HO HO, ER… HO

Happy Hogswatch Christmas everyone!

After having missed last year due to a house move, I’ve resumed the tradition of the festive miniature - this year we have Discworld’s Death as the Hogfather, which was actually a Christmas present last year:

 

Resin, rather than the metals I had previously had from this range, but quite lovely all the same.

Given how overcast it was the morning I took these pictures, they came out a bit gloomy, but the picture of the back is a better indication of the colour of his red clothes:

I was tempted to add a little snow to the base, but given how busy Christmas week has been that decision was largely taken out of my hands! Easy enough to go back and add though if the fancy takes me…

The Tally has taken hits in both directions this week though, as popping into our FLGS after work to grab some last minute bits I spotted that a D&D miniature I’d asked them to order in over the summer had finally hit the shelves - there was only one on the shelf, so it would have been foolish to leave without grabbing it:

The family fought their first Mimic last week, so Intellect Devourers seem like an acceptable escalation. 

This leaves the Tally at:

62 vs 195 = -133

Speaking of the family D&D game, after not managing to play for a few weeks, we managed to squeeze in a session the Sunday before last, which I shoehorned some festive cheer into having them fight a giant animated gingerbread man that had been taken over by an evil animated hand that the party had previously let escape. The gingerbread golem lumbered around battering people with his massive fists and vomiting tainted icing (full of black flecks and fingernails) over people - Christmassy!

Pogo, monkey father figure

Work continues apace on the Umbrella Academy board game (although ‘apace’ is a very generous descriptor considering how little painting time I’ve managed to grab this week), and I’ve finished another of the Ally figures:

Pogo! I still haven’t cracked the plastic on the cards in the board game, so I’m not sure what he’ll actually do, but I’m confident it will be great. Part of me is tempted to go back and try to get a crisper finish on the logo on his mug, but honestly I’m happy enough with it to not risk going back and messing it up!

Things were progressing nicely on this paint job until the final highlight drybrush on the hair, which I went a bit too heavy on and so it ended up looking too bright and flat, but I think with the careful application of a dark wash I’ve managed to pull it back.

I’ve also managed to paint a marker of the family crest:

I undercoated it black then carefully painted multiple layers of thinned white into the recesses. My original plan was to try carefully drybrushing black over the top to pick out the raised detail, but then I decided to try something else:

The firm nib of the marker meant I was able to only catch the raised detail, and then I swapped to a fine panel lining pen to carefully clarify some of the lines. It’s not going to win any awards, but it looks snazzy enough for its intended purpose!

Painting Pogo brings the Tally to:

61 vs 192 = -131

And means the first tray of the game now looks like this:

 

Release the Kraken!

Back on track with my plan to play some Umbrella Academy the board game with my wife, I’ve finished another character:

This was the character that my gut felt I’d most likely take, but I really need to get round to re-reading the comics to see if I’m not just being swayed by the tv series (which reminds me, we still haven’t watched the last season of that…)

Lots and lots of grey makes up the Kraken’s uniform, and I went with a more yellow hair colour because I felt it would pop a bit more on the board.

As well as taking the siblings, in the game there are Allies that can come to your aid. Im not entirely sure how that works, as the cards are still shrink wrapped, but figured I should paint some up too just in case, and what better choice than Mom, the Umbrella Academy’s robotic caregiver:

I went for an unnatural skin tone that I really drive home at a glance that this isn’t a human (and she looks a bit like an Auton), and gave her solid black eyes too (thanks, Gundam Marker!) 

The dress was a it of an experiment - I couldn’t find any reference images for this outfit with a quick google, so took inspiration from someone else’s paint job, but decided that I wanted it to look slightly odd, and so went with a grey tone for the shadows, in the hopes it would make it look like a really dull, not fancy material. Not sure if I quite captured that, but done is done, and into the box they go:

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

60 vs 192 = -132

What’s next? There are more Allies in the box that could in theory make an appearance, so those should be next up on the painting tile, and I should probably get the rest of the surviving siblings painted, so that we have options for playing (plus, I suspect they might also turn up as Allies during the game, so it wouldn’t hurt to have them on hand…)

Super Mission Force: first thoughts

Having previously played superhero games with my kids using some basic rules of my own creation, we wanted something a bit more in-depth (as in my bare bones rule set essentially each hero was a set of similar stats with a single special ability), but still simple and quick enough that my five year old could play it with us. Having seen other people playing it online, I thought we’d give Super Mission Force a try. 

While there is an excellent set of character creation rules in the rule book, for speed I grabbed some pre-generated characters from the Files section in the Four Colour Studios Facebook group. I figured for our first game while we’re learning the rules we would take a single character each, and stick to basic abilities (ignoring manoeuvres). My son wanted to be Venom, obviously, so I figured I’d take Spider-Man, for thematic reasons. My daughter, on the other hand, wanted to be Boom Boom, because I described her as ‘blowing things up and being sassy’, which apparently appealed.

According to the profiles it would be an even match for Venom to take on both Spider-Man and Boom Boom, so we set up our map to represent Venom bumping into the pair of heroes on their way home from a mission. Despite rolling fewer dice, my son was able to win the initiative on the first turn and so Venom was able to web swing his way across the entire map immediately:

Fun fact - we ended up using pretty much just this sixth of the map for the entire game. 

Super Mission Force uses a goal system (actually, I think it officially uses the trademarked Goalsystem) wherein you roll a dice pool and count successes, and I realised that I could use the dice from my old Havok set:

I figured this would be handy for the kids, counting skulls as one and explosions as two, rather than having to parse the numbers on a pile of regular dice. Inevitably, we all rolled terribly and so the game lasted longer than was statistically likely.

Also, our home printer didn’t want to behave today, so I hand wrote stat cards onto index cards for this game:

 

Long story short, Spider-man and Boom Boom did their best, but just couldn’t do consistent enough damage to overcome Venom’s health regeneration (despite managing to drop him down to his last health at one point). At one point Spider-Man webbed Venom so successfully that he could only break free if he rolled 6 successes on 4 dice, but they couldn’t even take him down despite him being totally immobilised, and my sone rolls better than his father so Venom was able to burst his bonds and wreak vengeance on the heroes:

Final thoughts: I like it! It was slightly slow going while we got used to the basic rules, but even my five year old was able to grasp the general mechanics pretty quickly. The game got a bit samey towards the end (punch, punch, try to stun so can run away then jump in for a big punch), but I think that’s more to do with there being so few figures on the board that rounds were pretty quick - with more figures per side, there would be more variety in each round. Not that we didn’t enjoy it with just a single figure each, as the goal system makes for fairly dramatic turns, where sometimes you roll a ton of dice and get bupkiss, only for your five year old to roll a statistically unlikely result on four dice to then rip himself out of your webs and proceed to murder everyone, so I think we’ll be playing again…

Everyone’s favourite quasi-dead guy

When asking my wife what character she thought she’d like to play if I was painting things for the Umbrella Academy board game, having seen the TV series she was quick to answer Klaus, so here he is:

Maybe I should go back and sort his eye out, but frankly he looks half decent as a board game piece so I’m happy with that.

The deathly skin tone didn’t come out quite how I’d planned, but honestly might look better than that, so happy little accidents, may they long continue.

Painting him brings the Tally to:

58 vs 192 = -134

And means the first tray in the box looks like this:

I’m Venom, my body weight is 40% tongue…

In between painting pieces for the Umbrella Academy board game, since I already had some black paints out I also finished this monstrous guy:

Whenever I’ve played with superhero miniatures with my children, my youngest has always asked to be Venom, which I didn’t have a miniature of, but thanks to eBay I’ve managed to rectify that. I’m not sure where my son’s love of the character comes from - he’s desperate to watch the Tom Hardy movies, but given that he’s five that’s not really on the cards yet. 

The spider logo came out quite nicely, I think, due to judicious use of Gundam liner pens to get the bits that I’d have struggled to line with a brush, then carefully tidying up with a brand new brush that came with my Father’s Day present, and has rapidly become my current favourite brush.

You wouldn’t believe it, but the black on Venom is three different shades, which you’d struggle to see in my pictures. Believe it or not, this was the second set of pictures I took of Venom, using natural light, but here’s another posed picture from the original set of Venom menacing the Spider-Man that I painted years ago:

I’m hoping to play some a super Mission Force with the kids, so I need to work out the stats for the symbiote. When asking my son who else he thought he might like to be on the same team as Venom, his first answer was Spider-Man (which I initially tried to object to, but thought the better of it), followed by Green Goblin. I have a Hobgoblin mini that I could paint, but apparently only ‘Green Goblin, wearing purple and green’ will do.

As of now, the Tally stands at:

57 vs 192 = -135

Now, back to the Umbrella Academy board game, no distractions. Honest.

Candy chomping assassins…

So, I’ve had the Umbrella Academy board game for about a year now, and figured I should probably try and play it a couple of times to justify the expense. Flicking through the rule book, I saw that to play with my wife for the first mission I’d only need to paint the characters we were using and Hazel and Cha Cha, so I set about getting on that:

I mean there’s also Allies and whatnot, but starting small makes me feel like I’m more likely to achieve my goal.

Being that the board game is based on the comics rather than the Netflix series, one benefit is that the colour schemes are fairly limited, so it’s pretty quick to get thing finished when I can actually stay awake long enough to get some painting done (working late at work the night before my week off when the clocks went back the day after absolutely wrecked my sleep schedule, resulting in my falling asleep after putting the kids to bed the first four or so nights of my week off, which is usually my painting time).

One down side to them being based on the comics is that it’s a comic written by Gerard Way, so black features heavily, which can be a pain to paint. The psychotic pair’s suits are really a very dark grey, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should invest in some sort of Contrast or Speedpaint Black for future miniatures…

Painting these two brings the Tally to:

56 vs 192 = -136

Now my board game looks like this:

Only about a million to go!

Zomtober 2024 Week 4

 Another Sunday, another painted zombie:

The last of the TTCombat zombie halflings that I had prepped, this time wearing a fancy hat.

I did have plans for a big finish for the month, but unfortunately work and family got in the way somewhat and my extra stuff wasn’t ready by deadline day. Ah well, they’re half painted, maybe I’ll get them finished off next week…

That means that post-Zomtober, the Tally now stands at:

54 vs 192 = -138

And after a couple of years, the zombie unit looks like this:

That’s nearly a legal minimum size unit! 

Zomtober 2024 Week 3

Another week, another zombie (he types for the second time, as apparently Blogger is having a day of it and rather than publishing this post just wiped the whole thing, so I’m starting from scratch):

I decided to quickly convert another zombie beastman this week to get back on the Zombieslayer theme - he’s a fairly simple conversion, being just a reposition of the original miniature rather than adding any specific zombie parts.

The arm hanging off by a thread (that I realise you can barely see in these pictures, annoyingly) was something of a happy accident - where I was cutting the shield arm off to reposition it to look like it is dangling uselessly rather than being brandished, when I went to pin it back into place, I realised that leaving the central pin showing would look like a bone of strand of gore!

If the gore looks wet, that’s because it is - it was applied about three minutes before this picture was taken, and then I had to go out in the rain to photograph it!

I also have this chap to offer, a backup that was painted just in case I wasn’t able to convert and paint his bestial brethren in time for the Sunday deadline:

Another TTCombat zombie halfling, this time looking like a tiny zombie publican.

As well as finishing these two miniatures, the Tally has taken some swings in other directions too:

@tmcllghn_paints sent me some heads for a conversion for the Alamo project (because apparently I’m of an age where I want to convert things based on something I’ve seen in a picture in an Osprey), but there’s a whole mini left there so it counts:

I also discovered that a friend’s partner had expressed an interest in trying out miniature painting, so after picking his brains in the car after coming back from a wildlife park last week I pulled together a gift of a sprue of Vikings and a handful of LOTR minis to have a bash at.

All in, the Tally now stands at: 

53 vs 192 = -139

What’s next? At least one more zombie, hopefully!

Zomtober 2024 Week 2

 Another Sunday, another tiny dead thing - or two, this week, as they’re even tinier than the last one:

Two zombie halflings, rising from their tiny graves. The one on the left had some indeterminate facial features (I suspect what I mistook for jowls May in fact have been intended to be a moustache), but a generous dose of blood makes it all better. I know, I know, bloody zombies don’t really make sense when they’re rising from the grave (as opposed to being a fresh corpse reanimated) but as ever rule of cool wins out over science when we’re talking about our little dollies…

And the back! These are probably going to be making up the back ranks of the unit, but I put an equal amount of effort into every mini, front and back, regardless. 

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

51 vs 205 = -154

Two weeks down, two more to go!

Zomtober 2024 Week 1 - the tiny dead…

It’s the first Sunday in October, and that can only mean one thing: Zomtober!

My original plan was to convert some more zombie beastmen to supplement the Zombieslayer inspired unit from last year, but time has conspired against me and I haven’t made any headway on that yet. However, having broken the seal on using non GW models in my Warhammer armies (Super was right) I figured that I could quickly paint some of the TTCombat zombies from the mystery box a friend and I drafted to bulk up that unit until I can make some more themed ones, the first of which looks like this:

I was originally tempted to paint them up like a Night Goblin, but figured I’d stick to neutral browns both for speed and also so they’d blend more into the finished unit.

At first glance they look like some sort of monk or priest, but then you see the chains and it raises some questions, I guess they were a naughty halfling in life…

Painting them brings the Tally to:

49 vs 205 = -156

Th king about it, if I finish Zomtober, I’ll hit my yearly challenge of averaging at least one painted mini a week, nice!

What’s next? I’ve got enough TTCombat zombies prepped that I’ll be able to hit all four weeks of Zomtober, but I still live in hope that I’ll be able to convert and paint some more thematic zombies. Now to find a 25th hour in the day, and also one of the old metal Minotaurs with a double handed weapon for a conversion that I’ve had knocking round in my head for years…

Dem bones dem bones

 Dem ratty bones:

A kind chap called Andrew over on the Oldhammer Community Facebook Group offered some free nonhuman skeleton minis, as long as people promised to paint them, so here we are!

It might seem weird, but in its own way this is a big step for me - this is the first non GW mini in one of my Warhammer armies. When you think about it logically, I’m never going to play in an official tournament or even in a Warhammer store (doubly so now that I’m only really enthused about out of print editions of their games), so why shouldn’t I just use whatever miniatures I think are cool? It’s a conscious step that I’ve had to take though, as the official messaging has always been you can only use ‘proper’ Warhammer in your Warhammer, and I guess I had been conditioned by that thinking since the age of… nine, maybe?

Whatever, cast off the (mental) shackles of the capitalist overlords, here he is hanging out with some other bony boys:

In order to paint him, I also had to receive him, and the Tally shall be adjusted thusly.

I also treated myself to a copy of Wargames Illustrated, because it came with a sprue of greatcoat wearing French napoleonic types, which would be ideal conversion fodder for my Alamo project:

Yes, the Alamo project that I’ve only actually fully finished a single miniature of and here I am buying more miniatures for it, yes that one.

All things factored in, the Tally now stands at:

48 vs 205 = -157

What’s next? My painting tile has a broad variety of half painted minis currently, where my attention has wandered somewhat. Then again, it’s Zomtober soon, which usually helps to narrow that focus!

Like dogs, only scaly, and bitier…

And so finally we come to the end of the Travelodge minis:

A pair of… drakes? I think one is an ambush drake, the other I’m not sure about. 

The family D&D game may well swing into Tyranny of Dragons once we finish the mash up of the various starter set adventures I’m running for them currently, so I figured a pair of tiny dragons would probably come in handy as they start smashing up the operations of the Cult of the Dragon:

As ever, they’re surprisingly nice sculpts for pre-paints. Not so nice that I’d pay the shipping costs on more of them though…

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

47 vs 198 = -151

As for what’s next, your guess is as good as mine! The orcs that I was previously painting have already been used half-painted a couple of times in D&D, plus I’ve been overcome with a sudden urge to paint some superheroes of the mutant persuasion…

The adventures of Time the Necromancer: Ishtar’s Weapon Shop

It’s my birthday today, so while my wife was baking me an Eton mess cake and slow cooking brisket, I decided to play Frostgrave with my children. No full report as usual, as I figured it was a recipe for disaster with regards to my children’s patience if I stopped to take notes every time anything happened, so here is a handful of pictures and some key happenings:

My daughter (9) took charge of rolling for the monsters, and my son (5) took charge of rolling for the ‘heroes’ and providing tactical advice. This largely led to multiple castings of the Grenade spell, regardless of what the optimum choice would otherwise have been. So, not much different from when I play solo I guess…

(If you look carefully, you can see the cabinet that I built specially for this game, and also my son’s one - his is the one in much brighter colours!)

The thing with my daughter is, she tends to roll more 20s than I do. Like, a lot. Tim’s group took their usual approach of having a strong force race up the centre planning to smash a path to the cabinet with two faster flanking forces sneaking up the sides to hit the magic locks, only for a pair of goblins to smash my strongest fighters down to 2 Health each in the very first combat of the game.

On the other hand, my son had some amazing rolls too - there was a single combat where my daughter rolled a 20, and so the only way to win was if he could also roll a 20 - which he did! That was pretty cool, as we all absolutely lost it, even dragging my wife in to clap appreciatively…

This next picture is my daughter showing that she’s enjoying the game, just before the Captain used one of their irreplaceable magic arrows with an explosive tip to wipe out half of those goblins, and seriously injure the other two, with some amazing rolls on my son’s part!

It largely went downhill from there though - my daughter continued her hot streak of rolls, taking warriors out left right and centre, and only my tactical nous (and careful hiding, mostly) carried me through.

Both thieves were able to sneak through and unlock the cabinet, but unfortunately one of them got shanked by a goblin, leaving Tim to have to pick up one of their treasure tokens himself with his own hands.

In an incredible display of sense Tim even chose not to cast a spell one turn to be able to put more energy into beating feet back to the exit door, helped along the way by his Apprentice (who had largely been skulking behind various ruined walls by the exit door desperately trying to avoid being spotted by goblins)  poking his head round a corned to cast Leap on Tim, launching him away from a pursuing goblin and closer to safety. 

By the time the game ended, only the spellcasters and the thief with the Treasure Token escaped, leaving a lone zombie doing their best distraction routine (arms waving and ‘kick me’ sign, presumably) surrounded by goblins, and everyone else in various states of unconsciousness.

Post-game, Tim gained enough XP that he could have gained 4 levels, but having no Grimoires to learn new spells from only gained 2, gaining another point of Health (as both spellcasters took a bunch of damage, entirely from failed spell rolls and cutting to empower spells), and improving the Brew Potion spell (because it sure would be handy to have a bunch of healing potions!). I realised that I’d accidentally cheated in the previous game, as you can only improve one spell per game (when I was planning to also improve Strength and Grenade, as the spells which get cast the most), but I’m not going to go back and undo it at this point, I’ll just have to make sure I remember for next time!

The Captain also gained a level (due to making 9 kills this game, which I’m fairly sure is more than they’ve made in the rest of the campaign so far), gaining another point of Health.

For treasure, in this scenario you have the choice of taking a special magic weapon per token, or rolling on the usual treasure tables. While unique weapons are cool, I left the magic vampiric crossbow in favour of rolling for treasure, hoping to get a pile of money and maybe a Grimoire so that Tim could learn a new spell. Unfortunately, I rolled 20gc and a scroll of Banish, which is better than nothing, I guess. The Sword of Wounding & Healing goes to the recently recovered Knight - I would have preferred to give it to the Captain, as it’s basically their magic sword with a fringe additional benefit (and her pockets are full, so it’s not like she could carry a healing potion anyway), but she wouldn’t have given back her existing sword, so I figured it was better to improve the overall combat abilities of the group! Speaking of the Captain, making money (from this treasure, and also finding a handful of coins at their base) meant that she took her cut as usual - 13%, now that she’s levelled up.

Of all of my wounded warriors, everyone was fine apart from the Man at Arms who died, but Tim was able to afford an almost identical replacement. I was tempted to try a different soldier type, but that’s the toughest frontline fighter of the basic soldier types, so we’re sticking with it for now.

Next, Tim thinks he needs to learn some new spells, so is going to follow up on rumours of a hidden underground library that has recently been unearthed…

It being my birthday, the Tally also took a little hit, as my pile of presents included the latest Warhammer part work, after I asked my wife if she could grab me one during the week when she had to nip into town, and she was then secretive when I asked her if she’d been able to:

At this point in life, I’m not super fussed about 40k, but I can’t resist a bargain - and anyway, I’d still be tempted by something narrative like Acolyte or Kill Team…

The Tally now stands at:

45 vs 198 = -153