Just who is that brave and or stupid masked vigilante?

Determined to finish the year with the tally in the black, I've stormed ahead and finished another miniature:

Hasslefree's Aaron, inspired by a certain Kick Ass comic and film character. He was pretty much done before today, but I'd been putting off finishing him up by adding the pattern on the wetsuit as my freehand skills are a little lacking:

Perserverence and lots of holding my breath whilst carefully adding tiny splashes of paint and constantly referring to reference pictures later and he's done! 

The reference material was a bit of a pain though, as trying to get different angles on the suit proved somewhat difficult, as the design seemed to vary slightly between the different images that I'd gathered...

Ah well, finished is finished, which brings the Tally to:

79 vs 80 = -1

So close, so very close!

I love mushroom men, this I know...

I love Myconids, as I think I may have alluded to in previous blog posts. I mean, this is the shirt that my wife got me for Christmas that I wore today whilst painting these miniatures:

As the Tally getting back into the black isn't unreachably far away, I thought it would be nice to finish off the dozen mushroomy fellas that I had half painted on the TV unit for a little while. Well, I say a little while, I literally had to dust them off with a large soft brush before I could continue painting them...

My encounter group of myconids is broken into three groups of four models each:

The first group is Hasslefree's Agarix miniatures, lovely little sculpts that will do for generic Myconid types. I would say warriors, but really they're peaceful mushroom farmers who are minding their own business until adventuring parties come trampling through their domains and start attacking them because they're different looking...

The next group are from Ral Partha, and are 25mm rather than 28mm. I don't mind this though, variety is the spice of life after all eh? I converted one to be a wizard or cleric type (or a Rotpriest, if we're running these in 4e) with the addition of a mushroom staff, and added a mushroom piece from an old Games Workshop Night Goblin sprue to another with an outstretched arm to make a farmer type - is he sheltering then with his arm, or perhaps summoning them? Depends on the needs of the encounter! And yes, I am a big nerd, and colour coordinated the mushrooms to the Nintendo standard (green for life, 1up style etc)!

The last group are Myconid gas spores, mildly converted with a little cutting, scraping and bending from GW Tyranid spore mines from the old Battle for Macragge 40k starter set. I imagine that they grow out of the ground like any other mushroom, on several stalks, held up by their buoyant head, until the day that they are mature enough to pull themselves out of the ground and become mobile, still trailing their stalks beneath them...

I picture these as somewhat like guard dogs for a Myconid colony, probably floating aimlessly about near the entrance , acting almost as an early warning system for the arrival of bands of roving adventurers looking for loot and seeing these peaceful ambulatory mushroom chaos as nothing more than sacks of XP (the horror!). 

The gas spores seem to be fairly large in the reference imagery I could find, but a little handwaveium deals with that (I mean yes, if you try to apply physics to a fantasy setting they'd probably need to be bigger in order to contain enough gas to float, but worlds of magic, that's why).

So, having finished these dozen miniatures brings the tally to:

78 vs 80 = -2

which would have put me back into the black if it weren't for the second round of Christmas presents... (Not wanting to sound ungrateful, don't get me wrong!)

Ragnar Lothbrok

Originally planned as a Christmas present for a friend of mine (who is quite the fan of the Vikings series, and passingly interested in miniatures), until my wife pointed out that his birthday was this week, which incentivised me to get him finished a little sooner!

The wobbly scroll on his base says Ragnar in old Futhark runes (or at least, the google search to find a translator that I did suggests it to be the case):

One of the defining features of Ragnar (as far as I can tell) as portrayed in the series is his ridiculous haircut:

Whilst the Gripping Beast Vikings sprues provided donors for the majority of his parts, I couldn't find anything in my bits box that was quite right for this. In the end, I decided to go with a GW head from the Middenheim sprue in my Mordheim boxed set (which I had to give a bit of a haircut to) and a little bit of sculpting. First of all, I used a bit of solder wire as a 'skeleton' for the hair:

In the very definition of first world problems, I spent a fraught evening unable to find my florist wire. Oh, the troubles I've seen.

I thought I'd taken more WIP pics of the hair sculpt, but apparently not. I coated the wire in some green stuff, chopped in the rims of the hair band things, and then sliced in some hair texture. Then, I went back over it with some thinned Liquid Green Stuff and literally painted on some detail, like adding more depth to the hair bands, the spikes at the end of the hair etc:

And lo, one paint job a later we have a Ragnar-alike, that whilst not an exact match for screen Ragnar (the beard isn't quite right, for one) is hopefully going to make the recipient very happy!

You'll note, I'm sure, that as this is for someone else, unlike most of the miniatures I paint for personal use, he even has pupils and everything!

I had especial fun painting his shield, taking inspiration from this picture:

[Tally 66 vs 36 = +30 unheard of, I know! I imagine this year will be the year my wife starts buying me miniatures at Christmas, ensuring as tradition dictates that I end the year in the red]

Due to being a massive nerd, in between writing this post and the time I'd scheduled it to go up, I went out and got a gift box:

Which with the addition of a lick of paint:

And some ageing with a variety of washes and stippling and general messiness,and careful application of a rune in Sharpie and pencil, gives us a box fit or a king:
 

Heh, king of the nerds...

Never tell me the odds!

Han Solo, everyone's favourite scoundrel! It probably says a lot about my tastes that I've still as of yet to even consider painting a Luke miniature...

With this miniature finished, that's the end of the group of Star Wars miniatures that I was working on as a batch. Although I should probably prep and paint some bog-standard Rebel Troopers (and work on the rules!), I think I might take a brief diversion for other projects, namely Pathfinder (as I'm hopefully joining a new campaign, so have the opportunity to build a one-off character miniature) or taking part in Zomtober!

[Tally: 65 vs 36 = +29]

Still no troopers...

Not a lot to say about this really, it's a Rebel Pilot. I added red bands and some gold squiggles to his helmet to try and diversify his paint job somewhat, but other than that he's mostly an orange blob. He'll hopefully see use either as an objective (in 'rescue the pilot from the crash site' type scenarios, if I can find a Star Wars model kit in the right scale on the cheap) or as an unnamed hero/captain type!

[Tally: 64 vs 36 = +28]

Manners are their own reward gentlemen!

Another day, another bounty hunter. Even though he's clearly not actually holding that gun, I think this is a great little sculpt (from the first set, Rebel Storm) that I had a lot of fun painting. 

While there have been some duff moments, like the Lizard Dance from The Mandalorian Armor (because yes, it makes perfect sense that a drunk Trandoshan would refer to their ceremonial dance as 'the lizard dance', as that's not ridiculous at all), there are more reasons that I love Bossk:

I'm always a fan of canonically accurate nerd core rap about Star Wars Bounty hunters:

Although he's no Boba Fett, Robot Chicken has shown us that Bossk is a suave, smooth operator:

Who also teaches us that manners are their own reward:

[Tally - 63 vs 36 = +27]

Leia? I hardly knew her!

Oh Leia, the Disney princess we waited so long for...

I had a couple of sculpt options for Leia, but went for this one, sporting the classic 'Danish Buns' 'do. It's a little petite compared to some, but I think it should do just fine. As you can see, painting white is still a pain, and the face was a bit of a nightmare - the sculpts on these bendy figures can vary between fantastic and terrible on the same figure! I did what I could though (including having to completely redefine her nose through the careful application of lines of flesh wash at one point), and so she should look fine on the table!

In other news, I've still got Han, Bossk and a rebel pilot half painted, then I really should get round to prepping a squad of rebel troopers...

[Tally - 62 vs 36 = +26]

Dark Trooper Phase 2

Having briefly played Star Wars Commander before my attention waned when it turned into another pay-to-win app, I thought one of these lightsaber-resistant robo-meanies would be a good add-on unit for my Imperials. He was surprisingly difficult to photograph for such a straightforward paint job too...

[Tally - 61 vs 36 = +25]

Death Star Protocol Droid

Like the Gonk Droid, another one that doesn't have the most obvious uses for skirmish wargaming, although I'm sure I read somewhere that these things were stuffed with secret recording devices, which would play nicely in a scenario with Rebels trying to sneak him away from an Imperial base...

[Tally: 60 vs 36 = +24]

Let the Wookiee win!

My first painted Rebel miniature is Chewbacca, walking carpet Hero of the Rebel Alliance: 

Although I wasn't originally super keen on the sculpt (having originally planned on picking up either the one from Rebel Storm or the now unavailable Knight Models sculpt), I think he looks quite snazzy now he's gone under the tender ministrations of my paintbrush.

Careful attention was paid to reference pictures of Peter Mayhew in costume in order to ensure that I was able to duplicate Chewbacca's fur markings, using several careful applications of various washes:

That little lump decorating the front of his base was originally a discarded Stormtrooper helmet, but unfortunately the detail was so shallow on the original donor figure that I ended up adding more and more battle damage to it to cover its crappiness that in the end you can barely see what it is...

Tally: 59 vs 36 = +23

Gonk, gonk?

Not much to say about this really, I painted a Gonk Droid (or a GNK Power Droid if we're giving it it's full and proper title):

I've no idea what use it will be for gaming, but it's a cool and very 'Star Warsy' miniature, so I had to include one in the project. Lots of fun was had with washes like GW Typhus Corrosion and scrubbing on chips and scrapes to get it looking good and grubby:

Tally: 58 vs 36 = +22

Scout Trooper finished!

One quick and dirty paint job later, and my converted Scout Trooper Sniper is ready to join the rest of my boys in white in putting down those troublesome rebels:

Which reminds me, I should probably try and turn my attention to basing and painting some opposition for them...

Well, that and sorting out some rules (he says, from a deep pile of reference material):

[Tally: 57 vs 36 = +21]

Scout Trooper Buttplate issues

Finding myself with an hour to myself, I thought I'd best get on with finishing undercoating some miniatures that I was partway through doing at the end of last week. Picking up my brush and pot of Ceramite White, I found myself staring at a miniature that I'd clearly been interrupted in the middle of undercoating, and I recalled that I'd realised that something was missing from my converted miniature - one of these thins is not like the others:

The more eagle-eyed of you will be quick to notice, he's missing a buttplate. Presumably an essential piece of armour, although maybe it's actually a cushion to make those speeder bike rides a little smoother? Whilst I'm not normally a button counter type (as opposed to some that I won't name), I knew that it would bug me if I didn't do something about it, so set about the problem with a little Liquid Green Stuff. Now, my pot of LGS has gone a bit funky, but mashing it about a bit and leaving it to set a little have me a manageable chunk that I could carve into the desired shape:

Yeah, I know, the back of your fingernail probably isn't the best place to carve green stuff with clay shapers and knives, but I'm fairly certain my mother rarely reads this, so if you don't tell I won't either!

After leaving it to set a little more (and dropping it on the floor, inevitably), a little dab of superglue with a cocktail stick later we have a Scout Trooper that's ready for the ball!

Alas, I now need to wait for this to properly dry before I can finish undercoating him and get on wih some actual painting, but them's the breaks...

The 6 Month Mountain Reduction & Painting Challenge - Introduction & Rules

So, Chris over at Chris' Miniature Woes and Dave over at The Spider Web of History have thrown down a metaphorical gauntlet here in the blogosphere and over on Instagram, with the instigation of 'The 6 Month Mountain Reduction & Painting Challenge', and I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and take part.

Essentially, they're aiming to combat 'The Gamer's Curse', AKA shinynewthingitis, and break the cycle of 'start a new project, buy some miniatures for said project, repeat' by hopefully actually getting some of those already purchased miniatures painted! I still reserve the right to hop from project to project with little rhyme nor reason as the fancy takes me though...

The rules (lifted wholesale from this post), beginning September 1st, are as follows:

1. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker card.  Like in a deck of cards, you get two jokers to use on a figure purchase during the six months of the challenge.  Could be a blister pack, an ebay bundle, or a single figure...you can't splurge. [Shouldn't be too much of a problem, as with Miniature Mojo closed, I can't buy any infected miniatures for TLOU, and there's still no release of soapy's broom-riding wizards, so there's nothing I was planning on buying anyway... Except for some old Space Marines, but as i still haven't finished painting my new Space Marines, I'm sure they can wait!]

2.  Gifts do not count against you. Christmas and or birthdays etc. Also, if you're given gift cards by your hobby illiterate family or friends, you can without penalty use them on anything you want miniatures wise. [My birthday is in 3 days, and then Christmas - I tend not to get miniatures though...]

3.  Paints, terrain (or materials), and other hobby supplies do not apply to the no purchasing rule.
[No problem!]

4.  At least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week.  If you Instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #6MMRPC
[I'll endeavour - I'm myincubliss over on Instagram, but be prepared for pictures of cats, food, and all the other oddness you'd expect on a personal Instagram account]

5.  Zombtober will be part of the 6 month challenge so, Zombie related stuff during October is ENCOURAGED!
[So many zombie miniatures waiting to get painted, so this should be a good incentive!]

So essentially, it's in keeping with the intentions of the Tally (to paint more than you buy, and thus start to thin out the lead mountain and actually get some stuff finished) but dialled up to 11. Future projects wise, I keep saying that I'm not going to start any more, and this will hopefully help me stick to it! Truth be told, I think I should have it pretty easy with this challenge, as with a baby on the way I'm probably not going to be buying (m)any miniatures in the next six months anyway! I've got enough miniatures already to be getting on with, although sods law is that as soon as this post goes up Soapy will release those wizards I've been after for the last three years...

Right, so, cracking on with old projects - I've had a dig through my boxes of Star Wars miniatures and started pulling out various bits and bobs that I might fancy painting - my only worry now is that I might have pulled out too much, that I'll end up half-painting half of before getting distracted and moving on to something else!