I don’t have a lot to say here, that I haven’t covered in earlier posts regarding this giant, except to say the beast is finished!

Or rather, mostly finished. I haven’t painted and dipped all of the options that came out of the box, and would still like to have the giant millstone + collar option to play with. Various other giant bits and pieces got added to my Mordheim box for later use. The gibbet and cage for example as it seemed a shame to use them all these great parts on one figure. However I’ve certainly painted enough bits and pieces to have a variety of different looking giant figures on the table for Warhammer Fantasy, or Mordheim.

You may notice some changes since I started painting the figure. In particular I snapped off the plastic arrow I embedded in the left arm so many times I thought to heck with it and just left it off. I also never got around to trying to paint any tattoos or wode on the giant, as Dustan pointed out how difficult it is to get convincing looking tattoos while painting at 28mm scale. So in the end just opted for a dirty, leathery looking skin tone for his torso.

I do still think he needs a little something more detail on the top half. The figure’s torso is very bare and quite odd looking to me. That’s why I want to paint up the millstone + collar, to cover some of that vast square belly. All in all he was pretty quick to paint with brushed on dip and has come out reasonably well. The dip is a little dark though when the figure is on the table, and I probably should have thinned it a little before covering such a large figure with it.

Hopefully I’ll remember this post when it comes to mixing another batch of custom dip…

As my custom dip mix is still useful after sitting in the tin for over a year, I’ve started dip painting the various heads and hands of my magnetised Warhammer Giant. Here’s what I’ve completed so far: three heads – that’s all of them bar the horned Chaos head (which didn’t really appeal to me), and two sets of hands.

I’m happy with the results which are leathery looking which seems appropriate for a monsterous giant that would sleep rough outdoors. As usual there’s a few problems with small bubbles in the dip – see if you can spot them by clicking on the image to the left, and the dip itself is getting quite thick in the tin. However once again the speed at which I can prime, base and dip parts to a tabletop quality paint job makes it worth while. I should probably pick up a fresh tin and remix some dip if I need some more chestnut dip after finishing the giant.

I’ve started base painting the Giant’s main body too. Here he is with a set of painted bitz snapped on. The body itself is far too large to dip paint in one shot so I’m planning to brush the dip on in stages, working up from the ground base, to legs then torso and finally the arms.

The summer humidity is high here in Auckland at the moment, and my dip is based on a moisture cured polyurethane varnish so the work time is short. I get about five minutes after painting it on to address bubbles and drips before it starts curing. Hopefully this will work, and I’m aiming to paint in sections that have natural seams that will trap the dip, for example the edges of clothing etc.

I’m also considering painting some tattoo or wode details on the Giant’s body to break up the large expanse of naked flesh. That might require a bit of google searching for some suitable inspiration.

I haven’t posted for a while because pretty much all I’ve been doing is assembling Orcs and Goblins, basing them and priming them. So here they are:

- The Orc General on foot, assembled from the $40nz Orc Warboss plastic boxed set. To be honest I found this set to be a disappointment. The parts aren’t that interesting, nor that well sculpted. The giant boar in particular was very bland and lacked the surface detail I’d expect. Guess I should have gone with a metal figure for the General. His base is detailed with some spare Zombie heads.

- 24 multi-part Orc Warriors with spears and shields, assembled from a Regiment box mixed with spares I had from other sets. You can probably spot a few Chariot Orc heads in there and a chariot shield, and the Hero is armed with the spare great weapon I had from the Warboss – I’ll just call that a large spear. I’ve got six more to put together to finish the 30 Orc unit.

- 20 of the newer vanilla Night Goblins which are -tiny- compared to their older figures and are another disappointing new plastic set. They’re so small compared to the older Goblins they look like a regiment of Gobbo kids out for a playful afternoon of stabbing small woodland creatures with their sharp sticks.

- Behind the Gobbos there are 15 Zombies. These guys have been assembled for something like four years now, so I dusted them off and finally primed them.

- Finally at the back there’s half of the 10 Orc Archers I’ve assembled, the other five are being painted. I’ve got another 10 to assemble for two small units of Orc Arrer Boyz.

I probably shouldn’t have assembled and primed all this lot at once, because looking at them ranked up like this is kind of daunting to a part time gamer like myself. Even painting them using dipping techniques will be a reasonable amount of work.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time patching my Games Workshop plastic Giant. It’s a nice figure, but it’s got a heck of a lot of large seams to patch because of it’s huge, hollow multi-part assembly. As I’ve also elected to put together all his weapon options I’ve got to patch them too, since many of them also have very prominent seams. Patching is tedious work, but it’s worth it in the end when you’ve got no obvious seams on the painted figure.

I’ve been assembling the Games Workshop plastic Giant I purchased recently and while admiring all the head and weapon options you have in the box I thought why should I have to pick just one? Fortunately I still have around 80 rare earth magnets left from my purchase from Aussie Magnets several years ago.

So I busted out my 1mm, 2mm and 3mm drill bits and started to drill a bunch of holes in the giant. As the figure is well, giant in 28mm scale, there was ample room to sink 3mm diameter by 2mm deep magnets into the limbs and hand choices. The first shot shows how I’ve placed the magnets on the main figure, after that it was just a matter of drilling out each and every hand and weapon option I wanted to use – which turned out to be all of them of course.

To place the magnets appropriately I used my own Blu Tack pinning method. Also If you’re wondering why I’m using three drill bits when one would suffice, it’s because I find sinking a guide hole and then drilling that out slowly to the right size gives you much more control than just slapping the 3mm bit against the plastic and hoping for the best. Control is particularly important when you’re drilling narrow pieces, or potentially drilling close to the surface of the sculpted plastic.

The hands turned out so well I magnetised the heads too. This required some careful drilling as the magnets were placed in the top of the skull as it’s the widest point of contact on the figure’s neck. The plastic does get thin up there though and I ended up leaving the magnets protruding about 0.5 mm out of the skull interior, rather than risk through drilling, resulting in tedious patching work. You can clearly see this in the photo. I drilled out all of the heads except the Chaos one, because frankly I think the horns look a little dopey – and I don’t play a Chaos force anyway.

Once the drilling and gluing was finished, I spent an amusing half an hour with my six year old son in the garage trying head and arm swaps. He liked the way you could pop the ‘enslaved giant’ collar on with the millstone, and then snap a number of different heads on over it, and also the way you could attach hands and then swivel them into different poses.

The rare earth magnets are easily strong enough to hold the head and smaller ‘free’ hands on during play. The weapon hands all stay in place fairly robustly except the large Orcish ‘dragon’s head’ club (see photo) which is really just too top heavy. It doesn’t detach from the figure, but will swivel downwards pretty easily. During play I suspect a little blu tack in the join will help stop that.

Now I just have to patch, prime and paint the beastie!