[question]: May I kill them now sir?

While I haven’t been chugging away painting zombies for Zomtober, I’ve also been working my way round some other odds and ends on my painting tile, the most recent of which is this sassy droid:

I mean, technically he was finished before the most recently posted zombies, but they got bumped up the posting queue due to the Zomtober Sunday deadline!

For those of you that haven’t played Knights of the Old Republic, HK-47 is hands down the best droid in all Star Wars media, a sassy assassin that refers to organics as meat bags, and so I figured an HK series droid would be perfect for some Star Wars Stargrave action. Yeah he’s technically thousands of years old by the time of the Jedi Purge, it still works.

Being a bendy WOTC mini, some of the detail was a little shallow, but some very careful panel lining made the details look a lot more defined, before I went crazy weathering him up to make him look like he’s been through the (star) wars.

Finishing him brings the Tally up to:

54 vs 296 = -242

What’s next? More zombies, hopefully!

Zomtober 2026 Week 1 - Braaaaaaains

Unbelievably, it’s October again already. As happens every year, I suddenly realised this fact right at the end of September, and so had to scrabble to get something ready for Zomtober. I was tempted by another themed month as I have occasionally done previously, but struggled to find one that I liked and was also manageable in the time I had. I’ve got over a hundred painted modern zombies already, so that wasn’t particularly inspiring for me, although very doable due to just being a case of plucking minis out of the lead mountain to paint; on the other hand my various other plans like making some flower/fungus infested zombies inspired by Hell’s Paradise for Ronin of Shadow Deep would require a lot more time consuming conversion work, and weren’t something I really wanted to rush, so they were out of the running too, as was a brief dalliance with the temptation to make some zombie Stormtroopers…

So I went digging through various drawers and boxes looking for inspiration, and in a box of bits that I used to make some Zombieslayer inspired conversions back in 2023 I found the zombies that I built and painted for Mordheim when I was 18 or so, and figured I could paint them to add to my raggedy Warhammer Fantasy zombie unit. And here are the first two:

These were built with Mordheim in mind, so I gave very little thought to whether or not they would rank up neatly or not, instead going for as many classic zombie movie arms outstretched while groaning braaaaaaaaaains poses as was humanly possible.

These were painted some twenty years ago, potentially with one thin coat of those little starter set tester pots of paint you used to get over a white basecoat, which is not in fact my style at all these days. Somewhat disappointingly though, slapping a dirty wash over the whole lot and then a light drybrush closed the gap between my painting then and painting now a lot quicker than I’d like to admit! Once that was done, some colours looked fairly good as they were (being basically an accidental slap chop paint job) and only needed a little bit more painting to tart them up, whereas others like the red shirt of the chap on the left I had to re-paint the layers of much more thoroughly to get it to where I was happy with it.

Then it was a case of adding some weathering and a fresh coat of blood, painting the eyes and they were good to go.

Speaking of the chap on the left in the red shirt, he’s had… quite a day. Here are how the minis looked last night having had some grass added to their bases while I was supposed to be writing a shopping list:

And here is how they looked this morning after breakfast, when it turns out my son knocked a tardis display case over onto them:

Most of the batch were fine, but this particular chap got the worst of it:

Some very careful superglueing and a sneaky touch up of paint to hide the joins and he was back on his feet though. 

Finishing this first pair brings the Tally To:

53 vs 296 = -243

I did say that this was chosen as that manageable option in the time that I have, so at the very least I aim to post a pair of these zombies every Sunday, but of course I also got excited and have already got something else on the go, so here’s to hoping I can finish that in time.

Speaking of getting excited, the launch of Black Death City came to my attention in our Salute trip group chat, so I’m currently musing over the idea of making a warband of knights that are hideously sick with the plague and cursed by demons but through hubris believe that they are actually protected by their faith and doing the Lord’s work, and I already have a mini that I could use for that as a starting point… no

Alien ruffians you say?

So, those of you that read what I put on the internet might have heard me proclaim that my project for the year was going to be Firefly Stargrave. In a shocking twist of fate, I have become side-tracked, and had a real hankering for Star Wars. I think it was the announcement of the video game Zero Company that did it; for a couple of years now I’ve been a bit burnt out on Star Wars, but I’ve found a new enthusiasm for it and shown the kids episodes 1-5 so far, as well as digging in to the Bad Batch series. 

When it comes to the tabletop, I’m still enthused about my Firefly plans, but realistically I need to paint a lot more before I could even get that to the table, whereas for Star Wars I’ve already got a chunk of painted miniatures ready to go - that’s not to say it’s easy though, as for any fantasy projects I might be inspired to start I already have a collection of scenery, generic monsters and whatnot that can be pressed into service, but for SF I’ll need to get building and painting…

Way back when, I painted up some generic Star Wars ruffians with a vague plan to run the Star Wars RPG - that never happened, but for this project they’ll make ideal ruffians for Stargrave. I could always do with more though, so I painted this Klatooinian Enforcer to add to their numbers.

I’ve been struggling with painting batches of minis at the moment, so figured that it would be more sensible to add a single mini at a time rather than prepping a whole load of them - and look, here I am posting a finished mini! I think I’ll carry on adding a mini here and there as a little pallete cleanser every now and then - although obviously, I’ve gotten inspired with an idea for a little narrative campaign that is going to require me to… paint batches of miniatures. The more we learn the less we learn, I guess. 

Before we get to the Tally I’ve also received some minis, as I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, and so picked up this lot on eBay:

Seeing other people convert crossbowmen rather than paying top dollar for official minis made me realise that I need to break the years of subconscious GW conditioning to only use ‘official’ miniatures, so I searched for a bunch of damaged minis to kickstart my conversion inspiration. Admittedly, it didn’t hurt that this lot also included some crossbowmen, berserkers and a banner bearer, but I think my good intentions still stand. 

As well as these, I grabbed the most recent (and final) free mini of the months from GW, which brings the Tally to:

51 vs 296 = -245

Speaking of birthdays, I also got these Alamo sourcebooks as my hyperfixation has swung round that way again:

Not that you’d know it from reading this blog, as I’ve only finished painting a single test miniature for this project, but let me tell you the amount of time I spend thinking about the Alamo is way above average…

What else is going on? I’ve got some batches of minis on the painting tile for Warriors of Athena that I hope that I can force my attention on to soon - with the plastic heroes box potentially being released soon, that might be the impetus I need to get my boys day booked in (where a couple of us get together to roll up warbands, then build them while watching Jason and the Argonauts) that we’ve been trying to schedule since February; more Star Wars (although admittedly this might need to wait until the next Stargrave expansion comes out); or maybe I’ll finish the half-painted William Travis mini that’s been sat in the queue for who knows how long? 

And on the other hand, we’ve just started a new family D&D campaign with our neighbour and some of his children, so I need a mini for my fairy monk:

Happily, I’ve been able to sort minis for my entire family out of things I already own, thus justifying the boxes and boxes of minis…

The second session is scheduled for later today, so we had a quick family painting session yesterday afternoon:

This taken just before I attempted painting abs on a mini the size of my fingernail…

Look at me - look at the orc

I’ve finally knocked off one of the groups of minis that has been cluttering up my painting tile for far too long:

It’s a selection of orcs and half-orcs that I need for as and when we re-start the family D&D game. The party have fought them unpainted several times, so I figured that as they were likely going to put an end to their activities in the area I should probably get them painted so that they could hit the table finished at least once. However, I’ve been having some difficulty getting any painting done of late, so this took far longer than I had originally intended…

First of all we have the half-orcs, shape-changing leaders of the group:

They started off life as Mage Knight Orcish Builders if I recall correctly - they had a hammer in their hand, but I snipped that off and made them a bone/antler punch dagger out of some bits box odds and ends (I think potentially from Warhammer Wood Elf Dryad bits) and they look the part.

I know, I know, technically half-orcs should surely look less orcish than their fellows rather than more, but I like the feral look of them leaping forwards on their clenched fist so I’m sticking with them.

Next come the more standard orcs, who came from a pair of Oathmark orc sprues. First of all, we have a leader and shaman looking pair:

The leader is stock, while the shaman was mostly cunning use of stock pieces decorated with doodads from Frostgrave sprues to gussy him up. His (slightly wonky) staff is a cut down standard, for example, while his other arm making some sort of cruel magical symbol is actually just a repurposed archer arm.

You can hopefully just make out that the edge of his clothing is decorated with a repeated pattern of three lightning bolts, the symbol of Talos, the cruel god that these orcs worship. His sleeves got a less meaningful pattern of dots and lines, as I just wanted something there to make him look a little more fancy, much the same reason as to why I gave the leader stripy trousers.

The rest of the band is made up of regular orcs, equipped with a smattering of spears and hand weapons:

I didn’t give any of them shields, mostly just because as when I built them I wasn’t thinking about using them for LoTR as I am now. In hindsight as well, I used the same body on the two spearmen, which is a bit of an odd coincidence. 

Finishing these brings the tally to:

50 vs 245 = -195

So now it’s on to finish the other batch of miniatures on the painting tile, which would mean I had pretty much everything I would need to run the first two scenarios for Warriors of Athena and oh no what’s that it’s my birthday tomorrow where I’ll hopefully receive Star Wars Zero Company, a game the anticipation for which has reignited my excitement for Star Wars? I’ve shown my children Episodes 1-3 in the last week, and some other minis may have made their way across the cutting board…

Bzzzzzzzzzzz

It has been a long time since my last post. Honestly, it’s been a long time since I finished painting this batch of miniatures (which were actually painted way back in June I think) but I’ve been really struggling with motivation. Heat plus tiredness and other obligations do not a recipe for happy fun painty time make it seems.

Away from that, and on to the miniatures, which are some tiny giant bees:

They’re the official miniatures for Mythic Bees for warriors of Athena, which are one of the main adversaries in the first Quest in the book. I’d initially planned to make some out of some sort of toy bee, but after playing a demo game of WoA at Salute and seeing how nice they were in the flesh I caved and picked up two packs of the official miniatures. They’re quite tricky to photograph, so here they are from a slightly different angle:

Fun fact - these are the first miniatures I’ve ever painted on flying stands. They were quite a nice little paint job to do, although my initial attempts to carefully line the wings looked terrible, so I fell back on the old reliable drybrushing and they came out looking a lot better. I did try to carefully paint some texture on the yellow stripes though, to make it look like they have furry little bums, which I was quite happy with:

And lastly, here’s a pic with a knight so you can see how large the tiny giant bees are:

So, the Tally. Since last we spoke, I showed my children the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and thought it would be nice to build paint and play some Battle Companies as a family, and so snagged a few little lots from eBay. A ‘few litte lots’, when added to the occasional GW miniature of the month, miniatures that come on the front of a magazine, a box of Cyclopes for WoA and also the fact that I went to Warhammer World through work means that I’ve actually added 78 miniatures to the Tally since my last post. It could be worse, someone gave me a copy of second edition Blood Bowl, but it was missing the minis so it didn’t swing the Tally - plus, I’ve given away some minis to family and friends, which leaves the Tally at:

38 vs 245 = -207

What’s next? Well, I’ve managed to get myself to do some painting at least twice in the last month, so have a couple of groups of miniatures basecoated and washed, so if I can get myself downstairs at a sensible time after getting the kids to bed maybe I’ll have something else to post soon…

Oh, and Warhammer World - here’s a couple of pics of some of my favourite bits:

PACTS: low level goons

Here is a horde of goons for my Firefly Stargrave campaign:

These will be ruffians for the PACTS faction, the Pan Asiatic Crime Tong Syndicate (the name might not stick, I think I was just desperate for an acronym). The plan is to have a couple of different factions of enemies, from scavengers to gangsters to Alliance law enforcement, which should between them cover most results that I can roll on the table of humanoid enemies.

I’d originally planned to have an alternating red and yellow colour scheme, or maybe blue to make them look like they are sponsored by Blue Sun, but settled on charcoal and red (which I like, it makes them look a little bit like they’re trying to cosplay as Harley Quinn). To try to disguise the duplication of sculpts, I mixed up the colour schemes a bit between models, so if one of a sculpt had charcoal trousers and red accessories, the other would have that flipped, or one leg of each colour. 

I like these Rezolution sculpts, but I kind of fell out of love with them a bit during the painting process - it felt like things kept going a little bit wrong, and I was spending more time correcting mistakes than making actual progress on the paintjobs, until it got to the point where it felt like done was as good as I was going to get. My original idea of adding some messages down the sides of their cloth bits got abandoned, although I did apply some shonky freehand to the head of the rocket:

I was going for a shark like look, but ended up with something that looks more like Deadpool as a cartoon dog, but I’ll take what I can get.

The Tally has also taken a hit between me starting the draft of this post and actually publishing it, as I nipped into GW on my way home to grab a pot of grey paint and also came away with this month’s freebie mini:

It’s a repeat of an older one that I missed the first time round - while I’m not overly fussed by space dwarfs, it does come with a cool female head wearing an aviatrix cap and flying goggles.

All in, the Tally now stands at:

30 vs 181 = -151

While there are several things that I should paint next (like the rest of my Stargrave crew, the orcs I need for D&D, or monsters for Warriors of Athena), over the last couple of weekends I’ve shown my kids the first two Lord of the Rings movies, and so am tempted by a family build and painting project to play some Battle Companies. And I’ve even picked up some elves for my daughter already, which don’t touch the Tally as she’s hopefully going to paint them:

If anyone has any oddments of LOTR minis knocking around in their bits boxes that need a new home, let me know before I buy Uruk Hai scouts on eBay. My wife has even said she’ll play with us if she can have hobbits, so I need to see if I have any unofficial minis that could stand in for those…

May the Fourth be with quick wit and nimble fingers

As is tradition, May the Fourth brings a Star Wars themed post:

An Alliance Smuggler from Imperial Assault. Last year I’d originally planned to paint a pair of trusty droids, as that was what was missing from my classic trilogy rebels, but with Stargrave on my mind and a vague plan to run a Star Wars campaign using those rules I fancied painting something that could be used for that.

I was going to treat myself to a nice Diehard mini, but unfortunately they didn’t bring any of the things I wanted to Salute, so I had a dig in my backlog and pulled out this chap instead.

He’ll make a nice rebel operative when the time comes to pull jobs against the Empire I’m sure. He’s come out a little duller than I’d originally intended, but the good thing about painting to a deadline is that there comes a point where you just have to call a paint job done.

The Tally has also taken hits in the opposite direction, as the ongoing Age of Sigmar partwork magazine has had Skaven on it a few times, and the new Clanrats are pretty nice. Do I need more clanrats? No. Did I buy 20 because they’re much more animatedly posed than the old ones, even though that means that they might be tricky getting onto 20mm square bases? Yes.

(I actually bought two issues to get both halves of the sprue, but didn’t take a second picture)

All in, the Tally now stands at:

21 vs 180 = -159

What’s next? I have some enemies for my Firefly Stargrave campaign half finished on my painting tile, which I could probably polish off if I gave them about an evening’s worth of focus. Then again, the family game of D&D hasn’t run since the start of the year, and I have some minis for that half finished too that I need for a future session. Although, apparently I started watching the Third Doctor’s adventures exactly a year ago while doing the washing up, and this morning, while doing the washing up I was also watching the Third Doctor (odd, with it being Star Wars day I guess), and I have a half painted mini of him in the queue…

Salute 53: the shoppening

As you may know, yesterday was Salute, and we made our annual pilgrimage (although in a reduced party of 2 this year).

As always seems to be the case, I took far fewer pics than I thought I had, mostly due to spending the time walking and talking as we encouraged each other to support a variety of small businesses, as all good citizens must.

As is now tradition, as soon as we got into the hall we rushed over to the Osprey stand to sign up for a demo game, this year being Warriors of Athena. While we waited to see if anyone else was going to sign up, we got to have a look in the cabinet at a preview of the upcoming sprues:

Here’s the board of the demo game, which is basically the second scenario from the first Quest:

I selected Penelope as my Hero, who unlike the other Heroes had no companions, but did have a bow, which I figured might be tactically optimal to reduce the chance of getting my face smashed in by a Cyclops:

The game was fun, and our luck with dice seemed to be very thematic. We were there to reclaim some honey that was due to the gods, and so bundled in to wreak mighty violence on the naughty Cyclopes that were withholding it. Things started well, with us generally avoiding getting blatted with flung rocks and even taking out one of the Cyclops brothers with a combination of bonfire and carefully applied axe, but then things took a turn. My hero, finding herself with nothing unengaged to shoot at, explored a hut, discovering it to be a slaughterhouse full of meat (some of it human). My usual terrible dice rolling skills returned in this moment when I rolled a 3 and failed to hold my nerve, and threw up at this sight. The next turn, I dashed forwards to grab the honey… which again required a roll to resist eating it (which the Gods were very clear about the importance of not doing). And I again rolled a 3(hey, she was probably hungry after losing her lunch earlier). The next turn, everything that could go wrong did, as 3 of the 4 companions were killed, and a harpy appeared just as we came to the end of our time slot, so we all surmised that I had managed to curse us:

Once we’d finished the game, we then ambled around peering at lots of lovely minis. A small selection of things I took pictures of:

Scratched paintwork, a music themed mech game that caught our fancy. No minis for it, but probably worth an investigate…

A Robin Hood game - not something on my immediate projects list, but it’s probably only a matter of time…

Butt Fish!

Dreadfjord had a cool diorama that caught our eye

Barsoom! I’m surprised I haven’t had a Barsoom project at any point, as I enjoyed the novels I’d read, and have a stack of the comics too. I even liked the movie!

Which leads us to the crux of every Salute post, the loot:

• A few packs from Foundry - assorted Satyrs and ancient townsfolk for Warriors of Athena, and some Mexican Irregulars to use as Tejanos in the Alamo project 
• A box of Perry Spanish Guerrillas, because they work for Silver Bayonet Bandits, and between these and last years purchases I could probably do a reasonable Spanish Napoleonic army… 
• A freebie of a little lizard from Twilight 
• A mixed pack of tufts, as I build up my basing options
• The event freebie of Saladin. Fun fact: I read the entire Osprey about the third crusade on planes trains and automobiles coaches the day before Salute in preparation 
• The Barons War Outremer expansion - I asked whether the rumours of this book being updated in the near future were true, which they couldn’t tell me, but I bought it as I figured it was still going to be full of cool Crusade stuff, and also they said they’d give me a free sprue of Ancient civilians (that they were giving away if you bought Gangs of Rome) if I bought it, which I was eyeing for potential Warriors of Athena use 
• Crooked Dice - some Greek themed treasure tokens, the 13th Doctor, a companion for the 3rd Doctor, and the Terminator to go with my batch of them from last year 
• Super Tiny Giant Battles and two gacha from the Mammoth Minis gumball machine 
• Some GSW basing bits - crabs, that I’m hoping look good enough based up to be enemies in Warriors of Athena, and Pigeons, because my daughter is currently pigeon obsessed and next time we play D&D will probably want her Druid to turn into a pigeon
•  Silver Bayonet Spanish Unit, because… it was in front of me and I really like the sculpts! Plus, with the various Perry Plastics I have I could definitely make a unit. He says, still needing to finish his first unit… 
• Bad Squiddo vampire hunters, in case this is the purchase that gets me to actuslly finish my original Silver Bayonet Unit 
• Warlord gave me a couple of Konflikt 47 preview sprues when I bought a pot of Strong Tone at their stand 
• A sprue of Mantic Abyssal Dwarf infantry was another goodie bag freebie 
• Sci-fi barricades (for Firefly) and Amphora (for Warriors of Athena) from Debris of War
• 2 pots of Troll Trader superglue, as a pot of that lasts a year as opposed to going through a hundred tubes of terrible Poundland glue
• A Vae Victus buttfish, and a Dwarf Slayer from a company selling orange brushes 
• 3 shapeshifting aliens from Tangent, because I try to support Wayne every year 
• The Wargames Illustrated Templar and Assassin heroes, that I had previously resisted, but were in fact right in front of me which is much harder to resist 
• A Bushido giant crab for use in Warriors of Athena - expensive, but the nicest crab sculpt I’d seen all day and a good size too 
• Warriors of Athena Mythic Bees and Athena herself - after months of telling myself that I was going to find some alternative miniatures to use as giant bees, after playing the demo game I decided that maybe the official minis were actually the way to go! 
• My Gringo 40s preorder, which had a spread of minis for Silver Bayonet and the Alamo, and even included a freebie mini of an 1860 Egyptian chap 
• The final goodie bag freebies was the annual Salute die, a sample of Warmag base magnets, and then a smorgasbord of stickers, fliers and catalogues.

Before we add all of that to the Tally, a confession:

With the best of intentions, I’d hoped to wrestle the Tally down to zero before Salute, but that didn’t quite pan out. I even took minis 250 miles to Germany to try and hit that target:

Only to discover that rather than Foundry 34B, a nice dark charcoal paint that I was planning to use next, I’d packed 34A, black. 

I was able to get some other base colours done though, although I only managed to actually sit down and paint once the whole week between one thing and another.

And in full transparency, I had also picked up another issue of the new Warhammer partwork magazine since my last post, which had added 3 more minis to the Tally:

So, running all the numbers, the Tally now stands at:

20 vs 160 = -140

Not the biggest haul I’ve ever brought home, but still unlikely that I’ll get it back into the black by the end of the year!