Oathmark: Goblin Spearmen and Goblin Champion

Goblin champion

I got this model to work as a goblin leader for Vanguard (planning to use the Dungeon Saga goblins and trolls). I've never gotten around to Vanguard, but I decided to paint him as a champion for my Oathmark army of greenskins. 

The miniature is actually sculpted to have a bare stomach and a smaller round plate. I didn't like that look, so decided to paint him as wearing a bigger full torso armor plate. Doesn't look as comical that way. 

Goblin spearmen

When getting in to Oathmark I decided to do the army on as low a budget as possible. So after looking in a sale group I got a huge lot of LoTR orcs. Terrible painted and some with missing heads and weapons. 

When building the models I've made sure to use as many different spears and shields as possible. Each model has a different shield. 

When painting I've made sure that each model had some red (the army color), and different brown and grey areas as well. These are not as elite as the Linebreakers, who had full red uniforms. 

When painting mono pose miniatures this is also a good way to break up the monolook. I used different browns, greys and red on different areas. Also made sure to use different hair colors and 6 different skin tones. 

In the end the regiment is a mix of GW LotR, dungeon saga and Oathmark miniatures.

TNT: Cult of the V8 reenforcements

I've made quite a good amount of TNT warbands, to play with mates otherwise no longer invested in the hobby. It's great fun and the casual nature of the game is perfect for a good time.

The Cult of the v8 warband I've build, had some really nice rolls after a recent game. And running an all melee warband, there was soem fairly cheap options for extra crew members.

Broiler
A cheap flamethrower armed soldier for the Raider faction. I made this broiler model from a 40k nurgle pox walker. I chopped off and trimmed with nurgle spikes on him. I added a head from the genestealer cult. There's a fuel cannister from the bit box and a hose made from guitar string.

Te flame and smoke at the front is made from pillow fillings and added with superglue.

Firebugs
A new crew option from one of the TNT expansions. The firebugs are like the sacrificial lambs of the peace keepers. These guys are cheap and armed with a huge load of gasoline. You run the towards the enemy and let them blow up in a huge ball of flame.

The plan is to soften up the enemy, before the heavy hitters of the crew move in afterwards.

The models are old restic Plague Stage 3 for Mantic Games. I've added torches made from warhammer bits. An old club with an orc pony tail on top. The molotov on the other guy is from Warlord Games ww2 Russians. Both have heads from genestealer cults. The jerry cans on their backs are resin pieces from Ramshackle Games.

WIP

Paper and super glue is one of the best things when sculpting and converting a miniature. It's super easy to add straps to a backpack, sling to a gun, hide connection points (like me making a bracer).

Dungeon: Tile 4 and base colors

I've made some more good progress on my modular dungeon board. I've finished up the fourth corner tile and designed them all to make a connected 2'x2' board.

Tile four

From the top this tile looks a lot like tile 3, with to large rooms and a corridor. But the placement of the entrances and doors make it different anyway. 

Also for this board I made archways at the connector points, an upgrade from the first two tile (had none) and the third (square, straight beam). 

Painting the base colors

Base colors on the dungeon board are almost done. First I made a grey mix, using a full tube of white acryllic and black, pva glue and sand measured with a spoon. I want to make the same kind of grey if needed for the other boards - if I run out. 

I made a darker grey for the floor in all the corridor areas. So however the tiles are lined up next to each other, the corridors will fit together nicely.

Then at least one room on every tile has a floor made with a brighter color, red, blue and green. Going for a bit of a Hero Quest vibe on them and breaking up the grey in grey.

Youtube and twitch

As something new, I want to make at least a hobby stream every week. I'll be streaming through the Twitch platform as it has fairly straight forward software. Please help by going in there and following the channel. 

Every live stream will be edited and cut into a youtube video - so I'll slowly be building up some terrain building content. Here's the first one (missing a bit at the start and end from technical difficulties). 

Also consider following the youtube channel.

What's next?

Next step is to add spot colors on the stone details. Make sure to pick out arch ways, door ways and stone details in the wall. And then everything needs a layer of brown wash. But that'll be in the next blog post. 

The Bloggerverse - Discord, streaming, Twitch and Youtube

This is gonna be a different kinds of blog post - no real hobby content in it. So that's not how it's usually done. 

Discord - fighting isolation with a human voice

This Covid-19 situation has been a crazy ride. I haven't gone this long without gaming in years and social isolation is really tough on a lot of people. Early in quarantine I decided to setup a Discord channel for hobby work. I wasn't the first - and it's become very popular to have a Discord channel. 

Lots of small companies have set one up. Most of them are either too cluttered with too many channels - or completely dead. Like any community it takes some moderation and care to grow it. This best facebook groups are the ones with clear rules and active moderators keeping it clean. 

I'm very happy with the community that have grown on the Bloodbeard's Garage Discord server. 

There's curently around 70 user on the server. There's a nice hangout area - where people post current projects, discuss gaming, share kickstarters and so on. But there three extra super cool things come from it:

Voice channel

People from around the world are hanging out in the voice channel, talking hobby while they work. Interesting discussions on painting, gaming, rules and the industry going on. It's nice. And not being the biggest talker myself, I've spend lots of time just listening in on other interesting people. 

I've made new friends through the channel and gotten new contacts. 

And that leads directly to 

A convention

There's not really a miniature gaming convention scene in Denmark. There's some large tournaments in Warhammer 40k and some nice large conventions for playing RPGs. But nothing for the skirmish / indie gaming scene. GW is sitting even heavier on the market in Denmark than elsewhere. 

We're making that now. This autumn, smack center of Denmark, we'll make a convention. At a nice location in the middle of Odense, we'll run a weekend of games. All those smaller scale and unknown games. Lots of cool boards. We want to connect the Frostgrave, TNT, Song of Ice and Fire, Relicblade guys to a weekend celebrating the completeness of the hobby. 

Painted models, great stories, non competetive environment. It's gonna be cool - so thank you Discord. 

Microblogs

The Discord server is growing with a number of super cool microblogs from hobbyists. They've gotten their own text channel and become moderators of it. Sure we'll see a lot of the photos shared around Instagram and in Facebook groups. But Discord connects it, shows the progress and the channel is only containing work from one person. It works really well and we're happy to setup more channels for new members.

The Discord server is such a nice place to hangout, that I've paid money for better options in there, deciding to go premium on the Mee6 bot - making even better moderation on the server, adding cool new features. 

A snapshot from the #Hangout area

Streaming - the frontier

I have never planned doing anything in the terms of either streaming or uploading videos to Youtube. Editing film is super time consuming and my hobby time is limited. But now I've taken the step anyway. 

Why?

It's been so nice to voice chat with people while painting, I figured I might as well turn on a camera while doing it. I don't paint to a high quality and can't share many good tips. So I have made other plans for that new camera. So here's my new Twitch.

I'll of cause continue to write blogs on my terrain building and the step-by-step projects. But now I'll start streaming while I work. Hopefully (with a bit of brain activity) I can do it in a manner, that won't take too much editing before going on youtube. 

So expect to get some build videos with my modular dungeon project and the like. 

Solo Gaming - 2020

It was my plan to make a lot of solo gaming this year. I like playing miniature games and I have so many systems with solo rules. ... haven't really gotten around to it in a manner that I want. So enter streaming and webcams again. I'll try to stream my solo plays (still gonna do written AARs with pictures) and make some 'let's play' videos for youtube. Huge expansion of my bloggerverse it is. 

Play testing

But what about the games I have actually played? Well, lots of those games can't be turned into AARs yet, because they're top secret. With the last month, I've been lucky enough to beta read and playtest three different new game systems! How crazy is that?! Three games, three known and published authors. That's a pretty cool hobby achievement unlocked right there!

That's a lot of words about what's going on. New ideas, new blogging, new places to share stuff online. ... so many different platforms. If only there's was a social media AI, I could post stuff to snapchat and tik-tok as well. 

But for know I'm on all these different places. 

The live by your influence life

I pretty freaking far from anything I want and could realistically achieve. I really love working as a school teacher. And I've already achieved the 3 influencer goals I set when making the blog a couple of years ago: 1. reach 500 likes on Facebook, 2. get shared by a company, who likes what you did with their kit, 3. try having someone send you free stuff. 

And I would of cause like your help with the streaming adventure and growing the Discord community as well. Here's the Bloodbeard's Garage Bloggerverse:

As always, please consider helping the blog on any platform you prefer!

I enjoy growing this blog and its reach. 

I appreciate your interaction, a big part of my hobby life. 

Facebook.com/BloodbeardsGarage/

The big one. Sharing the full blogs, the finished projects, a couple times a week.

Instagram: Bloodbeads_Garage
Every photo I take is posted here. Focusing on a single model or game at a time.

Discord hobby hangout: https://discord.gg/xwcRSs7
The nice new place. A great community to hang out in - lots of got people, come get a microblog and hangout.

Twitter: @Blodskaeg

Maximum 4 photos pr tweet, I tweet about other stuff than miniatures as well, post when going live on Discord and Twitch.

Twitch: twitch.tv/bloodbeards_garage
The new one. I need followers on it to open op different functions. We'll see how it goes. 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTgzuhhOQBWUZleTzwXei3A
I need 100 followers on it before I can get a good url adress. ... 100... better create some content.

Hobby donations: paypal.me/blodskaeg

I've actually spend money on a community server and a webcam. And all the great streamers have a donate button. 

Terrain: The Sprawl 1

There's no battle report, after action report or anything else with this post. It's quite simply photos from a test setup when I was about to start Reality's Edge. Quickly build a ton of pieces to upgrade my modern collection to a cyberpunk collection. I'm very pleased with the different setups I'm able to make.

Lots more pieces will be added over time and all projects will have step-by-step blogs on the Cyberpunk Terrain hub.

Zona Alfa: Russian Army Zombies

Russian army Zombies

For my first game of Zona Alfa, there needed to be some zombies from a crashes military vehicle. So I decided to try and build some Russian soldiers for zombies. I dug out four Mantic Games plague zombies. I used the ones with armor and helmets. 

Then i added a few Anvil Industries and Warlord Games rucksacks and pouches. The AK47s are from Warlords Project Z and the slings are made from paper and super glue.

Painting

Went online and found a few images of Russian uniforms - they have a million different ones. But I did try to use the same colors as I spotted in one of the images. 

Star Saga: Tables

Star Saga comes with a bunch of cool terrain and miniatures. Still hoping to see a terrain crate kickstarter with scifi pieces in this style.

Way back I bought a ton of small scale miniatures furniture from china. Full blog here. At that time I used some of the pieces to upgrade the tables from the Star Saga game, add a bit more life and detail to them.

Cut up some of the TV tables as seen below and used that for computer terminals.

For a game of Reality's Edge we needed some objectives to protect / smash and it was a good time to paint up these pieces. 

As with all good sci-fi I painted the screens green. Made with a goblin green base coat, then white lines for text and a layer of Vallejos flourescent paint on top. 

Last I've added a few news papers printed in a small scale, to look like reports and such.

I'm really happy with the result and I think they add way more than the plan tables they were before.

Carve Your Oathmark

Osprey has been running a terrain competition under #CarveYourOathmark and of cause I needed to get in. 

I'm building an army of Orcs and Goblins, so I really wanted my Oathmark to look fitting for them. First I'll show the finished piece, then follow with the wip shots from the projects. Base coated the entire thing brown and then drybrushed out the details and washed the entire thing. 

My army swears their oaths of loyalty at this old tree, Every new commander bringing a defeated foe as a sacrifice, then swears the oath of loyalty to their dark lord. The ropes are all painted red, the color of my army - and symbolizing being blood bond to the dark lord.  The dirt in front of the brazier is dark red from old blood and covered in purple Deathshrouds, a flower only growing in blood soaked earth. 

The tree itself died uncounted centuries ago, but it still stands strong and doesn't rot. No tree could survive drinking the bitter blood of defeated enemies - yet nothing lingers like their feeling of hate and revenge. So for as long as oaths are sworn and enemies sacrificed the Oathmark will stand strong. 

Step-by-step

Cut a piece of polystyrene into a decent sized hilltop. Using some branches to make roots. With a glue gun, I pieces together a few broken brances - for a nice root net. 

Using some super cheap tree armatures (I couldn't buy below 100), I made one big tree gluing them together. 

Used some hot glue to beef out the roots and hide the places where the tree pieces connect. 

Went to the bit box and found a bunch of different skeleton bits. Added a horse in there as wel. Used string and superglue to attached the bits to the tree, they won't break off.