Necrons Arrive

 Gerezman is a planet haunted by the returning dead. It is fitting, then, that the most ancient death of all has begun to stir beneath the surface.

Gerezman is a graveyard for temples, churches, and townships, ruins from ages past and tributes to the region's hostility. Now they are home to feral ghouls, wild Deadwalkers, and lost wraiths of the Nighthaunt. The walls throb with absorbed death magic, metal edifices buckle and warp, and statues haemorrhage blood as if living.

An unbound Chainrasp stalks through the ruins, peering out at intruders.

A statue of Sigmar begins to weep blood as a powerful Nighthaunt drifts near.

Alzharad is a minor chaos power, a manifestation of dementia, lost memory and forget. Ideas and thoughts in the minds of species with a presence in the warp create ripples in the Immaterium, which can endure on the eddies and waves of warpspace for long after their source is gone. These orphaned concepts are claimed by Alzharad and twisted into daemons, sent into the mortal realm to destroy knowledge, spread amnesia, and consume truth.

An embodiement of a forgotten gate, the key lost and the bars rusted.

A spectre of forgotten dead, who will never know a grave.

A Forgettor is a direct creation of Alzharad, formed as other daemons are from a portion of his own power. Forgettors seek out mortals to inject with their memory-erasing venom.

These are a few lesser daemons I've created for the 28mag challenge, to make a fifth chaos god and its followers. It's a fun challenge, with a lot of room for creativity. I've been really enjoying other people's entries.

Remote as it may be, Gerezman is not free from the blight of greenskins. Where once was a large desert in the southern hemisphere is now an ecosystem of orkoid life; fungal strains, squigs and the ubiquitous orks themselves. Isolated groups of feral orks are present in other parts of Gerezman, but the world's other horrors discourage the greenskins from leaving their own territory.

It's nice to finally be putting a brush to things. This pandemic is a good excuse to sit and paint. This boy is a simple paint job largely consisting of contrast paint over a zenithal undercoat. It's very grimy and dusty, but I like it, especially for a model I have to paint more than a hundred of.

Foxbox: We'll Make It Orky

Foxbox is a boutique miniature manufacturer based in the UK and someone I have been chatting with for a while now. I wanted to do a proper review of his products, since I am such a large fan of his products.

Foxbox has a selection of ork bits, and I picked up a selection of them to spice up my orks. Here we have some torsos.

The size and shape of them is in line with GW Ork Boyz. There's a nice variety available. However, the Aviator torsos in particular suffer from some flash that is difficult to remove.

As seen here, the nature of the mould used means that the connection point is right in a socket, which is a bit tricky to dig out. The other torsos don't have this problem.

If you are bothered by how hunched over the GW ork legs are, then these are for you. They are a little bit chunky, being from the "basiks" range of parts. Do note however that GW tork torsos and indeed the Foxbox ones are designed to fit in at the angle that the slouched legs have, meaning that there may be some fiddling required, and there may be a gap.

Like so. Easy enough to cover with a pouch or similar gubbin, though.

You can see here that the change in stance adds a bit of height to a standard ork boy, which I like.

The selection of arms is nothing short of fantastic, however size can vary slightly from sculpt to sculpt. This arm from the special forces weapon set is a little bit stubby. I don't mind a bit of variation personally, but it is worth noting.

Here you can see some boyz I've put together using mostly Foxbox parts, with some GW bits and an arm from Kromlech. 

Here's a Spanner made almost entirely using the Blackthumb part set. The variety of tools is delightful.

There's a number of original sculpts. I couldn't resist snagging this boss to be a lieutenant in my Waaagh!. Some of the fiddly bits snapped off in transit to Australia, but the overall level of detail is rather shiny and quite chrome.

My absolute favourites have to be the goblins, however. Look at that grin!

They're so characterful and absolutely marvellous. The squad leader at ease is my favorite.

They're a little bit taller than a GW grot, mostly due to the pose. These grots have confidence!

I wont make a secret of the fact that I love Foxbox's conversion parts. They cater to me as an ork player and a Gorkamorka fanboy directly and I would recommend them to anybody in the same category. I would, will (and have) buy again.

Tehnolog and Souldark: A first impression

I ordered some Tehnolog terrain from Souldark and it arrived today. I placed the order on February 7th, so it takes about a month to ship to Australia from their Russian place of business. I ordered 3 Repulse Line wall sprues and 1 Repulse Line Windows sprue, just to test out and see if the company and the product were worthwhile. The sprues were 3 USD each and shipping was 10 USD., coming to a total of about 35 AUD

The kits arrived already removed from the frames, with no damage from the shipping. Nice!

From the four sprues I was able to make a small building of some kind and a redoubt/fortified point. A base of a statue, perhaps? The pieces click together with a lego technic-ish system of rods and slots. It was a little bit fiddly, and the windows had an inverted design compared to the walls. It's hard to explain but if you do a ratio of 3:1 you should be fine. While the door to the larger structure does open, there's no real interior to speak of.

The pieces are well in scale for 40k and necromunda, and the price is very, very good, especially when compared to GW kits of similar size. When you take into account the ease of assembly and disassembly, I can see these being a big hit on the Necromunda scene for making dense hives.

The final verdict is a solid recommend. I will definitely be trying some more Tehnolog kits in the future. I can't wait to get some paint on these.

Small Skitari update

One of the planetside skitari, recruited from Gerezman's feudal population.

Peasant Hollow

The unfortunates that eke out a living in Gerezman are a pallid, withered lot. Mortals dwelling in the death-haunted, dimly lit lands often resemble cadavers even before they die.

This miniature is just a simple re-creation of a Peasant Hollow from Dark Souls 3. The arms and hat are from Mantic scarecrow and the head is from Mantic zombies. The body is a GW flagellant, possibly the best body ever to base Aos28 or Inq28 conversions on.

Deus Est Mechanicum

The Adeptus Mechanicus of Gerezman have long been in isolation from the rest of their brotherhood on Mars. Divergences have emerged, splitting them off of the hegemonic orthodoxy. They are fractured into factions, with more conservative and tradition-centric priests residing upon the planet's moon. The adepts that work upon the planet's surface more permanently are more divergent, and cast out renegades and hereteks have fled into the dark corners of the world.

The Cult Mechanicus are one of my favorite 40k factions. There's so much space to sprawl out and go wild with the aesthetic choices. With the right marrying of bitz, anything can be made to look like an adept of Mars.

One of the surface dwelling Magi. Note the unusual, low-tech leg prosthesis. 

A Sicarian assassin given unusual ornamentation.

Forces of Chaos, bow to me.

In ages past, the Planet of Gerezman was the site of incursions from the forces of Chaos. The twilight days of the Horus Heresy saw civil war come to the planet. A warpstorm covered the world for many years, inviting daemons into real space to wreak havoc. Seeking relics dredged into the materium by the storm, the Warriors of Mayhem, a warband of Heretic Astartes, assaulted the world. Despite being driven off, they left behind carved altars and monuments to the dark gods, some of which still stand. The world is irreparably marked with the taint.

In the 4th edition Chaos Space marine codex, there were a number of wonderful colour schemes, brilliant for inspiration and given only very brief blurbs. I always found these more interesting than the standard, big name warbands. The Sanctified, the Death Shadows, and The Flawless Host are all found here. With at most a single sentence to describe them, these warbands took root deeply in my head. My favourite are the Warriors of Mayhem

They are offered without any description at all, but I have loved the colour scheme for years, using it for my own marine force and make my own segment of canon for them. I've put together some cult marines together, some test models for a new detachment.

Muddy Splintered Fang for Warcry

The Mire-Men worship Chaos in the form of a great, all-consuming mire, an endless gyre of swallowing mud and quicksand. The Mire-Men dwell in swampy bogs and mires, coating themselves in mud and blood. They keep no possessions, casting everything into the muck to be consumed. The naked, lunatic freaks emerge from the marshes of Gerezman to blight Eightpoints and ruthlessly butcher any in their path.

Warcry is a good opportunity to explore one-off concepts and ideas within Age of Sigmar. I set out wanting to make a Splintered Fang warband, and also to try and re-create the wonderful Possessed warband of Ana Polanscak. Naked lunatics have always been scary to me. If you're being chased by a man with a machete that's bad, but if he's also butt naked then the world of horrible possibilities grows even larger.

Mud King and Mud Drowner (Venomblood and Serpent Caller) 

Mudbloods with Sticks (Venomblood with Spear and Venomblood with Duelling Blades)

Drowned  (Serpents)

Mud Men (Clearbloods)

Mud Men (Clearbloods)

The Mire Men emerge from the damp parts of Eightpoints, seeking more treasures to drown eternally in the muck. 

An introduction

Here is where I will be posting my ongoing miniature hobby related things. I make terrain, and I convert and paint minis hoping to capture a nice, dark, blanchitsu/Dark AoS feel. I also enjoy the lore of Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 and will be writing out my own sections of those worlds, sharing themes between them.

So welcome to the Realm of Gerezman, the name of both a planet in the Ultima Segmentum of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and a small part of the Eight Realms, that lies between the border of Ulgu and Shyish.