My Oldhammer year 2017 - a hobby review

As the year 2017 nears end it´s time to look back and see what has happened during it. I will reflect my doings to the Oldhammer: How todo it! -list written By Orlygg back in 2013 and see how I did. But lets begin this posting By showing you something that I´ve never painted before: a plastic imperial guardsman.

I´ve never really been a 40k guy. The younger me didn´t have the resources to buy both fantasy and 40k models plus I was strugling to paint even the WFB stuff I had. But I´ve always been fascinated by the old style imperial guard as presented in the WD109. That issue might just be my single favorite WD ever.

A couple of months back I had chance to buy a 30+ pile of old guarsmen both metal and plastic. All with plastic hand and weapons plus a few weapon/hand sprues. They´ve been resting in a box waiting for me to decide whether to keep them or to sell them forward. Then just the other day I wanted a break from painting gobbos, dug out one of the troopers and quickly did what can be seen above. Not fancy but will do for me. I might do some more in the future but I haven´t set myself any goals with these.

With that said it´s time to move on to the list and see how I did.

1) Get your hands on the original publications

 I´ve owned 3rd edition rule book all these years but my WFB:Armies book was lost at some stage. This year I managed to aquire a new copy for which I am very happy.

2) Bookmark online resources

This sort of comes with the blogging. One of the top 3 web sites I use is propably the Oldhammer Forum. The other one is the finnish speaking Sotavasara (=Warhammer) that has a slowly growing oldhammer community in it.

3) Start Small

I have to admit, I like building an army. I want to have a goal and then I do my best to reach that. I´m not good at painting a dozen models to do scirmish with and then expand that warband to an army.

I really haven´t kept a list or anything on how many models I have painted this year. But as I look back on my blog postings I can pretty safely say it´s roughly 140 pieces. By far most are green skins: about 50 orcs, 50 goblins and 5 trolls. The rest are mainly elves: 11 2nd edition Blood Bowl elves and 20 Black tree design elven guards. 

My plan was to expand my high elf army a lot more than I actually did but I got carried away painting those orcs & goblins.

4) Focus your collecting

 I can say that I´ve been pretty focused on elves and goblinoids. I fact the only thing painted this year that is not elf, orc, goblin or troll is this imperial beastman (and the imperial guardman above). He is my applicant for Oldhammer forum´s Legacy 2017 painting challenge. 

5) Start blogging 

Vanhaa Vasarointia celebrated it´s 2nd birthday on 2nd dec 2017. During 2017 I´ve published 41 texts this included. My personal favorite is the animal handler series of articles that took a couple of months to complete.

On 16th dec 2016 my blog had had 10000 views and if I remember it right I had ten readers/followers at that time. Now the view counter is 34000+ and 31 readers. A BIG thank you to everyone who has been here.

6) Ignore 'Buy it Now' prices

I wish I could say that I´ve followed this rule. But no, I have to admit that I´ve fallen to several BIN purchases in 2017. It´s usually something that I at that moment think is needed immediately but then ends up waiting to be painted for several months.

7) Create real scenarios

and

8) Become a GM

I put that and between 7 and 8 as these two go strongly hand in hand. Three different scenarios were created and I GM´d those scenarios four times. Here´s the largest and best documented of those scenarios: Trouble att he Fur Hunters´ Hut.

Having gotten into GM´ing WFB with narrative scenarios it really feels like my thing. There is always room for a pitched battle but as a gaming experience I think that one gets a lot more fun out of a written scenario.

9) Network on social media  

Oldhammer community, Scandinavisk Oldhammer and Oldhammer Finland are just some of the groups I´ve joined.

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Troll

First of all - Merry Christmas to all my readers! I hope you have had time to relax, spend time with your loved ones and do some painting.

I did a trio of troll earlier and they made their first appearence in games last summer. In the two battles they have been in so far they have fared terribly. The only reason for that has to be that I don´t have enough trolls. I got Slomm painted for Oldhammer Oulu meet where he was part of the Troll Slaying event. And now this guy takes my troll toll to five. Five is sure better than three?!?!

There is actually nothing Christmas or even wintery about this troll. He just happened to be completed this Morning. The cats woke me before anyone else and after feeding them I had some time alone to finish this guy.

Marauder MM40/1 Troll. I wonder who

manufacturessuch troll sized swords?

The trio - two gaming appearances, zero wounds caused, twice routed.

Leaping Slomm Two-Face. Actually fared pretty

well in Troll Slaying event.

At the moment I have some Iron Claw goblins and old Imperial Guard models on my painting table. Let´s see if I can get something out of them for new year.

Winner of Kalevala painting challenge

To honor the 100th anniversary on Finland I arranged a small scale painting challenge with Kalevala theme.

I was supposed to do the winner draw on 6th december but a couple of entrants came in a bit late and this text took a little longer to write than I thought. But here are the participants, each with a short excerpt from Kalevala to open up their back ground a bit. And the winner of course at the end of the text.

Ilmarinen, Smith-eternal

Blew the winds, fanned the fire:
Blew the east wind, blew the west wind,
And the south wind blew still stronger,
While the north wind roared the loudest.
Blew a day, blew a second,
Even on the third day blowing:
Fire was spurting through the windows,
Sparks were shooting through the doorways,
Ashes floating to the sky,
Black smoke mingling with the clouds.

After the third day Ilmarinen,

Smith-eternal, went himself
To take a look, leaning over
To see the bottom of his forge:
Saw the Sampo being born
And the ciphered cover growing.

Forging of the Sampo By Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Ilmarinen

is the bearded figure closest to the furnace.

Finmirage´s entry to the challenge is Ilmarinen the mighty smith of Kalevala. In the stories Ilmarinen is a demi-god like immortal character capable of creating pretty much anything. He is the one who forges the Sampo, a magical artifact that brings riches and good fortune to it´s owner. 

Lemminkäinen and Tiera

Then he goes out through the village
To his old companion's house
And on arriving states his business:
"My dear Tiera, my old comrade,
My true friend, the one and only!
Maybe you recall the old days,
Good old times we lived together
When the two of us went warring.
We went through so many hamlets,
In each hamlet were ten houses,
In each house at least ten men;
There was not a single warrior
Nor a man of any worth
Whom we did not beat in battle,
Whom we did not overcome."

Lemminkäinen and the Elk of Hiisi By Väinö Hämäläinen (1902).

LM participates with a duo of fighters: Lemminkäinen and his companion Tiera. Lemminkäinen is one of the prominent heroes of Kalevala. He is often described as a young and good looking but impetuous man. Lemminkäinen owns a flaming sword which he uses to bring glory to his family. Lemminkäinen´s close companion is Tiera who is a skilled warrior with spear.

Usva, Louhi´s daughter

Usva By Traject0ry

That dark maid of Tuonela,
Blind eye of the barren wasteland,
Made her straw bed at the crossroads,
Laid it on unholy ground.
There she lay, her back to windward,
Slantwise to the bitter blowing
With the piercing cold behind her,
Facing eastward toward the dawn.

But a blast of wind came blowing.
From the east a furious storm wind
Blew her heavy, big with child,
Pregnant in a treeless country,
On the open twigless barrens,
Ground ungreened by turf or tussock.

Bore her womb, her painful belly,
Carried it for two, three, four months;
Five, six, seven, even eight months;
For the full nine months she bore it,
And, according to the old wives,
Even half the tenth she bore it.

Daughters of Louhi are listening to Väinämöinen

playing his Kantele in this painting By R.W.Ekman

Usva (Mist) the daughter of Louhi painted By Traject0ry. Louhi is the main antagonist in the Kalevala. She is described as a powerful and evil witch queen ruling over the northern realm of Pohjola, with the ability to change shape and weave mighty enchantments. She is also the main opponent of Väinämöinen and his group in the battle for the magical artifact Sampo in the Kalevala. She has a number of beautiful daughters, whom Ilmarinen, Lemminkäinen and other heroes attempt to win in various legends. Louhi´s sons are described as evil and malignant but her daughters don´t bear those attributes.

Tiny man from the Sea

The mighty ocean dwarf By TL

Out of the sea a man arose,
Rose up from among the waves.
He was not the tallest of the tall
Nor the smallest of the small;
Was no taller than a man's thumb,
About a woman's handspan high.

Copper-hatted, copper-booted,

Copper gloves with copper broidery,
Copper belt about his waist
And a copper axe he carried,
Wore it hanging from his belt
And it had a thumb-length handle,
Blade the size of a finger nail.

Falling of the great oak By Joseph Alanen.

Väinämöinen´s sowing is a part of the world creation story in Finnish national epic Kalevala. In this poem Väinämöinen who is a powerfull shaman summons Sampsa Pellervoinen the architect of the forests to sow the land with trees. He sows many trees and in time they grow and flourish; however, the oak will not grow.

The water giant Iku-Turso then rises and burns a haystack and in the ashes he plants an acorn and it begins to grow. It grows taller than any other tree in the land, growing up to heaven and blocking out the sun and moon. Väinämöinen calls the Water-mother to send him someone who can fell the great tree. Presently a man appears from the water, clad in copper from head to toe, a man no taller than a man's thumb.

Väinämöinen mocks the man, but the man grows so large his head in among the clouds. He swings his great copper axe and the great oak is felled on the third stroke. (Wikipedia)

Defender of Sampo

Defender of Sampo By VonKortez

From her wings the lads came dropping,
In the sea the men were splashing,
From beneath her wings a hundred,
From her tail a thousand plunging;
Then the eagle too came crashing,
Down upon the boat ribs tumbling

As a wood grouse drops from a tree top,
As a squirrel from a fir branch.

Still she reached out for the Sampo,
Hooked it with her nameless finger,
Hurled it with its ciphered cover
Over the side and into the sea,
Over the side of that red boat
Into the depths of the deep blue sea,
Where the Sampo crashed to pieces
And the ciphered cover crumbled.

My own model takes inspiration from Akseli Gallen-Kallela´s painting

Sammon puolustus (The defence of the Sampo).

The scene portrayed is taken from the 43rd song of the epic, where the hero Väinämöinen, seen wielding a sword, has stolen the precious artifact Sampo from the evil witch Louhi, and she, having taken the form of a giant bird, is trying to reclaim it. The battle for the Sampo is also given a deeper connotation as a battle for the soul of Finland. 

My idea was to create one of the spear wielding Warriors who are battling Louhi and her men. My model did not participate in the winner draw.

And the Winner (determined By a dice roll) is:

LM´s Lemminkäinen and Tiera

All the participanting models including mine will be shipped to LM. After basing

I expect to see the full warband and a scenario written for them :)

Congratulation LM!

Now to decide if I´ll run another painting challenge for 2018... Perhaps we´ll do some Pohjola baddies for Kalevala heroes to battle...

Birthday cheer up - Crude paint jobs from the past

Today is the 2nd birthday of this Vanhaa Vasarointia blog. Still a very small project compared to many far better and more well known sites but it´s been growing steadily. Today the blog is like my painting skills - nothing brilliant but at least better than what it used to be.

With that thought in my head I rumbled through some boxes to find models painted many many years ago by the lot younger me. I won´t ask you to enjot this time - but if these bring even a little smile on your face I´m happy!

This is one of the first miniatures I´ve ever painted. Boromir from the Fellowship of the Ring -boxed set. The year is propably 1988. Just look at his yellow overalls! At that time I had the basic paint set and as you see it was straight out of bottle painting. No highlight or shading. It looks like I´ve drybrushed the sword blade. Shield is missing but it was a round one. Brown edges and an egyptian style free hand painted eye symbol on white back ground.

 Monopose Dungeon Bowl elf and a 2nd edition Blood Bowl starter set orc. Year must be some where around 1989-1990. No highlights at all. There is something that could be called shading on the elves shoulder bad. Was there an ink set around at that time? Can remember. But it looks like if either ink or dileded paint had been applied there. I remember doing that black lining on the orc. I first painted the base colours and then started to make the thin black lines between different parts. It took me ages.

This is something I had forgotten. The young me has free hand written a F-word on the left glove of this orc. Made me smile when I discovered it.

A metal goblin in Lowdown Ratz colours. Attempts of shading and high lighting the skin can be seen here. And I´ve done a nice astrogranite base for him by glueing some sand on the base and painting it grey.

The wardancer champion from Skarloc´s boxed set. Goblin green base with some high lights. Facial paint/tattoo and runes on the arms. Back then I thought he looked bad ass. Now just bad.

Can´t remember the manyfacturer or the exact year when this was painted. It could be something like 1996-1997. He has to be one of the last miniatures I painted before putting the brushes away for about two decades.

Camo pants, high lights on armor - there were some parts that promised better things to come but I did not have patience to practice my skills back then and lost interest in modeling. But it´s good to back in business.

Sadly a lot of terrible minis have been lost over the years. I remember a certain Julie Guthrie troll and a Grenadier cleric that I wish still had. That troll was the very first mini I ever put paint on.

Next time I´ll promise to show you something that doesn´t make you wanna claw out your eyes.

The new elven guard

As my previous blog entry was a Guest display I felt that it´s sort of must to show something done by myself now. I´ve been wanting to create this unit for a long time as I really wanted to have halberd armed elven guard. I´ve used these great Jes Goodwin models as my guard previously but they are obviously not WYSIWYG for halberd and heavy armor that I want my guard unit to have.

Black Tree Design Royal elven guard filled that need. I´ve had these models for a while now but was distracted with painting green skins until now. I really like the line - there are six different rank & file models and a full command. So a lot of variety. Sculpts are nicely detailed and well cast.

Enjoy the pics!

The command group. The musician is perhaps my favorite

sculpt of the line with the drum hanging on to his side.

The six different trooper sculpts.

A group shot.

A closer look at the front rank. 

A bird´s eye view on the unit.

Guest display: Jorma Jormasson's mighty avenging dwarven warhost of terror by Raaka-Arska

As it happens I have a couple of friends with nice Oldhammer armies or soon to be an army projects. However these guys are not into blogging and I felt that it´s a shame if their work does not get wider attention. Therefore I´ve started a new series of articles under the headline Guest display. In these articles I will present the works of my friends in a somewhat irregular schedule.

First up is Raaka-Arska with his growing old school dwarf army. Let´s hear it from Arska himself.

Enjoy!

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                           Jorma Jormasson's mighty avenging dwarven warhost of terror

I have dreamed for a long time about creating a full army for good old Warhammer third edition. All that with principle that army must have a lot of character and ton of heavy metal from the 80s. Now that work has started with characterful Dwarf warhost and it has been a blast!

From the experience I knew that planning a project properly really pays off so I started by writing 1000 point army list. Rulebook and Warhammer Armies book serve as inspiration to this project along awesome blogs like this.

Most important inspiration for the project is still Wayne Englands legendary Dwarf army which was presented in the White Dwarf #135. Stylish and unique look with steel, blue and white all used in harmony. All this led me to first important decision right away, should I go with original 80's look on bases with simple flock and Goblin Green or something bit more modern?

I decided to go with bit more modern look but still keep bases simple and make sure they won't take too much attention from the main thing, miniatures. Snow is really powerful element and easy to add but I had never used it on bases, even after all these years, so that was set. Basic grey, few plants, and lots of snow. I also wanted to keep regiments and heroes on same low level so no hero will pose well, heroically on big rock or anything like that.

Dwarves have really hard limits on minimum troops:
1 hero
20 Dwarf Crossbowmen
40 Dwarf Warriors

In practice those can be halved on small games but I will keep limits on my mind anyway. Then there is always Baggage Train to add (Bugmans cart, smith and his tools of trade or even juggernaut).

Starter list is going to be this:

1 x Level 10 hero (famous Jorma Jormasson himself)

20 x Dwarf Crossbowmen (Bugman's rangers)
Shields
Heavy Armour
Full Command
(these will most likely be split into two units later)

5 x Giant Slayer

1 x Three man Bolt Thrower
Heavy armor

1 x Three man Stone Thrower
(this will be Goblobber but I while I am by no means powergamer I just cannot make myself to pay 25 points to downgrade Stone Thrower for worse.)

Bugman's cart is going to be on high priority to paint and do it's magic as unit filler first and as Baggage Train later. I also need unit of Warriors but one big unit of troops will be enough now. I would love to add Wizard to army at some point just because in 3rd edition I can!

This is the first post from me as guest and hopefully it inspires other to paint some dwarfs.

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And here are the pictures. Comments by VK.

A classic bolt thrower with three dwarf crew. The batchy

snow bases work very well here.

 Who cares if gunpowder is explosive - I´ll smoke my pipe

where ever I want to. Really like the cool commander.

 A goblobber with a single crew member.

 Another dwarfy machine of destruction - the flame thrower.

A frenzied squad of Marauder troll slayers.

WIP Jorma Jormasson himself.

 Dragon company, Bugman´s rangers and the cart waiting to be painted.

Oldhammer Oulu picture dump

On 28th october the very first (as fas as I know) Oldhammer meet in Finland was organized in Oulu. I as the main organizer want to give a BIG thank you to Fantasiapelit Oulu for letting us use their gaming room. I also want to thank guys from ORLY for participating and giving the painting instruction/lesson. I picked up a few techniques I´m going to try out in the future.

As I had no previous experience on organizing a gaming event I didn´t have very ambitious goals for this meet. All the games were arranged by people I know and we were not expecting a big crowd. We tried to keep all the games and scenarios small and fast so that anyone could step in and play for some 30-60 min.

First scenarios started around 11am and we finished around 5pm although some of the guys stayed a bit longer to test a couple of games. I´m hoping to get a new meet arranged during this winter but we´ll see.

Enjoy the pictures. Wish I had taken more pics. But I was either busy GM:ing or playing so I kind of forgot to do that...

TROLL SLAYING

In the spirit of true sportsmanship  even a chaos dwarf was accepted

to participate in the troll slaying event.

The troll slaying champion. In the end it was a slayer with

his frenzy and two hand weapons who came through as the top dog.

ADEPTUS TITANICUS

LM brought his titans and buildings along and ran a 3 vs 3 scenario in the meet.

 Two loyalist titans do hand to hand combat with

a single traitor. This one ended with a reactor meltdown

that took out two titans.

 Four down, two left. A heavy traitor titans took out

the light loyalist titan without breaking a sweat.

A close shot on one of LM´s traitor titans.

WFB 3rd EDITION

Goblins are moving through a valley with their prisoners as the

elves attack trying to free their brothers and sisters. The advance force

of eight wolfboyz has just returned to field. They will charge and take out

the green robed elf scouts.

Wardancers break the gobbos leading the column but

are in danger of being charged by the wolfboyz.

Archers are fighting the troll to free the prisoners.

Troll manages to rout the archers and hacks them down but

the prisoners are left with no guard and flee. A brave beatmaster

and his warhounds tie down gobbo stickas.

Elven civilians head for safety as wardancers engage the wolfboyz.

Routing gobbos can be seen on the back ground.

Using their special ability to avoid being hit the wardancers give

civilians enought time to get away from their captors. 

The elves win but at very high cost.

In another WFB scenario led by me a small garrison of elves was

defending a strong hold agains a far bigger orc force. I was expecting

a fighting withdrawal as elves had a prisoner they should have escorted to safety.

In the end the elves failed to do that and were pretty much slaughtered.

One dream come true

When I was in the 9th grade I joined an american football team and ended up playing for 11 seasons all  the way from juniors to men´s team in Finnish championship league. Around the same time as started playing american football I discovered the White Dwarf magazine. The very first issue of WD I read back then was #101 I think. For obvious reasons I soon fell in love with Blood Bowl and 2nd edition was propably the first GW game I ever played. And I played it a LOT back in the days.

My general liking of Jes Goodwin sculpts began with these blood bowl elves. In my opinion these are still by far the best elf players GW has ever released. But I have have to admit that I do like the Dark elves of the same era a lot too.

It was always my dream to have a complete and painted elf team but the young me never had the resources or painting skills to achieve that goal. So I ended up playing with those not-so-gorgeous monopose elves from the Dungeonbowl set. A few of those got painted and I did buy a single blister of metal players and remember painting a thrower and a lineman but those have not survived to see this day.

Almost 30 years after discovering these elves I´ve finally reached the point where I can say that I have a painted playable elf blood bowl team. There´s a fair amount of good luck involved as I was not actively looking for these models. As it happened I scored a job lot that included among other things 8 elf players and that gave me the boost I needed to make this happen.

I painted the 11 models seen here in the same blue and white theme as my high/sea elf army. I tried to achieve a uniform look but so that there would be no two models that are completely alike. I was planning on making the bases astrogranite but made up my mind and chose green flock that in my opinion looks better with blue and white uniforms.

The whole team: a thrower, a blitzer, 6 linemen and 3 catchers.

I like my elves dark haired. Here are the linemen.

And the catchers.

Blitzer and thrower. Not happy with the thrower´s hair.
But he´ll do for now. I have another thrower waiting to be painted.

The team is now packed and ready to come with me to Oldhammer Oulu meet where I´m hoping to get my first game of BB in many years. BTW I´m looking for 2nd blitzer model. If you happen to have one you could part with please contact me. I would prefer the short haired version to complete my collection but the mohican one will do as well.