Wednesday 3 February 2016

Thursday...

...doesn't seem quite the same any more. I shared a birthday with the late great David Bowie. And Elvis and William Hartnell and Kim Jong-un! Basically all the cool kids. OK, so that last one is a bit dodgy....

And so now Dave's gone every Thursday is an empty, hollow, dark, dreary procession of hours. Even Thursday's Child can't remedy the situation.


But whilst we miss him terribly we can console ourselves with this kind of thing...

AND Thursday has another upside because the Antipodeans are busting out. So stay tuned for more cracking goodness from EvanH, BrendonW and MarkH just for starters.

Gawd, what an intro for one paragraph. It's not my fault. It's the loss. It still hurts...

Cheers,
Millsy the Minion


From KeithS - A Miscellany of Monsters (80 points)

I'm sort of between larger sub-projects so I'm continuing to clear a backlog of minis that have been taking up space for a few decades.  First up is a 60mm Fire Giant from Ral Partha.  At least I think that's what he is (in any case that IS what he is now!).  I don't much like painting really big guys as I see too many defects in my own techniques, but my current D&D campaign is centered on giants, and I have this vain hope I'll get to fight some miniatures battles with the one's I've painted.


Anyhow, per my usual approach, I tried to follow the description by Gygax in the AD&D Monster Manual, so dark skin (rather than "coal black" I went with black with a hint of red).  He is wearing red dragon hide.  Sadly, there is no hair showing so I could not use bright orange!  He looks menacing enough

From the back -- more dragon armor:
Next up is 50mm Hill Giant by Heritage.  I have no idea how long this guy has been buried in my stash of old lead.  The skin is tan to brown with some red, per the MM.  Since he is a barbarian sort of giant, he gets lots of earth tones.

He looks like he's on the move.  I like the sense of catching him mid-stride.  The skin came out really darker than I liked after I ink washed it, so I ended up drybrushing over to lighten things a bit.  he should be dingy and dirty, but not insanely so.

From the back, he has two heads tied to his belt by their hair.  One was clearly human with a hapless expression (understandable).  The other was really hard to identify, so I decided to do it in standard humanoid green.  Maybe it's supposed to be an Orc or something like that.  Whatever, it is now.

Up next is a Cockatrice by Grenadier.  I had accidentally poured a little too much dark green paint in my palette while doing something else and, rather than waste it, decided to do this guy real quick.  Glad I did!  The description from the Monster Manual was a little confusing to me, as I don't think the figure exactly corresponded to the critter.  But it was close enough, so he got a green body except for the feathery part which is "golden brown."  The wings are supposed to be grey but I thought that a bit dull and dry brushed some green on the ridges.  Everything else was per Gygax's clear instructions!

I like this figure a lot.  My only qualm was basing it for outdoors, as it would be a really useful critter to have available for dungeon crawls.

Last up for the week (and it was a busy weekend, so painting time was lacking), are 9 Bugbears also by Grenadier, at about 30mm.  They come in a set of three; the first set I've had for decades and actually painted many years ago.  At the time, I thought them among my finest work, but during my rummaging I looked at them and thought I could do a LOT better now.  Also, I needed some Bugbear forces if I ever do so wargaming for my D&D campaign, so did some hunting and bought two more sets.  The previously painted ones were repainted from scratch alongside the newer ones to get them all uniform.  I rather like the result.


A close-up of each of the three sculpts.  They're well detailed and very expressive.  I do wish there were more like these.  Three dudes with eye-patches makes it seem like they are pirate LARPers!


Three have blank shields, so I went ahead and tried to come up with some designs for them.  Since I can barely draw stick figures, I stuck with my wavy dragon styles.  On the right is the chubby red dragon, while the center got a serpentine thingie.  On the left, I decided to be different and tried a medusa head with snakes going every which way.  The shields have three faces with a sharp fold between sections that made painting them somewhat difficult for my meager skills.


Three of them had pre-designed shields.  Their pretty fancy for  these guys so I figure they were looted from an armory or maybe taken after a victorious battle.  That made me feel ok about having that much uniformity.  I could've smoothed them off and done something from scratch, but I rather like the English-like designs they came with.



That's all for this week.  I'm hoping next weekend is more productive!

Some nice Giants - nice to see those - I can imagine them flinging dwarves to the other end of the table ... Nice bugbears (surely an oxymoron) I used to hate coming up against then in my long gone formative D&D years - i have topped you up some extra pounts for the giants and bugbears foir the size.

from IgnacioR - The rest of the warmaster army and Ragnar Lodbrok (253 points)

First I have to apologise for my lack of posting... I´m finishing a job project and I´ve been really really really busy, but hey there is no rest for the wicked hehehehe. Now back to the challenge:

As you can check lately I'm in my blue period... i love the model even when a friend told me that he seems that he is whistle in an angry mood... once again i went easy on the bases cause I´m not sure what to do with the vikings... maybe i will cut them from the bases and add them on bases of a wood ship.

Marauder... thinking in Conan...

chaos hounds good doggies

chaos chariots

another 30 chaos warriors

chaos knights, only 3 for stand cause they should be less than marauders

144 marauders... I really hate them, deeply but they are ready

The whole army ready to... go to the cabinet hehehehe
Well I´m done with warmaster for a while, also no more vikings, on the table I have a band of ninjas with the Ras Al´Gul and his daughter for Batman. Also all the Frostgrave posting me is moving to make a nice band with old models. Once again I´m sorry for this time of no posting. So busy... I need a beer!!!

Blimey  - my eyes are aching just counting the blighters!! Thats a lot of 10mm goodness there Ignacio and it adds up to an impressive horde alright. The blue is nice and bright as well brings them to life nicely. My favorite are the chariots... i can almost see Circus Maximus..Ragnar looks a fine character with his brooding look ... a great submission. .

From MartinC - Ancients and I need a new target (260 Points)

Productive week this week - spurred on by AlexS' epic points bomb last week.
First up a couple of Republican Roman units. These are a mix of Crusader and Aventine figures, Crusader are good but Aventine are brilliant. I'm really quite chuffed with these
First the Principes in mail with a fairly simple hand painted shield




Secondly a unit of Hastai with pectoral armour and much fancier hand painted shields. I think the green tunics have come out really well




Next up a fairly weird looking Carthaginian general from Magister Militum. Not sure if is a good or bad figure. Looks like a model of a statue. Let's settle for interesting



Finally also from Magister a unit of Parthian camel cataphracts. These are massive, forgot to do a comparison shot but they are 70mm from base to top of helmet. I've always had a hankering for a fantasy desert army and I already have the infantry and of course the flying carpets.




The couple of the cloaks don't hang right from the back and I tried to fix but it didn't look right.
So that is 32 foot with 30 hand painted shields and 7 cavalry (260 points?). 
I have about 120 figs left to paint to complete my plan so lets say 2700 as a new target

Martin powers on with another wonderful points drop.i love the mix of bright colours - and well done the hand painting of the shields.  2700 - oh i think near 3k for you.. seeing you have an excuse to go shopping? Maybe catch you at York - the man laden with figures..


From AaronH - 28mm ECW artillery and crews (85 Points)

This entry is two ECW cannons and thirteen crew. Some of these are crew for a mortar, but I haven't gotten that painted yet.

All three crews.
These are 28mm models from Warlord Games. They also came with three resin bases for the cannons and the mortar.

Rear and overhead view.
These are great models. They are all different and all have a lot of character; both in their faces and in their actions.

This guy is very fancy. Probably a foreign mercenary from the low countries.
There are a few weird casting features in places. There seems to be something about sculptors that they mail it in on the left side of the faces. Other than that these were fun to paint. I actually prefer these kinds of models when I'm not pressed for time. I like a nice uniformed regiment when I'm trying to bang out a bunch of guys for the challenge.

Two guns that no doubt have colorful ECW names.
The guns themselves are fairly standard. The castings are not as crisp as they could be, which really only shows up on the carriages. The barrels are very nice, especially the larger one.

The other side. Same as the first.
The resin bases these came with are also very nice. I bought the set that has both guns, the crews and the scenic bases in one box.

The business end.
Gun captain.
I painted the crews up in a mixture of the colors of my infantry regiments. I don't know that they pulled muscle out of the infantry, but what the hey, it works for me.

This is one of my favorite models in the set.
Just look at that face. These are not cookie cutter faces at all.
I highly recommend any of these sets on their own or the combined set together. They are a joy to paint and look fantastic in action.

What a wonderful set - really full of character. I particularly love the gun captain with his telescope plotting fall of shot.

From KyleC - Infantry fall in... 230 pts


Been a while since I posted, and thats mostly due to ManFlu hitting home here. No real painting happening due to that, and when I was painting, it was to work on the alternative boxart of the Mutant that we released in January.

So I also had a chat with a long time friend, client for his models, and so it spurred me to go back to his pieces and get back to work on them. So this first batch is of his Raging Hero Iron Empire females. 36 females, and then 2 Forgeworld command models.



Seems I had forgotten 2 more Jailbirds also from Raging Heroes. So got them finished up and ready to go with the other batches.





I cannot remember what the kickstarter was that these were associated with, but I do remember getting them from The Dark Templar during my first Salute 2 yrs ago. Finally got them painted up though, and also gave them as a gift to my friend. Since he can always use more followers for his Word Bearers chaos army.. so basing was set to fit his army.





And then 2 quick paint ups of Hasslefree models that I will probably find use for in Zombiecide or 7TV perhaps...



Not sure what this character is supposed to be with the flashlight and the suppressor based SMG..


At this point I am literally adding models as I paint them and putting them straight into the post :) This is another hasslefree girl I worked on while listening to a meeting from home.. :)

All told, 46 models, so 230 pts for me. Not enough considering the time period, but still works for me I guess :)

Kyle - wow - what a submission . I love the forgeworld command figures - great movement and colours. Hmm how much extra would do do without the man-flu...