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…

Related posts:

1. Dipped Giant WIP – Warhammer
2. Dipped Giant Body WIP – Warhammer
3. Dipped Orc Border Patrol Complete – Warhammer

Here he is half painted and brush dipped up to his waist. It’s such a large figure there was no way I was going to dip the whole thing at once, mainly because of the short work time of the moisture cured varnish I based my dip on. So I’ve painted the figure’s base and main body and brushed on dip in two phases. The first was the base and his feet, the second was up to his waist. I was a little nervous about overlapping the dip like this, but of course since it’s varnish there’s no problem with applying multiple coats, or getting a bit of overlap at certain points.

You can see the finish on the varnish is quite shiny. That’s why you need a good matt varnish to use when dipping figures. Once the shine is gone, the dip seems to lighten a bit and the details will be more obvious. Although I am wondering if multiple coats of a less toned dip might be a better option in the future. Mind you a Fantasy Giant probably spends most of his time outdoors, so a particularly dark and leathery skin tone was what I was aiming for with this paint job.

Now to just finish off the shield arms and dip them and he’ll be done! Adding 245 points to my Warhammer Orcs and Goblins army, and possibly making an appearance in Mordheim.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Giant WIP – Warhammer
2. Dipped Warhammer Giant Complete – Warhammer
3. Dipped Orc Chariots – Warhammer

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.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Warhammer Giant Complete – Warhammer
2. Dipped Giant Body WIP – Warhammer
3. Dipped Orc Chariot – Warhammer

So, this weekend I put down the Xbox controller long enough to finish the paint job and find my tin of custom chestnut varnish dip. Of course the varnish had completely skinned over in the tin, but some work with a screwdriver revealed plenty of perfectly useful dip still in there.

As usual dipping the figure was a snap and after leaving it to dry for a day or so I also had to dig up my matt varnish (man I really need to tidy up our garage). Unfortunately I made the mistake of varnishing the chariot while the tail end of a tropical cyclone was lashing Auckland city, so humidity was over 95% and of course the varnish started to mist where it was applied in multiple layers. Ah well, the misting isn’t too bad (see if you can spot it on the front chariot above), and actually ending up giving the chariot wood a sort of worn look where the Orcs would be holding on.

At any rate it’s nice to be back in the painting saddle after such a long break. Now I’m eyeballing my primed Warhammer Giant and thinking of how to dip paint him too.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Orc Unit Completed – Warhammer
2. Dipped Orc Chariot – Warhammer
3. Dipped Orc Border Patrol Complete – Warhammer

- 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.

The base of the tray is 2mm white plasticard cut to hold a 6 x 5 ranking of Orcs. The tray edging is 1mm plasticard cut into a 1mm long strip and super-glued in place. Thin styrene cut into narrow strips like this tends to curl a reasonable amount so be prepared to carefully bend it back into a straight line. Look at the larger photo and you may notice some slight wavering along the edges because frankly I wasn’t that careful. A single sheet of styrene built two 6 x 5 Orc sized movement trays, with enough left over to make a small cavalry movement tray for 6 x Goblin Dire Wolf riders.

I’ll wash the trays in dish-washing detergent to clean them, then prime them with a cheap black spray can and matt varnish them lightly to get a nice flat black that will blend into the Orc bases. After all on the game table, nobody will be paying any attention to your movement trays.

The photo also shows I’m about 40% of the way through assembling the second unit of Orc spear + shield warriors. Multi-part regiment boxes take a lot longer to assemble than two part Battalion boxes – that’s for sure.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Zombie Unit – Warhammer
2. Dipped Goblin Wolf Riders – Warhammer
3. Dipping Orcs Ranked Up – Warhammer

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!

Related posts:

1. Dipped Giant WIP – Warhammer
2. Dipped Warhammer Giant Complete – Warhammer
3. Dipped Giant Body WIP – Warhammer

Anyway, while assembling the plastic Goblin Fanatics I was disappointed by the bland look of the straight chains their balls of whirling death are on. It doesn’t really match the fluff, so I thought I’d try heat bending the thermoplastic GW figures are molded from. Searching on the internet it seems people use all sorts of methods to reshape GW plastics. I didn’t fancy hair driers, heat guns or open flames so resorted to boiling water. Bringing a pot to the boil on the stove I held the Fanatics in for a minute using cooking chopsticks. The plastic chains became easily bendable so I put gentle curves into all of them, although I wonder if I shouldn’t have gone more extreme and tried for a spiral or u-bend?

It was so easy I wonder why I haven’t tried this years ago with other GW plastics. I discovered something else too – GW black plastic bases are made of an awful cheap and crappy thermoplastic. I made the mistake of leaving the round bases on the Fanatics while I was boiling them and the bases shrunk and warped considerably in the process. Oh well, I’ve got plenty of square bases to spare so just replaced them, since basing makes no difference as they move randomly with scatter dice.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Goblin Wolf Riders – Warhammer
2. Dipped Warhammer Giant Complete – Warhammer

The custom movement tray is just a standard GW movement try that’s had some resin cast details from a Hirst Arts mold pinned to it and painted. It looks quite nice but frankly can be a bit of a hassle to place figures into as they tend to snag on the details. Looking at it again, I wonder if I shouldn’t brush a little dip on that bronze as well.

I’ve got a bunch more Zombies taking a stripping bath at the moment to remove some incomplete paint jobs, and I’ve got another handful to patch up and prime. In fact I’m considering salvaging my original Vampire Counts Border Patrol Force from 2004 and getting them finally finished using dip. To complete them wouldn’t take much effort once the Zombies are done. From memory I think I had a handful of metal Grave Guard to finish as well, and they can certainly go through the green dip. In fact I might try a little highlighting over the base coat prior to dipping, rather than the simple flat base colours I’ve been doing so far.

For reference here’s close-ups of the two extra ranks of five Zombies I’ve painted. You can see I’ve been experimenting with a variety of skin tones, from a lighter green to a lighter turqouise to a slightly over the top dark turqouise tone. Dip gives your figures quite a natural range of tones even if you base them with the same colour (thinned GW Camo Green in this case) but I thought I’d mix it up a little and see how it works. The blue skin tones came out fairly well, giving the figures a drowned or maybe frostbitten appearance. I wanted to experiment with some purple skin tones as well, but couldn’t find any purple paint in my collection – and frankly couldn’t be bothered mixing a custom tone for a couple of figures. Ah well, maybe a few in the next batch!

Related posts:

1. Dipped Orc Unit Completed – Warhammer
2. Dipped Zombies – Warhammer
3. Dipped Orc Border Patrol Complete – Warhammer

I’ve ordered the following from them to bulk out my Orc’n'Gobbo force. I’ve put the GW NZ retail price in italics for comparsion:

$49.50 ($55) Night Goblins Regiment
$22.50 ($25) Night Goblin Fanatic Box
$49.50 ($55) Orc Warriors Regiment
$36.00 ($40) Orc Warboss
$67.50 ($75) Warhammer Giant
$225.00 ($250) Total

That’s a 10% discount on GW retail and free shipping. I’ll be using Imperial Games from now on for most of my hobby purchases, particuarly since they carry several other lines I’ve mentioned in the past and the Ziterdes range includes lots of useful terrain.

I also have no problem recommending them to any gamer based in New Zealand. It’s fantastic to finally have a professional, discount Games Workshop web-store based here in New Zealand.

Related posts:

1. Dipping Orcs – Warhammer
2. Dipping Orcs Ranked Up – Warhammer
3. Magnetised Giant – Warhammer

I dusted off some of the fifty assembled but unpainted Zombies I made for my Vampire Counts force, base coated them and dipped them into the new, minty green dip. Here’s the first four, matt varnished and ready to shamble. I’m not entirely satisfied with the results though, they’re passable for a gaming paint job but I think they’re not as successful as the dipped Orcs.

The green dip works well over the Games Workshop Camo Green that was used as the basic flesh tone, but don’t think it works that well over the brown tones on the figures. This is unfortunate because it’s earthy tones I typically paint with, which is obviously if you look at the Orcs I’ve been dipping, or any of my Pulp figures from the past. Ah well, perhaps it’s time to expand my repertoire and the green dip certainly works over whites like Skull White primer, off-whites like Bleached Bone, Rotting Flesh and yellows and yellow-browns like Khommando Khaki and Bubonic Brown. I’m also very happy with the way it’s worked on the Boltgun Metal chest plate and suspect it’ll go quite nicely over Shining Gold as well.

So I think I’ll forge ahead regardless of my reservations. I’ve tidied up half of my 50 Zombies ready for base coating and dipping so I might as well keep painting. It’s been suggested that I try varying the skin tone a little and I do wonder how the green dip would go over light blue or even purple tinged flesh. I suspect you could probably end up with some quite delightfully fetid looking Zombies… (cue rolling thunder, lightning flash).

Related posts:

1. Dipped Giant Body WIP – Warhammer
2. Dipped Orc Chariots – Warhammer
3. Dipped Goblin Wolf Riders – Warhammer

Once again I have to thank Dustan for his invaluable tips regarding dipping, without them I wouldn’t have bothered trying dip. Experiments with dip continue in both our houses – I’m looking to mix a good green dip for Warhammer Zombies and 40k Plague Marines while he’s trying for a blue dip for 40k Eldar.

Here’s a close up of the last five Goblin Wolf Riders. I wasn’t quite so heavy handed with the matt varnish this time and their paint jobs look a little crisper on the table. Since this is a Border Patrol force, both Wolf Rider units lack Standards and Musicians. There’s little point giving these speed bump units Standards of course, but their poor Leadership would certainly benefit from Musicians, which may get added in the future.

Next I’ll look at expanding this force with the existing figures I already have – another Boar Chariot, 30 Orc Arrer boys (I’ll probably paint 20), about another 10 Orc boys in parts and then it’s time to spend some money! It’s been years since I’ve been into a Games Workshop store, and I’ll probably end up buying additional Regiment boxes from Vagabond in Auckland city.

Related posts:

1. Orc Border Patrol – Warhammer
2. Dipped Goblin Wolf Riders – Warhammer
3. Dipped Warhammer Giant Complete – Warhammer

The wolves were based, primed white and then quickly painted with a watered down Scorched Brown. Their ears, snouts and tongues were all lightened with a mix of Scorched Brown and Dwarf Flesh. The teeth were just left as white primer. The base and wolf was then dipped into an even darker mix of the already darkened Wattyl stain + varnish product I’m using. Painting the wolves with dip was so easy I painted ten of them to completion in two evenings. This means I’ve got five Goblins left to paint to complete the second small unit.

The Goblins themselves were just primed white, painted in base colours and then dipped into the same mix as the Orcs. They didn’t turn out quite as well as the Orcs in my opinion. I suspect it’s something to do with the figures being simpler, and much less textured that the larger plastic warriors. But once again the speed of getting them painted outweighs the slight loss of quality from dipping. I also went a little overboard on the varnish for these figures and they’re extremely matt, and the spray varnish is thick enough to obscure detail in places. I must remember a light dusting is all that’s required.

Once I’ve finished the five remaining riders I will have completed my 500pt Border Patrol force. Then I’ll look at pushing the Orc unit out to 30 figures, and assembling the second Orc Boar chariot I have. I also have 30 Orc Arrer Boyz that I may or may not use. Orc archers are pretty worthless in my limited experience so if I’m going to use these figures I’ll probably try some conversions – Aaron made the excellent suggestion of replacing their bows with spears for example.

To get the force to 1500 points I’m considering purchasing a Games Workshop Giant, a couple of regiment boxes (Night Goblins and Orc Warriors) and a box of Fanatics. To save some money I may also try scratch building a couple of Goblin Spear Chuckas from balsa and plasticard.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Orc Border Patrol Complete – Warhammer
2. Orc Border Patrol – Warhammer
3. Dipped Giant Body WIP – Warhammer

I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the end result. In particular the wood effect is superb considering it’s just a coat of dip over a Graveyard Earth base. I used to get much the same effect by messing around with several layers of drybrushing and an ink wash. The boars also turned out well I think, considering they’re painted with only three colours prior to dipping.

The next task is to find a reasonable way to dip Goblin Wolf Riders. The challenge is I’d like the wolves to be quite a dark tone. I’m considering mixing a small amount of darker dip and using a lightened base coat of Scorched Brown. Even though I bought the smallest tin of stain available, and I’ve dipped 20 Orcs and this chariot I still have plenty left in the tin, so dipping is not only easy it’s also economical. The wolf riders will get the same treatment as the Orcs and once I’ve painted ten wolf riders I will have completed a 500pt Border Patrol force.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Orc Unit Completed – Warhammer
2. Dipped Orc Border Patrol Complete – Warhammer
3. Dipped Goblin Wolf Riders – Warhammer

The standard bearer in the front was partially tin dipped and partially brush dipped as I discovered my cheap tin of stain wasn’t quite as deep as I thought it was. It turns out that there are no problems brush painting dip on, which is not much of a surprise but still good to know.

I’ve also prepped an Orcish Boar Chariot for painting this week and while the Boars, Orcs and chariot wheels are all small enough to dip separately, the chariot body isn’t so it’ll be brush dipped. Hopefully it won’t be too hard to paint either since there’s not much to an Orcish chariot, just wood, metal and a few cloth tones to paint on before dipping. Once that’s complete I have ten Goblin Wolf Riders to paint to complete the 500pt force.

Although I doubt I’ll stop at 500 pts since I have another 30 Arrer Boyz I could assemble into two units and a second Boar Chariot as well which would get me up around 800 points.

Related posts:

1. Dipped Zombie Unit – Warhammer
2. Dipped Orc Chariot – Warhammer
3. Dipped Goblin Wolf Riders – Warhammer