He’s small, he flies…

 …he’ll leave puncture wounds on your thighs. I mean, that’s not specifically what he does, but what can I say I’m a sucker for a rhyme. 

As well as re-instating the family D&D game, we’ve also started a game with a family that moved in across the street from us earlier this year - the dad is also a D&D nerd, and asked us if we wanted to start a cross family game with him and his boys (presumably figuring that having my wife and I as players would potentially help with the herding cats aspect of playing RPGs with children).

My original character concept was a Harengon Artificer that had been exiled from the Feywild after only considering what he could do with regards to creating weapons of mass destruction rather than what he should do, but I figured that a background involving war crimes and the constant risk of being discovered due to the prisoner tattoos just barely visible under his fur probably wasn’t the vibe we were going for when (discounting my wife and I) the average player age is 9, so that character is getting filed away for now in the hopes that one day I get to play with adults again. 

Thus was born Dandelion the Fairy Monk, because… well I thought that was a funny combination. And every PC needs a miniature, so here is Dandelion:

I know, that’s technically a Pixie, and fairies are canonically a couple of feet tall, but again the idea of him being a tiny flying dude karate kicking orcs while brandishing a fancy elven letter opener like a sword makes me smile. 

Born the third son of a minor noble fairy house in the Feywild, as the family already had an heir and a spare they weren’t really sure what to do with him. Steadfastedly refusing to find any real purpose for himself beyond laying around playing pan pipes and helping himself to his father’s prodigious wine cellar, his parent decided that he needed to ‘find himself’ and so he was promptly shipped off to a monastery in the mortal realms, the [insert cool fantasy world title that means sensei] of which his father had had dealings with decades before, and was thus owed a favour.

Surprisingly, Dandelion actually found himself flourishing in the structured environment of the dojo - he honed his body and mind, finding that without the distraction of an almost inexhaustible wine cellar he was much more focused than he had been throughout his teens. One day, when delving into the archives at the dojo, he made some incredible discovery as per his hermit background that the DM and I still need to collaborate on. Regardless of what that revelation was, he was then released from the dojo, again under the guise of ‘finding himself’, but presumably really that he was just unbearable after having uncovered some secret truth of the universe.

Armed only with a short sword and a pair of leafy bikini bottoms, he began to wander the world, potentially searching for further proof of his revelation but again that depends on what we decide it is. Eventually, he crosses paths around the city of Westgate with a bounty hunter named Brula (my wife’s half-orc Barbarian), and they have travelled together ever since.

My wife’s character’s back story at one point included having taken my character from some other bounty hunters to try and collect a bounty or ransom for him for herself, but on discovering that he wasn’t actually worth anything felt too bad to tell him and so he thinks that she rescued him and that’s when they became best friends, but I’m not sure if she kept that in to the final draft or not…

While I didn’t paint his eyes in, being far too small (that’s a 20mm base he’s on) I did in fact carefully paint his tiny abs, so there’s that. All I need to do now is come up with an incredibly elaborate full name for him, as I imagine he’s actually Dandelion something something of House something or other, first of his name, bearer of the silver something and also several other ever more elaborate and involved epithets. 

Tally:

63 vs 312 = -249

Next? Speaking of the family D&D game, it’s Halloween soon, so I’m tempted to see if I can quickly paint something thematic to shoehorn into the next session…

Zomtober week 4 - this joke’s getting laaaaaame

 Week 4 of Zomtober 2026 brings the final pair of jazzed up Mordheim zombies:

More outstretched arms meaning they’re difficult to rank up in actual Warhammer, and one guy holding a big bone I think because there are only a limited number of those selfsame outstretched arms.

Finishing this pair means that I’ve actually got enough for a unit in Eighth Edition Warhammer, when you add them to previous years Zomtober submissions:

‘Enough’ admittedly being quite subjective when it comes to units of zombies, as more is presumably preferred when they’re basically just ablative armour for a Necromancer rather than a credible threat.

As previously alluded to, I was hoping to do more than just my Mordheim zombies this Zomtober - and just squeaked in ahead of the deadline, finishing of this pair of converted walking corpses for Warriors of Athena:

You can tell that these were finished at a different time to the Mordheim zombies, as the natural light is very much storm-tinged as opposed to the actual sunshine used to take the Mordheim pictures! 

These were a pair of Greek slingers that got made undead via the careful application of some heads and arms from the Wargames Atlantic zombie sprue - I love this sprue for conversions, even though I’ve still yet to build a complete miniature from it. I have some slight regrets about using the body on the left for this conversion though, as look at his little booties! They would have been perfect for a companion for my Hero, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.

These were mostly painted in a Premier Inn in Bexleyheath, as staying away overnight for work seems to be the best way to get myself focused to do some painting (and only having brought a limited number of things with me helps with that too). On the other hand, more would have been done if I’d remembered to bring my medium sized workhorse brush, but I was able to make do with what I had with me.

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

62 vs 312 = -250

Also, absolutely ages ago I painted a tiny burned out campfire (that I think originally came with the Renedra tents set) that I haven’t gotten around to taking a picture of until now, so here that is too:

Stupid zombies, not realising that the fire has gone out. Annoyingly, last week we picked up our family D&D game again, where the party got ambushed while they slept, and I could not for the life of me remember where I’d put this… ah well, I’m sure they’ll get ambushed again sooner or later…

Zomtober 2026 week 3 - the name of the gaaaaaaaaame

 Another Sunday means another pair of zombies for Zomtober:

Not much to add that hasn’t already been said in previous posts, these were built and painted for Mordheim by my teenage self, and have now finally been finished and had their eyes painted in.

Finishing this pair brings the Tally up to:

58 vs 296 = -238

Or it would have done, if I hadn’t split a set of Victrix foot knights with a pal, so actually finished the week at:

58 vs 312 = -254

Unfortunately, my plans to do something additional this Zomtober have stalled a little - I did the conversions, primed them and base coated the flesh, but between being busy, tired, and generally distracted by converting miniatures for a Black Death City warband that’s all I’ve managed and now we’re only a week away from the final deadline!

Zomtober 2026 week 2 - more of the saaaaaaame

Another Sunday in Zomtober, another pair of Mordheim zombies spruced up after twenty-something years:

I know, I know, removing the head kills the zombie in most fictions, but to reiterate I built these when I was but a teen, and the idea of a zombie fumbling around looking for it’s missing head was (and still is) funny to me.

These sculpts are a bit of an odd duck - there’s some lovely details on there, like the back and ribs of the chap on the right, but they’re also kind of clunky (as was the style at the time) and the arms connect via a tiny ball and socket joint, which looks a little odd. Not so odd that I won’t add them to the horde though, which brings the tally to:

56 vs 296 = -240

What’s next? Well, I’m currently building a warband for Black Death City, and have something for yet another game on my painting tile, as well as the next batch of zombies, so who knows…

[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…