Ragman

Another miniature finished, this time for the Batman project:

Ragman!

You know, Ragman:

No?

My road to Ragman is something of a convoluted one - I first saw this miniature way back in the misty days of the past in an issue of Inquest Gamer that had a full visual spoiler from the then brand new Heroclix set Collateral Damage (back in the day when physical media was still a thing that you could purchase) and, though it wasn't a character that I was familiar with, thought it was a pretty interesting and dynamic sculpt. Many, many years later, I ended up ordering one randomly whilst picking up some other bits and bobs from Blue Rat Games with the vague idea that maybe I could convert it into some sort of fantasy wraith.

Obviously, I stashed it and didn't get around to converting it.

For the last couple of years, I've been working my way through a backlist of Batman comics, in in-universe order, starting with Year One, and this year I hit some comics featuring Ragman. A guy with a murderous cloak of rags that makes him kill nazis (well, the Ragman from the era of comics that I've been reading, as opposed to the other that a quick google suggests also exist), although he struggles against it, that I already own an interesting miniature of? Consider me sold!

So, a-painting we did go!

This is a difficult miniature to photograph, given it's dynamic pose...

The angle where you can actually see the rags of DC's 'Tatterdemalian of Justice', each of which is the captured soul of an evildoer. Except for here, where it's just a random daub of paint, which was oddly therapeutic to do...

My original idea was to give the body a wash to grubby it up a little, but I ended up not doing this as I liked how bright some of the colours were in contrast to the rest of the model...

Tally

54 vs 342 = -288

I've dug a random assortment of half-finished bits and bobs out of the painting queue, so we may even see another post or two before the regular end of year post!

In other news, apparently this little corner of the internet hit over 100,000 page views at some point in the last fortnight - even if only 6 of them are real people that have found my stuff and liked what they saw, that's okay with me!

Talz copilot

Having rediscovered the time sink iPad app Star Wars Uprising, I found myself inspired by one of its loading screens:

Sure, they've just made Chewbacca into the abominable snowman and made Han a gender swapped Twi'lek, but I think it's pretty cool! I like the idea of a Talz NPC or PC if I were to run the RPG, or worst case scenario he can make up the numbers in a Fringer band when I get round to finishing enough miniature to be able to run a tabletop game...

So, after a quick rummage through my supplies (making sure I still had another spare for when I get round to making a Foul Moudama conversion) I dug out an old Talz spy miniature, and set about separating him from his base, as well as popping off the arm that was on a plug for ease of access to his body:

Whilst I wasn't looking to make an exact copy of the character in the picture, I wanted to take several cues from it (mostly the belts and bags) and so set about marking out with a pen where I wanted belts:

I considered green-stuffing belts on, but thought that it might look a bit scrappy as my green stuff skills are fairly rudimentary, and it would look a bit like the belts were laid on top of his fur rather than he was actually wearing them - so I decided to cut in the belts, figuring that if I didn't like how deep the cut went I could always paint some liquid green stuff into the groove to bulk it back out:

Brief side note: despite having spent so much time getting my work desk sorted out, I'm doing this in the living room, as my wife wanted me to watch the Great British Bake Off with her in exchange for watching The Thing with me (because nothing says Happy Anniversary like old school body horror):

[edit - it's a week later as I'm editing this and we still haven't watched The Thing]

Surveying the cuts, I think they will look fine without green stuff, so I set about scavenging some pouches. A modern Space Marine sprue provided a set of three for his chest harness, and a freebie Journeyman Bot Handler sprue from Maelstrom's Edge from Spiral Arm Studios that I got at Salute provided another pouch to go on his leg.

Looking at the figure thus far, I thought he could do with a bigger gun than the somewhat scrawny pistol that the figure originally had; so I turned to the freebie sprue again:

A little trim here, a blob of gel glue there and here we have a completed conversion:

That's a 30mm base he's on, if I recall correctly, to give an impression of what size he is...

I ummed and ahhed for a while over whether to replace the doodad in his left hand (as there was an interesting looking technical aerial... thing on the freebie sprue) but decided to leave it as it is, figuring that it looks enough like a hydrospanner to leave. 

A few days later (well, just shy of two weeks from initial conception to finished miniature) and he's done:

(Pictures were taken with a daylight lamp balanced over my shoulder last night, so are a little better than the usual subterranean nighttime shots, if only by a little)

And the back! The straps turned out... passable, I think. A LOT of tidying up around the edges was needed after I dropped some colour into the grooves...

Pow, baggage and his new gun!

I especially enjoyed weathering the baggage, adding little dings and nicks in a variety of lighter shades, trying to make them look beaten up and lived in!

Another miniature painted takes the Tally to:

24 vs 333 = -399

What to paint next though? I've got the Star Wars thugs previously showcased undercoated on my desk, as well as some Lannisters for the A Song of Ice and Fire project; an undercoated obscure Batman character and a moderately obscure Batman villain that's had some red base coats and little else, or maybe something else entirely?

In other news, Blogger informs me that this was my 250th post - blimey!

Else Wechler, Axe Wielding Baddy

Yes, that title is how she appears in my D&D notes. So, shortly after posting my completed Gotrek and Felix, I also managed to finish this little beauty from Hasslefree Miniatures:

Who despite being an absolutely beautiful sculpt, was an absolute pig to get a photo of that wasn't even worse than this one... For example, the axe head is actually shades of purple highlighted all the way up to Rotting Flesh, but it doesn't really show up here... Normally I'm not one for excessive gore on a miniature, but as she's carrying a severed head I got a little carried away using Blood for the Blood God (which comes up a little bright, I think I will probably go back to my old TCR and ink mix for blood effects in future...)

She's another miniature that I started painting a fair while back and kinda stalled on - at the start of December, she looked like this:

And that's how she stayed until a month ago, when I decided to crack on and actually get her finished (as she is the last mini needed for the D&D adventure that I wrote that we may end up at some point actually playing)! Her skin got completely repainted, as I couldn't get a 'deathly pale' tone that I was happy with. Not that I'm super happy with the current finish, but it's better than it was (and I didn't feel like stripping her and starting again!)

Other milestone reached: this is the first pair of naked miniature boobs I have painted. Is this what growing up feels like?

Gah, looking at these pics, maybe I'm getting worse at this whole painting malarkey in my old age...

Well, another finished miniature is another finished miniature though, which takes te tally to:

18 vs 19 = -1

So close! Unfortunately, my pot of Vallejo Smoke (that I use in painting every single miniature ever) is pretty much dry, so I may not actually be able to finish any miniatures until post-Salute, when the tally will take it's next hit...

Collecting Dwarf Slayers...

I never set out to collect Slayers, it's just something I fell in to. A steady diet of Gotrek & Felix novels and the fluff in old White Dwarfs has left me with a certain fondness for the little flame-haired psycopaths, and shortly after reading Zombieslayer I got the idea into my head to paint up a max size unit of Slayers (30, in the old army book). After buying a couple of bundles of miniatures, I started to investigate whether I could make a unit that size without duplicating any poses, which then somehow turned into trying to collect every Slayer variation...

The problem I'm finding, is trying to find a comprehensive listing of all the different sculpts! Stunties.com looked like it had what I wanted, except the pictures won't display on any device I try to view it on... Instead, here's what I've managed to cobble together from various sources, amended with the dorfs I already have:

Marauder Dorfs:

(after a bout of ebaying on Saturday, the last two should be winging their way to me as we speak)

Somehow in my collecting, I have apparently entirely missed the 1993(?) Troll Slayers. Oh, how I miss the days of Mail Order and being able to order particular sculpts (like Daemon Slayer 3 here)

The new sculpts! I had originally thought that there had only been two new sculpts done (the two in rather 'square' poses), but when I bought some as part of a batch on eBay, I realised that the rest on this page that match the style of the previous generation of Slayers are in fact different sculpts! Unfortunately, this leaves still more for me to collect...

Only 3 sculpts released for Mordheim - the Dwarf Pit Fighter (pfft, he's blatantly a Slayer) is a bit of an odd sculpt, but for completionist's sake I need one! I also fancy getting a second copy of the Trollslayer Hired Sword, as he'd probably be a suitable donor body for a Snorri Nosebiter coversion...

£1.50? Honestly, if I had a time machine I'd mostly use it to nip back to Ye Olde Nottingham and buy miniatures. Admit it, you would too.

Here endeth the pictorial segment of this post - as far as I can see, this is the rest:

• blood bowl star player Grim Ironjaw (in the box, ready for action)
• 2 blood bowl slayers (alas, I've not got either yet)
• Ungrim & Garagrim - both acquired, ad having read Road of Skulls I'm further incentivised to paint them! 
• Games Day Slayer on daemon head - owned, and ready for action as a unit filler
• Talisman plastic slayer - Do want! Veeeery portly, but rocks a certain design sensibility that reminds me of simpler times...
• Battle for Skull Pass plastic slayer - owned. A bit blah, but variety is the... well, you know the drill.
• Dwarf Lords of Legend Slayer - owned. A bit un-slayer-y (although admittedly, Ungrim the other Slayer lord wears armour...), but we'll see how he paints up...

And lo, this is all the slayers that I have thus far discovered, and which of them I still need. I'm not particularly familiar with the older dwarf ranges though, and am fairly certain that there are some likely Slayer candidates in the old 'Norse Dwarf' range - if anyone can provide any suggestions (or has any of the sculpts that I'm after) drop us a comment!

In other news, the blog recently passed 40k pageviews:

and here's me without a 40k related post... #missedopportunity :(

100th Post, Post-Salute Post Post and the Lannisters I'm working on...

So, 100 posts! To celebrate, I've finally gotten round to changing my blogger profile pic to this:

Because as much as I love Sam & Max (RIP Lucasarts) it says more about me and my tiny attention span...

I even considered changing the header image too (as it's been a while since I painted any modern zombies) but I still like that it plays on 'Dead Lead Project', as it's a blog about dead lead (as in the miniatures that I will likely never get round to painting) rather than necessarily just miniatures of dead things. Any road up, on to more miniatures that I've acquired since Salute that I will definitely get around to painting:

The Dog handler from Warlord Games that was ordered at Salute as they'd run out (and even came with an extra dog) for my Stark force, and a bundle of bases from em4... the 40mm variety of which don't fit into the War of the Ring bases from Games Workshop that I hope to eventually use when I've painted enough miniatures to be playing anything bigger than a skirmish scale game:

Except for upside-down, when they fit perfectly. Curses. Oh well, it's better to realise something like this now than once I've stuck horses to them, and I suppose I can scavenge some Terminator bases from old 40k starter boxes...

A selection of bits and bobs from the Perrys that I forgot to pick up at Salute and some Blu Stuff, 2 part mould-making wonder goo (more on this later...)

Some mushroom men from Ral Partha, to go with the Hasslefree Agarix I picked up at Salute - these are especially dinky though, so I might need to convert some sort of Ogre-sized Myconid to balance it out...

A bundle of knights and a priestly type from Forlorn Hope Games, who seem to have more em4 miniatures than em4 do, for use as plate armour wearing Hedge and foot knights...

From Hasslefree, I got the metal Boudi that I wasn't able to get as Salute, and added a 'not Ramona' as well to take the sting out of paying for postage (and also because I made the mistake of reading other people's blogs when they included lists of things that they'd bought at Salute, more fool me...). It also came with a free dinky homunculus, to make up for the fact that the order was delayed by various shows, who I'm sure I can find a home for somewhere in the multitude of generic fantasy drawers (and should be pretty quick to paint, as he's so tiny!)

And last but not least, a delivery from Foundry, of the two packs that I wasn't able to pick up at Salute - the archer command (for commanding my Lannister archers) and King Ronnie's Court (as I wanted the jester to convert into Shagwell, of the Brave Companions / Bloody Mummers). I also added a pack of armed Medieval peasants to take the edge off of the shipping charge (better than it used to be, but still not ideal if you're only picking up a couple of packs), as I'd like to build a warband of the Brotherhood without banners at some point (and handily a couple of the miniatures in the archer command pack look like they'd be suitable candidates). Speaking of which, I could do with getting some LOTR Ruffians miniatures, especially the chap carrying the noose (Spoilers - the Brotherhood without Banners are fairly keen on hanging people). Foundry even threw in a free knight, which was nice.

Unfortunately though, this takes the tally to:

8 vs 339 = -331

What can I say, it's been better... Only 8 finished models this year though, that's a bit of a sting... I hope to change that (if only a little) though as I'm still working on the generic fantasy miniatures I need for D&D, as well as having built these:

My first Lannisters! Perry plastics with a metal knight from Forlorn Hope / em4 to give them some variety (and also so that there's at least one miniature that I can paint really, really quickly as he's entirely armoured), these chaps have since been gesso'd ready to start painting:

Finally, I've also been working on something else. Although I'm not sticking slavishly to either the books or the TV series for my Ice and Fire Project, I'm quite enamoured with the armour worn by the Lannister House guards in the TV series:

Plastic Warriors of Minas Tirith will furnish me with near enough armour, but the helmet is another matter. So, stealing inspiration entirely from Mr. J over on the LAF, I set about making my own:

Cut the head off of a plastic Uruk Hai (originally painted about a decade ago!) and shave it down so it's less recognisable:

Take a tiny square of plasticard:

and cut it into a crest shape:

and gently file until it's the desired shape:

 

Attach it to the trimmed down original crest of the Uruk helmet, and realise that you've been over-zealous with your scraping and filing. Don't worry overmuch though, that can be easily fixed with the addition of a glob of Liquid Green Stuff that can then be re-filed.

To ease casting (probably), attach the head to a pole. It's the sort of thing you see done all the time, so there's probably a reason for it (I jest, it's to provide a channel for the milliput to get pushed into, and will also form a handy neck on the cast head that can be trimmed down to the required size)

Many failed attempts with Blu Stuff later, such as attempting to cover the entire head and cut the Blu Stuff into a two part mould (for some reason I was expecting it to dry to a rubbery finish, but be warned, it sets pretty firm):

we have the first half of our two part mould:

I had it  end around the crest for ease of removal later. After some careful cutting to tidy up the edges and put in a slight slope to help align the two halves of the mould, we have this:

An incredibly unpretty mould. Looks aren't everything though:

As it works! The pictures pretty much as out of focus as a picture can be, so you'll have to take my word for it. Now it's just a case of cranking out some more of these and cleaning them up before I start working on push moulding some Lannister Lion shields, and then it's go-time on Lannister House Guard conversions...

I was also going to write an aside on my plans for my Ice and Fire project, and how I see the composition of each House's forces going, but I think that this post is already long enough that it  might be an idea to save that for another day...