Of men and monsters…

 The next two finished miniatures are both for Frostgrave:

This knight is the first finished mini for my Frostgrave warband, ready for some solo play after Rangers of Shadow Deep (as I’m planning to play through the solo campaign from the Frostgrave Folio). He’s mostly Fireforge bits, with a couple of accessories from the bits box to make him look a little more like he’s got enough supplies to last him ranging round a frozen city (although admittedly it’s only a pouch and a knife, so he probably can’t go too long before he needs to nip home for lunch):

As my warband is a Necromancer’s, I’d initially planned to make my Knight look a bit more evil, with a wild looking bare head and maybe a club or savage mace rather than a sword, but my daughter decided that he needed a helmet to protect his head, and who am I to argue with a 6 year old? A purple and black colour scheme make him look a little sinister though, so it’s all to the good…

(He’s a little dinky, coming from historical sprues, but not so much that it’s so jarring that I’d not use him).

The other mini is my Alchemical Monstrosity, for the first scenario in the Dark Alchemy solo campaign. As it’s a creature that’s a hideous combination of several creatures fused together with a whipping tentacle attack, I ventured into my bits box for the parts to make my own back in the distant past of mid-January…

Proof that you should never throw anything away, I’d kept these tentacles that I removed from a Horrorclix figure at least a decade ago (it’s pre-blog I think, it’s the chap in the straight jacket above the letter ‘e’ in Lead in the banner at the top of the page!):

I knew I had the perfect body, some sort of shifter from Mage Knight Dungeons. I couldn’t find the one I’d previously stripped, so I had to dig through boxes to find another (I found the stripped one in parts this week while looking for something else, coincidentally, which I’ll probably not need a second of but that’s the way it goes sometimes)

With copious scraping and some drilling and pinning, I had a very serviceable monster, that is incredibly difficult to photograph as it’s not really got a single best angle:

Then, ten months later I finished painting it! I’d originally put it on the back burner while I prioritised getting things finished for RoSD, but now we’re at the end of the year I’m painting whatever I can get my hands on as and when they take my fancy!

I went for very different skin tones on each area of the mini to try and really sell that it’s multiple creatures blended together, and where the detail is a little soft on the face went with bleeding eyes rather than trying to paint them in to add to the ‘flailing in its suffering rather than necessarily malicious’ vibe:

As well as the Alchemical Monstrosity for Frostgrave, it might also pull double duty as Possessed monster for The Silver Bayonet and as a … something horrible for D&D!

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

37 vs 23 = +14

And I realise as I’m typing this, let’s me cross another thing off of the 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 (2/3)
• 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!

House Stark marches to war in the New Year!

Having chipped away little by little, I've managed to get the 5 House Stark conversions that I'd previously posted finished:

Which brings my Stark forces to 13 minis total - I should really finish up statting up the various troop choices so that I can paint to a points limit or force organization of some sort rather than just what I fancy building at any particular time!

Tally:

5 vs 0 = +5

New year, new Starks!

Trying to stick to the plans of the year before last, here's a wip pic of some House Stark troop conversions I've been working on:

The archers are mostly from the new Perry Agincourt sprues, whilst the rest are a mix of Fireforge and Gripping Beast bits to get the look I was after. My possible favourite of the bunch would maybe have to be the mace wielding chap, as he looks almost sad that he's about to have to brain someone...

House Stark musters for war!

I know, you're as surprised as I am, I finished painting some miniatures!

My first 8 finished miniatures for the Stark forces for the A Song of Ice and Fire project - a mix of Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge bits to get the look I was after (much more rugged than my Lannister troops!) and a Wargames Foundry champion to lead them (from their Baron Wars range, originally a Citadel sculpt iirc). And yes, the chaps in the back rank have the Wolf's head shields that I previously made a one part push mould for:

As my 'knight' miniature (knight in inverted commas, as the Northmen don't have knights per se as the Southern types do, if we're going to get mega nerdy) had a large blank shield, I took this opportunity to try using a waterslide decal for the first time. Ever. I know, it's kind of weird to be this old and have never used a waterslide decal before, but what can I say, I've never really needed to before and kind of shied away from trying them for fear of ruining a paint-job right at the end...

Filled with the spirit of experimentation and adventure, I did a quick bit of internet research and soon settled on making my chap some unknown son of House Cerwyn, and dug out the necessary bits and bobs:

I was originally going to use an axe decal from the Bretonnian Men-at-Arms sheet, but when borrowing a pot of gloss varnish to prepare the shield from Uncle Johnny, he offered me these, which were better (I think) than the ones that I'd originally planned on using.

A quick coat of gloss to prepare the surface, some poking with a wet paintbrush and minute adjustments where the decal split where I had perhaps over-zealously trimmed it, and a touch up with paint (and an application of static grass, it seems, as I forgot to take an 'after' photo at the time) later, we have a chap holding a suitably emblazoned shield:

Huzzah!

These chaps take the tally to:

13 vs 16 = -3

That sweet zero is so close now, I might even reach it! I suppose I should probably sort out some stats and point values for the ASOIAF project soon, so that I can start painting towards playable skirmish warbands rather than my current approach of 'a little bit of this, a little bit of that'...

In other news, Uncle Johnny gave me some random GW sprues (from 1998, if the tab on them is to be believed) that he thought would come in handy with conversions for the ASOIAF project, that I'd never seen before:

Has anyone come across these before, and know what they are?