Pokrzyw's Empire Army - Month 2 - Fire and Arrows - Rank and File 2 - OWAC IX

 Pyromancers - masters of fire - are the most unstable and terrible wizards. Any time when something burns around, one of this strange magos is nearby...

Pyromancer

Plans for February:

Another month that I had different plans (January shall be month of halflings, February shall be a month of Halflings.. March would be ..).

But I decided to finish archers from group no 3 and bright wizard from the extra stuff.

Realization:

Bright wizard is iconic person in Warhammer world. Yellow-orange-red colours need to be used. From the other hand bowmans is rather connected with hunters or scouts - green/brown people from woods. But also I had in my mind that there were one unit of archers from Dark Omen game:

Why not try to do Helmgart Bowmans? But blue was to bright, whole models was too dark..


Gallery:

Archers led by wizard

        

Points:

• Bright wizard on horse (59)
• 12 archers (120)
  

This month: 179
This challenge: 612

Whole Army after two months:

whole army after two months

Plans for March:

halflings ;)

Sybou_Month 4_OWAC VIII_Wildcards and leader_ Artillery and ... a mysterious fellow

Hello dear assemblée,

I'm glad to join you again on a new month for our favorite contest.

I took time to do my wildcard which was surprisingly hard to finish.

It's just a couple of cannons!

A great canon!

So The Baron purchased several artillery pieces for his army. It includes a mortar, 2 great cannons and 2 hellguns.

These one is operated by 3 former Bretonnian outcasts. As the cannon is kind of old, it is better to have a big shield to protect yourself when you light it on.

A hellgun

Sorry about this picture which is kind of blurry. 

The crew tries really hard to make it work but misfires are to be expected.

The Baron's army doesn't include master engineer so the artillery pieces are not the more reliable.

Finally to finish the month, something wicked this way comes ...

“There are some who call me…Tim”

Tim the Enchanter is one amongst lots of wizards working for the Baron. But Tim is a man of talent that only has a relation of equal to equal with the Baron ...

The 2 old geezers don't really get along and have many contest of who's the more mysterious.

In order to finish Owac 8, I still have my big cavalry unit of dogs of war and my lord on steed.

So 11 riders before the end of Owac.

May --> Mercenary cavalry

June --> Leader month

That's it for my month of April. Thank you for reading me and keep your head into the game, we're getting closer to the end.

Cheers    

                                                                                                                                                Sybou

JohnR's Dwarf Month 3 - Rank and File (1077 points)

Well we're at the half-way mark and I'm not completely sick of painting beards yet, so I guess that's something :)

 I stuck to the plan again this month and painted a regiment, war machine and character. With those complete I had some time left so went for a few extra bits - crossbow dwarves, sappers and another hero.

25 Norse Dwarves - Hand Weapons, Light Armour and Shields, Command and level 10 Hero - 387 points

 Organ Gun - 99 points

 

12 Crossbow Dwarves - Light Armour and Crossbows with a level 5 Hero - 209 Points

 

 

6 Sappers (3 teams of 2) - 90 points

 

Level 10 Dwarf Wizard - 118 points

 

Level 20 Dwarf Hero - Heavy Armour and 2 Handed Weapon -  174 points

 

I made good progress this month and feel like I'm on track to finish everything in the initial challenge by the end of June. However work is looking busy for next month and we have house renovations ongoing so I guess we'll see!

 

JohnR's Month 1 - Rank and File (835 points)

 Rank and File Month #1

The original plan was to do the Dragon Co. this month but I can't make my mind up on their shields. Should I use the original type ones that they came with or do what I usually do and cut off the bosses and use later, round shields or drawing-pins?

I've never been much of a purist in my oldhammer, and I don't care much for the style of those original shields. Consequently, I suspect it'll be one of the latter when they finally hit the paint station.

So this month I painted the Marauder dwarves instead. Plus one of the small crossbow-dwarf regiments, a bolt thrower and a wizard.

 I enjoyed painting the regiments, warmachine and characters together in a month - kind of feels like painting a little army within the army. Think that'll be my plan for each month going forward.

12 Crossbow-dwarves: light armour and crossbows with standard and level 5 champion - 210 points

Dwarf bolt-thrower - 54 points. This is the 6th one of these bolt throwers I've painted. I now have 4 for my dwarves and 2 with orc crews for my greenskins.

 

24 dwarf warriors: hand weapons, light armour and shields plus standard bearer and musician and a level 10 hero in heavy armour with a 2-handed weapon. 368 points.

Level 15 dwarf wizard: 203 points. Dwarf wizards aren't much cop in 3rd ed since they only get half the magic points they should. However I really like the dwarf wizard miniatures that GW released so my armies usually include at least one :)

That's it for this month, hope everyone else's OWAC is going well.

Sybou - chaos army- month 6 - Wild card - 66 points

 Hello everyone,

it seems that it's a new year for lots of us where we reached our objective of completing an other Owac.

For my last month, I was willing to complete something really significative for me.

But first, I got to show you my tzeentch Wizard:

This Svodred called the Clever one, I tried to recreate his style in the White Dwarf. It's a really cool miniature, I like the result.

I planned to add  a little diorama on the base but it was to busy so I just put a couple of rocks. You can feel the end of the Owac where you want to complete your miniatures list.

But back to my wild card, here is a little history: 

In the end of 2016, I was planning to make myself a really cool altar, an altar that would make all chaos followers die of envy ...

So I started building it, gathering foam, plastic cards and minis ...

2016: The altar project just starts ...

Then I went on all kind of project and life ... The altar and its parts got put in a box and lots of us forgot about it.

Then Owac 2024, I was watching all the result of my procrastination concerning my chaos army and I remembered ... The altar Project ... Shame went through my body as I realised it was just an other project thrown without finishing it.

By Khorne! This should be no more, I'm going to finish this Project!

And here it is:

8 years later ...

Pulled by some wretches, the Khorne altar incudes a chaos bishop, some crazed summoner with some bloody daemons, a master of discipline and his whip, and a big old school Khorne statue with a little pile of skulls.

The altar stands on a pretty big homemade base. 

I remember that the fact i didn't suceed to make the wretches hold the handle frustrated me. But this time I was like, they're gonna look a bit silly with their hands but I'll finish the project.

I hope you'll appreciate the work put into this piece wich is now, a central piece for my chaos army.

I finished all my miniatures for the Owac but I still have to finish my offering.

May be in the wrap up post, i ll try to add a couple of lunatics in order to conclude on a good note.

Thanks you all for your kind words through this year Owac, reading and watching all our photos.

Take care everyone and congratulations to everyone.

Cheers,

                                                                                                                                            Sybou 

Byron's Realm of Zargon! - Wildcard Month (565 pts)

 The Home Stretch! 

This month I am very excited to present 

ZARGON: The evil Chaos Lord of Darkness! (565 points)

Sadly the mini minis were too big, so I had to settle
with board squares that were too big rather than a
 proper warhammer-scaled HeroQuest board :/

The door was made from a popsicle stick

There's a lot of nerdy details I want to explain here. So! First, the reference. In the original game of heroquest there are few images of Zargon, at least outside of the canonical sticker album. The most famous is his imposing presence on the front of the DM screen included with the game from which he looms over the heroes. 

The Second image that I am drawing from is from the HeroQuest Winter Special comic book created by Marvel Comics. Now, oddly, in this version, we are told that the old man is in fact MENTOR! the goodly wizard that helps us. And, Zargon is presented as a bland mix of Dr. Doom and Skeletor. However, I loved the image of him playing with the heroes as they moved through his dungeon. 

To accomplish this look I needed a handful of things:

1. a wizard - from reaper bones - he was then heavily converted
2. a board -  I made from a blister pack
3. a table -  from HeroQuest; I replaced the cardboard with plastic from a blister and sculpted wood grain onto it
4. a throne - from HeroQuest; the cardboard was replaced with blister pack and sculpted to look like a cushion
5. A evil shield skull which I sculpted myself to match the icon on the dice as a repeated motif throughout the army.
6. furniture doodads - these all came from the game and include a rat, candle holder, skull, and bottles
7. dice - these are chopped up green stuff
8. Minis for Zargon's board - these were printed from thingiverse and scaled down. These were graciously printed by Roger from the oldhammer community in Portland. 

Moving along...

The Realm of Zargon

Oof, that underlighting isn't doing it any favors.

The minis shown in this section are there to demonstrate interactivity and do not represent minis that I have painted this month. 

Castle Zargon

The Mountains of Zargon

Lots of skulls so you know it's evil

Shoutout to Lissanne who gave me the Warhammer Quest doors used throughout

This cave is vaguely inspired by the artwork on the front of the box.
Two doors with steps and a big broad step. When the heros are done
I will mock them up with the monsters to pose like the box art.

Sadly, I didn't have time to finish the two bone piles I had also glued together... next month I suppose...

Finally...

How I did it.

Throughout the process I've shared a few WIP of the terrain and gotten many people asking how I did it. So I thought I'd share my process...

Step 1. Inspiration

I went on google and looked through old sources for inspiration. 3 sources really stuck with me. 

1. Ian Miller's buildings that seem to organically form out of mountains and spire upwards

2. The Squat Terrain from early Warhammer 40k Epic 

3. Castle GraySkull

Step 2. Gather Supplies

With my project in mind, I started to gather supplies to me like Sauron summoning the forces of evil. Basically, Halloween was just over and decor was real cheap online.

I also collected other supplies like carboard and tubes. Right proper materials for oldhammer terrain.

It's important to have a variety of cardboard types, each has its uses.

Parchment paper tubes > paper towel tubes

Additionally, I would note that few materials can beat masonite as a material to base you terrain. 

Step 3. The foundation

In this step I used a lot of hot blue to glue together corrugated cardboard into the rough shape of the castle. Holes were cut for the warhammer quest doors. It's pretty rough. 

take note of the various curved triangular pieces under the walkways and along the base. These will be important for later steps for shaping the mountainy parts/organic stone.

Step 4. Start of the planks and bricks.

I cut out many many many card stones and just started gluing them on with PVA glue. The wood framing is all popsicle sticks. You will also notice I cut out the windows, arrow slits, and doors at this stage. 

Note the use of clothes pins. They are a cheap but effective wood detail.

Step 5. The Teeth

I sculpted some teeth our of polymer clay. Baked them. Then I drilled holes in them and stuck paperclips in them. This allowed me to stab them into the foam skull and play with various arrangements. Once I got the arrangement right I glue them in. 

This was a bad arrangement.

Step 6. Foundation for the rocks

For this step I took these weird cloth-like paper towels that were thick and without a repeating pattern, and I cut them (or ripping works better, it gives a more natural edge) into shapes appropriate to where I was going to put them, submerged them in diluted glue and draped them over the curved triangle bits. This gives more volume to the shape and doesn't have you fighting the runny plaster later. 

Step 7. Doors

I made doors from sheets of balsa wood. The metal components are card. the door hand is a bead with a loop of wire. The doors were then glued in while I could still reach inside the castle.

Step 8. Plaster

I put plaster on the castle. The plaster is a mix of ripped up toilet paper, PVA glue, sand, and plaster of paris. This took multiple batches. Haste makes waste.

Step 9. Texture

I added the texture that represents the plaster/stucco between the timbers. This was gesso and sand. I also used it as the ground/earth texture on the base.

Step 10. Paint it up

I spray painted the whole thing with a dark brown rattle can, then with a darkish turquoise rattle can to make it a little spookier. The rest was layers of dry brushing.

Step 11. Windows

For windows I use these see through drawer liners. I find them with diamond patterns. I cut them into small rectangles and glue them in. You have to do this before you glue on the roof or it becomes impossible

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Step 12. The roof

I start by putting a single layer of card across the top. This acts as a good surface to glue the shingles onto. For the shingles, some people will tediously glue them on one at a time. I don't. I make strips of card and cut little triangles out at semi-consistent intervals. I also cut the ends of each layer inwards like a trapezoid so that the layers all overlap each other. The strip technique is tricky for the cone towers. But basically, It's using a circle of the same dimensions you used to make the cone, and then cutting out rings of different radiuses. 

Step 13. Finishing touches. 

I painted the roof and glued static grass the base. 

The mountains

The mountains were the same technique as the organic rock parts of Castle Zargon but bigger. Large curving triangles were cut, and glued to a base to make the frame of a mountain range. Paper cloth was put in glue-water and draped over the frame. Then plaster was put over it. Spray Painted. Dry brushed. Shaded. Grassed.