Dead Wood...

 Happy Halloween - or at least it would have been if I'd gotten this post out on time!

So I've been a bit of a hobby butterfly recently - my participation in next year's Bring Out Your Lead weekend is in doubt thanks to it likely clashing with my Father-in-law's 70th birthday. Divorce is an option were I to attend in the event of it being on the same date, albeit not an entirely attractive one...

Consequently I've been a bit directionless, not wanting to fully commit to any projects for the big games I've over-enthusistically got in to discussions about for next year. Bring Out Your Lead is the main event in my gaming calendar and usually dictates what I need to get painted up throughout the year. The big Dr Who game and transforming my Shrine of Rigg in to an ancient Xeno temple for an Alien Vs Predator style Rogue Trader Dungeon Crawl might have to wait another year - along with whatever else I impetuously agreed to and have since completely forgotten about! 

I have no shortage of other projects, lurking in my cupboards of shame, to be getting on with in the meantime - Hobgoblins, Slann, Amazons, long forgotten Epic armies and finishing off what I didn't get round to painting for the Chaos Cult and Evil Empire armies that I entered in to the Old World Army Challenge a while back, to name but a few. And that's been the problem - where to start!

Back in October, I went down to Foundry in Newark for the usual Warlords of Albion game (a very disparate group of gamers and very good freinds who meet up there a few times a year as well as at Bring Out Your Lead). The October get-together, Night of the Living Lead, is our Halloween flavoured game. Set in old Albion, as all the games are, this year's game involved a firewood dispute between the local ruler, Boleslaus the Cruel and the peasants unfortunate enough to live in his lands - oh and lots of monsters who live in the forest! Of course I had to take my scary Wood Elves and as forest terrain had been requested, some scary trees as well.

This also prompted me to paint up some more things for my scary Elf army, including this chap from Simon Miniatures, who I think will be my army general. He's normally called Syrius but I've rechristened him Oberus - at least till I can think of something better. He's mounted on a Hell Deer which seemed quite fitting for the army theme. Simon Miniatures are things of beauty but they are resin and extremely delicate - the eagle eyed among you will have noticed he's missing an antler after his first outing on the gaming table - Perhaps more of a display piece... I had quite a bit of fun with his base, adding various fungi, a poor unfortunate being consumed by them and various useful bits from AOS Sylvaneth sprues I picked up ages ago on ebay. I even tried some luminous paint from the Revell Ghost Ship kit on the mushrooms although it has to be very dark to notice any glow!

To further add to the creep (and a good way of procrastinating from painting anything) I had a very enjoyable few evenings kitbashing some Forest Revenants. My thinking was that they'd be the victims of those lost in woods or perhaps even those who had angered the Forest Spirits in some way. Their punishment - to be reanimated to serve the will of the woods as part zombie, part living tree. The arboreal version of those insects that are zomified and controlled by a certain fungus in the real world...

The parts came from the Mantic Zombie Swarm kit and Sylvaneth Dryad sprues - effectively a very cheap unit almost entirely out of the bits box!

I'd also wanted to get a bit of a Turnip 28 influence in to the army (a game I'd love to paint up a warband for and play some day) and these Tree Revenants were an obvious candidate for covering in dead foliage.

Happily I also found a use for the bag of Silver Birch seeds my folks kindly collected for me from their garden ages ago - they make great fallen leaves for adding to the bases.

The original inspiration for the unit was some more of Simon Miniatures gribbly offerings! These dessicated, antler headed monstrosities are perhaps the very Forest Spirits whose vengeance has altered the poor souls they drive in to battle.

Now these figures, again very beautifully sculpted, are extremely delicate. Happily Stephane Simon, who sculpts and runs Simon Miniatures, sent me doubles of almost all the miniatures I ordered, where there had been breakages or slight miscasts, in addition to the perfect casts - I was very pleasantly surprised and grateful when I opened the box and found way more than I had originally ordered!

Having various duplicates meant making up a full unit of course and the kitbashed tree zombies are my crude attempts at duplicating Stephane's wonderful sculpting and style.

In Warhammer game terms I'll most likely play them as Zombies or Ghouls, perhaps with a special rule or two for ignoring difficult terrain in woods, along with a few extra points added to their cost - not that points costs factor in very much in the games I tend to play!

The trees in the background were bought off Etsy ages ago - I forget the seller - and are 3D printed. Not sure if they're just a bit of a crude print or whether 3D printers have improved a lot since I bought them, but the layers of the print are clearly visible now they've been painted. 

I'm not entirely unhappy with the finish as it makes the various skeletons and corpses hanging off them look like they have wood grain - as if they grew out of the tree rather than being actual bodies and skeletons.

Last but certainly not least is this Wendigo - another purchase from Etsy. Lord knows what I'll play it as in Warhammer terms but I rather liked how creepy it was and the crazy amount of antlers it has - another theme I've decided to use to tie the various elements of the army together with.

Happily this model is made from some kind of flexible resin so it's not as fragile as it looks!

And any excuse to get the Tamiya Red out for some blood and gore effects is always ok with me!

So there we have it - I think I'm embarked on a new project and hopefully I'll see it to the end and get all my old Citadel Elves painted up in the process. I've now spent too many hours and potentially am going to spend way too much money on lots of resin and plastic antlers to convert and creepify the old Citadel miniatures to back out now!