Ogre Corsairs of the Araby Coast

Ogre's are a little side project -mainly bought to provide opposition to George's Lizardmen. My main criteria for selecting them is that you don't need many to put an army together in theory leaving me some time in the year to paint some proper figures (10mm AWI of course). Tonight i'm going to have my first game of Warhammer Fantasy for over 20 years. I suspect it's changed a bit!

So here we are - the first completed unit of the Ogre Corsairs of the Araby Coast

Adventures in Byzarbia

It's been a long time since my last post - that's mostly because I have been in panic painting mode for 3 months getting ready for the WD3 Forum game that took place over the first weekend in May. Once again the event was great fun.

This year we played another scenario from the imaginary 18th Century world devised by Henry Hyde of Battlegames fame. This time we were in the desert lands of Byzarbia, where Henry once again played God, umpire and general mischief maker in a huge battle over a 30' table with more than 3000 28mm figures. Over the course of the weekend we saw sandstorms, mirages, camel mounted artillery, elephants, pigs, flaming pigs (the same pigs), warships, exploding warships (the same warships), pirates, drunken pirates (the same pirates), flamethrowers, naptha grenades and a lot of quicksand.

I was once again the caretaker of the forces of Prunkland, the Austrian-ish nation that Henry has played himself for many years. This year my forces represented those of The Prunkländische Ostindische Kompanie, comprising a mixture of European troops, sepoy style local forces and a rioting mob. Oh... and the aforementioned special weapons squad of naptha flamethrowers and grenades, something I managed to keep secret until the day of the battle. For a full unbiased account of the battle you can check out my WD3 forum post here. There is also an excellent account of events from the other end of the battlefield in the Another Slight Diversion blog by Andy McMaster. For a video (!) account of the battle keep an eye out on Henry's YouTube channel - the trailer is already online with a longer film due soon.

So far I haven't got round to putting up any blog photos of my forces on parade, so the purpose of this entry is to put that right. So without further ado here are the gallant forces of The Prunkländische Ostindische Kompanie.

The 1st Prunkländische Ostindische Kompanie Sepoy Regiment of Foot (and their Officers):

(Flag by Henry Hyde)

The von Schiffman Marines:

(Flags by Henry Hyde)

The von Pereztrov Hussars:

The Brothers of the Cleansing Flame - Naptha Squad!

Oberst von Hauptzeige and his Staff Officers:

And last, but certainly not least, the rioting mob:

Chaos Space Marine Project Part 1 - Chaos Daemon

A side project of mine is Chaos Space Marines for 40k. This isn’t going to produce a usable army any time soon - but is rather a chance to model and paint interesting units in between other projects.

My force background is that of a large Imperial space cruiser (formerly the Lex Talionis, now known in whispers as Naga Oblivio) that has been possessed by a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, the crew having been overcome, seduced and entrapped by its magic and lies.This particular aspect of Tzeentch is that of the snake - deceiver, whisperer, influencer, manipulator. Having taken control of the ship, the Daemon is working to a mysterious plan, ambushing other vessels, luring in boarding parties, appearing seemingly at random to launch its attacks and then inexplicably disappearing again. The denizens of the vessel are barely aware of their own sentience - their minds only clearing from a haze of magic and warp visions in time to attack the latest objective of their deviously insane master before lapsing back to their nightmare existence.

The snake presence will feature strongly in all units of the legions of the Naga Oblivio. These are not so much Space Marines who have adopted snake iconography - rather the essence of the snake is taking them over slowly and surely.

The first unit in my army is the centrepiece Daemon Prince, J’Ssurus. No one is quite sure how he came to be - part snake, part Daemon, part machine. His slithering form leads the assault in boarding parties - huge though he is, his lithe and supple body is able to compress and slither into vents and service shafts, erupting behind the defenders in a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Sometimes he prefers to use mutated thruster vents to propel himself across the void between the ships and tear his way into the enemy bridge using his daemonic strength to rip through the bulkhead walls.

The model is a combination of the standard GW Daemon Prince and a rather excellent 54mm giant snake figure from Grey Matter Figures with a bit of greenstuff embellishment thrown in too. So far its just undercoated with a brown guidewash. Full painting will have to wait till after my summer holidays.