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…