‘Stick’ it to the man

A slight diversion from my current project focus, as my family D&D game is currently on hiatus until I get the next few encounters prepped. They’re entering the later stages of Dragon of Icespire Peak, so I needed a decent number of Twig Blights to menace them with:

Previously, I’d described them as vaguely humanoid fetishes made out of lashed together twigs and sticks (which is great fun, messing with your players as they wonder whether they saw it move or whether it’s just a tiny scarecrow left to scare them), which the official minis look a bit like - but they are more pricy than I wanted to spend on monsters that are going to be getting cut down in droves, so these 15mm plant monsters from Checkpoint Miniatures  were an ideal standin.

In order to make them look more like they are made out of sticks and whatnot, I dug out and opened up a baggie of ‘forest scatter’ that I bought more than a decade ago - only to find that rather than seed pods that looked like tiny leaves that I could stick on these monsters, it was mostly a bag of brown dust and the occasional tiny chunk of wood - fine for a base, maybe, but not quite what I had envisioned. 

I finished basing these last night (superglueing a frankly outstanding amount of flock and static grass to my fingers as I did so), but have had the Tally take some hits before I could get this post typed up:

Even though I’m probably never going to play Age of Sigmar, a couple of quid for a Grey Seer and a Warlock Engineer is too good a bargain to pass up. Even though I haven’t actually finished anything for my Skaven since February 2023.

It was also new mini of the month day, so we nipped into GW to grab that:

My children both grabbed one too, interestingly, so hopefully we can get some more family painting in in the near future.

With all the pluses and minuses, the Tally currently stands at:

19 vs 29 = -10

Next - back on track with Firefly Stargrave, hopefully… although I do feel like maybe I should finish the next rank of Skaven Clanrats, as I didn’t realise just how long they’ve been half finished!

Bits and bobs

One problem with prepping so many miniatures for my Firefly Stargrave project is that physical space on my painting tile is at a premium, so in between applying base coats to the test model for an enemy faction I finished off some scatter terrain that had been hanging round my painting tile for far too long. Firstly, some mantic bits:

A barricade and some cardboard boxes, which I think were originally from the Mars Attacks scenery set that I used for making my post-apocalyptic ruins way back when. I need a bunch of scatter terrain for Stargrave, so this is a start!

I also finished this piece from Checkpoint Miniatures, that I originally bought purely because I thought it was cool:

It’s technically a 15mm scale standing stone, but I figured it would work just as well as a 28mm shrine (just with a… very small skull having been left as a sacrifice). Here’s how it looks with an angry looking fey stood inside the ring of stones:

And now…

 …for something completely different - my wife and I have been watching the latest series of Critical Role, in which at one point the party is menaced by à Redcap, which inspired me to get this chap painted up:

I went for basic colours for his clothes, to give him a slightly Noddy-ish feel - Noddy is technically Fey isn’t he? Or not, I guess Big Ears was an elf, but I can’t remember if Noddy was actually a human living in Toyland or something else, but I digress.

His whacking great axe got tinted with some teals and greens to try to make it look like it’s made of some strange fey metal - the jury is still out on whether I was successful or not.

In D&D lore, their caps are red from being painted with blood, so I was briefly tempted to give his hat à coat of blood effect paint, but decided against it. From memory, they also have iron boots, and I didn’t green stuff him any of those either.

He was originally a Dreamblade miniature, so getting him ready for painting involved a certain amount of effort and manual labour:

He’s also tiny, that’s a 20mm base he’s on. To reduce the amount of time he spends tipping over due to the ridiculous size of his weapon, I had to glue some scrap metal underneath his base to try and weigh him down:

Painting him brings the Tally to:

7 vs 24 = -17

He’s not in the Monster Manual, so technically doesn’t add to the Monstrous Alphabet though.

What’s next? It was going to be back to focusing on the Firefly Stargrave project, but I needed to finish a couple of oddments to make space on my painting tile for all the new things that I’ve been adding to it…

In summer, we can taste, the rain…

It’s late, which is the only explanation I have for using an Alien Ant Farm lyrical reference that is only tangentially connected to what I’m writing about as a post title. Painting time has been sparse recently (mostly due to repeatedly falling asleep after putting my children to bed), but having a week off work to celebrate my daughter’s birthday means I’ve actually gotten to occasionally put brush to miniature and have finished the next member of the crew for this year’s Firefly Stargrave project:

It has rained all the time recently, so apologies for the slightly dark pictures.

My First Mate is a River Tam expy, a girl that has found herself on the crew in mysterious circumstances. She has clearly been experimented on by the Alliance, and vacillates between terrifyingly deadly in combat and down right nonsensical the rest of the time. She can kill you with her brain, though.

She’s a Hasslefree mini that I’ve had for years, potentially since I initially planned this project which I think was at least fifteen years ago. Looking at it blown up like this, there are a couple of rough spots - a little blister on the front of the dress and a crack on the back of her coat, but fixing them would involve stripping her to the bare metal again, so I’ll have to live with them if I want to get any games in this year. The paint scheme was inspired by River Tam rather than any one particular costume, although I have googled ‘Summer Glau Firefly Red Dress’ and other similar variations enough times in the last week that I probably appear on a list somewhere now…

Although it’s the months leading up to Salute, where I traditionally save my hobby funds for the big spend in April, but a couple of packages have arrived since my last post. First of all, I took advantage of Checkpoint Minis January Sale to grab some 15mm plant monsters to use as tiny 28mm plant monsters, and a frog for a planned conversion. They also threw in a freebie frog, because they are too nice and don’t know some of us work on a Tally system:

I’ve been prepping the plant monsters, and realised that I actually had far fewer 20mm bases than I thought, so I’m waiting for an order of those to turn up so that I can get these painted (and the family D&D game is currently on hold until I do).

I also received a package of Rezolution APAC figures from a kind gentleman over on the LAF, as I had fewer than I initially thought in my project drawers, and I feel like 10-12 is probably a goodly number of Ruffians to menace my crew in Stargrave. 

Plus, there were a couple of minis that I didn’t already have that could potentially make good NPCs or bounties, which is nice…

All in, the Tally now stands at:

6 vs 24 = -18

I’d hoped to keep the Tally in the black a little longer than usual this year, but that’s jus5 how it goes sometimes. Hopefully I can wrestle it down a bit before Salute though… 

I bet IKEA is terrible in Faerun…

 So, brief diversion from the Firefly project - I painted a mimic!

I stuck fairly close to the pictures in the Monster Manual for this one, and it came out pretty nice.

Why paint a mimic now? Well, I attacked my family with one last year, and to my shame had to use an undercoated mini, so we’re unlikely to need one again soon in this campaign. On the other hand, we have vague plans to play Strixhaven Curriculum of Chaos once this campaign ends (so, probably in 2 or 3 years) and flicking through the book the other day I spotted that the first couple of combats need a Mimic and an Owlbear. An Owlbear I have already, so the Mimic got bumped up the painting queue so that when we do eventually start that campaign that’s one less mini that I have to scramble to get ready.

Painting him brings the Tally to:

5 vs 2 = +3

And also adds another entry to the Monstrous Alphabet

A is for
B is for Bullywug
C is for Carrion Crawler
D is for
E is for Elemental (More than one)
F is for Flameskull
G is for Goblin
H is for
I is for Intellect Devourer
J is for
K is for
L is for Lich
M is for Mind Flayer, Myconid, Mummy, Manticore, Mimic
N is for
O is for Owlbear, Ooze
P is for Purple Worm
Q is for
R is for Rust Monster
S is for Shambling Mound, Scarecrow, Skeleton
T is for Thri-Kreen
U is for
V is for
W is for Wraith
X is for
Y is for
Z is for Zombie

I should probably see about filling in some other letters rather than just keeping adding to M though… on the other hand, I do have two other Mimics undercoated, so we’ll see…

Like a leaf on the wind

 What else does a ship need other than a Captain? A Pilot, of course:

This is my not-Wash, who may well end up named Alan after Alan Tudyk. He’s not as direct a likelness to his inspiration as the Captain is, but I’m more than happy to run on vibes for this project if needs be.

I painted him like he’s wearing overalls under his vest, as I figure he’s also going to have to get his hands dirty with ship maintenance until the crew can hire a dedicated engineer…

He’s going to be a Pilot Expert from the Bold Endeavour expansion, as I feel like a bunch of random events happening between fights sounds like a lot of fun! Still no name for the ship yet though…

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

4 vs 2 = +2

What’s next? Well, I actually finished the Pilot last weekend, and at the same time got a little side tracked and finished something else that’s not for the Firefly project…

Take my love, take my land…

Take me where I cannot stand /

I don’t care, I’m still free /

You can’t take the sky from me:

Or more specifically, you can’t take the sky from Captain Tim Reynolds, ‘ex’- Browncoat, who found himself on the losing side of a war but still isn’t convinced that it was necessarily the wrong side. 

As I’ve alluded to, my Stargrave by way of Firefly game is going to be inspired by rather than a direct recreation of Firefly and Serenity, and so we have a Captain called Tim, spiritual successor to a beloved Necromancer, leader of a rag-tag band of misfits and ne’erdowells that I’ll talk about more as soon as I get round to painting them.

He’s a Heresy mini that I’ve had tucked away for at least a decade, and possible even two, so happy to finally get some paint on him. The painting process was a little fraught, with a few things going wrong like going far too heavy on highlights on the face and then having to try and knock it back with glazes, but as always, there comes a point where done is done and he’s definitely good enough to see some table time! 

I also painted the back, because this is no catalogue shoot - I wanted his brown coat to look absolutely battered, as if it’s literally been through a war - I might have gone a bit heavy handed and had the weathering end up too light, but as always, he’ll look fine at arms length on the table.

Finishing him brings the Tally to: 

3 vs 2 = +1

Next: more crew of the spaceship… wait, I haven’t chosen a name yet! More crew, and a name hopefully then for the next post…