Of men and monsters…

 The next two finished miniatures are both for Frostgrave:

This knight is the first finished mini for my Frostgrave warband, ready for some solo play after Rangers of Shadow Deep (as I’m planning to play through the solo campaign from the Frostgrave Folio). He’s mostly Fireforge bits, with a couple of accessories from the bits box to make him look a little more like he’s got enough supplies to last him ranging round a frozen city (although admittedly it’s only a pouch and a knife, so he probably can’t go too long before he needs to nip home for lunch):

As my warband is a Necromancer’s, I’d initially planned to make my Knight look a bit more evil, with a wild looking bare head and maybe a club or savage mace rather than a sword, but my daughter decided that he needed a helmet to protect his head, and who am I to argue with a 6 year old? A purple and black colour scheme make him look a little sinister though, so it’s all to the good…

(He’s a little dinky, coming from historical sprues, but not so much that it’s so jarring that I’d not use him).

The other mini is my Alchemical Monstrosity, for the first scenario in the Dark Alchemy solo campaign. As it’s a creature that’s a hideous combination of several creatures fused together with a whipping tentacle attack, I ventured into my bits box for the parts to make my own back in the distant past of mid-January…

Proof that you should never throw anything away, I’d kept these tentacles that I removed from a Horrorclix figure at least a decade ago (it’s pre-blog I think, it’s the chap in the straight jacket above the letter ‘e’ in Lead in the banner at the top of the page!):

I knew I had the perfect body, some sort of shifter from Mage Knight Dungeons. I couldn’t find the one I’d previously stripped, so I had to dig through boxes to find another (I found the stripped one in parts this week while looking for something else, coincidentally, which I’ll probably not need a second of but that’s the way it goes sometimes)

With copious scraping and some drilling and pinning, I had a very serviceable monster, that is incredibly difficult to photograph as it’s not really got a single best angle:

Then, ten months later I finished painting it! I’d originally put it on the back burner while I prioritised getting things finished for RoSD, but now we’re at the end of the year I’m painting whatever I can get my hands on as and when they take my fancy!

I went for very different skin tones on each area of the mini to try and really sell that it’s multiple creatures blended together, and where the detail is a little soft on the face went with bleeding eyes rather than trying to paint them in to add to the ‘flailing in its suffering rather than necessarily malicious’ vibe:

As well as the Alchemical Monstrosity for Frostgrave, it might also pull double duty as Possessed monster for The Silver Bayonet and as a … something horrible for D&D!

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

37 vs 23 = +14

And I realise as I’m typing this, let’s me cross another thing off of the Challenge:

• Finish something old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Finish some scatter terrain (3/3)
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Frostgrave)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics

• Finish the last member of the Nextwave team
• Complete the classes project (and when I do that, start a project to have painted miniatures to represent all of the Races in the Players Handbook)
• Add at least 3 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project (2/3)
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

What’s better than a monkey?

 A monkey in space:

Jokaero are great. Digital weapons in the old Inquisitor rulebook: awesome. The fluff that they’re inveterate tinkers that will if left unattended upgrade your bathtub but it might also be a weapon: awesome. Whilst looking like a space orangutan: awesome!

I caved and bought a finecast version a few years back, as I figured that my chances of scoring a metal one for a reasonable price were firmly somewhere between slim and none. Alas, even with plenty of liquid green stuff, as I was painting I kept finding more and more little bubbles, but c’est la vie. There are a couple on the mysterious apparatus on his back, but I figure maybe they’re special technological holes too advanced for our stupid human brains:

I think I started painting him at some point last year (or possibly the year before!), but after being let down on my Blackstone Fortress Escalation order my enthusiasm cooled somewhat and he got relegated to the boxes in the basement of half painted miniatures sadly awaiting their turn in the sun. Luckily for him though, I couldn’t resist his little face! Looking at the pictures as I’m posting, I wonder if I should have gone a shade lighter on his fur, but I think I’ll leave him as is (as I’m rapidly running out of year!)

Tally:

35 vs 23 = +12

P is for Purple Worm

This weekend I finished painting this beastie:

I know, I know, there’s only a 2.5% chance of encountering one in Frostgrave, so I should really be sorting out some ghouls or wolves or something of that ilk, but I watched Dune, and he was just there on my painting tile ready to be drybrushed when I was too tired to do any proper painting. And that smile, that damned smile:

It’s a Reaper bones figure, a little small for a true D&D Purple Worm perhaps but just right for making an appearance in Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow Deep (and especially nice for the price!). Lots of drybrushing and washes made this a very pleasant model to paint of an evening.

I did originally try to weather the lower portion of the worm to make it look like it was all grubby and dusty as it burst out of the ground, but it looked absolutely terrible so I had to go back in and tidy it up again.

I had been planning on adding some greenery to his base, but decided against it in the end as he’s most likely to make an appearance in a Frostgrave game where shrubberies are few and far between.

To give you an idea of scale, here he is with another current denizen of my painting tile, a knight that’s mostly Fireforge iirc:

Painting this brings the Tally to:

34 vs 23 = +11

and also updates the Monstrous Alphabet to:

A is for
B is for
C is for Carrion Crawler
D is for
E is for Elemental (More than one)
F is for Flameskull
G is for Goblin
H is for
I is for
J is for
I is for
L is for Lich
M is for Mind Flayer, Myconid, Mummy
N is for
O is for Owlbear
P is for Purple Worm
Q is for
R is for
S is for Shambling Mound, Scarecrow, Skeleton
T is for
U is for
V is for
W is for
X is for
Y is for
Z is for Zombie

So, only one more to go until I get to cross another entry off on the Challenge:

• Finish something old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Finish some scatter terrain (3/3)
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Frostgrave)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics

• Finish the last member of the Nextwave team
• Complete the classes project (and when I do that, start a project to have painted miniatures to represent all of the Races in the Players Handbook)
• Add at least 3 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project (2/3)
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

What next? My painting tile is a mix of genres currently, featuring some for Frostgrave, some Ronin, and a robot, amongst other things. But on the other hand, I received a copy of The Silver Bayonet last week and so had a rummage in the basement to see if I had any suitable figures:

Living in the woods, hugging a tree…

Next in my desperate sprint through the painting queue before the year ends is the final entry in my Dungeons & Dragons Classes project, the Druid:

To recap, here is everything else so far:

Classes (as of 5e Player’s Handbook):

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue (and also here)
• Sorcerer

• Warlock
• Wizard

Originally when I was looking for a Druid mini for the project I was considering using one of the sculpts from the old board game expansion Forbidden Forest:

(Especially fun is the fact that the antagonist Druid in this has a separate staff, cloak and headdress that you can dress him up with)

But then I remembered this chap, that I think was from Wargames Illustrated at Salute a few years back, and fell a bit in love with his look of absolute disdain (I imagine he’s looking at someone who just thoughtlessly stood on a flower). It’s a lovely little sculpt, with a bunch of little details that add visual interest (the various bones and whatnot hanging off him) without there being so many that it’s a pain to paint.

Speaking of painting, when it came to it I went for a faded leather duster look, even if the idea of a nature loving Druid wearing that much leather might not feel quite right (although I justify it to myself as him having honoured the animal to continue using it after its death, rather than having killed it for fast fashion). What in hindsight might be a bit of flash rather than an earring I painted silver, which just makes it look a bit like he’s got a chipped paint job… but that’s how it goes sometimes. I also wanted to give him a non-white skin tone, to add a little more variety to my miniature collection. Unfortunately, I base coated his face months before I came back and finished him, and could not for the life of me remember what colour I’d originally used, leading to an evening peering at various Foundry skin triads trying to work out which one was closest in order to highlight the flesh…

[edit - my copy of The Silver Bayonet turned up the day after I posted this, and I suspect this Druid might slot nicely into that…]

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

33 vs 23 = +10

And let’s me cross the Classes project off of this year’s Challenge:

• Finish something old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Finish some scatter terrain (3/3)
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Frostgrave)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics

• Finish the last member of the Nextwave team
• Complete the classes project (and when I do that, start a project to have painted miniatures to represent all of the Races in the Players Handbook)
• Add at least 3 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project (1/3)
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

Looking at the Challenge, I’m probably on track to cross a few more off by the end of the year, which is nice! Also, at the start of the year I considered expanding the Classes project to include all of the races in the Player’s Handbook, which if I look back at things I’ve already finished would look like this so far:

• Dwarf
• Elf
• Halfling
• Human (there are plenty more, I won’t link them all here!)
• Dragonborn 
• Gnome
• Half-Elf
• Half-Orc
• Tiefling

(I’ve also done a Goblin adventurer, which appears in the Monster Manual iirc)

So only four miniatures to paint and I’ll complete that project too! Although I know I don’t own any Tiefling miniatures, and am fairly certain I’ve not got anything that could be pressed into service as a half-orc… that sounds like a problem for next year’s me though…

Yes-yes, man things…

 So, this time of year is always interesting when it comes to my hobby. Generally, I have a project on the go, which I should really be pressing on with, but then I start calculating how many days there are until the end of the year and panic slightly at how many miniatures I need to paint every few days, and then again immediately become distracted and paint something else entirely instead.

This year, I should be making the last few bits I need to play the second Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario (which in my defence are sat in a cup on my dining room table currently), but have been spending my evenings on miniatures instead to try and get the Tally up a bit! 

The first of this batch to get finished is this Skavenslave, a test mini for a Warhammer Old World Skaven army:

Ooh, looks like I need to touch up the edge of his base…

Long story short: I liked old Warhammer, AoS didn’t really grab me. I’m not anti-AoS, I’m just not the target market for it and that’s fine. When I heard that Warhammer: The Old World was going to be a square based rank and file game, and that it also didn’t have a definite release date, I thought I’d challenge a couple of pals to paint up a 500 point Warhammer army as a starting point, figuring that a) that’s not too much, seems achievable right? And b) with no deadline, we can trick ourselves into believing that we’ll finish this eminently manageable task when we almost certainly definitely won’t.

So, I set up a Facebook group for the challenge (which I’m tempted to open up to the public, but can’t bear the thought of having to spend any of my time deleting people commenting on Age of Sigmar being terrible/bases etc) and chose my army. I could have been smart and chosen a low model count army, or worked on my half painted Night Goblins, but no, I figured this was the perfect time to get round to starting that Skaven army I’d been gathering models for… both chums chose Chaos Warriors, and so can probably paint three models to hit the initial 500 point target.

So, 1 Skavenslave painted, 2 points done, 498 to go!  

If we ever do finish, hopefully we can play some sort of little campaign, maybe using something silly like the old d66 table of different territories that unlock certain troop choices for your army that was in whatever edition came with Lizardmen and Bretonnians…

So, finishing this adorable little ratty chap brings the Tally to:

32 vs 23 = +9

I’d love to pretend that I’m planning on painting a full unit of them next in an uncharacteristic display of hobby focus, but no, a hodgepodge of things that have caught my interest reside on my painting tile currently, and I should probably be getting on with painting my Frostgrave warband if the plan is to play through some solo scenarios of that after Rangers…

(Plus after weeks of studiously avoiding reading anything about the Silver Bayonet, as I don’t need yet another project, I might have cracked and had a tiny little peek…)