Project: Scabby Terrain

On moonless nights, when the air is still, vessels from across the Turnip world disappear, sucked down the rusty plughole of death to a forgotten ship’s graveyard far below the world known as the Abyss.
   - Scabz, Apocrypha_Now and Max Fitzgerald

normal oil refinery

Ages ago, famous internet miniatures weirdos Max Fitzgerald and Apocrypha_Now collaborated on a game of rusted hulks fighting each other on an oil-slicked black ocean. It's called SCABZ. I got very excited about it, along with the new Turnip-universe game Max was working on called Swill - and then Swill got put on some kind of indefinite hiatus and I lost a lot of emotional impetus.

I still haven't built the ships I intended to buy, although I have gone through a lot of cans of fish.

But, somewhat unusually for me, I did build a lot of scenery first (wild, I know). Some of it I mentioned in my year-in-review for 2025, where I decided not to count it until I finished the final piece. Which I did, a few weeks ago. It's the normal oil refinery, above.

Scabz calls for 3-7 pieces of terrain measuring roughly 5”x 5”, representing wrecked ships, sunken row houses, corroded naval mines, decaying docklands or islands of rotting fish. I've made:

Project: Wet Ømens

 I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite.
   - "Dagon", H.P. Lovecraft

Church of the Fleshkeeper

Welcome back to another installment of "I made a small warband as a break from my larger projects." This time, it's a gang of horrible fishy friends for Ømen Tide. Created by Paolo Boracchi and Simon Schnitzler, two of the luminaries of the Inq28/weirdos-on-Instagram world, Ømen Tide is a tiny skirmish game of salt-soaked body horror, religious fanaticism, and that icky feeling you get if you accidentally touch seaweed while at the beach.

You can find the rules and much more for free at the Patreon.

I found the aesthetic and the inq28-inflected 'make your own' bit as inspiring as always - plus, technically, you only need three models for a warband. I got carried away and made a miniature of every role in the Church of the Fleshkeeper, but I do have some things wrong with me.

I may even make a terrain board, but only if I wind up doing a Mordheim-y waterfront - I've got too long a to-do list to commit to that sort of thing... discipline is boring

Project: Folk Horrors

 I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth.
  - Lord Summerisle, in The Wicker Man

sylvan warband

folk horror warband

If there is no longer a fan of Ana Polanšćak on this earth, light a candle for me because I am dead. I kickerstart almost every single line of hers since I first stumbled over her work a few years ago. I've commissioned a few big ghouls from her for my accidental Flesh Eaters Court project. I love her work so so much. Watching her go from strength to strength, a tremendous pillar of the miniature community - it rules. I can't wait to see what she does next.

Of course, actually painting any of her cool miniatures is another thing entirely. I have decision paralysis, combined with 'how do I use these in a game'. A few months ago, I decided that I was sick of leaving these wonderful sculpts in a drawer, so I sat down and assembled two rough warbands that could work in Mordheim just to structure the decision-making process. And now here we are!

In the Graveyard of Terrain

 The 'paint undercoated shit' project continues...

Garden of Morr

This set has a pretty bad reputation. The Goonhammer article describes several mistakes one can make when painting it - and that guy has an airbrush. Ana has several criticisms in her old series where she modifies the hell out of hers, criticising the tacky skulls everywhere. Neither of these guys really go hard enough on the damn thing.

I've had mine for a few years now. I got it through that monthly magazine for Age of Sigmar (in which I think it's called a Sigmarite Mausoleum or something) and was initially keen. It's a big kit, it's plastic, and it works really well for Mordheim. Ana had also done a tutorial on buildings which I wanted to use (and I did, along with referencing her graveyard series and her tutorial on verdigris).

You can even see where I'd undercoated it in 2021 and played a game of Mordheim around it. Very suitable for my Undead warband.

Unfortunately, while 'yeah, paint all the stonework, then pick out the metal railings, the skulls, and the vines' sounds pretty easy in theory, in practice it fucking sucks. There is a LOT of stonework, and it's incredibly boring and tedious to grind through, even using washes, sponges, and stippling. And there are so many fucking skulls holy fucking shit.

I only really enjoyed the buildings, where I followed Ana's tutorials pretty closely (including a first experiment with her trademark white-and-black splatter effect) to give the grounds a pop of colour. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if the initial colouring on the stones hadn't gone so grey.

Anyway, the damn thing is done. It'll make good terrain for Sun Rot, Hag28, Mordheim, or any other horror skirmish game - or even some historicals, if you don't look at it too closely. All the individual buildings are removable from their bases and the whole thing can be split apart to cover more ground.

I have had a little good weather lately, and managed to undercoat a bunch of guys (and some more plastic Age of Sigmar terrain for Mordheim uses), although I have still failed to undercoat my Praetor...

Project: Hag28

 For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark.

    - Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

The Hunt of the Death Hag Mother Skaïth

My friend Jimmy is the artist on one of the latest games to come out of the 28 Movement - Hag 28, written by TM Cibelius and currently on Kickstarter. Each player takes on the role of a Hag, be she of the Wode, Death, Desert, Brine. The Hag collects a Hunt of various creatures, and they battle over the soul of local villages, treasures, ancient arcane whatevers. The tone is a mixture of Terry Pratchett, classic folklore, the folk horror trend, and the 'kitbash whatever the hell you like' ethos of the 28 crowd. 

I love the idea, and I love even more the idea of supporting my friends... plus, I have all these horror miniatures I've bought over the years burning a hole in my backlog. So I bashed up a gang and got very lucky a few days ago with some weather clear enough for priming and here we go.

    Hunt of Mother Skaïth

    Mother Skaïth
    Death Hag
    Hex: Death is No Excuse
    Hex: Evil Eye
    Weapon: Basher (wand)

    Terror/Spawn
    Weapon: Basher (or maybe a Poker) (staff)
    Damn Spooky; Make your Entrails your Extrails
    Pretties: 9

    OR if Spawn
    Hex: Nightmare
    Mutation: Where There's a Whip, There's a Way

    Mercenary (x2)
    Heavy armour; Scarred veteran
    Weapon: Chopper (sword & knives or axe)
    Pretties: 4 (each)

    Goblins (x4)
    Ramshackle weapon: Choppers (scratchy claws and rocks)
    My Handiwork
    Mutation: Vicious OR Where There's a Whip, There's a Way
    Pretties: 2 (each)

The above is a 25 Pretty warband based on the 2.0 playtest rules. I think some of the models can be flexible, depending on what's more fun to play with. The Hex Death is No Excuse is a little redundant with the Whip mutation, and similarly with the My Handiwork trait, so we'll see how they interact in a game.

On to the miniatures!

After Action Report: Sheepherding in Cist

12 Маиуса 7533 года от сотворения мира

Любимая моя,

Пишу тебе после битвы...

the would-be shepherds meet

Reduced to squeezing slugs for nourishment, our two forces pushed into this slime-green valley, filled with towering pustules, gleaming with noisome sludge, and hungry, open-mawed pools, shifting in trackless swamps. Триста Тридцать Третий Репки Родины, the mighty 333rd Turnips of the Motherland, clashed against the snivelling dirt-eaters of Jimmy's Earl of Slough Feegle's Regiment of Foot.

After literal years of having turnip on the mind, Jim and I coincidentally finished big piles of terrain in the same month and managed to organise a game! Of course, that was two fucking months ago, because my brain then immediately froze on writing the after action report. I gotta work on this.

Project: It's Still About Turnips

 There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.
   - Stephen King, The Strand

action shot of the teeth swamp
(in a forthcoming battle report)

Having finished the Death Guard a few months ago, I decided that the next project would be making some terrain for Turnip 28. I've got mountains of terrain-making supplies, but it's something that gives me a lot of anxiety, being so far out of my wheelhouse. I've been planning terrain for the desert board that my Mantis Warriors would fight over for half a decade, accumulated tons of stuff for it, and am frightened like a little baby.

Turnip provides a way to do this kind of work in a fun, relaxing way, knowing that it's okay to screw up -- that's what the mud is for! Of course, it's still taken me like four years to turn teeth and horrible fingers into actual stuff that goes on a board. In that time, the 'swamp teeth' aesthetic has turned into one of the cornerstones of the Turnip 28 vibe. You see it everywhere - well, fuckers, I had the idea very early! Probably not first, but very very early! I'm just chicken!

cyclopean shepherd stands atop a sunken house
(in a forthcoming battle report)

Anyway, the time finally came to bite the bullet. I snuffled through the rulebook and scenario pamphlet that Max has put together and put together a list of core terrain and a few would-like-to-haves. Some of those haven't eventuated (I wanted to build a sunken windmill and a few terrace houses), but I now have a core list of pieces, which will cover the generic scenarios and some of the weirdo ones:

Impassable Terrain (6x6")

Rotting Fish

Drowned Tower

Defensible Terrain (6 x 6")

Sunken House

Ruin

Dangerous Terrain (9x 9")

Finger Forest

Tooth Pits (in three pieces)

Tooth Bog

Normal Swamps but with Weird Guys (in three pieces)

Walls/Cover (6x1")

Regular wattle fences x2

Tooth walls x2

a pus sheep hangs out at the edge of a tooth wall
from - that's right, a forthcoming battle report

As is traditional, I will go through these in the order I actually finished them. As is not traditional, I'll include a bit more discussion on how I made them and include some WIP photos as we go - so this is going to be a long post!

mortem tyrannis: многоочитии

Not all daemon princes are ascended from human stock.

ꙮ, associated with + + + XIVE CO77UPT3D + + +

Probably not the Three-Eyed King in Yellow worshipped by cultists shuffling through reeking sumpwater at the rotting base of their hive cities, but an ancient and puissant creature nonetheless. Ordo Malleus archivists have determined that ꙮ brought about the fall of at least one pre-Imperial civilisation on Terra, and there are indications that the multi-eyed horror has been known for millennia, across many pre-Dark Age human peoples - called variously многоочитии, or 百々目鬼, or ^dŠul-pa-è-a, one of the so-called 𒀭𒐌𒐌𒁉𒀭𒈥𒆪𒉿𒅀𒀸 (trans. 'Dark Heptad'), seven fell lords of ruin that serve the Plague-God-that-Must-Not-Be-Written. The truest way to name this creature is the single character ꙮ.

Its blank eye enervates, overwhelms. Before it, healing stops, regeneration ends. Life drains away.

Project: It's About Turnips

 I actually hopped on the #turnip28 bandwagon when Max FitzGerald first started putting it together a few years ago. I went all in, got several boxes of historical plastics, converted and went nuts with muck and slime and weird little helmets. I got my partner to design some cool banners... and then we just straight-up weren't able to print the damn things.

Триста Тридцать Третий Репки Родины
[trans. 333rd Turnips of the Motherland]

In late September, we finally did it. We painted 'em. I finished another project!

All it took was gluing four pieces of paper down and adding a little muck to them, photographing them and posting them. Managed to do that for Instagram -- but of course I forgot to post anything here...

Gnow There are Gno More Gnomes To Paint

 Look at that. A second post.

the new villagers

Back in 2020, for the Old World Army Challenge, Old School Miniatures was kind enough to sponsor my entry: a small force of their wonderful alpine gnomes. I never considered the project complete, though; one regiment of spearmen was under-equipped, and I wanted to expand the cavalry regiments a little.

As part of my new focus on finishing projects (I know!), I have managed to actually complete the gnome army. I also wound up adding a second spearman regiment as well as a small pile of new villagers (above).

The force is fairly small in most editions, especially as Byron's list design eschews heroes in favour of wizards, but I'll be able to ally in Wood Elves or my old, ancient Empire army (whichever of these boxes that's in...) if I really need more points.

So, what's new?

Old World Army Challenge: Wood Elves II: VICTORY

 I know I haven't posted here, but I did finish the Old World Army Challenge this year!

really should have brushed my hair first huh

My total of Wood Elves stands at something like 3910 points, so I'm nearly finished. However, this year's OWAC will be something very different. Stay tuned...

Project: Blood Bowl - Amazons

 It's been a while. My computer became too unstable to write anything longer than an email, [redacted] occured, I got promoted at work. Luckily, I've done fucken tons of hobby stuff since April. Let's start with a fully completed project.

watch the parrot!

Of course, about sixty seconds after I finished the last of these girls, Games Workshop released a new ruleset for them. It doesn't look too bad. Catchers are gone and while the blitzers are reduced to 0-2, we now have blockers, who are also 0-2. So I should be able to use the team without too much trouble - if littlemangs and I ever get around to seeing one other in real life, that is.

Presenting the Lemuria Leopards!

League of Two-As-Four: Match One - Uzkulak Udugs v Skälsbërg Skrëëchers

Good afternoon, folks! A few weeks ago, my regular opponent Mangs-of-War and I got together on a calm autumn day to inaugurate a miniature Blood Bowl league.

..the teams line up! Here comes the kick!

Unfortunately, this was on 14 March, and I'm writing this nearly a month later, so I've forgotten nearly all the details. It's been an unforgivably busy month at work and with the Old World Army Challenge, with April not shaking out much better. This means that you will have to settle for some snapshots and my vague recollections.

On the other hand, this is the first match of the League of Two-As-Four, where Mangs and I take our four Blood Bowl teams and mash them against each other. Two coaches! Four teams! For games where we play against ourselves,* we will hand control of the team to the other coach. Fun! The team roster looks like this:

Team	Team Name	Coach
Chaos Dwarfs	Uzkulak Udugs	goblinpaladin
Human	Skälsbërg Skrëëchers	Mangs-of-War
Elf Union	Saphery Strikers	Mangs-of-War
Amazons	Lemuria Leopards**	goblinpaladin

For this first bout, the Uzkulak Udugs took the field against the Skrëëchers, here fielding an Ogre instead of Herr Skrëëch. Come below the cut for pictures and a match summary...

Old World Army Challenge: Wood Elves II: Beasts!

 Over at the Old World Army Challenge, the March issue is out!

grr. argh.

I really enjoyed painting these beasts! We're past the halfway point, and some great miniatures are still to come...

Old World Army Challenge: Wood Elves II: Swordsmen

 My work continues on Wood Elf II over at the Old World Army Challenge V.

Warrior Kithband

Head over to see the February results! Don't forget to check out the other challengers.

Old World Army Challenge: Wood Elves II: The Wood Elf-ening

 Been a little quiet here, as I work on wood elves for Old World Army Challenge V.

elves, falcons, and harps! oh my!

I've finished the January challenge already; to see more go here. Hard at work on February, if I don't get distracted by someth

Those Who Herd

 Another set of miniatures done a few months ago (August!) but which I've not posted here.

grim ol' One-Eye and his rot sheep

I love this sculpt so much, available from Old School Miniatures. Unlike most of the civilians I paint, this herdsman and his nightmarish rot sheep are intended for wetter fantasy or science fantasy settings - I can see them lurking on the outskirts of Mordheim, on the muddy fields of #turnip28, or even being warded against the Emperor's lackeys by my 40K Death Guard.

More photos under the cut.

Match Recap: Uzkulak Udugs frozen out of victory on a frosty afternoon

  UZKULAK, ZU. -- A brutal offence is the best defence - but sometimes even iron and steak isn't enough.

The exhibition match between the freshly minted Saphery Strikers and home-mine heroes the Uzkulak Udugs ended in a crisp 2-2 draw on Sunday 08 August. 

part-way through setting up

We take you to our commentators, Jim and Bob...

Hear Ye! Disturbance in the Dömplatz

Last weekend saw a frightful disturbance in the shattered ruins of the Dömplatz, in southern Mordheim. The cathedral square - already shattered by a multitude of meteorites from the Comet - was invaded by two warbands of nightmarish creatures, squabbling to secure the shattered square.

the Dömplatz

Long-since denuded of the obvious wyrdstone shards, the surviving buildings around the Dömplatz  were rumoured to hold stashes of the cursed rock. The great cathedral that once dominated the south-western corner had been obliterated by the Comet; the font still retained an eerie green glow that even the monstrous avoided. Instead, the warbands sought to secure the two towers in the north-west and west, the graveyard to the south-east, Shallya's abandoned shrine in the east, and the eerie tower of Morr that loomed in the north-east, the memento mori carved into its stonework now laced with terrible new meaning.

Servants of the True Emperor

Pijavic ‘the Impious’ von Carstein and his band of cretins, murderers and shambling horrors sought to secure at least the graveyard and the abandoned tower of Morr. The first would allow Jakob Karg new sources for his grotesque sorcery. The latter amused the vicious little sycophant.

The Crowgor's Herd

The Crowgor sought to despoil the places sacred to Man, to feast on the bones in vault and scrawl the nightmarish sigils of his people across the high vaults of the Mannish gods. Also, he bore grudges against the grey-limbed humans after last time.

Match Recap: Despite turmoil on the pitch, Uzkulak Udugs defeat Skälsbërg Skreechers 2-1

 UZKULAK, ZU. -- Even bringing a screeching owlbear mascot onto field isn't enough sometimes.

Luckily for the newest Chaos Dwarf team out of the Great Skull Land - a region producing a number of great teams this season, including the Uzkulak Juggernaughts - their coach had the tools to handle the flailing mass of teeth and claws.

This Sunday saw the Uzkulak Udugs take the field in their first home exhibition game against the newly-reformed Skälsbërg Skreechers, coached by the infamous LMW.

the two teams line up!