Lurking in the shadows...

...to suck out your brains - finished painting my converted Illithid rogue (that I finished converting from a Hasslefree figure way back in December of 2014):

Lord knows when I'll meed a Mind Flayer in studded armour, but when that day does come I will be ready.

His flesh was one of those times when you finish painting happy with what you've done, then come back to it the next time and decide it needs more done to it over and over, hence quite a stark difference between the darkest shade in the deepest recesses and the lightest areas. His weaponry was painted in non-standard colours after being inspired by a flick through the 4th Edition Monster Manual (hence the aqua/teal hilt to the purple-sheened blade, and grey rather than colourful gems on the scabbard of his secondary weapon).

I also had a play posing him with some of my wife's plants (more and more of which seem to appear in the house each week):

As well as playing with the settings and applying filters to make moody pictures like this:

Tally:

7 vs 0 = +7


In other news, a family emergency last week led to us heading down to Portsmouth a week earlier then originally planned - horrible times, but one upside to spending four hours each way on trains was that I cracked on and managed to mostly get the set of zombie rules that I've had knocking around half-formed in my head longer than I've had this blog that have been previously alluded to on paper:

Don't worry about trying to decipher my scrawl about rules for fighting across barricades, the picture is just illustrative to break up blocks of text ;)

It's in no particular order currently, fairly free-form as I remembered / thought of things, but I think I've got a fairly workable framework once I rearrange it and chisel out the heart. I have a vague thought to run a zombie game at halloween, which would need some scenery building and cards making (well, as well as actually playtesting these rules to see whether they actually work at all!)

Otherwise, I'm still wanting to get on with Necromunda, although I'm in a bit of a quandary - I'm reticent to start building models until I've built a gang roster, but don't want to build a gang roster without knowing what's good or that I like to play with... I could just build the models in their stock poses (which are lovely, don't get me wrong), but shouldn't I choose their loadouts myself? Argh, such conflict...

I also starting playing the Game of Thrones: Conquest game whilst waiting for the laptop to fire up tonight, which I'd assumed would give me a hankering for that project, but the game is so buggy (oh how it crashes) that hasn't kicked in at all...

Cut off one head, and two more adorable ones will grow in it's place...

Whilst finishing off the Flameskull from the previous post, I also started a couple of other miniatures that have been sat undercoated for far too long, and managed to finish this baby hydra:

One of many of a number of rather lovely Mage Knight sculpts, potentially from one of the Dungeon sets. He's old Mage Knight (and lord knows how long ago I cleaned him up) so awkward mould lines are a bit of an issue, but I quite like it flaws and all.

I hadn't really thought about how many 'generic fantasy' miniatures I've painted in between other projects, but when you look at them all at once it's quite a few! Especially when you include the ones tucked in other drawers that I'd forgotten about... Hey ho, they can all menace Conan or get drafted in for Dungeons & Dragons though, so there's hope for them seeing a game table yet...

Here he is menacing a Lannister Foot Knight that whilst digging out I discovered one of the aforementioned drawers of finished miniatures that I had forgotten were there:

And here's an aerial view so that you can see that yes, some of the heads are a little cross-eyed!

Tally:

6 vs 0 = +6

The plan at present is to finish off a couple more miniatures in the queue to make space for some figures from the Necromunda Boxed Game. Part of me wants to make some more terrain though, considering the piles of interestingly shaped pieces of plastic and polystyrene I've been hoarding over the last couple of months...

You won't believe how long this took...

So, after a period of low painting mojo (aided and abetted by .hack on the PS4, Super Bowl etc), i knocked off another miniature that had been sat half-finished in the painting queue for six years or so:

Yup, it's a flameskull:

In the 4th Edition era of Dungeons and Dragons, at one point I considered painting up a miniature for every entry in the Monster Manual. So, for the Flameskull, I grabbed a spare skull from a GW Skeleton Warriors sprue, pinned it to a base, basecoated it green, and then carefully stored it away in a drawer for more than half a decade. I think it moved house like that at least twice.

So, finally freeing it from it's hellish limbo, I popped on some mystic symbols in lurid shades of green and called it done:

I mean, it took so long that in the interim Games Workshop actually released a kit containing flaming skulls, which probably would have worked better for representing a FLAMEskull...

He's so tiny, it's hard to get a decent picture. Here he is posed on a sewer tile:

And with a Heroquest wizard for scale:

Finished is finished, regardless of size though, which takes the Tally to:

5 vs 0 = +5

Rubble and Scatter Terrain - Part 3 - Finished!

Christmas passed, I knocked off a few miniatures here and there, and then decided to get down to business and finish this terrain (as it had been sat forlornly on a box lid in the corner of the basement ever since getting undercoated).

I started out by basecoating the barrels red, a step so mundane that I apparently didn't even think to take a picture of it, and then decided that the barrels needed some markings. Having a dig through my supplies, I settled on using some of the old Imperial Guard numeral transfers:

However to make them look less recognisable (and give a wider variety of numbers) I decided to cut them down into two digit numbers:

And so on they went (in this example, onto a set of barrels that I'd already started weathering before I decided that I was going to add transfers):

Using these probably quintuples the amount of waterslide transfers that I've ever used? Unfortunately, when I went to paint around the edges of the transfers to blend them in, I discovered that they mostly weren't actually very well stuck down. Whether this was due to the age of the transfers, me not being patient enough when applying, or some other factor, I don't know, but this needed fixing!

I remembered Uncle Johnny telling me a while ago about the miracle of Micro sol and set for applying transfers; wondering whether it would work to help set the already applied transfers, he was kind enough to bring some round when he brought presents round after Christmas.

I painted some on with an old brush, and let it set for a while before dabbing away the excess with a clean piece of kitchen towel, before going back and reapplying where necessary, and it seems to have done the trick. Sometimes I got a bit carried away and the transfer started floating away, but I was able to nudge them back into position with the brush and then dab them down to affix them.

Health & Safety reminder - remember to open a window when working with things like this. I did not, and so was musing about the fact that Micro Set smells like the most delicious salt and vinegar crisps you could possibly imagine, before realising that that might not actually be the case, I'd just been inhaling the fumes for too long.

Then it was just a case of weathering (using blister sponge and some grotty brushes), washing everything with Vallejo Smoke, and then drybrushing the rubble with the same paints that I use for painting bases.

Note to self - seal cork better, or drybrush gentler. An additional step involved spending an amount of time going back over each piece fixing any spots where the bare cork had been exposed by my overzealous brushing...

And lo, the finished barrels:

I tried to make the bucket look like it had some dirty water in the bottom. I started out by dripping in a little PVA, mixed with some Typhus Corrosion (as I had it out already to add some streaks to some of the metal painted pieces). For the effect that I had in my head, Vallejo Smoke might have been a better choice, although as it took the PVA two days to dry, by which point there was almost nothing left in the bucket (bar a tide mark left by the Typhus Corrorsion) I don't know how much difference that would have made! Rather than continuing like this (which could have ended up taking weeks to get the bucket to look half-full) I settled for a shallower fill on the bucket, pouring in a little 'Ardcoat to make it look shiny and wet.

Here are the finished rubble pieces:

And now here are a number of posed pictures with various miniatures testing how multi-use this terrain set is...

Nothing off of the Tally for finishing these, but I do get to strike another item on the Challenge list:

2018 Challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish something pre-blog old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• 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? I've got the majority of the scenery from the recent Necromunda rerelease cleaned up on my desk and awaiting spraying; I could start some of those terrain pieces that I was tempted to now that I've finished these; I've even attached the Wildlings that were converted around the same time as this terrain was started to bases (although they might get pushed back until I can get some more female miniatures - there;s a rather nice Frostgrave Barbarian Tracker that I like the look of, as well as the recently announced female soldier sprue...); - most likely though, I'll pick at a few odd, unrelated miniatures from the queue, until I've made space for the Goliath and Escher gangs from the new Necromunda...

Experiments with Rubble Paste; Rubble and Scatter Terrain - Part 2

When we left off, it was now July (natural light in pictures, my word!), and we had a bunch of scenery on fairly sparse looking bases, so I decided to try and make some rubble paste. As with many things I attempt, I had a vague recollection of having seen a tutorial on Youtube at some point in the past, and so winged it based on what little (potentially not the important bits) that I could remember and hoped for the best.

One of the things I remembered from the video that I'd seen was that they used crushed eggshell to add some erratic not-just-sand shapes to the rubble, so I dutifully set about saving some. Warning - no matter how much I cleaned them, the plastic tub I was keeping them in was very, very stinky when I came to use them, so this isn't for the squeamish!

So, I cleaned them again. And again.

Then dug out the mixing bowl that has been used to make textured paint enough times that it is ruined for any other use:

And set about crushing the eggshell into irregularly sized pieces:

Then bulked up using a blend of sand, grit and cork pieces:

I then mixed it all up, with some PVA to bind it all. At this point it looked like the world's least appealing breakfast cereal:

I also added some plaster at this point, to bulk it up even further. In hindsight, I would probably reduce how much I added (or skip it entirely) as it softened some of the lumps and bumps, but not so much so that I felt compelled to rip it all of and start again!

Then I added some black paint, before adding some extra larger cork pieces for seasoning:

Then it was just a case of bodging it onto the bases using a coffee stirrer to jam it into all the nooks and crannies:

Repeat for each piece:

And here's how it looked once it had dried:

I was beginning to suspect that I had added too much filler to the mix, but figured that it looked alright here, and would hopefully drybrush nicely when it came to time to paint!

Then it was just a case of sanding the rest of the bases:

Here's everything drying post sand application:

At least a couple of those miniatures at the front have since been finished and posted, which makes a nice change from most of these old WIP pictures!

I then spray undercoated all of the terrain grey, as usual, and then that was about it for the next six months...

Tune in next time for what is hopefully the final stretch...

Rubble and Scatter Terrain - Part 1

So, I've almost completed some pieces of scatter scenery that have been sat half finished in the basement for way, way to long! Admittedly, the main reason I've been determined to get them finished is that I keep getting struck by inspiration for building various bits of scenery, but didn't want to just add to an existing queue of half-finished things, and so decided to finish them off before I'd let myself start anything new...

How long is way too long, you ask? The bulk of the content for this post (as there's so much, I'll probably split it into two or three posts) is from last June. You'll notice that I'm wearing shorts in some of the pictures:

So, way back last summer, a few of us had decided that we wanted to play Inquisimunda. Well, I say a few of us had decided, I was tempted to, and bugged other people in the hopes that they would too. Wanting to be a providing sort of host, I thought I should knock up some simple (and generic, so that it could be used for other projects rather than being limited to just 40k) scatter terrain.

My first idea was some pleasingly generic sci-fi barrels, made from soda caps, an idea I think I first saw done by Nathan Ironworker Miller over on the LAF that I mentally files away for later use. Handily, my wife drinks a bunch of Pepsi Max (it is apparently healthier than regular carbonated beverages), so it didn't take too long to accumulate a suitable number of bottle caps. A quick sand to flatten their bottoms (oo-err) and they were ready to be superglued together in pairs to make barrels:

Note the Inquisitorial Acolyte for scale, who has noticeably not appeared painted on the blog in the sevent months since this picture was taken. The majority of those clips are from poundland, by the way, and I recommend anyone thinking about building any terrain or scenery grab some rather than siting holding things together while they dry with your actual hands!

I scribbled some rough shapes in pencil on the board that I use for basing all of my terrain these days, and then cut them out, and bevelled the edges with a knife.

I then set about arranging the barrels on bases, and glued them down with PVA, as I figured this would have a little more 'give', being less likely to snap off than superglue if I were to drop them or be a little rough during painting (spoiler alert - at least one broke off during painting)

I also made a couple of other pieces that don't seem to feature in these pictures, but that you'll end up seeing later...

Pleased with these pieces, I decided to make some accompanying rubble / rough ground pieces, to slow movement and block line of sight. In hindsight, knowing how I am, I should potentially have done the two batches of terrain separately (as two manageable chunks rather than one big mega lump) in order to get them finished quicker, but who knows if that would really have been the case...

Thusly, I dug out my bags of differently sized pieces of cork (doesn't everyone file their cork by size?) and a few bits and bobs, and set about making some rubble bases.

A pipe here, a bit of scrap metal there, a broken piece of wood panelling that was inspired by the collapsed buildings in Fallout 4 where there's a whole floor collapsed into the room below but ended up looking more like someone had discarded a fence panel, and a hearty handful of bits of cork, and we have our basic base:

I also etched a brick pattern into some foam (the type that comes underneath a tasty chilled pizza from your local supermarket) to break up into fallen wall sections, to provide some different texture and visual interest:

Some pieces also got taller ruin sections, to provide more line of sight blocking, whereas other pieces had quite a low profile, intended to simply be rough ground that would force tactical movement decisions but otherwise not affect a firefight.

I then decided to go back and add a couple of 'character' pieces to each set;

Firstly, an objective-esque barrel (or simply one with a little more narrative than just 'stack of barrels') with the addition of some pieces from a Tamiya sprue:

And then taking a saw to the cogs from an old Hot Wheels toy (that is one of the projects that keeps catching my eye, but I'm determined to get these finished before I start anything else!) to make a large cog and rubble piece, even including a half-buried barrel to tie the two sets together...

And that, dear reader if you've made it this far, is where we pause. More to come in a future blog post though, don't you worry...