The Mountain that Rides...

My journey through my painting queue continues, venturing to a miniature that has been about 80% finished for several years, Ser Gregor Clegane:

I'd had the metals and the yellows done for a time, but the dogs detail was putting me off. I bit the bullet and grabbed a tiny brush to bring him to the finish line! The sculpted detail is lovely, but a little shallow, so I had to improvise a bit. Squint a bit and it looks great!

I also went over the armour with a ton of dings and scratches to make it look like he lives for nothing but combat. Rules wise, I think I'll use adapted troll stats - he should be able to tear through a horde of regular troops! 

Also, whilst discussing trolls, he's a pretty big lad:

[Caption: Stark Bannermen and the very bad, terrible, awful day]

The Dark Sword A Song of Ice and Fire figures are a larger scale than everything else I'm using, but The Mountain is meant to tower over his foes, so I think it works in this case... Which is a bit of a shame, as there are some lovely figures in that range, but they'd just look out of place with my Perry troops!

I have a scenario percolating in my head involving the Mountain and some of his brigands trying to burn down a house (so I should probably get around to building and painting the Perry House I have tucked away somewhere) in the period where they rampaged around Westeros during the War of Five Kings, so who knows, maybe I'll make some more Stark troops next year..

Tally:

37 vs -46 = +83

So, fifteen more minis before the end of the year to hit my Challenge target, what next? I've got a few bits currently on my painting tile, but then again there's an entire Blood Bowl team in the painting queue, choices choices...

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age...

...no wait that's something else...

When I originally put together my initial Lannister warband, I built the ranged warriors with bows, figuring that it was an appropriate weapon, and vaguely considering perhaps including some crossbows when I got around to making the more heavily armoured Lannister House Guard, thinking that that would add to the look of them as an elite unit. However, when reading a post by Captain Blood over on the LAF about his Robin Hood project, he made the point that the longbow is traditionally the weapon of the plucky underdog, the the common man champion of right and justice, whereas the crossbow is the weapon of the snooty oppressor, and I knew I had to make some for my Lannisters!

And thus, we have four crosbowmen in lovely red and yellow:

As per usual, they're a mix of bits from various Perry WOTR kits - probably about 90% from the Mercenaries sprues, although truth be told I don't pay a lot of attention to where the bits come from while I'm kitbashing!

These were as ever a pleasure to paint, although at times I ended up scrolling through google images trying to work out what material each part of the crossbow should be (the winder thing especially) and ended up winging it a lot of the time! I also painted these to match the previous miniatures completed, so no eyes, fairly scruffy, a maximum of 3 layers (not including washes) used for most colours - thanks past me for setting the bar low!

This takes my Lannister forces up to a respectable 24 models:

Although I'd like to add some more pikemen, and maybe some cavalry, and should probably finish painting the Mountain... And then finish working out stats and point values for everything so that I can work out what else I'd need to paint to make them a workable gaming force...

Tally

17 vs 40 = -23

Plus, I get to knock off another Challenge! There were a number of times when I was sorely tempted to start something new and just reset the counter (one of which I'll hopefully be able to speedily sort and paint and post this week!), but I'm glad that I managed to stick with it!

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (16/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old) x2
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

Writing this post, it turns out that it's been two years to the day since I last added anything to my Lannisters - how did that happen?! 

Next on the ASOIAF / Game of Thrones front will probably be some wildlings to go with the Others that I painted last year though, which will then need some Night's Watch to go with them - I don't suppose anyone has any LotR rangers that they want to trade?

"All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs"

A solid two years after doing the conversion, I've painted my Tyrion Lannister!

As you may remember, the conversion is based on a LOTR hobbit with green stuff boots, a GW axe and the head of a ... well, I'm not sure entirely, as it was donated for the project, but I'm fairly certain it's from a Wargames Factory sprue. 

Like the entire project, he takes inspiration from a mid-mash of sources - armour and axe from his brief stints in battle at the Battle of the Green Fork and Blackeater, his lack of a nose from... well, mostly from it getting squashed whilst in cautiously cleaning up the plastic head, but we can always claim that it's inspired by his look post the Battle of the Blackwater!

Painting this takes the tally t-

Oh, that.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a skirmish narrative wargame and this one looks shiny (and I'm already considering the options for swapping out the enemies, or running it as a more free-form game on Space Hulk tiles...)

Painted Tyrion and impulse purchase (although spending a week mulling over whether I was going to get it makes it less of an impulse purchase I suppose) takes the tally to:

19 vs 104 = -85

Alas, my assassins won't be getting painted tonight, as having dug out the Foundry black triad that I bought at Salute last week it turns out that rather than shade, mid-tone and highlight, the pack contains three pots of shade, which is... well, just black really. Maybe I could paint the cape and cowl on the Batman mini I've got on the go an- no wait, that's black too.

There are no men like me. There's only me

Jaime Lannister... How do I begin to explain Jaime Lannister?

Jaime Lannister is flawless. 

I hear his hair's insured for 10,000 Gold Dragons.

I hear he does cart commercials... in Asshai.

His favorite bard is The Blue Bard.

One time he met Loras Tyrell on a tourney field... 

 - And he told him he was pretty. 

One time he punched me in the face... it was awesome.

(If you've never seen the film Mean Girls, that heavily referential joke probably fell flat)

So, as you may have guessed, I managed to finish painting the Jaime Lannister conversion that I'd been meaning to finish for so long in order to face off against the tiny Ned Stark I had previously completed (in order to refight the confrontation in the streets of King's Landing when Jaime discovers that Catelyn Stark has taken his brother prisoner, hence him being in a long coat rather than full plate). The two generic lads flanking him are both minor conversions that I'd built a while ago that I largely painted whilst waiting for washes to dry on other miniatures...

I hate my painting most days, but I eventually got his coat to a stage I was happy to stop and walk away from...

Tally -

18 vs 22 = -4

Having finished these three miniatures brings my total of painted Lannisters to neneteen men, although if I finish the next figure in my painting queue it will be nineteen and a half, if you catch my drift...

A long time coming...

Unbelievably, I finished painting the converted Lannister House Guard that I started way back in June 2013:

They're plastic Minas Tirith bodies with all insignia removed, with cast converted heads and roman oval shields with a cast on lion insignia from an Advanced Heroquest figure, led by a Finecast Minas Tirith hornblower with a Perry head (mostly for the pursed lips) and the sword that was broken by the lot he came in being sent in a bag with zero packaging material by an unthinking seller cunningly replaced with one from the Perry mounted men at arms set:

I filed away the front of the hand to allow the graft of the whole piece from the Perry set, rather than trying to pin a teeny thin blade onto his fist...

Completing these 8 miniatures doubles the current size of my Lannister forces, so I suppose I should get round to painting a hero type or two to lead them... 

(Ignore Dengar for now...)

Tally - 14 vs 15 = -1

I'm still here, honest...

So, things have been all quiet on the blogging front of late, as I now have somewhat reduced modelling space:

Yes, that's right, I am now the proud owner of one tiny ewok. She spends a lot of time sleeping currently, so I've been grabbing some modelling and painting time during my Paternity leave where I can...

Well, if by grabbing modelling and painting time you mean wildly procrastinating, watching blocks of Community on Netflix, or spending half an hour searching for your superglue because you can't remember where you put it when tidying away dangerous things ready for having a baby only to find that you did in fact put it somewhere sensible you just didn't look at the back of the modelling supplies cubbyhole... 

When I finally tracked down the necessary materials, I thought I'd crack on with the Jaime Lannister conversion that's been rattling around the Song of Ice and Fire project box for a ridiculous amount of time waiting for the right head transplant...

One Westwind Pictish head later and voila, we have a Jaime ready for painting. So, based on how long it took me to finish my Ned miniature, expect to see a post in two to three years...

After six months of being good, I had a little splurge though, and ordered a few bits for some Mass Effect inspired fun:

A limited edition Mantic figure that is 'heavily inspired' by the Geth. All I need to do now is work out whether I should spend infinity money on buying more of these, or should I see about casting up the head to use on donor bodies...

A Strider mech from Dreadball, because I got it for such a good price that I figured I could convert some weapons onto it rather than just coughing up the cash to pay full price for the Deadzone one that comes with weapon arms...

And also an Enforcer starter to convert into Cerberus Assault Troopers and the kickstarter exclusive figure to convert into a Quarian scavenger type. 

Alas, I still find myself searching for the right helmets for headswaps before work can begin in earnest - the general look I'm after is this:

The closest I've found is a Pig Iron head (top centre), but I'm still hoping there's something better that I have as yet to discover (anyone that can think of any I've not seen, drop me a comment and I'll love you forever)

Well, heads and the new Enforcer support booster and an Infinity ninja (to convert a Guardian and Phantom respectively), but then I'll be right on the productivity train (well, that or go back to looking for heads to Frankenstein onto Sedition Wars bodies...)

Tally - 6 vs 15 = -9

Lunchtime productivity

I've set myself up a little temporary paint station at work so I can get some painting done on my lunch break:

Word to the wise though - if you followed my instructions to make your own ghetto wet palette, you need to transport it very carefully as it's not actually watertight...

Experiments in one part moulding: the end, I guess...

So, some careful cutting and filing later, and we have a cutesy little lion that we can glue onto a modified shield donated by some Roman chaps:

Not just one, a whole bunch:

 For some I used green stuff, others a mix of green stuff and milliput. I think the green stuff casts feel like they've captured the detail better initially, but feel a little softer as I was handling them during clean-up, whereas the ones made using the milliput mix are rock hard and unlikely to deform, but lack the flexibility of their green stuff counterparts... Either way, I'm using a mix of both, as I'm trying to be less fussy. Less fussy, in that I discarded the rest of the casts of my converted Lannister guard helmet, as they all either broke or had imperfections that it was more work than it was worth to fix whilst cleaning them up, leading to making a couple of new moulds to cast some fresh ones, in green stuff this time:

Yes, my beloved finally gets to sit down at her sewing machine and I stick a bunch of tiny heads on sticks under her light, that's perfectly acceptable behaviour isn't it?

Quick, here's a pic of the bodies awaiting their new heads and shields to distract you from dwelling on my ungentlemanly behaviour:

Although the finecast hornblower needs a whole bunch of fixin' (not to mention a new weapon, as his flimsy original one didn't survive the journey to me...)

Experiments in one part moulding part 2.5

As the green stuff designs still felt a little soft last night, I thought I'd have a crack at some using a mix of milliput and green stuff:

Organised chaos, that's how I'd describe my cutting mat...

These ones seem to have dried a little harder, so we'll see how they take filing...

Experiments in one part moulding part two...

So, the previous mould ended up like this:

So, having sought advice from the collected wisdom of the chaps over on the LAF, I tried again. The suggestion seemed to be that Blu-Stuff wasn't the way to go, and the liquid green stuff wasn't ideal either. So, scratch everything I'd previously done! After a bit of a search, I managed to dig out my instant mould and green stuff (it had been tidied away after my young lady had requested that there be a flat surface available somewhere) and set to making a new mould:

Preparing my instant mould the usual way, results in a mould that looks a little like the world's most unappealing Turkish Delight:

However, it looks a lot better on the other side:

But then again, so did my Blu-Stuff moulds... Lubricating the mould with vaseline, I mixed up a small batch of green stuff and had at it - the green stuff is a bit old, and a bit tough, but nevertheless I'd soon churned out these:

A little thicker than I'd hoped, but still not a bad result for a few minutes work! Overall, it seems like using proper green stuff rather than the liquid variety has made all the difference, as I can churn out a few in very little time at all. Fingers crossed I can trim these down once they're dry and glue them onto the receiving shields, but that's a job for another day... In the mean time, I might have a go at doing a thinner scraping of green stuff, and trying to stick it straight onto the receiving shield while still wet...

Experiments in one part moulding...

So, having finished a handful of Lannisters, I thought it prudent to knock together some Starks for them to brutally hamstring. After putting together a couple of archers, I started thinking about some sword and spearmen. Now, I quite like the style of the shields used by Stark troops in the TV series: 

and thought they'd make a good jumping off point. I found an old GW shield with a wolf's head, and cleaned off a viking shield to attempt to transfer it to:

(the hole is because I thought the easiest way to clean the boss off was to just drill out the whole thing and reconstruct it later). I stuck the donor shield to a square of plasticard ready to make a one-part mould:

And then... had second thoughts about using the viking style shield, and ordered some hoplite shields to try out instead.

Somewhat disheartened, I turned back to the rightful heirs to the Iron Throne - the Lannisters! With a bit of fiddling, I managed to convert a pair of spear-holding arms to be wielding a pike:

But then, rather than actually going on to integrate this part into an actual miniature, due to my tiny attention span sound tactical thinking, I decided I should probably finish up some straightforward hand weapon and shield warriors. I got as far as sticking a head onto a body:

rather than doing some detail work tidying up the join, I focused on working on carving away what remained of the miniature's original shield. Much cutting and filing later, it was time to make a new shield - aha, this post has come full circle! Again, I turned to the TV series for inspiration:

I like the image of the oval shield for Lannister House Guard, although non-House Guard troops will probably get more traditionally medieval looking shields. So, in order to get this effect, I needed an oval shield (from some plastic Romans, cheers John!) and a lion - I dug out a Bretonnian shield from my bits box, and we're back on the path to making moulds!

Huzzah, Blu-Stuff!

Which made a mould:

Which was trimmed down for ease of handling (both in terms of width, so that I could line it up to the receiving shield, and depth, so that the detail part of the mould would actually touch the receiving shield!):

And then filled with liquid green stuff:

Now, despite how straightforwards and working things have appeared thus far (due to the magic of post-production), this is where the wheels started to fall off... This one wouldn't turn out, so (despite the claims that nothing sticks to Blu Stuff) I tried again with some vaseline as a mould release agent, but still no dice. As the detail was fairly shallow, I tried a thicker layer of green stuff, reasoning that if I could actually get it to transfer onto the shield I could then cut it down and tidy it up...

However that plan relied on it turning out...

I thought maybe thinning the mould would make it a little more flexible (as Blu Stuff makes firmly fair moulds, not the flexible rubbery type I had envisioned when I originally ordered it)

But that didn't work wither. Somewhat frustrated, I turned to Google to see if there was a readily available ready-made lion shield that I could use... and was reminded of a lion shield (with deeper detail!) in the Advanced Heroquest set. Much dragging out of boxes later, and I have one in hand:

Cue more making of moulds (note the filled mould in the background - I thought I'd try letting a filled mould set before trying to transfer it)

(spoilers - the detail was still still too thin to be of any use)

[Brief diversion] - while all this was going on, my wife to be got silver ink on my copy of the LOTR SBG rulebook that she was using to lean on, and trying to wipe it off only made things worse:

To cut a long story short, the new mould was then trimmed, thinned, greased, filled, clamped to the receiving shield and left overnight to set. 24 hours later, I expectantly open the clamp, to find:

Sadness abounds.

Aidez-moi wise internet personalities, where am I going wrong?