Goddammit

Seriously TCR, I'm getting real tired of your shit:

Every goddamn time, apparently. You could say perhaps I haven't been studious enough in making sure the lid is forcefully enough closed, but I blame the pot, personally.

It looks like I actually murdered someone in here:

Ragnar Lothbrok

Originally planned as a Christmas present for a friend of mine (who is quite the fan of the Vikings series, and passingly interested in miniatures), until my wife pointed out that his birthday was this week, which incentivised me to get him finished a little sooner!

The wobbly scroll on his base says Ragnar in old Futhark runes (or at least, the google search to find a translator that I did suggests it to be the case):

One of the defining features of Ragnar (as far as I can tell) as portrayed in the series is his ridiculous haircut:

Whilst the Gripping Beast Vikings sprues provided donors for the majority of his parts, I couldn't find anything in my bits box that was quite right for this. In the end, I decided to go with a GW head from the Middenheim sprue in my Mordheim boxed set (which I had to give a bit of a haircut to) and a little bit of sculpting. First of all, I used a bit of solder wire as a 'skeleton' for the hair:

In the very definition of first world problems, I spent a fraught evening unable to find my florist wire. Oh, the troubles I've seen.

I thought I'd taken more WIP pics of the hair sculpt, but apparently not. I coated the wire in some green stuff, chopped in the rims of the hair band things, and then sliced in some hair texture. Then, I went back over it with some thinned Liquid Green Stuff and literally painted on some detail, like adding more depth to the hair bands, the spikes at the end of the hair etc:

And lo, one paint job a later we have a Ragnar-alike, that whilst not an exact match for screen Ragnar (the beard isn't quite right, for one) is hopefully going to make the recipient very happy!

You'll note, I'm sure, that as this is for someone else, unlike most of the miniatures I paint for personal use, he even has pupils and everything!

I had especial fun painting his shield, taking inspiration from this picture:

[Tally 66 vs 36 = +30 unheard of, I know! I imagine this year will be the year my wife starts buying me miniatures at Christmas, ensuring as tradition dictates that I end the year in the red]

Due to being a massive nerd, in between writing this post and the time I'd scheduled it to go up, I went out and got a gift box:

Which with the addition of a lick of paint:

And some ageing with a variety of washes and stippling and general messiness,and careful application of a rune in Sharpie and pencil, gives us a box fit or a king:
 

Heh, king of the nerds...

My Pathfinder character, painted and converted!

So, as I've joined a Pathfinder game, I needed a character! Although I'd originally envisioned rolling up some sort of wild magic using bunny man sorcerer (borrowing heavy inspiration from a certain Crit Juice character, I'll admit), after perusing through my DMs (quite substantial) stack of rulebooks I remembered a particular Mage Knight miniature that I had knocking around that I could build a character around... Which is how I ended up rolling a Dhampir Gunslinger. 

(Hmm, this pic of the still wet wash on the hair is blurrier than it originally looked...)

Honestly though, despite my emo leanings, I'm aiming for more Vampire Hunter D meets Vash the Stampede by way of Gungrave than Edward Cullen!

After rolling stats (4d6 and take the highest 3, we're not so hardcore as to roll 3d6 in order as we briefly considered) I came up with this:

Well, I'd best not let anything hit me. Ever. Plus, being a dhampir, if he does get hit, it's going to be tough to heal... Never let it be said I choose the most powerful option over the most flavoursome!

Anyway, on to the conversion itself; this is the model that inspired my choice of class: 

An old Mage Knight Fanged Gunslinger, because what's not to love about a vampire with flintlocks?

Although my DM had said that if I had my heart set on using the mini as-is he'd find a way to let me have wings, I thought that might be a little munchkin-ish and overpowered so they were the first thing to go:

Two quick snips and a quick filing later we have one mini with his feet firmly on the ground:

Speaking of feet, being a plastic prepaint that has been sat in a box for gods know how long, his stance was a little ... wonky, for lack of a better word.

 A quick dip in some boiling water, a slight reposition and then a bath in cold water to set the pose later though and he was ready to get pinned to his new base:

Then it was just a case of adding some finishing touches, like green-stuffing over his back to smooth out where I'd removed his wings, and doing the same on his chest where I'd carefully scalpelled off the somewhat garish bat motif he was originally emblazoned with:

I'd originally planned to have him carting around a backpack and length of rope (both from my Mordheim box), but in the end settled on just a sheathed sword, as I couldn't seem to find a way to utilise the other pieces without him looking like a child on his first day of school...

Although, with his fairly low Strength score, it makes sense for him to be travelling light! Theoretically, he should never need to actually use his sword (as hopefully nothing will ever get that close!), but as they say it's better to have it and not need it than the opposite!

Then, it was just a case of getting him painted! I'm not entirely sold on the skin tone, as I mixed up a grey based flesh tone to try and give him a sallow, unhealthy look, but hey, if you don't experiment you never learn anything.

[Tally - 67 vs 36 = +31]

To anyone that follows me on Instagram, I apologise in advance if there's a sudden surge in pictures of me winning Pathfinder (and other such cliched jokes) tonight, but it's the first proper session with this group...

Never tell me the odds!

Han Solo, everyone's favourite scoundrel! It probably says a lot about my tastes that I've still as of yet to even consider painting a Luke miniature...

With this miniature finished, that's the end of the group of Star Wars miniatures that I was working on as a batch. Although I should probably prep and paint some bog-standard Rebel Troopers (and work on the rules!), I think I might take a brief diversion for other projects, namely Pathfinder (as I'm hopefully joining a new campaign, so have the opportunity to build a one-off character miniature) or taking part in Zomtober!

[Tally: 65 vs 36 = +29]

Still no troopers...

Not a lot to say about this really, it's a Rebel Pilot. I added red bands and some gold squiggles to his helmet to try and diversify his paint job somewhat, but other than that he's mostly an orange blob. He'll hopefully see use either as an objective (in 'rescue the pilot from the crash site' type scenarios, if I can find a Star Wars model kit in the right scale on the cheap) or as an unnamed hero/captain type!

[Tally: 64 vs 36 = +28]