Unboxing: Mantic Games Crazy Box (Sci fi/Fantasy 20014 edition)

Hi there, this video unboxing has been long overdue because of several things, mainly problems transferring the movie clips from my camera which is isn't working as it should right now.

But... even if this is kind of late, and you can't purchase the 2014 ed version anymore, it's still a hint on how this years Crazy Box could look. As I said, I did a video unboxing of this one. So hope you enjoy and over too.... myself!

If you also purchased one of these boxes, either this one or the sci fi only one, please share what you got in it. Always interesting too hear how random they are.

Nagash and the 'End Times for Warhammer Fantasy?'

There will be some major big changes in Warhammer Fantasy according to rumors and even GW themselves as told in the latest White Dwarf. Well Nagash is back and the End Times is a here, and what could this mean?

First off, we have heard the rumours and seen the pictures and when White Dwarf hit this weekend we also got chance to pre order all the new Nagash stuff and get some more info about what's to come for WH Fantasy.

The new stuff is of course the model of Nagash, a limited ed of the two Nagash books and the standard books. There's also the limited Battle Magic: Lore of Undeath, which disappeared really quick (why have these in so limited numbers is beyond me). I wanted these as they work with every army with wizards and I was going to do a pre order on the GW site on Saturday morning but they where already gone. So no money from me and the Nagash books I will probably buy cheaper somewhere else like Wayland Games instead.

So what do I think about all this? I like the model, won't be buying it (yet at least) but according to rumors we will get some other heroes and villains soon (Valten, Crom and Archaon) which I will most probably buy.

The books looks very neat as well and I will be getting those for sure, but what about all of this? What does the End Times mean for WH Fantasy. Well first of all, GW loves to exaggerate these kind of things, so the End Times can just be the name of a big campaign which the Nagash book is the first. However, since 8th Ed hit we have all seen that the Storm of Chaos was removed from the timeline, so we know GW has had something big planned for quite some time. And this time we won't just have the Storm of Chaos when Archaon marches on to war, we now also have Nagash who wants to stop just that. Nagash have even resurrected Vlad von Carstein to help him out in his endeavors to make the whole Warhammer World into his realm of undead.

We can of course only speculate on what all of this will mean to Warhammer Fantasy, but I really like that it looks like GW is moving the timeline forward and new stuff will happen in the fluff. This makes it easier to introduce new things for the armies in WH Fantasy in the future. In the end even something cataclysmic might happen that will change all the armies and how they work.

This could be the thing that has been rumored in the past (all the army books becomes invalidated like the move from 5th to 6th). This will make 8th Ed the last edition of the "Old Warhammer" and 9th the first of the new edition ones. You can still play with your army with the 8th ed rules and all the old army books or go over to the new ones where your armies functions totally different from before.

All this is of course only me rambling and thinking about what the End Times could mean for Warhammer Fantasy, and maybe this is just another supplement that bring us some new models and nothing more. But we do know WH Fantasy is struggling with sales and the armies is getting bigger and bigger with more and more options which actually makes the game less accessible for new players.

I don't know what GW will do with all of this but I hope whatever they do, that they keep the spirit of the game and world as I do and always have loved Warhammer Fantasy.

What do you think about the Nagash coming back? And further more what do you think The End Times means for Warhammer Fantasy? Tell me in the comments below. 

Warhammer Fantasy News: Pictures of Nagash leaked!

So finally we will get some Warhammer Fantasy in White Dwarf in form an new release of..... Nagash! Yeah the Lord of the Undead is back and looks bloody awesome.

Got these via Talk Wargaming:

Painting Banners

One of the hardest things to paint in the army is the banners your BSB:s and Standard Bearers are carrying. The banners is also the one of the things people tend to notice most, and taking time to paint some nice looking banners is a good time investment in my opinion. I also think that banners is one of the things most fun to paint. So in this post I will show you some of the banners I've done and some tips and ideas on how to paint them.

Here's my latest banner and It's actually not quite done yet. It's for my Empire Greatswords and as it a elite unit in the Empire army I wanted to spend some more time on this one. The design is from the Uniforms and Heraldry book for the Empire. A great inspiration for designs on banners, uniforms, shields etc. If you're a Empire player I can't recommend it enough and I hope they continue doing these books for other armies as well (I think it's only Skaven which also got one if I'm not mistaken). A lot of free hand on this one, but I just tried to follow the design from the book as much as I could. And one tip is to lay out the design very simple with a brush or pen. So everything goes where it's supposed too.

Another Empire banner I painted not long ago, this one is for my BSB. The design is also taken from the Uniforms and Heraldry book and a lot of free hand stuff. And generally, if you can paint well free hand, banners should not be a problem. And if you aren't that great at painting free hand, banners is a great way to try and learn. Because that's the only way to get better, practice and try it out more to practice even more. A simpler but just as effective method is to paint banners like the reaper one here. I loved this when it first came out, and I still think it looks awesome.

The next banners, are some of my older ones for the State troopers. I repainted the first on where the yellow where once black. Also on these kind of banners I think it's more crucial to put some time to paint both sides as both of them is showing just as much.

And now some Orc and Goblins banners, the first one is for my Savage Orcs. Really fun to paint but even though I didn't have to do anything free hand I put quite a lot of time doing highlights do get the right colours. I really love this "banner" sculpt and it looks really fitting in a Savage Orc unit. There's another one for the Savage Boar boyz with a snake and stuff which is also very cool looking will try to paint this up soon to. Maybe for a Savage Orc BSB? And then is the first Orc banner I painted for this army. And it's for the Orc boyz. Did the design free hand and is really simple to paint, Orc motifs is generally quite simplistic in nature so it's great for beginners to try out some free hand work.

Then there's one for my Night Goblins. This one was quite easy. Did some chequered pattern and the Quckshade did it's job shading the banner so it looks a bit dirty. Simple but quite effective way of painting a banner, and no free hand needed except the pattern.

And for last is my WoC Tzeentch standard bearer and for my my Undead Revenants. The WoC one I painted as with no real plan in mind except I wanted the eye in the middle. So I started with that and then thought I needed some swirly things around it. So I started to paint this around and around and did more and more highlights until I thought it was finished. I quite like the design and thinks it represents the Lord of Change quite well.

And the last banner I wanted to show you is for my Revenants. And here I did all of the banner myself. I started to cut plasticard and sculpted green stuff on top of to get some structure and a wind flow through it (I also painted the fire on top of the banner pole which isn't showing much on this pic). Then I painted the whole thing red and did the design free hand, the design is inspired from Starcraft II and I think it looks okay. It don't look that hard to paint, but actually took quite some time.

That's was all for today and I hope you liked this and maybe got some little tip on how to paint your banner. And the most important thing to remember is to plan out the design beforehand. What motif do you want? What colours? Try to paint free hand designs on paper to see how it looks, it's all worth it to take this time and you will be pleased when you get the result.

Tutorial: Speed painting 20 Mantic Zombies

I consider myself a pretty decent painter, but I don't paint stuff fast and I try all the time to speed up my painting using different techniques and one that is working pretty good for me is the Army Painter technique. So how do we need to paint these Zombies when using this technique? First of all the models, which can be from pretty much any company but the ones I have here is from Mantic Games who makes nice miniatures for a really good price. I assembled all of them which didn't take long, generally Mantic's stuff is easy to put together. Then you need some colours, a colour primer spray and Army Painters Quickshade Dark Tone.

First of all after assembling I sprayed all of them with Army Painters Colour Primer called Necrotic Flesh (can't find it any more so they have maybe stopped to produce it or something). Some of the minis stayed with this colour and some of them I washed with GW's washes like Thraka Green, Asurmen Blue, Ogryn Flesh and Baal Red. Just to get some more variate in the unit. Next step is to paint the blood, I did this with a 40/60 mix of Blood Red and Red Gore. And I painted this on all the exposed tissue, organs etc. It doesn't matter if the blood goes on places you didn't wanted because it will just look more real and the zombie will look more gory. I also painted this mix on the hands on most of them and around the mouth to represent that they recently eaten on an unlucky foe.

After this I painted the exposed bone areas (like the rib cages and knees on some of the models) with a mix of Dheneb Stone and Bleached Bone. I also painted the cloth they are wearing in browns, greys and whites using, Calthan Brown, Adeptus Battle Grey and Dheneb Stone. I also painted the hair in these colours. And finally I highlighted the bones with skull white and a mix of 60/40 mix of Blood red and Skull white as an highlight to the intestines and the muscle fibres. Then I painted the eyes and teeth with Skull White. Now on to the dipping part.

Here they are dipped in Quick Shade Dark Tone and when they have dried 24 hours I sprayed them with AP's Anti Shine Matt Varnish. Be careful with this though and don't spray to much, because otherwise you can destroy the result like I did here.

After this is was just the basing to be done, took a lot of time for me though and can be shortened quite a lot if you don't work with all the materials I used. I used, GW sand, painted it with a mix oif Vermin brown and Tausept Ochre which I then Highlighted with the same mix but with quite a lot of added Skull white. I then washed the whole bases with Devlan Mud and when dried added AP's Brown Battleground and Ash Grey flock. Then I added Green Static Grass and Citadels Dead Grass and on top of this some of the Mordheim Turfs and Middenland Tufts from Citadel. All in all this process with all twenty of them took maybe eight hours to get done, and three or maybe even four of them was the basing process. Really happy with the result though and I know there's some of you you which can make this faster but that's as fast I can get them done with this quality which is fine for me. Hope you like this tutorial and go and paint some Zombies, If you're an VC player you will need them ;)

Merry Christmas from me and the Zombie Zsanta

Merry Christmas everybody! Made a little conversion for the holidays, a zombie who looks somehow familiar. Anyway, hope everyone had a great Christmas and got a lot of Wargaming stuff! I got the Battle in the Badlands book and some Chaos Marauder Horsemen, but will buying some more stuff soon. Will hopefully post one more time before it turns 2012, so until then you can check out this Zombie Zsanta (sorry for the bad pics, Zombie Zsanta is a little bit shy).

Mantic Undead Wraiths

Another little update, and this time I wanna show you some Mantic stuff! Yeah it was some time ago I painted Mantic minis the last time. But I got really excited to paint my wraiths when I saw this awesome tutorial in nr 6 of The Invocation by SethDrallitoc (pages 13-17). Wasn't happy with my old one which I painted so I decided to try this method out and I think they look much better, quite fast to paint as well.

Been really busy IRL with the baby and all, so have been painting a little here and a little there this last couple of weeks. I currently paint my Night Goblins and building ten more Savage Orcs. I'm also in the slow ongoing process of painting the howda for the Arachnarok. As always much to do little time. Atleast I have some summer vaccation for two weeks now.

One thing I have forgotten to post is that I got my Avatars of War Berserkers last week. have built one and currently painting it, will give you a full review of the box in the coming week but I can give you a little hint, the box is awesome and there's some really nice bits.

Now pics with the wraiths:

 

Mantic Zombies painted

Well, the first three zombies are done. Actually they have been done for a couple of days just haven't had the time to take pictures of them. But now there are! The models was easy enough to paint, and I could probably painted them faster than I did but the extra highlights and blood just add that much more flavour to the models. Anyway, will paint the converted zombie ghouls next and here's some pictures of the painted Zombies.

Mantic Zombies!!

The zombies are here! I finally got my hands on the zombies as well thirty more ghouls on Friday. Been quite busy last weekend and I won't do much updates until next week as I travel to Gran Canaria tomorrow. But atlest you will get a small update today and see what I have done to my zombies and ghouls the last couple of days.

As I have mentioned earlier I wanted to kitbash the zombie sprue with the Ghoul one to get more variation to the units. There are no problem combining the two sprues to make Zombies, but making Ghouls was a little bit trickier. The main problem of making Ghouls with the zombie parts is that they look to decayed which results with them looking like Zombies anyway, so I decided to do some Greenstuff work to make them look a little bit more alive and human. You can see the result below.

As you can see (hopefully) there isn't any major GS work. I made clothes for the torsos on two of them and I needed to fill up some places where the skin is missing with greenstuff. Particularly two of them around the knees and lower legs. The hardest bit was probably the one that got an nose job and the one to the left where I needed to sculpt the right portion of his face. Not anything really hard, but hard to tell if it will look good until they get some paint on.

And then there was the Zombies. I used almost only the Zombie sprue for these guys, and I didn't need to do any GS work on these as I want them to look decayed, they are Zombies after all. Just added some more intestines and some maggots.


So not much done yet I'm afraid but there will be more, well next week anyway. I will also make a decent review of the Zombie box and pretty much all of the undead from Mantic in the near future as I now have all of the undead range that has come out. So stay tuned for more!

Eleven ghouls sitting in a tree

Eleven ghouls finished, god knows how many more there will be. I've just finished three more ghouls and it actually starts to look like a unit which is always nice. The latest of the bunch have some minor greenstuff work done to them to make them look a little bit different from the rest. I am especially keen on the one with the long hair, just add a electric guitar and he would look like belonging in a Heavy Metal band. Cool to see how such small changes actually makes them really different from the rest of the bunch, which is needed as there only are three head options.

I won't convert everyone of them though, my order from Mantic with 60 Zombies and 30 Ghouls was dispatched yesterday, and when they arrive I will have plenty of options of kit bashing the two boxes and make more different looking ghouls as well as zombies, really looking forward for this.

I have also taken some pictures (although not very good ones) of the whole bunch of maniacs so far, and I must say I really like how the unit looks ranked up, really ragtag and crazy looking, decide for yourselves.

Ghouls and Flagellants

Okey not much updates lately, have been quite busy with renovation of the bathroom and stuff. But here is a little update of what I'm doing right now.

 

As you can see I wanted a little more variation on my ghouls so I added little bits of greenstuff on them, not any major stuff but it makes them a little bit different. I have also ordered new stuff from Mantic, I choose to buy 60 zombies and 20 more ghouls, as they are interchangeable I will kitbash these quite extensively.

 

I'm also in the process of painting more Empire Flagellants, the two Mordheim Zealots to the left and in the back just need some Quick Dip. The one in the front is in the converting stage and my intention is to make him into an Prophet of Doom, I will take more pictures of him when I finish him up.

On a other note I have finally bought a new camera as well, still need to learn a bit more how to use it properly but these two photos is taken by it and I think they look quite decent, down below are a picture of one of the old ghouls which I hadn't any good picture of, this one looks better and I even took it with flash turned on.

Thats all for today, will try to post more updates in the future. Until next time.

Undead Revenant Knights Review

As you may have seen I finally got my Revenant Knights last week, and now I want to give you a little review of my first impressions of the miniatures, how they are to put together and to paint etc.

So when I first opened the package I got in the mail there was two of the ordinary boxes that all the miniatures from Mantic comes with. There was no box art which is a shame because most of the other boxes have some cool box art, not a huge deal though and I think they will change this to the “real” release with the plastic versions of the knights.

Anyway inside the boxes there was the normal foam and a lot of parts for both horses and knights. The first thing that came to my mind was that the horses looks quite small, even smaller than the undead Pegasus for the Vampire Lord. I didn’t like this at all in the beginning, I am a Warhammer player/painter first and foremost and in comparison with GW’s heroic style horses they look like ponies and when you play with them in Warhammer games that may look a little strange. But with no one will notice if you just do a good paint job. Also when thinking a little more about it they don’t look strange when just looking at them and their riders. And they actually should look a bit smaller as they are rotting decaying corpses of horses. So now I don’t think this is a huge problem.

When it comes to details I think they look really nice, the decaying muscles, skin and bones have good details and really looks good when painted. The knights looks really nice as well, good details and cool armor and much better looking shields than the Revenants on foot.

But there are some problems with them as well. The lance are very thin, it doesn’t look strange but because of this they bend extremely easily which can be a problem if you aren’t careful, this problem gets solved automatically when they are in plastic though. The other thing is that they all look similar, there are just two different looks on the knights, which I think is quite bad. But as you get different arms you can make them quite diverse anyway, I’ve would have liked some more helmet options and hopefully they fix this with plastic release.

Pros

• Nice details
• Cool looking
• Fun to paint
• Decaying horses instead of just bones

Cons

• They are metal and some parts are really thin
• More different heads for the knights
• No extra bitz or pieces to choose from
• The horses are a little small in my opinion

So all in all they are nice boxes and the knights looks really cool when painted. I do have high hopes for the plastic version Mantic has promised to produce, and hopefully there will be more bitz and stuff when there is a plastic kit instead.