So, um, hi.
I’ve been hobbying again. I was ill for pretty much all of 2019; not interestingly ill, just malfunctioningly ill. I’ll spare you the tedious deets of exactly how my gears started slipping and my cogs went all blunty-toothed, but suffice to say it’s been a relief to get some paint onto plastic again.
A lot of my attention has been on tinkering with finishing my Idoneth Deepkin to a reasonable point so I can finally consider my contributions to the Tale of Four Wordlords finished, after going dark on that for basically a year. I’ve also been messing around with Kharadron Overlord paint schemes, and I’ll have photos of my Barak-Zon Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit soon. I have no particular love for Barak-Zon’s lore, rules, or paint scheme over any of the others, but after a bunch of attempts, that’s basically where I ended up.
The Endrinmaster is actually finished, but my iPhone pics are hot garbage, so I’m waiting for Ross to come over this weekend and get some better ones with his photo setup.
Here’s a rough and blurry look at him.
He’s a lot better in person, I swear.
Anyway, one of the things I’ve been doing is, well, speeding the hell up. I paint minis about the same speed that I write books, which is to say fucking glacially. For several reasons, that’s no longer a sustainable way of hobbying, largely because it means I never playing anything except with grey plastic, and my mental health is deteriorating the more I look at Col’s and Ross’s finished minis, while I have a string of failed projects to my name.
So the first few months of 2020 are devoted to playing catch-up, then moving on to actual progress. One of the things I wanted to do to counter my Extremely Slow But Very Neat painting style is to try doing something much faster, and much dirtier. You know the style: John Blanche does it to perfection. My friend Alan used to do it with his minis too, before he selfishly died. So I’m giving that a go with, first of all, my House Cawdor gang.
Here’s the first of the Dart Frogs, the remake of my original gang from the late 90s. I’ve gone with a significantly filthier and more realistic palette than the garish (and totally unfinished) red and yellow of my beloved jester-zealots’ previous incarnation.
I am absolutely and completely in love with the new edition of Necromunda. More on that soon, though.
For the record, here’s the rest of them on temporary bases.
I’m so lamely self-satisfied with my Leader, up top there, nonchalantly leaning on the polearm-blunderbuss and clutching his Clicker-pattern autopistol.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m trying to get into a habit of smaller, regular updates instead of, y’know, fuck-all for a year until I feel like I have something worthwhile to say. Here’s hoping we can stick to that.
P.S. Regarding the deliciously Cawdor title of this blog post, what can I say except You’re Welcome.
Tales From The Aaronorium 
Glad to see you back Aaron! Ave Imperator!
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Thank you kindly!
Also: FOR THE GREATER GOOD.
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I love these little guys – there’s something about the combo of relatively static poses, masks, hoods & downcast gazes that makes me think they’re waiting in ambush – which, considering how naff Cawdor are, is probably a bright idea
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Ha! Not wrong, on any points. Cawdor are kind of anathema to my playstyle and preferences, but they look so freaking cool and their lore is so damn amazing, so I’m going to try to learn how to play them and see how it goes…
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Well, you’ll have plenty of gangers on the board so: room to experiment!
I’m with you on their lore though – I think it was suggested at some open day or other that the all-women Cawdor gangs mentioned in their background might take inspiration from the Adepta Sororitas in the same was as the male gangs are influenced by the Custodes, and ever since I’ve had an image of a Cawdor sisterhood in scrap-plate armour with knock off bolters (stripped of the boxy casing) stuck in my head, so that’ll have to happen at some point
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Fantastic work, these are oozing character. Necromunda has to be hands down my favourite game the company put out right now.
I’m plugging away on Genestealer Cults myself …my 3rd gang..
Can’t wait to see where you take these. The Blanche painting suits Cawdor so, so well.
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I know what you mean about Necro. The rules are awesome, the models are brilliant, and the boards end up looking gorgeous. I enjoy AoS a lot and Underworlds is great, but something about Necro’s ruleset feels great to play.
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Good to see you back in action. That Cawdor is looking good, nice and grubby – just the way the filthy vermin ought to be! Are those Wildwood Ranger heads you’ve used for them? It’s a nice effect – makes them look suitably sinister.
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Yep! Wildwood Ranger heads. Tiny conversion, but ridiculously expensive.
And totally worth it.
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I can’t do slow and neat. I do slow and a mess and sometimes half built. I’m the hobby equivalent of Coventry. I’m trying to fix this by also hitting a tale of four style experiment with some long time grey plastic toting pals.
Your Cawdor look awesome, the scheme is grubbily on point. I can imagine pouring on a whole bottle of anti-bac gel after shaking that guy’s hand but the shops are all out.
Stay busy and keep the pics coming!
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I’d be keen on seeing how your Tale of Four X’s pans out.
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Those Cawdor look amazing. Love bionic arm and the muted palette.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thank you kindly! Stealing that bionic arm from a Poxwalker was a very gratifying move.
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Ugh, that sounds rough — the business about having been ill for most of 2019, that is, not the stuff about the hobbying — that’s ace 😉 Loving the Cawdor test model — nice, gritty paintjob. The combination of the poses and hooded heads works really well on these — are these hooded heads stock (Cawdor) bitz, or are they part of any FW resin booster pack?
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Hey, dude. Nice to see you around these parts again.
The heads are from the Wildwood Rangers / Eternal Guard kit, in the AoS range.
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Hah! I actually thought of that for about ten seconds, then went “Nah, they fit in too well to be Elven parts!” — great choice of bitz! And cheers for clearing that up!
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Hey! I remember an old Necromunda web page called Poison Dart Frog, way back in like 1997. That wouldn’t be yours, would it?
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Sadly, no! What was on the page?
I just liked the name, since my Cawdors were so colourful, like the adorably dangerous real-world dart frogs. (Or, well, they would’ve been if I’d painted them; the test guy I almost finished was very colourful.)
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Too bad, that would have been a nice headline.
WARHAMMER AUTHOR STARTED CAREER AS BOOTLEG GAME DESIGNER
It had a bunch of home-brew gang rules, none of which I think was playtested. But who cared in the nineties?
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I too am massively in love with the current edition of Necromunda. The only problem is deciding which gang to do first! Hope things continue to get better, nice to see you back and your Cawdor mini looks beautiful.
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Gang choice is *the* difficult decision of our era.
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Welcome back. Very nice – Cawdor are lovely models but (most) of their heads are not my favourite bits of them. Those hoods work really well.
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Bleurgh, it’s a familiar story, 2019 just seemed to have it in for a lot of people…
Illness all around, my friend had a terrible time all last year, me and my partner have been constantly ill off and on from around August right up until now. And my mental health took a severe nose dive right at the back end of last year.
Just about recovered and started to get back into the swing of hobby work again in the last few weeks, so at least things are improving. Managed to update my own blog after letting it slide by the wayside for far too long.
The Cawdor ganger looks awesome, suitably grimdark and grimy, I think the whole lot are gonna look great together. Wishing you all the best with getting back to your own regular hobby and blogging 😉
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Many happy returns! Glad you’re feeling better and you’re back to brighten our days with new hobby content. Those cawdor gangers look ace
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Good stuff!
And it’s very good to see you back!
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