Which witch is which?

It’s taken a while to get done, but here’s my first painted miniature of the year:

A repainted Mage Knight figure of Scholar Magus Bessa that I have apparently been entirely unable to photograph well today. Being bendy plastic, despite my attempts to fix her bendy staff using the hot water trick it seems to have curled back down, but I’m not mad enough about it to try and fix it again...

I like the little details all over the figure, like the potion bottles and assorted feathers. I tried to go for a swirling smoke effect on the orb in her hand, but I’m not sure if it quite reads as that (my daughter asked if she was holding the earth, which I’m not sure is a compliment or not). It got a coat of gloss varnish to finish it off, so it looks glassy at least!

The colour scheme was inspired by another witch:

Except for the yellow ribbon on her hat, which was the result of asking my wife to choose. 

Although I’ve described her as a witch, she was actually painted to fill the role of Sorcerer in the Classes Project, with the running total currently looking like this:

Classes (as of 5e Player’s Handbook):

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue (and also here)
• Sorcerer

• Warlock
• Wizard

Which leaves me just a Druid to go to complete the challenge! 

As an aside, picking what to paint for my Sorcerer was an interesting exercise: when it comes to the magical classes, what are the tropes and visual cues that set them each apart? Admittedly, I could have chosen any old magic user and called them what I liked, but I wanted something more archetypical than that! 

In my mind, the Wizard is the easiest to define - robes, beard, staff, big nerd. Not all wizards are like this I know, but that’s the wizardiest wizard, the one that pops to mind when someone says wizard. Warlock and Sorcerer are a bit trickier though - a Warlock forged a pact, which doesn’t really affect their look, but ritual knives, maybe some spooky tattoos sell the theme (and the mini I chose for my Challenge Warlock was pretty much the only Warlock mini I had). Sorcerers though, what defines them? The Charisma magician, so sexy wizards?

(Pathfinder has taken this theory to heart)

The other way to go is raw power, so a magic user with their hair whipping around, robes flapping in the arcane typhoon... but I didn’t have a miniature like that, so went with a cute witch instead!

Brief diversion into the semiology of magicians aside, what else have I been up to in the month since my last post? Plenty, just nothing was finished until now to post! A lot of my much reduced by homeschool hobby time has been spent prepping miniatures:

Just a few odds and ends to paint as it takes my fancy! Also an entire Frostgrave warband, as apparently I can’t just use already painted miniatures to play solo...

I’ve also got a few odds and ends half finished to check off some things from the various lists in my previous post, but I’ll save them for future posts when they’re finished!

The Tally also took a swing in the opposite direction with the arrival of this:

Out of Print 12th Doctor mini made by Crooked Dice before the range got pulled, sent by the guy that runs Tangent Miniatures because he was feeling like he was in a surplus of awesomeness! 

So between painting one and receiving one, the Tally stands at:

1 vs 1 = 0

For now... I placed a little Northstar order when they had a subscriber order earlier this month which has now been despatched...

I also finished these walls made by Fenris Games:

They’re gorgeous, and painted mostly with drybrushes of Wilko tester pots, with a dirty wash and a spotty green glaze thrown into the mix too! They were intended for use in Rangers of Shadow Deep, but will also see service in Frostgrave, Mordheim, and potentially more modern games too, as walls are walls regardless of era!

Finishing this scatter terrain gets me a third of the way towards crossing an entry off on the Challenge:

• Finish something old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Finish some scatter terrain (1/3)
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Frostgrave)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics

• Finish the last member of the Nextwave team
• Complete the classes project (and when I do that, start a project to have painted miniatures to represent all of the Races in the Players Handbook)
• Add at least 3 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project
• 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!

I could probably claim painting the Sorcerer as ‘something old’, as she’s been undercoated in the painting queue for an indeterminate amount of time, but I’m sure I’ll have older stuff in the coming months too!

So, what next? Probably not Blackstone Fortress, as my back ordered copy of Escalation (that I need to use the copy of Ascension that my wife got me for my birthday last year) was cancelled, as it has apparently now gone Out of Print and copies are selling for silly money on eBay, which has soured me towards GW somewhat (although if someone has a spare copy of Escalation, with for without minis, that they want to send my way, let me know!). As previously mentioned, I’ve started a couple of bits from the checklist of things I need to finish to play Rangers of Shadow Deep, so that and painting a Frostgrave warband are my current priorities, including something using these supplies:

(Mysterious mysteries - I might not end up using the tape in the end though...)

So, singular focus on getting to the point where I can play a solo game. Well, singular except for the fact that my wife and I started watching Wandavision...