The Hellcannon is not quite as dangerous as I assumed; it is good no question, and certainly did a number on the Thundertusk, but it is also pretty random which can work against it as often as it for it.

Also Maneaters are really good, possibly better than Ironguts?  I don't know, they're damage is certainly more reliable but they are much less survivable by far.

In fact based on this battle I kinda want to build up some Maneaters next, but I will need to think on that; I do not like the hodge-podge nature of the actual Maneater fluff, I want something more uniform.  I'll draw up some concept sketches and see what I can come up with.

And next update will be fluff stuff I guess, I should probably write a first draft for that before I get to typing it up...

Interesting battle report Halos. It was an enjoyable read and I was too surprised that the Hellcannon didn't do more damage to your forces. At the beginning of the batrep I thought that the orgors would end up losing however, I ended up amazed and happy at how the battle went.

Building more Maneaters seems like a good idea after reading this batrep but maybe you should play one or two more games to see how they fare. Uniformed Maneaters sounds unique and I wonder how you will fashion the females of the unit.

In other news, I have gotten papercrafts for the Dark Eldar: Raider, Raven, Reaver, Venom and Skyboard. It feels good to have the means to mass build the dedicated transports for skimmer spam list. However, with the addition of the Raven and the Reaver I'll be trying out some air force/jetbike lists and see how those fare. So far it looks like I'm off to a good start in building my Slaaneshi Kabal of the Alabaster Caress.

All right, I meant to do this literally weeks ago, but boring things like actual life got in the way.

But now I've got a spare minute and I promised some fluff.  I've also got a few battle reports piling up which need jotting down, but first you'll have to suffer through some creative writing...

Currently there's no real interesting fluff for AoS, and I'm assuming none of it covers Ogres anyway, and I don't know the old WHFB fluff enough to make reference to specific places or events, so this will be mostly pretty generic stuff which can slot into either setting more or less.

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The Hoarfrost Hearteaters

Territory
Mountains make for treacherous living, even under the most clement conditions one misplaced foot on loose scree can spell a sudden and fatal plunge, and conditions are rarely clement in the cloud-wreathed peaks which spear upwards from the tree-clad foothills of the Schwarzweald like rocky talons seeking to claw out the very sky.

Here on the very edge of the snowline there are but two seasons; for a brief two months summer reigns, painting the craggy landscape in deep purples and lustrous greens as hard-wearing plants spread their leaves in defiance of the chill winds.  Winter dominates the rest of the year, cold and grey and unyielding, in the deepest days of winter the sun rises for mere hours, their is little appreciable difference between the cold-steel grey of the sky and the ground and the desolate mountains between.

It is perhaps no surprise then that Ogres, those hardiest of the mortal races, are the only sort to dare to carve out a life here.  The Hoarfrost Hearteaters lay claim to the entire range of razor-edged peaks, from Lagnar's Folly to the north and the Jotbergs in the south, though few would bother to contest their claim; the land is much like the Ogres themselves: solid, unchanging and dangerously stubborn.

In the approximate center of this spine of mountains sits the tallest spire, Lorenzo's Peak, a dizzying tower of stone and ice which seems to bridge the earth and heavens on clear nights.  Nestled between this formidable landmark and the split-peak of the Old Sisters lies a broad, glacial valley known colloquially as Meltwater Craw, this ice-carved scar forms the center of life for the Hearteaters.  Although sheltered somewhat from the howling blizzards which ceaselessly storm about Lorenzo's Peak the Craw is no safe haven.  In winter it sees little light, nothing grows and everything freezes.  In summer it melts dramatically, meltwater freed from glaciers high above torrenting down into the valley, leaping and bounding like salmon spilled from a net, carrying with it boulders the size of houses, tangles of dead wood an the remains of those foolish or unwary enough to brave the mountain trails without a local guide.

Despite these perils the generally nomadic Ogres cling with an unusual tenacity to this location, the valley throws boulders down at them and they pile them together into sturdy long houses, pines from the forest below are hauled upwards for construction and fuel.  Defiant to the point of foolhardiness the Ogres see a place where organised life was not meant to plant roots and spit in it's face.  They have good reason, however, Meltwater Craw houses an unexpected treasure.

Discovered by the tribes founder, Frigga Blackfoot, in a moment of pure chance, the twisting ice-caves formed in the living glacier which rumbles slowly down from the peak contain large reserves of an exceedingly rare mineral, known in scholarly circles as Vericite, but more commonly as Bluestone, Truth Dust or Skjellrar.  This mineral, when ingested as a powder or inhaled as an incense, produces extremely vivid, and, more importantly, extremely accurate visions of events yet to occur.  As can be imagined this is an extremely valuable property, wizards, wise-folk and warlords across the land desirous of a clear understanding of just what the future holds.  For them however, what it mainly holds is a series of lengthy and exacting payments to the coffers of the Hearteater Tribe, who hold the largest vein of Vericite known to exist, and of the highest quality.  This lucrative capital venture allows the tribe to keep well stocked in terms of meat, materials and status despite their relatively small population, a prize worth clinging to life in the Meltwater Craw for.

Ecology
An Ogre is an Ogre no matter how far it travels and how much it learns, when pressed it will always revert to base instincts of feeding the ever-present hunger in it's belly and demonstrating the true meaning of 'might is right.'  At surface the Hearteaters are no different, they are just as prone to the brutal violence and outright bullying typical amongst Ogres, perhaps more-so given that they are often cooped up in relatively small areas when bad weather hits.  However, there is, a little, more to this particular group than meets the eye.  For one their Tyrant, and clan founder, has remained in uncontested leadership since she discovered the hoard of Vericite decades before, her frequent useage of the prophetic mineral ensuring she has the wit and cunning to guide the tribe from strength to strength.

All Ogres are religious, after a fashion, it is hard to engage in theological debate when the birth-echoes of your hunger-god can be felt gnawing in your guts at every waking moments.  The Hearteaters are particularly ritualistic in this regard however, almost cultish in their proclivities towards sating the Great Maw.  Indeed their very name comes from the deliberate, ritualistic fashion in which they will pick free specific viscera from their, often still living, meals, even during the heat of battle, and devour them in specific, if undocumented, fashion.

The useage of Vericite amongst the population no doubt lends to this secretive air,  when you have a reasonable knowledge of what is to come, it is critical that you do not let slip what you know, lest someone has a slightly better fore-knowledge than you and a willingness to alter things to their favour.  It should be noted that excessive consumption of Vericite is not without it's risks, even discounting the obvious issue of coming to rely too much on the visions and growing blinded to the realities of the present, there are some things a mortal mind was simply not meant to witness, many a human mage has witnessed their own deaths in the dream-smoke and had their very mind wrought asunder.  Ogres, bull-headed as they are, are surprisingly resilient to this fate, but still they are not immune, only Frigga herself and the elite Hoarfrost Guard are known to have witnessed their own eventual deaths within the blue crystals and retained sane, and alive, enough to do anything with that information.  Gnoblars, surprising no one, are particularly susceptible to the effects of even unpurified Vericite, it is not uncommon for Ogres working in the mines to carry a gnoblar or two in a cage, akin to the more usual canary, in case of an unseen cloud of freed dust.

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Umm, I guess that'll do for now, I'm no great writer.  More specific stuff to come later maybe, but that's the gist of it.

From now on, when I have battle reports to share, I shall probably write them using this fluff framework to tie them to the blog a little better.

I am also working on some rules for special characters and formations specific to the Hearteaters, which I shall try and convince people to let me test out so I can report on that.

Till next time.

Seems the Hoarfrost Hearteaters are not your usual ogre tribe. Thanks for the backstory to your creations. I'll be looking forward to your future additions and battle reports for the army.

Maybe by merging some of your batreps with your army's fluff might give you some extra ideas on characters, names and events that transpired to the Hearteaters?

Keep up the good work.

Sincerely,
Nazzaarth Icebreaker

At the core they're still pretty standard Ogre fare, just with a layer of pseudo-mystic, mercantile obfuscation over the usual bullying, smashing heads and eating stuff. 
I don't want to go too far beyond the core Ogre tenets, cos then there's not much point in them being Ogres in the first place.  As I get round to writing more fluff hopefully that will show up better.

Character-wise I'm in a similar position; I don't want to go crazy with them.  I have rules and fluff for the Tyrant and BSB at present, we'll see if any other characters develop over time I guess.

Next up will be some battle reports, I have three just waiting in the wings to be written up, but that sort of thing takes time, so it'll probably be over the weekend.