Summer work - More Venators !

Summer is not exactly the easiest period to get any hobby done let's face it. Too much bathing, sun, seeing friends and all. It's just not a productive time. We can make it worth though by trying to cease the opportunities.

And avoiding temptations.

Lucius Lupo - Venator Leader

'Long time coming' doesn't even begin to describe the process behind that model. The conversion dates back to January 2014, I've tried many sources and ways to come up with a solution to do this head and it's only a month or so ago I finally got an actual answer !

But what was I trying to achieve some of you may wonder ?

Cyber hound for the underhive hunters

Quick one today, I've had this model for some time now (since last BOYL actually). This little fella here was a kind gift from the kind Crooks.

Elite Venator Leader - The simping hunter

WOOOOOHOOOOO ! I really thought I'd end this year on a bunch of dogs but I just managed to take the time to finish this lovely model !

You might not be familiar with it and none could hold this against you as it's one of those rare confrontation models you couldn't find in any catalogue and which were only available for a limited period in certain places.

A real shame, because it's a very fine model with delicate sculpting and loads of character as you can see !

Confrontation hunters

Gibbons (left) and Bronson (right), 2 underhive hunters.

On today's menu I'm advising you a couple of confrontation hunters who have been saved from the limbos of abandon like most of my late models. It's kind of funny to find in a quite misknown game and model range as confrontation to find models that are even more misknown !

Those familiar with confrontation (brief history HERE) will know names like Bratts, scavvies, ash waste nomads, techs and all. If you've been on this blog before you might also have seen rarer gangs like the venators or Helmawr gangers.

Well today's gang is one of hunters but it is not a gang that was specifically described in confrontation's rule or background.

Complete Marauder Venators Set

You don't get that many pictures of painted venators around (for now...)

1996 I'd say, yes, I think that's the year.

What am I talking about ? Well 1996 is the year I went into my local independant hobby shop in Nantes to get my fix of old lead (even at the time in the middle of the red era I was looking for older stuff...). And what did I find ? White Dwarves, old ones, a whole lot of them and amongst them these particular issues :

These contained what left a solid and resilient emotion in my teenage heart : the rules for confrontation and amongst them, this picture :

Marauder Venator - Test and first on the line

Venators... Funny how these guys have been playing with me since 1996 when I first discovered them in the White Dwarves where the confrontation rules had been published. I had just bought this lot of old magazines in a hobby shop and when I came home my mind was blown into atoms.

Venators and confrontation aren't familiar?, Have a read at THAT first then ...

See? What's not to love in a group of professionnal bounty hunters dressed in leather and chasing psykers and mutants.

Steal your face - part 2

Some conversions require dedication, yep, that's right, dedication.

The venator bounty-hunter for confrontation are not a gang you cast "resurection" on that easily...

I took some plastic bits anddid some dry builds (well with some blue-tack) for them during new year's eve :

 but I was looking for some proper heads.

This resulted in me trying to steal the heads of other miniatures by taking prints and casting them in resin but it proved to be quite a failure as you can see in that post. 

The idea of making the band has no left me at all so I took a little trip on the background  side of the venators to see what could be done.

The necromunda redemptionists are going to offer their heads in sacrifice to the Venators but Mutantdale made me feel remorses about cutting the heads off of them for this purpose only. So I decided to go back on the copy way...

This time it would be pressmoulding.

After some very interesting discussion with Shoebox, I opted for Oyumaru and greenstuff and used this tutorial by the very same Shoebox.

Oymaru is the exact same product as instant mold, the only difference being it is not sold by the same companies and comes out with silly colors. 

I opted for Oyumaru because :

- It's cheaper

- You can have many colours (though it has no impact on the modelling whatsoever)

- It's japonese (Yes I'm that superficial)

Basic ingredients are simple :

- Some Oyumaru sticks (I used the pink ones because my daughter asked me to)

- some models

- some hot water

- 3 minutes

Pour some hot water in a mug and make yourslef and your wife/husband a nice cup of tea with the rest.

Cut some oyumaru pieces and put them in the hot water for 3 minutes.

Put the  pieces in sime absorbant paper to avoid having water drops on it.

And then apply them on the heads of the models like a maniac, screaming horrible things in a mad laughter...

It looks fairly similar to the siligum and resin casting so far doesn't it?

Well now you will see how the dreaded pink-blob gang is far superior to the blue-blob head gang...

Forget the flashes around the heads, this will be fixed, i even think I'll do another batch ut making sure the oyumaru mould is perfect, I kind of rushed on the first batch and I've lost some details but second batch should be good. I'm really liking how things are turning out. The lady on the far right side won't have the complete masl but just a part like a sort of venitian mask.

While I was at it, I also built the 2 nobles I had in mind :

They will have fancy hairdo like this :

or this 

If I manage to sculpt them of course...

Apart from that, you can see here that the nimber of Work In Progress is quite high on the table at the moment. 

- 20 red redemption cultists

- 9 chaos androids

- 7 sensei gangers

- 1 sphincter beast

- 1 plastic Kaleb Daark

- 1 adventurer paladin

- 1 adventurer cleric

- 10 marauder archers

- 10 chaos warriors

- 1 chaos lord

- 12 slaanesh cultists

- 3 dark elf crossbowmen

- 2 minotaurs

- 1 wizard

- 1 chaos grav-attack

Hopefully I should be able to lower the number a bit...

Just when I didn't need anything more on the "to do" list , I decided to build bases for my chaos dwarf swivel guns... (sorry about the very bad pictures but you get the idea)

I guess I can consider myself busy for the time being... ;)

Building Venators : A journey from Laserburn to Necromunda via Confrontation

A little warning before you start reading, this post is going to be a bit lenghty so you might want to get yourself a drink and sit properly before reading.

You're back? Good.

I've recently tried to gather all the information I could on the venators to capture them the best I could. I need to have a clear vision of how they were portrayed in the designer's mind to see what I like in them and how I can make my own interpretation.

My main source of inspiration will be the confrontation rules published in white dwarf in (information below taken from LEXICANUM).

• White Dwarf 130: Introduction; background to the planet and hives
• White Dwarf 131: Necromunda Gangs; background to the hive gangs
• White Dwarf 132: Creating a Gang; background and rules for creating a gang including generating equipment, a stash and skills, with a short story
• White Dwarf 137: Combat Rules (first half); game rules for characters, group coherency, game sequence, turns phase, actions, visibility, firing and rules for trading equipment
• White Dwarf 138: Combat Rules (second half); game rules for hand-to-hand combat, hit locations, damage and injuries
• White Dwarf 142: Weapons; rules for weapons 

 You can find pretty much everything in those articles but I'm going to concentrate on venators.