The first of many... You lucky people!

Welcome to the collective blog for the Stevenage Wargamers.
If a member has a voice then I provide the soapbox....

No 1... (Jamie).

For a long time now I have almost forgotten what it is I truly enjoy about Miniature Wargaming.  Dont get me wrong I haven't had a touch of the hobby wobbles, lets just say I have had a recent epiphany.
I was stuck in a hobby rut.  Caught in an endless cycle of painting miniatures purely for tournament builds; I ended up speed painting my life away and generally getting burnt out with the act of rushing models to a poor state of completion.  Throw in the fact that actually having decent tournament attendance was proving problematic and you can see why I needed a change.



With this new mindset firmly in... mind, I hit upon the glorious idea of doing a themed Warhammer army.  Not just an artistic theme but sticking as closely as possible to a themed build without putting together a list that couldnt fight it's way out of a paper bag.

Ergo....

 Some Trolls gain extra limbs, others have a scary visage.  Throgg on the other hand gained.... brains.  So much so that he hit upon the idea of taking all the beasts and monsters roaming Troll Country and gathered them together into a shambling horde of mass destruction!

In case you really havent guessed it I am doing everyone's favorite themed army.  No humans, Daemon Princes, Skullcrushers or Wizards of any kind.  In fact, no characters other than the big guy himself - Throgg.

Took me a while to paint as I needed to work out the colour palette.  Whilst I genuinely don't mind the GW paintjob I never like to copy wholesale.  Getting a bit excited for starting; I never think too hard about the colours beforehand and so dive straight in and spend an inordinate amount of time painting and repainting in different tones and hues till I am happy.  Even then it takes a few days to get used to my own colour scheme.  :)  The defining moment was using Hellion Green to tint the pale skintone.  Before that I struggled to make the blue scaly bits truly pop.  I do feel that I have managed to keep it consistent with how the Games Workshop portray him whilst still adding my own take.

The basing is.... simple.  Fortunately this was intentional.  Seeing as I think this is one of the best character models GW has produced in recent times, and the crux of the whole army, it seemed appropriate to let the sculpt do the talking.  I will tell more about my plans for bases and unit fillers in future posts.  The intention is that this army will be something I can truly feel proud of.  A simple snow base is merely the slightest hint of what's to come. 

Any questions about the painting/basing/army concept please feel free to post a comment.  I would love to hear from you, like most artists, I dont mind sharing the knowledge.  In fact I find it rather flattering.  :)

OH YES!  Before I forget....

INSPIRATION CORNER.

A colleague of mine sent this around work.  I think anyone with an interest in post apocalyptic landscapes will dig it.  Especially as this one is in the real world.  :)

Google recently took a trip to the abandoned mining island of Hashima (Gunkanjima) in Japan.

Click on the link below to go to Google Earth and do Street View on this puppy and start wandering. 

 https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Gunkanjima&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF-8&ei=N33NUYGxIaK30QXTk4CwBA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg

Reminds me very much of playing Myst and Riven on CDROM back in the day except with better graphics and a different setting.  :)

If anyone knows of any other cool unusual places to wander around on Google Earth then definitely share the knowledge. 


Till next time......
Jamie