Legions Of Ankhira Neferher, This is my kung fu...

PM sent about the snake. Sounds like it'll be a cool casket.
Nice arkhan you have there too.

Great looking stuff! I particularly like the Tomb Scorpions you've done.

And an original idea for the catapult.

This is the same model I use for my Tomb Guard

Thanks for all the feedback guys, glad you liked this latest batch. I'll try and get some better pictures taken under natural light for the next lot.

@Mercutius:
The obelisks are from Grendel:
http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/inde...sort=20a&page=4

The ones I used were from the palace entrance set but they have a few interesting pieces. I also got a really cool doorway/wall kind of thing with it that I was tempted to use as the backdrop for a casket conversion, but it seemed a bit cheesy to effectively put a big wall on one of my units because someone would probably think I'd only done it so I could hide my heirophant behind it.

Grendel also do a few aztec pieces that I'm sure at least one of us will be interested in...

@Amplebob:
You're an absolute legend mate. I sent you a reply but it doesn't show up in my 'sent items' folder, so I'm not sure if you got it or not. I'll send it again if not bud.


Well my master plan of getting everything I have all painted before I buy anything else has kinda gone out the window -lol. I have managed to get pretty much everything on my immediate to do list done, but I kinda fell off the wagon a bit and I've been a shameless ebay whore over the last couple of days.

I'm putting the washes on my casket tonight so with a little luck I should have another update up in a day or two, and amongst my ebay haul I have a sphinx howdah and crew so I can finally get my conversion thang on again.

Ha, tell me about it! I was very happy with the new VC release as there was very little for me to buy, so I could go on with painting and build what I already had. A random thread on Warseer, a small idea pop in the head, and next thing you know I'm buying some 500-1000pts force of another army for a side project

Oh well, I guess as long as we keep going it's all good, even if the pile of unfinished stuff never shrink!

Thanks for sharing that link, I will browse that with patience :-).

Who have not buyed (too) much in an form of enthousiasm? :-) But in your case thats not bad, so you can deliver us with more of your great stuff! :-)

Well I have some good news and some bad news for this update folks. The person who has been kind enough to loan me a laptop has asked for it to be returned, so this is likely to be my last real update for a while. I do still plan on checking in from time to time of course, but on the rare occasions I have internet access I'm simply not going to have the time to upload any new pics for the forseeable future.

On the plus side though, that should leave me with a lot more time to paint and work on my conversions so with a little luck I should have a good batch to show off next time.

I also promised a that I would post some pics of my casket. It's maybe 95% completed now (mostly just the usual final highlighting and shading left to do -especially on the casket priest), but I wanted to get these up for you all while I still could.



Some of you may remember this resin thingy (from page 2) that I bought off ebay for my original casket idea. I had also looked at using a couple of war mammoths to carry it, but those are firmly in the sphinx role these days so it was back to the original plan. The pic on the right is an early stage WIP shot that shows the plasticard base, cork 'rocks' and resin dias from the side. By the time the casket itself is on top it is about three times the height of a normal skellie



Because I had to cut the resin deely in half I had to fill in the hole with cork and use milliput to blend it into the existing detail. Pretty pleased with how that turned out though.

This is how it stands at the moment:














The GW casket base is not permanently fixed to the resin base because the bloody thing is huge (It has almost exactly the same footprint as a unit of 3 chariots. ) I also wanted to avoid any potential gameplay issues further down the line so I'm going to see how it goes for now. I have also decided not to blend the GW casket base into the resin one so that you can still measure to the original and so I can use the dias sepertately to the casket model as a terrain piece (for example with one of the obelisks atop it as a bane stone). This looks really cool and I'm kicking myself now for forgetting to take pics of it like that.

I'd like to revist this one further down the line and maybe use some mortis engine spirits and aether trails along with a few spirit host models and cursed company minis... but for now this one is pretty much at a level that I can live with until my sphinxes and chariots are brought up to a similar tabletop level.

So there you go. A huge big thank you to amplebob who was kind enough to post me the missing snake I needed to complete this one -what a sweetie.

Hope you like the casket folks. Comments, crits and suggestions are all welcome as usual.

Nooo you're going away again You should hurry up and get your own PC/portable, maybe we could raise fund to help you?

As for the Casket, I must say "dammit"! Between Veritas and now you, that makes me want to do mine, I should hurry up with my Stalkers!

But it's awesome, love the base you ended up with (much better than the 2 mammoths I must say ), that resin base turned up real nice. Also a good idea to keep the original base for mesuring or for any argument that could come up. Maybe the guards standing on the ground would have been better though, they looks like they stand on their heel on these small stair! Can you remove them during play or are they glued there?

Cheers bud. With a little luck I should be able to check in maybe once per week just to keep up with things here, but more pics are probably out of the question for a bit.

A new laptop is a must though and I hope to have one by 8th of April at the latest so that I can do a round up of the full years progress. At the very least I'll try and borrow one for a day or two then and hopefully add a few new updates.

Glad you like the casket bud (we do seem to of hit a rich vein of caskets lately, eh?). All three crew have got pins in the legs to slot into the base, but none of them are permanently glued in at all (still have the extra bases I made for them in 7th ed too if needs be). The sand at the guards feet could indeed do with bulking up a bit but it's a lot more noticable with the pictures at this scale than it is in person. I did try a few different places for the guards but these spots just seemed to look more imposing than they did at ground level, so for now I'm just going to leave it until the bigger jobs get done.

Casket looks quality. Glad to see the snake made it to you and has been put to such good use.
Shame we wont get any more updates of your work for a while.

Ace!

It looks nicely oasis-y. Oh, and totally awesome of course

Love the casket and base you've made.

The snakes on the top make a nice addition too.

Love the snakes! I'm doing a similar idea for Khalida

Vallah at its best! What more can one say? :-) Phantastic work! Would love to see your army in real life! :-)

Thanks for all the positive feedback folks!

I've managed to get hold of another PC now so life is good again.

Since I've had no computer to distrct me I've been able to get quite a few more conversions and even a new scratch build completed and painted up so you can expect another juicy update for those as soon as I've caught up with the last 5 weeks or so...

...and with that in mind I'm off for some thread necromancy elsewhere.

Awesome, can't wait to see what you have to show us

Pepole with talent are scary.
Nice work

Cheers guys.

Okey dokey. I've got a few new things to show you all but in order to preserve my sanity while I'm uploading all the pics I'll split them up into bitesize chunks rather than going down the 'mega update' road again. Since I have a bit of a backlog now, this should mean much more frequent updates for yous and much less suicide for me.

Both the units in this post have now been painted and I'll try and get some decent pictures of the finished models taken under natural light tomorrow, but for tonight I'll kick off with a few WIP shots so people can get a taste of some of the stuff I've been up to.

First up is my heirotitan-to-be:


This was part of my recent ebay haul and set me back the princely sum of 0.01 euro. Shipping was £4 or so but still not a bad price for a heirotitan methinks.

I really didn't do anything much at all in the way of conversions with this one although I did seriously consider swapping the crook & flail for a staff & scales, but in the end I thought it would be a lot of extra work for such a small payoff... and of course, by keeping him a bit less 'specific' I can also indulge in my party piece of fielding him as more than one thing. In this case either a heirotitan, colossus or simply as a statue terrain piece.


Next we have a scratch built tomb swarm:


Despite my lone swarm base not being much use on its own I didn't set out to make a tomb swarm at all. I had some green stuff left over after I'd done some work on the heirotitan and, for want of anything better to do with it, sculpted up a load of scarabs. After a few early fails I managed to get the hang of it and ended up cranking out fifty or so, all around 3mm long. Some time later I spotted the forgotten bag of scarabs while I was burrowing through my bits box looking for something entirely different and got a flash of inspiration...

Ever see those huge termite mounds that stand taller than a man? I've never seen anyone try to model one of those yet but it seemed like a great way to add some height to the swarm in a way that actually made sense.

I started by making a 40mm base out of plasticard and built up the rough shape I was looking for with cork and wood glue (pic 1). Next I built up sand in the places I wanted it (this also sets the otherwise fragile cork rock solid), and made a tiny opening at the base of the mound (pic 2). Finally, I started gluing on the scarabs I'd made starting from the hole and fanning out towards the front of the base (pic 3).

I added some extra ones at the back swarming over those beneath as they come from below to defend their lair, and also added one or two more sparingly at selected points on the model to try and sell the idea of a termite (or in this case scarab) mound.



So that'll do for now I think. I'll try to get some half decent pictures of these two taken now that they are fully painted and, (with a little luck) get them posted for you all in a day or two. I've also finished another unit of light cav (the white ones from almost a year ago on page one), so those will be in the next update too.

Where to buy those snakes of yours??

The ones on the casket are from Lizardmen jungle swarm.

Very creative swarm, I love it! I never would have thought of making a termite mound, but you pull it off. Can't wait to see this thing painted. Any plans to make a whole unit?

Cheers JJ. I've got a pair of swarms now and no immediate plans to increase the unit any more presently, but watch this space.

Well now that those scary couple of days downtime seems to be behind us lets get down to business again with the promised update:

Heirotitan/colossus:


The pictures I originally took of my new heiro/colossus came out blurry but I managed to scratch around and find this one for yous. Normally when I complete a model I am pretty happy with it, but this one is only so so at the moment for a couple of reasons (bad ones as it turned out).

I had originally decided to leave the base empty and the paint job as a very basic sandstone look so that I could use the model atop the casket base as a statue terrain piece without it looking out of place. In fairness it looks great like that, but lets be honest -how often am I likely to not use the casket? Even worse, when would I ever use a heirotitan and not want a casket too? Given that the egyptians routinely painted their statues anyway it seems daft to have left it so basic now, but I'm happy enough with it for the time being. Definately one to get the paint brushes out and come back to at a later date though.


Really pleased with how the scratch built swarm turned out though:


...and next to a GW swarm for comparison:





All in all I couldn't be happier with this one. Looking at it next to the GW version I think it works really well -I'd even go so far as to say I prefer it over the GW one, but the best thing (for me at least) is that is nicely solves my 'ushabti basing problem'. I had no idea what to do with the bases on my Ushabti and the only idea I could come up with (to use GW swarm bases) would of worked out ridiculously expensive -and besides, who wants to throw away a ton of cash on those models right?

I kept this particular one as a 'scarabs only' test model rather than adding in the customary skeleton bits you normally see, but obviously there is lots of scope for me to explore other ideas with these guys now that I know they will turn out alright. You can expect to see quite a few of these cropping up in the future and I'm seriously tempted to try a Prince Apophas conversion too.

And finally, some horse archers:





Really pleased with how these guys turned out too. I've added some skull brooches to the chest straps of a couple of these and also a couple of horse blankets as well. The movement base and all the minis are magnetised as usual, and I've left the hands and horses mouths drilled out to accomodate the extra reins/bit/bridle additions still to come. Bow strings and extra ornamentation for the horsies will also come in time, but since my self imposed April 8th deadline to get the army all painted up to a tabletop level is fast approaching, those will be jobs for another day.

Hope you liked that little lot guys, comments, suggestions and crits all welcome as usual of course.

I really like the finished swarms, bravo!

Fantastic swarms! Not only a brilliant idea with the termite mound, but the vegetation really makes the things work by providing contrast. Did you greenstuff the cacti too?

Finally! Someone else put saddles on their horsemen! Egyptians did have saddles, after all. I can't wait to see them all gubbinz'd up.