Something something Tosche Station something something power converters

As is tradition, I have painted my annual Star Wars miniature for May the Fourth:

Luke Skywalker from Imperial Assault, as I didn’t have a painted version of him yet. Don’t look too closely, when adding the finishing touches I managed to dip my paintbrush in my cup of tea, and while reeling from that he ended up incredibly cross-eyed. Perfect is the enemy of done though, as they say!

He’s a little chunky compared to some of the other miniatures in my Star Wars collection, but not so much as to be unusable I don’t think:

While I’d only planned to paint a single Star Wars mini this year, as is my way I find my plans expanding - I could do with painting R2D2 and C3P0 to round out the core gang from the original trilogy, and of course after watching a couple of actual plays on YouTube I’m now thinking about painting the rest of my Imperial Assault core set, but one thing at a time…

I’ve had a couple of mail drops since my last post too. First of all, a couple of eBay wins - some Hobbit goblins to use as ghouls in Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow Deep, as my gnolls are goblins so it fits thematically having ghouls be messed up looking versions of those, and some old plastic dwarfs, as the lot included the Warhammer Quest Dwarf and a plastic Slayer that was missing from my collection:

They’ve since had a bath and are awaiting being prepped:

Also, I received a parcel from Joe of Zabadak’s Zombie World that requires some backstory. A few years back, one of the pillars of the blogging community was Vampifan, whose prodigious output was only matched by his enthusiasm for miniatures. Check out Vampifan’s world of the undead if you haven’t before, and marvel at the blog that was long an inspiration for many of us.

After years of multiple posts a week, Bryan/Vampifan suddenly stopped posting midway through December 2019. After a month, it turned out he’s been in hospital but was looking to be on the road to recovery, but unfortunately his next and final post revealed that he was unfortunately critically ill in a hospice, and said goodbye to us all.

I don’t know the full story of what happened, but Joe/Zabadak posted earlier this year that he’d saved a fraction of Bryan’s collection, and started a series of blog posts showing it off, including a number of things that I don’t remember ever having seen on the blog originally, as well as offering it up to anyone that could give them a good home. I expressed my interest in a  couple of items, and here’s what came:

As well as some Mordheim scenery, a selection of miniatures:

There’s also a zombie in there, that I want to get or make a small display for to keep as a memorial/memento, as it was Bryan’s (huge!) zombie collection that originally brought me to his blog.

Also, this graveyard piece, that will be perfect for fighting over once I’ve finished my current Skaven painting project:

Adding everything up, the new total for the Tally is:

14 vs 46 = -32

Next time: there’s a single figure that’s almost finished, then it’s back to batch painting a regiment of Skaven! They’re all base coated now, so it’s time to crack out the washes and dirty them up…

Leia? I hardly knew her!

Oh Leia, the Disney princess we waited so long for...

I had a couple of sculpt options for Leia, but went for this one, sporting the classic 'Danish Buns' 'do. It's a little petite compared to some, but I think it should do just fine. As you can see, painting white is still a pain, and the face was a bit of a nightmare - the sculpts on these bendy figures can vary between fantastic and terrible on the same figure! I did what I could though (including having to completely redefine her nose through the careful application of lines of flesh wash at one point), and so she should look fine on the table!

In other news, I've still got Han, Bossk and a rebel pilot half painted, then I really should get round to prepping a squad of rebel troopers...

[Tally - 62 vs 36 = +26]

Let the Wookiee win!

My first painted Rebel miniature is Chewbacca, walking carpet Hero of the Rebel Alliance: 

Although I wasn't originally super keen on the sculpt (having originally planned on picking up either the one from Rebel Storm or the now unavailable Knight Models sculpt), I think he looks quite snazzy now he's gone under the tender ministrations of my paintbrush.

Careful attention was paid to reference pictures of Peter Mayhew in costume in order to ensure that I was able to duplicate Chewbacca's fur markings, using several careful applications of various washes:

That little lump decorating the front of his base was originally a discarded Stormtrooper helmet, but unfortunately the detail was so shallow on the original donor figure that I ended up adding more and more battle damage to it to cover its crappiness that in the end you can barely see what it is...

Tally: 59 vs 36 = +23