Living in the woods, hugging a tree…

Next in my desperate sprint through the painting queue before the year ends is the final entry in my Dungeons & Dragons Classes project, the Druid:

To recap, here is everything else so far:

Classes (as of 5e Player’s Handbook):

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

• Warlock
• Wizard

Originally when I was looking for a Druid mini for the project I was considering using one of the sculpts from the old board game expansion Forbidden Forest:

(Especially fun is the fact that the antagonist Druid in this has a separate staff, cloak and headdress that you can dress him up with)

But then I remembered this chap, that I think was from Wargames Illustrated at Salute a few years back, and fell a bit in love with his look of absolute disdain (I imagine he’s looking at someone who just thoughtlessly stood on a flower). It’s a lovely little sculpt, with a bunch of little details that add visual interest (the various bones and whatnot hanging off him) without there being so many that it’s a pain to paint.

Speaking of painting, when it came to it I went for a faded leather duster look, even if the idea of a nature loving Druid wearing that much leather might not feel quite right (although I justify it to myself as him having honoured the animal to continue using it after its death, rather than having killed it for fast fashion). What in hindsight might be a bit of flash rather than an earring I painted silver, which just makes it look a bit like he’s got a chipped paint job… but that’s how it goes sometimes. I also wanted to give him a non-white skin tone, to add a little more variety to my miniature collection. Unfortunately, I base coated his face months before I came back and finished him, and could not for the life of me remember what colour I’d originally used, leading to an evening peering at various Foundry skin triads trying to work out which one was closest in order to highlight the flesh…

[edit - my copy of The Silver Bayonet turned up the day after I posted this, and I suspect this Druid might slot nicely into that…]

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

33 vs 23 = +10

And let’s me cross the Classes project off of this year’s Challenge:

• Finish something old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Finish some scatter terrain (3/3)
• 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 (1/3)
• 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!

Looking at the Challenge, I’m probably on track to cross a few more off by the end of the year, which is nice! Also, at the start of the year I considered expanding the Classes project to include all of the races in the Player’s Handbook, which if I look back at things I’ve already finished would look like this so far:

• Dwarf
• Elf
• Halfling
• Human (there are plenty more, I won’t link them all here!)
• Dragonborn 
• Gnome
• Half-Elf
• Half-Orc
• Tiefling

(I’ve also done a Goblin adventurer, which appears in the Monster Manual iirc)

So only four miniatures to paint and I’ll complete that project too! Although I know I don’t own any Tiefling miniatures, and am fairly certain I’ve not got anything that could be pressed into service as a half-orc… that sounds like a problem for next year’s me though…

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...

Patrón

(The joke in the title only really works if you read this blog post immediately after my previous one...)

Despite working longer than usual hours at work (lockdown plus Christmas makes for busy times) I’ve managed to finish another miniature, snatching twenty minutes of an evening whenever I could:

She’s a repaint of an old Dungeons & Dragons prepaint, an Elf Warlock from an old starter set I believe. The detail is a little soft, but she still came out looking quite nice!

The boob armour was a bit much, but I think with a bit of careful colour selection it looks more like a set of clothes rather than a couple of bowls strapped to her chest now! She got purple hair because... I let my wife choose. While yes it is the same as the miniature in my previous post, no I did not paint them simultaneously, despite the fact that that would have been a much more efficient use of time...

Finishing her brings me one step closer to completing the admittedly fairly sidelined Classes project:

Classes (as of 5e Player’s Handbook):

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

• Warlock
• Wizard

(I would have updated the links, but blogger just won’t let me on any device currently, so you’ll have to try and imagine the others I’ve finished!)

I may even expand the project out to encompass miniatures to cover all of the races featured in the Player’s Handbook too, but that might be a project for next year...

The Tally took an equal hit in the other direction too this week:

I grabbed myself a Saruman from eBay after grabbing the latest issue of White Dwarf, in order to be able to play the Wizards Duel game in it (I already have a bare metal Gandalf somewhere in the Lead Mountain). So he hops straight into the stripping pot, and takes the Tally to:

46 vs 134 = -88

A spearwife without a spear tip...

...does that make her a staffwife?

I finished the final miniature needed for my Rangers of Shadow Deep party, the Tracker:

A lovely Frostgrave sculpt, that I really messed the face up on but after a few more passes I liked how he rest of the model looked so didn’t want to strip it and start again! Lockdown has been tough, I think I need to get some new brushes...

This miniature was originally purchased to be a Spearwife in my Wildling project, but was plucked from the queue of undercoated miniatures to get a slightly brighter paint job than she would have otherwise! I’m especially a fan of the various beads sculpted in her hair, which add a splash of colour - I probably would have stuck to neutral bone and wood colours has I been painting her solely as a Wildling, but I added some pops of gold, blue and green instead, imagining that she’s acquired some pretty beads and trinkets on her travels.

Finishing her takes the Tally to:

17 vs 68 = -51

Thinking about it, she’d also make a nice dnd Ranger, so I’ll include her in the Classes project too!

Coming next: the whole party!

Regdar, punching bag extraordinaire...

So, Christmas looms ever larger, and life has been getting in the way of my attempts to finish 52 miniatures this year - at this point, we’ve gone from me needing to complete a miniature every other day to hit that target to needing to finish three every other day...

Regardless of whether I hit that target or not, here’s another finished miniature:

(still getting to grips with using my wife’s photo booth, but I think this is better than the usual late night miniature photography!)

A miniature of Regdar from an old D&D board game - if you’re not familiar with Regdar (although you’ve probably seen him getting murdered numerous times in various pieces of art) I’d recommend giving this a read: The Many Deaths of Regdar

I like that he’s actually equipped with a bundle of stuff, he looks like he’s prepared to go delving! Less fun was the weird blending of some details from the casting process - his helmet stretched across to meet his sword, which I carefully cut away but might have taken a smidge too much material...

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

37 vs 27 =

Wait, the postman has been...

Northstar’s Black Friday sale brought 6 miniatures, and eBay brought a classic Harlequin Solitaire (as I’d been enjoying painting the Howling Banshee in my previous post and thought that all else failing I could use it for Blackstone Fortress after rules were published in White Dwarf)

Which actually brings the Tally to:

37 vs 34 = +3

Painting Regdar reminded me of an old plan (in the 4e days) to paint a miniature for every Dungeons and Dragons character class, and I thought I’d look back and see whether I could do the same for 5e, and was pleasantly surprised at how far done I was:


Classes (as of 5e Player’s Handbook):

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

• Warlock
• Wizard

I think I’ll add adding to this list to next year’s Challenge, and also may well add races to the mix... which also gives me another idea for an addition to the Challenge... 

Short, sweet, and hey where's my wallet?

It's my birthday today, so last night I was banished to my sweet basement while my wife made me a cake, and I managed to finish a couple of miniatures that I'd been working on, the first of which I present to you here:

Ugh, for all that is good about my basement, there is a distinct lack of natural light that makes miniature photography horrible! Although admittedly it was half one in the morning when this picture was taken, so it's not like there was an abundance of natural light available... Imagine that the colours aren't so washed out though nevertheless!

As you may recall, this is the promo Halfling Thief from Westfalia Miniatures, purveyors of a line of absolutely fantastic miniatures that are a joy to paint, and hopefully soon providers of the bounty of the first Kickstarter project that I ever backed...

Level of detail on a miniature is a difficult thing to balance, and I think Westfalia Miniatures are one of the best at getting it right - I had great fun picking out details like his pinky ring, the brooch on his cloak and painting tiny griddle lines on the sausages hanging at his waist, but there weren't so many things that I got frustrated as can sometimes happen when you spend ages painting details on an overly busy miniature and don't feel like you're making any progress...

[Brief diversion with a shot of how I spent the last minutes of my twenties...]

And here's the back! The cloak isn't as washed out as this to the naked eye - and the patch actually looks purple!

This was my first time painting fire on a miniature, and after (despite?) watching several youtube videos with wildly conflicting advice I think it came out looking alright (and oddly seems to be the only part of the miniature that actually photographed well...)

Eh, it'sdaylight now, so here are some much better lit pictures:

Fun fact: in daylight, you notice that the tea based display board that you made a couple of years ago seems to have taken on a strange tinge, and looks like it might have started going mouldy (boo!) - it looks like I might need to strip it off completely and redo it...

Anyway, finishing this chap takes the Tally to:

22 vs 333 = -311

What, did I say that I finished a couple of miniatures at the start of the post? Well, you'll just have to watch this space...

May the power of Pelor or some other monotheistic belief system that resolves around an advanced form of solar worship compel you!

This miniature was I think originally produced by Spyglass as a limited edition freebie for a fantasy book club. A number of them made their way to discount seconds shop The Works, and a nice chap on the Lead Adventure Forum was nice enough to pick one up for me (as my local branch didn't get any, boo). So, I undercoated it, painted the flesh (using a Foundry triad) and then didn't touch it again for a few years.

Digging through my project box for a few things to paint before getting sorted and actually working on project related miniatures (I know, I know, the same old story), I came across her and thought she'd be a nice mini to get finished.

I think my original plan for her was to have her in gleaming silver armour, but decided instead she might look nice in gold (which would help her stand out amongst every other silver armoured miniature I own), and would likely look a lot better doing it now with the paints I have than if I'd have tried it when I first got the miniature and only had a pot of Shining Gold to my name! Extrapolating from this, I imagined her as some sort of Paladin for a sun god, her unusual (compared to the rest of my Cadian Flesh toned miniatures) complexion suggested maybe she's far from home, spreading the word of her God and taking its light into the darkened places of the world. This line of thinking also influenced the colour of her cloak, as I thought it might be thematically appropriate for a paladin serving a sun god to have a cloak the colour of a clear sky... 

The cloak was base coated Fenris grey, then layered up from Caledor Sky to Ice blue and out the other side with the addition of increasing amount of white...

(Looking at this picture, I've just seen a splash of blue on the rock, which I'll fix with an extreme Bleached Bone edge highlight before posting!)

That's as far as the considered symbolism goes though - for the colour of her hair and the gem on her shield, I just asked my wife to choose! I originally highlighted the hair much lighter, but it just looked... wrong, so I glazed it with the original colour to knock it back a bit. 

I even tried the Kev Dallimore tip of painting the bottom lip a shade of red on female miniatures, which in my mind I imagined would look a bit harlot-ish, but in reality looks quite nice!

Finishing this pious elf maiden takes the Tally to:

21 vs 333 = -312

(I sold 37 orks, hence the reduced total on the acquired side of the equation!)

This is probably the last miniature I'll paint and post before moving house in a fortnight, as everything will be getting packed up (one of these days) - this also includes everything on offer in my previous Trade Post, so if you want anything get in quick before they get packed up!

My Pathfinder character, painted and converted!

So, as I've joined a Pathfinder game, I needed a character! Although I'd originally envisioned rolling up some sort of wild magic using bunny man sorcerer (borrowing heavy inspiration from a certain Crit Juice character, I'll admit), after perusing through my DMs (quite substantial) stack of rulebooks I remembered a particular Mage Knight miniature that I had knocking around that I could build a character around... Which is how I ended up rolling a Dhampir Gunslinger. 

(Hmm, this pic of the still wet wash on the hair is blurrier than it originally looked...)

Honestly though, despite my emo leanings, I'm aiming for more Vampire Hunter D meets Vash the Stampede by way of Gungrave than Edward Cullen!

After rolling stats (4d6 and take the highest 3, we're not so hardcore as to roll 3d6 in order as we briefly considered) I came up with this:

Well, I'd best not let anything hit me. Ever. Plus, being a dhampir, if he does get hit, it's going to be tough to heal... Never let it be said I choose the most powerful option over the most flavoursome!

Anyway, on to the conversion itself; this is the model that inspired my choice of class: 

An old Mage Knight Fanged Gunslinger, because what's not to love about a vampire with flintlocks?

Although my DM had said that if I had my heart set on using the mini as-is he'd find a way to let me have wings, I thought that might be a little munchkin-ish and overpowered so they were the first thing to go:

Two quick snips and a quick filing later we have one mini with his feet firmly on the ground:

Speaking of feet, being a plastic prepaint that has been sat in a box for gods know how long, his stance was a little ... wonky, for lack of a better word.

 A quick dip in some boiling water, a slight reposition and then a bath in cold water to set the pose later though and he was ready to get pinned to his new base:

Then it was just a case of adding some finishing touches, like green-stuffing over his back to smooth out where I'd removed his wings, and doing the same on his chest where I'd carefully scalpelled off the somewhat garish bat motif he was originally emblazoned with:

I'd originally planned to have him carting around a backpack and length of rope (both from my Mordheim box), but in the end settled on just a sheathed sword, as I couldn't seem to find a way to utilise the other pieces without him looking like a child on his first day of school...

Although, with his fairly low Strength score, it makes sense for him to be travelling light! Theoretically, he should never need to actually use his sword (as hopefully nothing will ever get that close!), but as they say it's better to have it and not need it than the opposite!

Then, it was just a case of getting him painted! I'm not entirely sold on the skin tone, as I mixed up a grey based flesh tone to try and give him a sallow, unhealthy look, but hey, if you don't experiment you never learn anything.

[Tally - 67 vs 36 = +31]

To anyone that follows me on Instagram, I apologise in advance if there's a sudden surge in pictures of me winning Pathfinder (and other such cliched jokes) tonight, but it's the first proper session with this group...

WOMP day five...

...the end of the inaugral WOMP week, also known as 'a biker, a priest, a singer and an ape walk into a bar...'

A biker from em4, this survivor has a substantially better chance of survival than the average - I mean, doing drive-bys on zombies with a samurai sword? Although admittedly there is an increased risk of incapacitating yourself and dooming yourself to getting eaten. In other news, Day of the Dead is on at the minute, which raises several points:
- Fast zombies? Seriously? Slow zombies are awesome, you can sneak past them, you can trick them into falling down holes, they're like a tide, a force of nature, but fast zombies that can crawl on the ceiling? That's not awesome, that's your life expectancy in that scenario whistling past your ear and down to zero. 28 Days later started some sort of 'my zombie's better than yours' war with any new zombie movie...
- Why is it that people in zombie films are so unprepared? Do zombie films not exist in-universe in zombie films? And if not, why are they calling them zombies? (I know, I know, suspension of disbelief, but still...)

Eolith's monk, bought from Heresy because it's just such a nice sculpt - look at it, so simple, but with so much character! It's one of those minis that's so nicely sculpted that it's an absolute pleasure to paint, and so you lavish more care and attention on it than you normally would.

Joining the cleric above in the on and off project of dnd classes is this bard, from Hasslfree, that I picked up at last year's Salute. Another lovely miniature, but I just couldn't get his face how I wanted...

The last of today's output is this hairy fellow, an Orangutan from Black Cat Bases for my possible Rise of the Planet of the Apes (ROTPOTA) project, because every squad of improved-intelligence apes needs a wise-looking Orangutan to act as spiritual advisor and strategist... I have a gorilla in the painting queue at the minute, but as I bought it sight unseen it's a little smaller than I'd like (and the Bushido gorilla has since caught my eye...)

with these four finished, the tally now stands at:

12 vs 27 = -15

Alas, the postman still didn't bring the goodies I was expecting this morning, which threw my plans off somewhat. There's a group of 15 fantasy minis waiting for some love in the painting queue, which would take me back up to zero, or I could paint the 10 minis for Strange Aeons, or crack on with finishing my zombie horde base... but what I really want is for the postman to bring the things I'm waiting for so I can get distracted by them. Truth be told though, in this wonderful high-tech modern era that we live in, I have the Song of Blades and Heroes rulebooks on my phone, so that should help with keeping my motivation pointed in that diretion...

Kung fu, discourse and lighting...

So, after claiming the end of radio silence... nothing for a while. 

I blame a multitude of factors: moving house, halo 2, and in some cases the fact that I've been staring at certain half-painted miniatures for long enough that I'm considering thowing them away and buying new, exciting, shinier ones (and yes, I realise that the sensible option would be to take them from half-painted to fully painted, but hey, sometimes your brain just wants to make excuses to buy new miniatures).

Despite all this, after a period of approximately eight hours of procrastination today (during which I watched several episodes of Adventure Time, drank several coffees, and went out for several cigarettes, so it's arguably not technically a wasted day) I managed to actually finish some miniatures:

A couple of dudes from Black Hat that will serve various roles - the sorceror type I see as being an ally for Conan (since I'm sure there should be at least one non-evil magic user in the universe), but can also slot into the generic fantasy project (like most anything else that gets the conan tag); whereas the martial artist is a monk for the 'paint a miniature for each dungeons and dragons class' that I shamelessly stole from EvilCartoonist and then didn't really do anything with, as well as being able to stand in as a martial artist for 7tv...

Onto the discourse part of the title: there are many miniatures I want, and many projects I want to start. I have a terrible problem with considering every movie I see and every game I play in terms of what 28mm miniatures I could buy to use for it, but never actually finish anything as I've lready started two more projects. I rewatched Sucker-punch and started planning conversions, I'm playing Halo 2 at the minute and planning on repainting some clix (after christmas though, let's hope Santa brings me a brick). I think I've found the secret though, the answer to my problem: 'give it a week'. After a week, I'll have either lost interest, or discovered another three things I want to do, or actually be considering starting something as a project. But even then, it's likely another week will pass before I actually start anything, as I'll have been distracted by something else shiny.

And so, onto the final part of the title: we need better lights in the Craft Room. That was it.

Which, as usual, brings us to:

118 vs 293 = -175

There are 23 days left of the year. If I painted 7.6 miniatures a day every day, I could end up with a score of -1. I've painted two miniatures in the last month, and truth be told they were already more than halfway done. I've said it before and I'll say it again, roll on the new year clock reset!

11th Doctor, companion, and some more D&D...

Painting, I have been (apologies for the more crap than usual pictures):

The 11th Doctor, ready to join his two predecessors that I'd previously painted. Nicole (my previously alluded to young lady) had a look at all three together:

and judged them somewhat harshly: 'the ninth one's rubbish, it looks nothing like Christopher Eccleston. But it might just be your painting...'. She's lucky I love her so much. She also complained that the 11th Doctor looked like a zombie, but in my defence I hadn't finished painting him at that point (and yes, that second anecdote was added when she leant over and complained that her complaints had not been properly noted).

But what's the Doctor without a companion? (other than more interesting, if the tail-end of the tenth Doctor's run is anything to go by)

The Heresy Amy Pond. I love Karen Gillan, but I really hated painting this mini's face (and yes, as soon as this post is up I'm going to go back and fix the smudge under her eye). But with the pair of them painted up, it means I can do things like this:

On the non-Who front, I've finished a trio of miniatures:

A gaoler type from Heresy. Don't ask why he's based on a square base, or exactly what I was trying to achieve with his basing, as I think I originally started this particular miniature somewhere in the region of three years ago, before there even was a dnd project, when I bought the miniature because I fondly remembered the intro adventure to my generation's 'Red Box', the 'Black Box With A Big Red Dragon On The Front', where your character wakes up in Zanzer Tem's dungeon under the baleful glare of a fat gaoler...

The other two finished miniatures are an unlikely pair of bedfellows:

A Dwarf Fighter, originially a Heroquest mini, that was a bit of a nightmare to paint as some of the detail was a bit stretched (apparently back in the old days all plastic miniatures suffered from this, due to the limitations of technology at the time - sometimes we forget how spoiled for quality we are these days...)

And a Goblin Sneak (well, I guess he can be a Rogue for now, until I sort out a proper Rogue mini...), that was originally a character figure from Mage Knight Dungeons. Odds on if I ever play Keep on the Shadowfell he'll make a funny little Splug stand-in...

Well, that little lot brings the tally to:

111 vs 285 = -174. All I need to do is sell 175 miniatures and I'll be back in the positive! Or, more realistically, wait until the New Year for the count to reset to zero...

Plans for the near future include cybermen. Lots of cybermen. However, if I can't get the last couple I need for conversions, or if said conversions are less fun than I envision, it's entirely likely that plans for the near future will include Judge Dredd (because Dirty Frank in 2000AD at the minute is the best it's ever been), my Blood Bowl Team (Humans if I can finally get a Mighty Zug, or maybe Orcs, since I just saw an awesome Orc Coach conversion over on another blog using a Games Day miniature that I'm sure I own), or maybe even something like some of the Firefly project miniatures I keep getting out of boxes, looking at lovingly, and then carefully putting back away...

A whole lotta evil and a hairy guy...

Well, to get the usual business out of the way:

Yes yes, minus one to the tally, I'm a bit rubbish really - although in my defence I stuck a 99p bid on him on ebay and forgot all about it until the email telling me I'd won arrived a few days later - he'll go into the stripping pot with all those other unfortunate souls, hoping to one day see the business end of a paintbrush...

On a more positive note, I managed to finish a whole bunch of miniatures!

Ahh, lovely lovely single colour easy to paint nightgaunts, how the tally loves thee. I'd originally planned to only buy one, as that's probably all I'd really need for Strange Aeons, but they're just so cute! Well, cute for a faceless haunter of the night... Who am I kidding, they tickle people with those barbed tails. But they do it silently...

I know, I'm surprised too, this makes two lots finished from a package that arrived last week, normally it takes me a few months (sometimes years) from receiving miniatures to actually painting them! A nice 'man in a suit' type alien, suitable for menacing the good Doctor, or perhaps used as a terrible experiment gone wrong unleashed by some evil genius [cue seamless segue]

Boom! My 7tv rulebook is in the post, so I thought I should at least have one miniature finished expressly for use with it. And look, he has an adorable kitty!

Which admittedly probably isn't meant to be photographed at such close range, but hey, just look at his little face... In other news, there are some femdroids currently winging their way to me to add to the growing collection of 'undercoated miniatures for 7tv'.

I even managed to finish off a miniature that's been in the painting queue for a ridiculous amount of time, this zombie from the Frothers sculpting competition set.

I even spent several minutes with a pin teasing TCR so that it looked like the blood spilling from the severed head was following the laws of gravity and flowing down the gulley between two tiles towards the open drain. Because it's the little things that make me chuckle. Also, I'm sad like that.

The zombie project has fallen off my radar a little bit, as there's so many other projects demanding my attention (the span of which isn't exactly great). Then again, I've got a decent number of zombies finished, and the rules are at least half done, so I can easily pick it back up when my mood swings back that way (as it inevitably will).

Last but not least, we have:

A barbarian! 2 classes down, only a dozen or so to go! I really like this miniature, it was an absolute joy to paint, which meant I spent a little more time on it than usual (although it's hard to tell with pictures this close up).

As is inevitable, we come to the tally:

80 vs 202 = -122

I wish I could say that I'm not going to buy any more miniatures this year, that I'm going to power on and even up those numbers, but today Uncle Johnny called and asked if I wanted to go to Salute...