I just found this excellent site through the-waaagh.com and I though I would get your ideas on rebuilding my Night Gobbo force. So here is the army blog I just started over there:

**EDIT: I just noticed there is a forum for Army-blogs. This post probably belongs there so if a mod can move it I would appreciate it.


So I got bit hard by the fantasy bug since a lot of people at my local store play it and the new Orc & Goblin book is very nice. I used to play a mixed force back in 4th and 5th but I moved to pretty much a pure Night Goblin force in 6th. After reading the changes to choppas and black orcs I was tempted to go back to a mixed force. But then I read the actual army list and noticed I can finally take huge amounts of squigs. In addition my favorite fantasy character, aside from Gotrek, has always been Skarsnik & Gobbla. I absolutely love the new miniature for them and they made the rules much better as well.

So I am rebuilding my pure Night Gobbo force. I placed a large order for conversion material and it just arrived the other day – so its time to start converting! I dug out my old WIP Night Gobbo heroes and thought I would share those pics with you guys. I am rebasing all of them on scenic bases and adding a number of touches to finish them. The main reason is so the commands fit alongside each other – and because I cannot use as many heroes as I used to in previous editions. So I will have a number of pretty fancy unit-bosses. I have also bought a number of rackham goblins that I plan to convert over into my night-goblin army. Rackham just makes awesome stuff.

I have not decided upon the base-scheme for the army yet so I thought I would run it past you guys.

Idea-1: A cave scheme with a lot of rubble, stalagmites, etc

Idea-2: A captured dwarven stronghold (this is Skarsniks army) so square cut flag-stones, broken masonry, toppled and smashed dwarven statues.

Idea-2: A combination of the two.

Let me know which you think sounds more interesting – or new ideas are more than welcome! And now for the pics:



Yes, this IS a pogo-stick banner






One of my favorite heroes – he has magic armor…


My old general


This post has been edited by Cannibalbob on May 27 2007, 04:33 AM

Welcome!

Those gobbos looks totally AWESOME!
I really hope we´ll see a lot of more pictures of that army, as you build and paint it further!

as for the basing, I don´t know? maybe the second "idea-2"?

Nice!

are these all older models? ive seen parts of some of them before, but many parts are completely new to me. its very original, and fun

i prefer the first idea for the bases, the others just dont appeal to me, although they are more unique ideas.

i'll definetly keep an eye out for future work done by you

This post has been edited by wyvern master on Apr 28 2007, 01:01 PM

that are great conversions
i like how you used the fanatics...awesome!

and for the bases: i would take the 3rd choice. but not too much from a cave...i would mostly make a dwarven stronghold scheme with some stalagmites and other stuff here and there. and add some destroyed stone plates ore something like that to show that the stronghold was taken over...

Nice looking stuff cannibal bob, it seems many people start to play full goblins .

Greetz
G

This thread is running over on the waaaghalso so some of my updates like this one will be cut & pasted from that thread.


Not really an update since I have not done any real work on this army yet - I worked on my meks a bit more tonight. Instead I bring to you one of the oldest painted models I still game with - Olaf the Giant! This model is special enough to me that he warrants a bit of explaining. This guy is very old - but I think the paint-job on him still stands the test of time and does not at all detract from my other models. I can paint much better now than I could at the time I painted Olaf - but THIS is the model that got me started on my current paint-style. Before I used to use an extreme highlighting technique with no blending and I did a lot with washes. Olaf was my first attempt at blending highlighting. I still like the job I did on his skin - but there is not enough contrast in the lighting for it to really show with my poor camera skills. As I said I can paint much better, and maybe one day I will make an updated Olaf and give him the benefit of all that I have learned since I first painted him, but I am still proud of this guy. He was my first truly ambitious paint project and the way he turned out really gave me the confidence to keep painting with blending techniques and refining my painting methods.

Olaf has been in my fantasy army since I started it and I don’t think he has ever missed a game - I doubt he ever will. You may notice that his patchwork clothes are painted up like old GW banners from various armies. This was a bit of a poke at all the opponents I used to play against when I painted him. I chose a banner from each of their armies and used them as a patch in his clothes. There is even a forest-goblin banner on his back which he stole from my army. The only banner unique to him is the Jolly Roger on his chest - and that was chosen cuz I have an obsession with pirates.

So here are the pics of one of my fondest and oldest (probably painted this guy 12 years ago) models!





This wanted poster is actually a piece of paper I printed out. I attached it and shaped it with a coat of super-glue to make it hard. I then did a very light drybrush of bleached bone to give it the appearance of parchment.




Wow, these pics really look like ass - I will try to get better pics soon.

Wow mate, I have that old maruader giant too and he is kick ass. I love all the little art work you added to his clothes, that is a really well done miniature.

The rest of it looks pretty nice too, can't wait to see some paint on them.

So it has been a little while and I have not really updated this thread with any pics – although I have been spending most of my time working on these guys. It seems, as usual, that I decided to undertake a much more complex and involved project than I first thought. Who woulda thought that an entire army with every regiment built upon highly-scenic bases would be a lot of effort…. However things are shaping up well and I think these guys are starting to look pretty good.

I was originally planning on getting more done and then just making a huge update with a few “how-to” style entries in it – but this update is already gonna be fairly large.


So once I finally decided to go with the fungus-cave theme it was time for some planning and research! It is always a good idea to plan out, at least generally, any large project you are planning to start. Do some research into the subject matter, look at some pictures, and draw out some rudimentary ideas you have. Decide upon what parts you will need and try to anticipate any troubles you may encounter in the build. This is especially true for anything like a diorama or highly scenic project.

To start I browsed a ton of concept art pictures from GW and from Warhammer Online pertaining to caverns and goblins. In addition I looked at a lot of pictures of natural caverns. Once I had a better idea of how I wanted the units to look overall I decided to plan them out on paper. In Warhammer Fantasy most of your units are fielded in base-to-base rank/file formations and for this reason you really need to work out how the models are going to fit on their bases. This is especially true of the front rank – which is the most noticeable part of the unit. If you fail to plan this out then you can easily have trouble moving the unit as it does not line up right and it may look like crap since your guys will be stuffing their weapons, elbows, arms, and whatever into the models next to them.

So first I worked out how I planned to field the units. As I did this I also worked out where I planned to use unit-filler bases. Unit filler bases are larger bases that take the place of multiple individual models. These serve a few purposes. First they make units easier to move in the game and to rank up. Second they serve as excellent ways to make your unit visually stand out since you can do really scenic things on them due to the larger size. And for the cheapskate in us all they can make units cheaper since you don’t have to put as many models on them as the base represents.





I then drew out these formations on paper and used this to plan out how to fit the different command models together. I also drew some craptastic mock-ups of what the scenic regiment would look like without any models on it.






Now that I have the regiments planned out and I figured out which models were in which command and in what order it was time to make it happen. While most regiments include the command models already designed to fit with each other my commands are filled with mainly conversions or non-standard models. This meant they don’t get along well or stand next to each other easily. So to make them fit I had to rip most of the models off the bases I had originally put them on and build a base for each one. These bases were built to specifically fit the models next to the neighbors I had chosen for them. Just getting all these rowdy gobbos to fit alongside one another took longer than I thought. To do this I used rock-formations to alter the height, position, and even tilt some models. Here are some pics of the commands with their rock-formation bases:









Now they all fit along with one another pretty good. A lot of these guys still a bunch of work and some large conversions to go – but the first goal is to get them to line up properly. Extra details can be added once the bases are complete.


Continued next post ...

There are a lot of ways to make scenic rocks for bases. You could steal some from the garden – although this may not be the best way to make units that fit in rank-formation. You can make them out of cut wood or cork (cork works really well for broken rock or concrete). I decided to use cut plasticard. I did this for a few reasons. Plasticard is a better surface for bonding to metal than cork is and I don’t want to repair these guys a lot. In addition cork looks very rough and I don’t think this works well for a cavern look. Caverns are mainly worn through underground water and the natural build-up of water-borne minerals. This gives them a more smooth and natural shape.

So first I decided how big of a rock I wanted and cut a number of plasticard sheets to those dimentions. I then glued these together in a very haphazard way till I got the height I wanted. I did not line the sheets up on purpose so that I could get more interesting shapes.



Once the stack is dry I took a sharp knife (emphasis on sharp – you don’t want to do this much hacking with a dull blade) and hacked the snot out of the edges of this thing. I hit both the tops and the undersides of the protruding sheets to get a more natural look. Once it was cut to a satisfactory rock shape I glued it to the base.



At this point you could possibly stop and call it finished – although it is still very rough. At this stage you will get a very craggy rock. For my purposes I want them a bit smoother and so I decided to coat the rock with watered-down white glue. I am still working on how thick I want the glue. The test rock had two coats as the first was too thin. The second is much better although it is still rather craggy and I will probably use a thicker coat, or multiple glue coats, on the actual rock bases. The glue coat is nice in that it smoothes out some of the rough edges, fills some of the gaps that may still exist between the sheets, and fills the gap between the base and the rock. Here is a view of the finished test-rock with a quick and dirty paintjob:



This technique is really easy and quick and probably so damned simple that it does not deserve a “how-to” – but I made one anyways!


Continued next post ...

You cannot have a fungus cavern without stalagmites and shrooms! So next it was off to add the stalagmites to the command bases. Since this is the front of the unit and the main characters of the army these bases are gonna need to stand out a bit more than the rest in the army. So to start I cut a ton of plastic tubing into various lengths and sharpened one end like a stake:



These were left longer than needed so that I could cut the different ones to fit bases as I saw fit. So then I trimmed them to the desired length and glued them onto the bases in various patterns. Once the glue was dry I then took GS and added it to the bottom of the different stalagmites to get the flare effect as they rise out of the cavern floor. These bases will probably not have flock on them – so I cannot just expect sand to cover where they connect to the base. I also used a bit of extra GS to form the very tentative shape of a few giant shrooms that some of the gobbos are standing on top of. Here are some of the commands with the stalagmites added:








Next up is the shrooms – which I am currently working on. I am trying a variety of methods, including sculpting, to make different shrooms. Since shrooms are such an orc/ork & goblin thing I will share the different methods I come up with soon.

Let me know what you think of the current progress!

Nice tips and models! Nice blog

This sure looks like a high-class blog. I'll stay tuned, and I have way too much spare time so you better be active!

wonderful ... i can't wait seeing them painted

where's that banner from you used at the last picture on the right standard bearer? is it an old goblin banner from 3rd/4th edition like the one on the second last picture?

Nice looking stuff , but are you doing all your units in metal models ?

Greetz
G

Well it will be updated as soon as I get significant progress to display. I am not the fastest modeler so there is no telling when the updates will come. I do work on this stuff every night lately though so I am making good progress. However I decided to make this army with such an ambitious idea that I am having to invent a number of techniques to build some of this stuff and that is slowing me down.

I anticipate the actual rank & file troops taking less time than the commands since the commands take the most effort and I should have a better handle on how I want to contruct the fungus-cave look. You can probably expect at least one update a week - maybe more depending on how things go.

Also as I mentioned in a previous post this thread is also running in the Mek-shop over at the 40k Ork site "the-waaagh" which is my usual hangout. There are a number of good replies there as well - and I posted a link to that thread in the post with my giant pics.


@Mulambo: Sadly I doubt much of this gets painted any time soon. I am working on this army and revamping my 40k orks. In addition there are a few events and contests over at the-waaagh.com that I am partaking in and will have to start work on soon (namely I have to build a 40k Ork Fungus Brewery). I will definitely post pics of these guys when they get painted but right now I just want to get the army constructed so that I can game with it!

As for the banner - it is not actually a GW figure *gasp*. The banner with the moon on it is a very very very old GW goblin banner. It is so old that it is actually a lead mini. But the grinning-face banner is a Rackham goblin. I have a number of other rackham goblin minis that will find thier way into this army as well. The banner is nowhere near done and is going to get a ton of work done to it. It will probably be my BSB - and so the banner needs to be bulked out, the face needs to be replaced with a night-gobbo, and I will probably sculpt pointy shoes onto his feet. But that is for a later time. I don't follow the "has to be all GW minis" stupidity. I have played these games for many many years and if I see a cool mini and I want to convert something from it - I do. I don't worry about the brand name on the package.


@Warlord Ghazak Gazhkull: No the main bulk of the troops will be made up of the new night gobbo minis. I have a ton of the multi-part night gobbos in boxes, but those guys are rather large. I really like how small and weedy the new night gobbos are and so I will use those models for the bulk of my troops - although there will be a number of conversions and scenic bases. My commands will be all metal models though since I have a number of extra heroes from 6th ed when all-gobbo armies got additional heroes. I also like a number of the new night gobbo characters and so they will get to become unit bosses and standard-bearers. I also have a number of older metal gobbos such as clubbers that will get sprinkled throughout the units to add variety.