‘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!

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…

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…

Monsters of rock 2: electric boogaloo

As was anyone’s guess, the first finished minis of the year aren’t actually anything from the plans outlined in my last post. These rocky chaps were dug out and started in my end of year rush to drag my average painted miniatures for the year up to one a week, and so got finished as I figured it was probably the same amount of work to do that as to put them into storage:

One of the things I’ve found with actually using my miniatures for D&D rather than just to fill boxes is that a lot of the time it’s actually quite handy to have multiples of monsters, so these got dug out to add to the one that I originally painted fourteen and a half years ago. I slightly converted one by twisting its head around a bit so that they wouldn’t all look identical - I did consider cutting and re-posing an arm too, but figured that would take more time to fix and potentially re-sculpt, time I didn’t have as New Year’s was rushing towards me while I was prepping these.

As you’ll see, my painting hasn’t really improved in fifteen years, as they accompany the original:

But, you know, dry brushing all the way makes for a very satisfying painting experience!

It’s only been two weeks of the new year, but I’ve already gained as well as painted some miniatures, so the Tally doesn’t look as healthy as it might otherwise. Firstly, a nice chap over on the LAF sent me a Santa rat mini, which sorts this year’s festive blog post:

I also grabbed the GW mini of the month servitor, as that seemed like it could definitely find a place in an inq28 warband if my fancy turns that way again. I didn’t take a picture of that apparently (and I’m sat down fairly comfortably typing this) so you’ll just have to imagine the little cardboard box it comes in instead.

All in, the Tally for 2026 currently stands at:

2 vs 2 = 0

Still in the black! 

What’s next? Back on topic, with something actually from my myriad project list… 

Esprit de corps(e)

As you will have seen from my last post, needing some Corpse Tokens for the first scenario of the Hunt the Golem mini-campaign, I set about making some! I know I could have just used the laser cut exclamation mark tokens that I use for Rangers of Shadow Deep, but I figured these would be a nice little project (and I’m sure this isn’t the last scenario that I play that will have a need for corpses).

I grabbed some 25mm flat Renedra bases, as that is what I’ve used for the rest of my tokens, glued sand to them, and then set about rooting through my bits box for bits that looked like they could be used to represent the aftermath of terrible violence wrought on the human body by a massive monster with stone fists. A couple of half-empty Frostgrave sprues furnished me with some arms, one of which got a paper clip bone stump, but these were looking a little bare so I looked for some torsos. After a brief pass for thought where I considered what the worst miniatures I had that I didn’t mind sacrificing to the cause, I soon realised it was probably the sprues of Wargames Factory figures. Technically the redcoats are worse, but zulus would be a good generic body when suitably distressed - and yes, I guess the golem hit them so hard that their shirts flew off? Either way, it keeps them nicely generic, so I can use these in Frostgrave, D&D, anywhere where I need to gore things up basically. Once I’d hacked at them with a pair of clippers, I went in with green stuff to make any cut edges look more ragged (as well as making a generic glob of gore on one base that still looked a little bare), and ended up with a selection of tokens that looked like this:

The one at the bottom even got a pelvic bone added, which I used green stuff to meld with the torso:

Is it realistic? Probably not. Do I mind? Also probably not.

They then got a quick and dirty paint job, all pale skin and copious globs of TCR, and they were ready for their first outing in the frozen city:

Doeskins of which, I also painted up these tents from Renedra:

A quick grubby paint job, with plenty of sponging and drybrushing to try and make them look nice and textured and worn, but isn’t really worth a separate blog post of their own. I’m torn on whether I should go back and black line some of the creases - I still have the campfire piece to paint, so it may still happen. Good enough to use in a game already at this point though!

What else is happening? I entered a competition hosted by Wargames Illustrated, and won a copy of the book Assassins and Templars:

Handy, as I’m currently very tempted by some Third Crusade gaming (more on that in a future post, I hope).

Finally, the family D&D game has restarted after five months away, with a short after school session:

The party are rushing back to Phandalin in response to a message received by sending stone (the ringing sound for which is the sound of an old school Nokia vibrating on a table, thanks YouTube for fulfilling my weirdest sound effect needs) when they come across something unusual - someone seems to have set up checkpoints across the road, but there is no one to be seen… alive, that is (although I had to remove the corpse tokens from the board, as they were grossing my daughter out). ‘We should be careful, it’s probably an ambush’ my wife’s character warns, as the Dragonborn Paladin played by our son sprints headlong at the nearest pile of crates…

Do you have time…

…to talk about our Lord and Saviour Tiamat?

So, I was off last week for Half Term, and so powered through painting some bits that I need for the next encounter in the family D&D game, some cultists of Tiamat:

In my canon, low level cultists wear rough spun plain brown robes, of a sackclothish material, but they decorate the hoods with triangles representing the different colour of chromatic dragon, with the positioning of the coloured triangles representing which type of dragon they hold in highest esteem, which you can probably just make out if you really zoom in.

This was also handy, as them being dressed in plain robes made for a pretty quick paint job! 

The more eagle eyed of you may well notice that the chap on the far right is armed with a very distinctive weapon - this is sadly the result of a picture frame falling on my desk and snapping off the scimitar (of which there are a sadly limited number per box, and I’m hoping future models from h to is box will all have), and so disheartened I decided to leave it as is looking like some sort of diminutive handaxe rather than trying to either fix it or replace it entirely.

As the next encounter is attacking a dragon in their lair while they are being courted by members of the Cult of the Dragon, I also needed some piles of treasure:

Apologies for the awful picture, it was very sunny when I took it and I assure you the piles of coins look to have more depth in hand than they do in this picture!

Which leads me to my last picture, pretty much what the party are going to see when they rush into the ruined tower - plus a green dragon languidly looking down on them…

After all that rushing to get them done, we didn’t end up having time to play D&D all week, but at least they are ready to go whenever we are now!

Painting these cultists brings the Tally to:

14 vs 206 = -192

What’s next? Well, I’ve been watching a lot of (classic) Doctor Who recently, but on the other hand we need to pack up and move house again, so if you don’t see me post for a while that will be why… 

I is for…

 …Intellect Devourers!

I forget why I painted these, as I don’t think I have a pressing need for them in the family D&D campaign, but it may well be because the scene in the D&D movies where the NPC warns the party that intellect devourers will attack whoever is smartest, only for them to then completely ignore the party, is classic D&D humour (and yet another reason it’s such a shame that we’re unlikely to see a sequel to that film).

You might not be able to tell from the picture, but these are absolutely tiny - that’s a 20mm base they’re on! Add some prominent mould lines, and me having to repaint the brain after I went too heavy handed highlighting it and it ended up far too light, to give a paint job that was surprisingly taxing considering it’s so small, but done is better than perfect, as I think the saying goes…

This brings the Monstrous Alphabet project up to:

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
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

Although they’ve released a new Monster Manual since I started this project, which may affect some of the letters (I’m fairly certain I have twice as many options for ‘Q’ if I update it to the new MM, for example).

Speaking of the family D&D game, we’ve managed to continue playing intermittently. Highlights include learning that encounter balance is tricky, like thinking siccing a second Shambling Mound on three level fours sounds like a good idea only for my wife (and main damage dealer in the party) to then suddenly fail to hit anything, ever, leading to some scary times:

Luckily their new friend that is a manticore was there to take some of the heat, otherwise we’d have been starting fb a whole new campaign…

Unpainted Dreamblade minis stood in for Ankhegs in the next session, where the party found out getting grappled and covered in acid sucks, but they were much better equipped to visit murder on these bugs than the Shambling Mounds:

Given the amount of time that has passed since my last blogpost, despite the fact that it’s almost Salute and I usually save my spending money for that, I’ve had a couple of deliveries. First of all, a package from Northstar:

While I may not have been painting much, I’ve been thinking about projects a lot, and I’m keen to make some headway on my Alamo miniatures. As I got a nice Mexican Command Group sent over from the States by my brother in law for Christmas, I thought I’d prep them and paint the alongside the conversions I’d made from Perry plastics. The banner bearer needed a pole, so I dutifully ordered some brass spears (and I’m looking forward to trying out making a flag from tomato purse packaging), and while I was there also treated myself to a discounted Wargames Illustrated (because it came with a free sprite of greatcoat wearing French, which will get converted into Mexicans most likely), and also an ACW miniature from the Giants in Miniature range that was also on sale, because logically seeing as the Alamo led into the Mexican American War and then the American Civil War it’s surely only a matter of time before I start a project like that too.

The other parcel that turned up is nothing to do with any current projects:

As occasionally happens, I was reminiscing on how good the Warmachine lore is, and trying to work out how far I’d got on reading my way through it. I dug out some books, and had an idle search on eBay looking for the Retribution book (which I should have bought when it was £3 on eBay rather than putting it off!), and ended up stumbling on this lot - the pics were blurry (and occasionally of the seller’s floor) but I saw some gun mages (which I already have, but are always cool) and a storm tower type thing that I didn’t own, so figured I’d stick a couple of quid on just on the off chance, and ended up winning. I was even more pleased when they turned up, as it looks like the Warjack in the lot is actually the Character Jack Thorn, owned by Lieutenant Haley, who has been in my painting queue for quite some time!

All in all, the Tally now stands at:

3 vs 23 = -20

So already slipping further into the red, and with Salute just around the corner! I suspect it’s going to get worse before it gets better, as the Perrys have previewed two boxes of plastic Napoleonic Spanish, and between currently reading Sharpe’s Eagle and the Alamo project I can see myself getting a couple of boxes…

HO HO, ER… HO

Happy Hogswatch Christmas everyone!

After having missed last year due to a house move, I’ve resumed the tradition of the festive miniature - this year we have Discworld’s Death as the Hogfather, which was actually a Christmas present last year:

 

Resin, rather than the metals I had previously had from this range, but quite lovely all the same.

Given how overcast it was the morning I took these pictures, they came out a bit gloomy, but the picture of the back is a better indication of the colour of his red clothes:

I was tempted to add a little snow to the base, but given how busy Christmas week has been that decision was largely taken out of my hands! Easy enough to go back and add though if the fancy takes me…

The Tally has taken hits in both directions this week though, as popping into our FLGS after work to grab some last minute bits I spotted that a D&D miniature I’d asked them to order in over the summer had finally hit the shelves - there was only one on the shelf, so it would have been foolish to leave without grabbing it:

The family fought their first Mimic last week, so Intellect Devourers seem like an acceptable escalation. 

This leaves the Tally at:

62 vs 195 = -133

Speaking of the family D&D game, after not managing to play for a few weeks, we managed to squeeze in a session the Sunday before last, which I shoehorned some festive cheer into having them fight a giant animated gingerbread man that had been taken over by an evil animated hand that the party had previously let escape. The gingerbread golem lumbered around battering people with his massive fists and vomiting tainted icing (full of black flecks and fingernails) over people - Christmassy!

Like dogs, only scaly, and bitier…

And so finally we come to the end of the Travelodge minis:

A pair of… drakes? I think one is an ambush drake, the other I’m not sure about. 

The family D&D game may well swing into Tyranny of Dragons once we finish the mash up of the various starter set adventures I’m running for them currently, so I figured a pair of tiny dragons would probably come in handy as they start smashing up the operations of the Cult of the Dragon:

As ever, they’re surprisingly nice sculpts for pre-paints. Not so nice that I’d pay the shipping costs on more of them though…

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

47 vs 198 = -151

As for what’s next, your guess is as good as mine! The orcs that I was previously painting have already been used half-painted a couple of times in D&D, plus I’ve been overcome with a sudden urge to paint some superheroes of the mutant persuasion…

Man’s best friend

So, a couple of weeks back I had the rarest of things - a free evening. My daughter was away at camp, my son was soundly sleeping, and so I dug out my Frostgrave stuff with the full intention of continuing the adventures of Tim the Necromancer. Perusing my Wizard Sheet, I remembered that I’d earned enough money to add a dog to his warband, which was probably quite sensible considering they’re planning on venturing into a ruined potion shop for sniffing out treasures. So I dug out this mini:

He’s the cultist hound, and I think he’s perfect for Tim because he has a fancy little gold armband that you can’t really see in these pictures.

I was originally just going to paint him as a black dog, but decided to instead take inspiration from the studio paint job to avoid it ending up looking too much like something else in the painting queue.

The next half dozen miniatures you’ll see on the blog were mostly painted in a Travelodge in Ilford, as I found myself staying away for work, and figured I’d use it as an opportunity it’s to get some painting done.

Obviously I forgot some vital paints, so they ended up getting finished when I got home…

As well as finishing this mini, I’ve also acquired some more. I found a bricks and mortar board game cafe two doors down from a surviving comic book shop while in Southend for work, and came away with these:

I also ordered myself a couple of sprues of Oathmark orcs, since my family are likely to come across some sooner rather than later in the family D&D game, and weirdly I don’t have any in my collection…

Speaking of work, I also came away with three sprues of space dwarfs, that my colleague saved from the bin for me:

All in, the Tally now stands at:

42 vs 196 = -154

As has been alluded to, there are more finished miniatures on the way. I mean, not enough to pull the Tally back into the black, but enough to nudge the needle a fraction…

Oozes sah

 Faaasahnds of ‘em!

So, after previously making some oozes, I was reading the adventure that I needed them for and realised that I actually needed two Ochre Jellies, so set about making another (complete with smaller and smaller versions, in case they get to use their splitting power):

Honestly, if you haven’t tried making ooze minis out of hot glue I heartily recommend giving it a go, the mild burns you’ll sustain are more than made up for by how satisfying a goopy mini you get at the end.

As I’d had so much fun before, I figured I could also make a different sort of ooze, a Black Pudding:

Same method of construction as before, but instead of getting glazed so that it was still transparent, they got a couple of coats of thinned Corvus Black (which is pretty much a very, very dark grey), then washed with Dark Tone, and then given a gloss varnish coat to make them look extra slimy.

I also selected the glue models that were extra ‘tentacle-y’ for the Black Pudding, as in the official art it looks like it’s especially grasping:

Finally, as I was making my plans, I figured that with just a couple more slimes I could use these in place of vapour snakes for Frostgrave, and so prepped two more medium and two more small bases, which would give me eight of each when I was one, which I assumed would be enough. But what to paint them as? I was tempted to paint them grey to hit another Monster Manual entry, and considered green or blue to make them look a bit manically or acidic, but then I thought ‘wait, what’s the best way I could mess with my family during D&D’, and realised that it was probably having pools of blood animate and attack them:

There were stippled with a couple of coats of Blood for the Blood God, as I wants it to look like flakes or drops of blood suspended in a slime. I could probably have gone a little darker, but worried that if I did it wouldn’t really read as ‘liquid’ any more, so this is how they’ll stay.

Finally, here’s a posed shot of my daughter’s Druid character getting menaced by a number of slimy foes:

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

38 vs 152 = -114

What next? I ordered myself a sculpting tool a that I could see about green stuffing some more Mexicans, but unfortunately it got delivered to our old address, which took a week to get sorted (as our old landlord apparently took the parcel to her house, and then forgot to bring it over after saying she’d drop it off…). Hopefully my enthusiasm is still as high when I finally get a chance to use it as it was a week ago…

Handy is as handy does

Several weeks ago, like many people we watched the Fallout TV show, and it made me want to revisit my Fallout project, so I dig out a Brother Vinni robot that had been sat unbuilt in his baggie for far too long. After putting together so many tiny fiddly bits, it looks real nice, and several applications of dirt grime and rust over a shiny chrome basecoat later looks like this:

The flying stand is slightly wonky, but let’s be friends and pretend that was intentional to create the illusion of movement.

I’d long ignored the Modiphius Fallout game, as the minis for it are on the larger side and so wouldn’t match anything that I’d previously painted for the project, but thinking about it I could just use the rules with my own minis, which a timely Humble Bundle furnished me with. I’ll probably pick up the two player starter at some point in the future too, as I figure Super Mutant miniatures looking over my survivors would look less out of place than a survivor being head and shoulders taller than is companions.

Although…

Speaking of looming head and shoulders over a survivor, here’s our handy robot chum next to a vault dweller to give you an idea of scale:

The Tally has also take a couple of bits in the opposite direction.

I popped into GW before picking my son up from Squirrels during the week to grab a pot of paint, and also grabbed the latest mini of the month:

As there’s always space for a lady barbarian in my life, and doubly so if she’s free.

Also, it’s Father’s Day today, and so I was gifted with this:

A kit with a miniature, a couple of brushes, and some little pots of Vallejo paint, which was nice. Funny story, my wife asked if there were any particular miniatures that I wanted that she could point the kids towards, so I explained about the Monstrous Alphabet project, and told her that I’d actually made a list recently of what monsters I still needed to do, explaining that the ones in brackets were the ones that I didn’t actually own yet. She had it backwards though, and thought that the ones in brackets were the ones I didn’t own, so I should probably dig out all of the other Yuan Ti minis I already own so that he can have some friends on the painting tile!

All in all, the Tally now stands at:

23 vs 149 = -126

Next - something that’s been alluded to a few times in previous posts…