Ronin of Ronin of Shadow Deep

Here are the first two miniatures for my Ronin of Shadow Deep project:

These were painted about a month ago, as unfortunately I listened to a podcast about the game Battletech and found myself with the urge to replay Front Mission 3, which took up the majority of my very limited evening time in the following weeks. They were also painted about 4000 miles away from where I currently am, so I haven’t been able to take less washed out pictures!

This is going to be Rei Togarashi, my Ronin (Ranger) and an as-yet unnamed archer. For the name, I chose Rei as a generic Asian sounding name, and Togarashi, because he’s a bit of a firey character:

Coming soon, a mage called lemon pepper.

But I digress. His shirt is my attempt at recreating this pattern from memory: 

It looks about half-way between that and him looking like he should be in Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet, which I’m not entirely unhappy about, truth be told.

As well as sporadically painting things, I’ve also been acquiring things. Games Workshop announced a new Clan Pestilens warband for whatever their skirmish game is, which got me thinking that a couple of them would make nice Plague Censer bearers, one of the only options in the Skaven army book that I don’t own any of. Not enough to make a unit though, so I had a browse on eBay and found myself the proud owner of these two lovely rats not much later:

Not long after, we found out we need to find a new place to live, so not the best time to keep buying vintage metal, so they might be on their lonesome for a little while longer. 

Also not ideal timing, as we were about to travel 4000 miles for my brother in law’s wedding. Which I took as an opportunity to save on shipping and placed a little Khurasan order:

(Shipping saving aside, it’s mostly the customs charges that I was keen to avoid)

I grabbed some Kappa to stand in for gnolls in my Ronin of Shadow Deep project, and also the mini that looks a lot like Torchwood head Yvonne Hartmann, so all I need now is a Genesis Ark and I have all the minis I need to play through the Battle for Canary Wharf booklet that Crooked Dice put out way back when.

All in, the Tally now stands at:

27 vs 64 = -37

We’re two thirds of the way through the year, and getting busier all the time, so the chances of the Tally getting back into the black by the end of the year are getting slimmer and slimmer…

Speaking of being 4000 miles away, I had a nose in Barnes and Noble and was jealous of their selection of exclusive games…

I kinda wish I’d picked up the Battletech box, but I haven’t even got a starter set yet so have no idea whether I’d have any use for them (that’s waiting until I can get to a lTarget to grab the exclusive Essentials set)

And now, more rats!

After painting an entire unit of Skavenslaves in one whack was such a drag (an army painter I am not), I thought I’d approach the next unit in smaller chunks, figuring that being able to complete each step quicker would allow me some more variety in my painting experience, and thus I’d be able to get throughout more enjoyably (and quicker!), as well as being able to standardise somewhat (so each batch would have the same colour fur, removing a few steps from the painting process).

So I prepped myself the majority of the unit, and the selected six as my first group to paint. 

This was… during the summer I think? And I’ve just finished them this week:

The secret to getting them finished was deciding I was going to focus on stuff needed for Last Days, at which point I decided I needed to make some space on my painting tile and knocked out the remaining steps over a few evenings.

Here is a side profile view, showing off some shonky freehand shield runes:

Six down, twenty something more to go! Plus characters, and a war machine. On top of all the other projects I’ve got on the go. But then again, my opponent has already finished his 500 points, so that’s motivation to get finished! The same opponent that has recently expressed an interest in inq28 though, so add another distraction to my ongoing projects…

These additions bring the Skaven points total so far to:

188 / 500 (I think - I don’t have my army book to hand as I type this!)

And also brings the Tally to:

9 vs 7 = +2

Back into the positive! Best not buy the next issue of the AOS part work then…

Bang bang bang

Goes the beat of the drum:

Inorexibly, my small Skaven army grows! Batch painting the block of slaves before took ages, so I thought I’d break the Clanrats down into smaller chunks so I’d get the satisfaction of finishing things more regularly. Don’t worry though, I’m not planning on painting them all individually, it’s just that I liked the look of this mini so fancied painting him on his lonesome as something of a colour test:

I’ve gone with a blue as my main ‘uniform’ colour for the army, although I think I may have gone too bright on this particular figure for what is supposed to be a grubby tunnel dweller. I’ve decided to use red as a spot colour for leaders and elites, to make them stand out a little, which I know doesn’t really make sense in reality given that Skaven leaders should really be hiding at the back rather than standing out with fancy red neckerchiefs, but allow me this foible!

Painting this lovely lad (one of the Island of Blood sculpts - I chose him rather than a bell ringing chap as I’d already painted one of those for my unit of Skavenslaves) takes the army to

161/500 points (I was half a point out in my previous Skaven post, as I forgot that the Clawleader technically has a shield even though the mini I painted doesn’t).

No mention of the Tally yet, as the postman has brought more bits and bobs:

I know, I haven’t even painted the last lot of Warmachine nostalgia purchase, but funny story the one of the minis I’d bought previously was actually damaged that I hadn’t been able to make out in the pictures, and the seller was kind enough to offer to swap it for another one, but to make postage worth it I bought some more things - Arcane Tempest gun mages, because they’re cool; a Skarlock Thrall, because, erm… I thought it was cool; and Narn, because I think the Mage Hunters of Ios are oh you get the idea…

Annoyingly, the Sorscha mini in the previous batch of purchases turned out to have been liberally doused in superglue over her hand when I stripped her, and trying to clean her up her weapon just disintegrated, leaving me ever more frustrated trying (and faking) to drill into her tiny hand to take a pin to try and rebuild it, which killed the momentum on my planned Khador painting stone dead sadly.

Tally:

66 vs 63 = +3

In other news, having finished painting the ghouls, I figured that as I now had everything except a vampire painted up I’d go ahead and play the ‘Lost in the Crypt’ scenario from Spellcaster magazine, since the chances of even rolling up a vampire or a wraith were very slim (I obviously encountered a vampire and two wraiths, as it seems in Frostgrave I can actually roll high, but only while rolling on an encounter table).

After failing to print out dungeon tiles in the right scale, I decided to go DIY and make myself a bespoke dungeon board using a large piece of old cardboard:

Complete with some additional declaration from my daughter:

So my new Captain, on their way to meet up with their new employer, manages to fall into a hole in the undercity and fights their way out, finding a magic bow, sword, boots along the way. Things started fairly well, as she plinked every monster she came across from a distance before sprinting from door to treasure to door, even managing to nuke a vampire (played by a lich mini, as I haven’t painted s vampire for Frostgrave yet) with a magic arrow and a lucky roll. Eventually she found the exit door, and decided to try and take down the two wraiths that were closing in on her to bank that sweet XP, but in the end decided discretion was the better part of valour and fled…

So, joining up with the rest of my warband, what next for my Necromancer and his merry band of chums? I’m tempted by the Hunt the Golem mini campaign, as my Necromancer has picked up a couple of constrict based spells so it makes sense that he’d follow up on related rumours, but I think first I might run through all of Perilous Dark to teach myself the key things for making solo Frostgrave scenarios, so it looks like I need to make some vapour snakes and a couple of constructs…

Champion of the downtrodden…

 

Another mini finished for the Skaven army, this time a lovely old sculpt that will be the Claw Leader/Champion in my unit of Clanrats.

He’s from Vampifan’s collection, so I painted him singly rather than in a mass of his furry brethren, and like every Skaven sculpt of this era it’s a joy to paint, well detailed without being fussy.

As ever you’ll have to take my word for it that the pictures don’t do the model justice, he’s much nicer in hand than he looks magnified here!

I think I’ve also decided on a colour scheme for my army, which you’d think I’d have settled on before painting 30 odd minis for it… The plan is to go with GW Dark Reaper as a spot colour on the majority of troops, with a red (like the Claw Leader’s scarf) reserved for characters and important rats. I read through the Skaven uniform book, but after long considering the options there decided to just ignore it all and go with my gut.

This mini has actually been nearly finished for the best part of a fortnight, but last weekend we took the kids on a trial run camping in grandma’s garden before we take them out into the actual wilds, which impacted my painting time (but did give me the opportunity to move from the first to the second Gotrek & Felix omnibus, so my enthusiasm for Warhammer remains high!) - all that actually needed finishing off was painting his teeth and then washing those and his horns with a little sepia, so easily done.

Painting him brings the Tally to:

50 vs 47 = +3

And the Skaven army points total to:

152 / 500

Only the rest of the Clanrat unit, two characters, and an artillery piece to go!

In other news, I’ve rediscovered my love for the fluff and lore of the Warmachine universe, which I was steadily making my way through (back in the almost forgotten era of 2019), and have resumed making my way through pdfs of No Quarter magazine and eBay is furnishing me with the last physical expansion book that I didn’t yet own, and there might also be a miniature bought purely for nostalgia purposes on its way too… of course, plans for a ‘small scale, nothing crazy’ project are forming. Plus GW previewed some new LotR stuff, and despite the fact that I wouldn’t describe myself as a LotR fan I still find myself thinking about how easy it would be to slot in a little Battle Companies project, it’s only 6 minis and I could convert them from my bits box, although those metal minis of Osgiliath veterans are nice too, maybe I’ll just have a look…

I have a problem.

Ratling Gun!

The next step in my plan to conquer the overworld (or at least the part of it the chum I’ve challenged to paint a Warhammer army is standing on) with a sea of ratty types is completed:

Gorgeous, and a joy to paint, even if grey-furred ratmen don’t show up particularly well against my usual display board background.

I was so happy with these that they even got their vanity shots done using actual sunlight, unlike 99% of what I paint which gets photographed at midnight in my basement or balanced on my dining room table. See also, tufts and flock, making them technically the only fully finished mini in the whole army!

So, why the Ratling Gun? The first benchmark is 500 points, against an opponent painting an equivalent amount of Bretonnians, so my options from the miniatures in my collection were:

Poisoned wind mortar - move AND fire, good at killing knights

Warp fire Thrower - absolutely archetypical, good at killing knights

Ratling Gun - most likely to misfire, bad at killing knights, punny name

Me, in this situation:

Eh, I made the right choice. We’ll see how it goes, I’m generally luckier with D6s than I am with D20s. Plus, at this low points level the Bretonnians have a general on foot, so you never know…

The Tally took a hit in the opposite direction too this week, as GW are offering a free Skaven to cut out and keep this month, so I made an excuse to nip in for a pot of paint (not pictured) and grab one of those:

I mean I’ve got dozens already, but I always need more right? I might see about getting a pack master arm from somewhere and converting him, as the old plastic pack masters look a bit chonky compared to the modern cleanest sculpts.

Tally:

49 vs 47 = +2

And to end the post, here’s a group shot of the army so far:

All 140 points of it so far - the Ratling Gun is only 7 points shy of that unit of Slaves it’s next to!

Happy Father’s Day...

 ...to (from?) some scrawny ratty boys:

And here they are again, in actual natural light:

The downside to which being every flaw on these secondhand miniatures that I stripped is more visible in this picture, but for 2 points a model I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over that. Pretend that lump on the bell is a specifically modelled clapper, wouldn’t you?

When you add the singular model for this unit I’d previously painted (last year!), we get my second complete unit for the Road to the Old World challenge:

Being that they’re only Skavenslaves, this isn’t a huge amount of points out of what I need to paint - between this and my rat dart, the running total of painted Skaven is now 85 points. Still quite a way to get to 500… on the other hand, in painting this unit I’ve now painted more models than my opponent will have to for his whole army, so who’s the real winner here?

Painting these brings the Tally to:

44 vs 46 = -2

(and also brings me a huge leap closer to my annual challenge of painting at least 52 miniatures each year to average one a week)

Now having a proper unit to shove around, I thought I’d see about making a movement tray. I dug out some materials from the basement:

And, suitably fortified with coffee, after sketching out what I wanted (a square base, with a lip around the edge that I could hopefully fold up) I tested it using the actual unit, as my ability to produce squares is not always perfect):

Then I cut it out, and removed the corners to allow the excess ‘lip’ I’d allowed for to be folded up.

Now, in my planning I’d assumed I’d be able to gently score the plasticard, fold it up, then superglue the corners in place. In theory maybe, but in practice it was much less accommodating. A quick Google suggested that heat was the best way to bend plasticard, so off to the kettle I ran, much to my wife’s bemusement.

This however was also a non-starter, and I was largely just mangling this poor piece of plasticard. so I set about drying and flattening it back into shape (additional weights courtesy of my son):

Plan B: cut out some strips of plasticard that I can glue down to form the lip. Lesson learned from initial attempts at that though is you should cut the thin strips off of a whole sheet rather than trying to trim them out of a pre-cut piece, as tiny pieces of plasticard bend and slide under your metal ruler like there’s no tomorrow when you try and cut them. I’m tempted to use matchsticks instead, but worry that they will look even more shonky than my initial plans.

I could order some from Warbases, or crack open the single pack of Warhammer modular movement trays that I have stashed, but the thing holding me back from pulling the trigger on either of those is that I’m still undecided on whether I’m going to expand the units at a higher point value, and being that my modular movement trays are a finite resource I might end up using them up to make smaller bases than I end up needing…

What’s next? Probably more Skaven, although there might be a little palette cleanser or two in there as well. The next unit might get painted in smaller batches rather than all at once - I’d probably have done more detail and highlights on this unit if they weren’t such a big blob, where it got to the point where I was just glad to see the back of them on my painting tile. Maybe five at a time for the Clanrats? But then again, that’s pretty much what the plan was for these guys, before I got carried away…

Oh rats

I’ve completed the first proper unit for my ‘Road to the Old World’ challenge (for those of you that haven’t heard about it, it’s a slow grow escalation challenge to paint and play some classic tank and flank Warhammer ahead of the release of The Old World - there’s a Facebook group and a Reddit, if you want to join in!), a Skaven rat dart:

Excuse the lack of natural light which is making the pictures look more terrible than they do in real life. Look at that lovely classic pack master sculpt though, beautiful.

Considering that I need to paint close to a hundred models to fill out my 500 point starter list, I probably shouldn’t have done 3-4 layers on the fur and 4-6 on the skin, but I guess a speed painter I am not.

I may come back and add some vegetation to their bases at a later date, I’m still undecided. But for now they’re done, and take me up to a mighty 25 points painted, only 475 to go!

Finishing these also takes the Tally to:

13 vs -4 = +17

Next? Some slightly more involved sculpts, in greater quantities is the plan. I intend to break up painting the units with single figures to try and keep motivation up between batch painting, as well as having some off-project figures for when my attention span wanders towards something else. Batch painting is slow going currently though, as post-covid my energy isn’t what it previously was, so I’m generally able to base coat one part of three or four figures an evening, if I don’t fall asleep putting the children to bed…

Oh Captain my captain

Finished off while I was waiting for washes to dry on other things this week is this:

Another beautiful Westfalia sculpt from the Kickstarter I backed a couple of years back, who is going to be the Captain in my Frostgrave warband.

I love everything about this sculpt, from the poised sculpt with fingers outstretched for balance, to the knife ready to throw, just a lovely model all round.

Annoyingly I’ve seemingly only managed to photograph the back of her well, but hopefully you can extrapolate from that what the paint job actually looks like.

I plan on running her through the ‘Alone in the Crypt’ scenario from Spellcaster magazine before she joins the warband proper, so still need to paint a couple more monsters before I’m ready for that. If anyone has a sprue of those blobby looking goblins from the Hobbit game in their trade pile let me know, I think they’d make ideal ghouls but don’t fancy buying a whole box of 36 of them…

In other news, the postman has also dropped off a new friend:

A converted Skaven model that the seller presumably snapped the whip off of to fit into the envelope. I mean I’d planned on cannibalising it for parts anyway, but still…

So between one painted Captain and one purchase, the Tally now stands at:

7 vs -4 = +11

Next time: Skaven and enemies for Alone in the Crypt, barring distractions!

Yes-yes, man things…

 So, this time of year is always interesting when it comes to my hobby. Generally, I have a project on the go, which I should really be pressing on with, but then I start calculating how many days there are until the end of the year and panic slightly at how many miniatures I need to paint every few days, and then again immediately become distracted and paint something else entirely instead.

This year, I should be making the last few bits I need to play the second Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario (which in my defence are sat in a cup on my dining room table currently), but have been spending my evenings on miniatures instead to try and get the Tally up a bit! 

The first of this batch to get finished is this Skavenslave, a test mini for a Warhammer Old World Skaven army:

Ooh, looks like I need to touch up the edge of his base…

Long story short: I liked old Warhammer, AoS didn’t really grab me. I’m not anti-AoS, I’m just not the target market for it and that’s fine. When I heard that Warhammer: The Old World was going to be a square based rank and file game, and that it also didn’t have a definite release date, I thought I’d challenge a couple of pals to paint up a 500 point Warhammer army as a starting point, figuring that a) that’s not too much, seems achievable right? And b) with no deadline, we can trick ourselves into believing that we’ll finish this eminently manageable task when we almost certainly definitely won’t.

So, I set up a Facebook group for the challenge (which I’m tempted to open up to the public, but can’t bear the thought of having to spend any of my time deleting people commenting on Age of Sigmar being terrible/bases etc) and chose my army. I could have been smart and chosen a low model count army, or worked on my half painted Night Goblins, but no, I figured this was the perfect time to get round to starting that Skaven army I’d been gathering models for… both chums chose Chaos Warriors, and so can probably paint three models to hit the initial 500 point target.

So, 1 Skavenslave painted, 2 points done, 498 to go!  

If we ever do finish, hopefully we can play some sort of little campaign, maybe using something silly like the old d66 table of different territories that unlock certain troop choices for your army that was in whatever edition came with Lizardmen and Bretonnians…

So, finishing this adorable little ratty chap brings the Tally to:

32 vs 23 = +9

I’d love to pretend that I’m planning on painting a full unit of them next in an uncharacteristic display of hobby focus, but no, a hodgepodge of things that have caught my interest reside on my painting tile currently, and I should probably be getting on with painting my Frostgrave warband if the plan is to play through some solo scenarios of that after Rangers…

(Plus after weeks of studiously avoiding reading anything about the Silver Bayonet, as I don’t need yet another project, I might have cracked and had a tiny little peek…)

May the Fourth, Revenge of the Absent blogger

So, it's been quite a while since my last post - with the impending birth of second child, I've not had much time for painting little men, but didn't want to miss out on the tradition of a Star Wars post for May the Fourth so managed to knock out this on a few tea breaks at work:

A psionic from Osprey Games' Rogue  Stars, that with the right paint job and the addition of a length of coloured acrylic rod makes a nice gender swapped Luke Skywalker type.

Apologies for the awful lighting, it's the night before and so I'm crouched over the Dining Room table trying to get something half decent.

Apologies for the awful painting, it's been a few months! As you can see in the next picture, there was a little mould line (but one of the annoying ones, an indent rather than flash) across her face that it turned out I hadn't fixed at all when prepping the miniature, which I'd hoped I'd be able to disguise with paint, but in the end had to settle for painting as a rad scar:

Originally I'd planed to paint her the same as Tatooine Luke, but as I was working on her ended up inverting the scheme of the trousers and top and quite liked it, so left it as it was!

Also pictured, an objective marker that is essentially a Stomrtrooper's bum:

Made yonks ago out of scrap parts from a WoTC bendy miniature, it can represent some intel that the Rebellion need to acquire, or maybe explosives that they need to capture in order to sabotage some Imperial project...


Whilst I may not have been getting much painting done these last few months, that doesn't mean I haven't added anything to the Lead Mountain:

Four Nurgle terminators for £7.99 was too hard to resist...

As was a Rhino! Admittedly, it's missing the turret hatches, but I'm sure that I've got at least one (and parts to kitbash another) in my bits box...

Finally got hold of a Jokaero for the Ordo Xenos warband I've had kicking around my head for a little while now...

Picked up some Poison Wind Globadiers from a friend of a friend, so now I have enough to make a legal unit of them (well, legal for a game that is no longer current), as well as a dinky Night Goblin because look at his little face.

A friend mentioned that he had some old Warhammer and D&D miniatures back in the day, and after having a clearout gifted me this little treat, an old Warhammer Fighter!

I wasn't able to make it to Salute this year for the first time in a while, as baby could potentially have come (spoilers: he didn't, and is nine days late as I sit typing this the night before it publishes), but luckily Adam (lostinthewoods79 on Instagram, look him up, he's an embarrassingly good painter) was able to grab me the show mini and this promo of some sort of space necromance that looks like it would be ideal for Starfinder.

I finally managed to pick up some of these pipe straws from Flying Tiger, which will be adorning some Necromunda / 40k terrain at some point in the future...

Jimchenko (previously lauded buddy) gifted me this old Necromunda box, filled with all sorts of lovely plastic bulkeads! Now, I need to get hold of some mould-making silicon so that I can make duplicates to fancy up some boxes...

Also, this beautiful GM Canon kit that was a Christmas present from my wife came, and was then immediately stored until the day when I will have bountiful hobby time again!

The Mantic Hellboy game that I backed on Kickstarter came too! Frustratingly, it was delayed, and so came a week before baby's due date, so I haven't been able to dig into it as much as I'd like! Just look at this though:

Very much looking forward to getting some paint on these!


So, factoring in everything, that brings the 2019 Tally to:

2 vs 12 = -10

Not honestly as bad as I thought it would be when I started going back through my photos to see what I'd acquired since the start of the year! And also, it would be a very different story if I counted the board game pieces in the Hellboy game...

Whilst I haven't gotten much painting done so far this year, that doesn't mean that there has been no hobby:

My Blackstone Fortress miniatures are now all ready for undercoating. Well, they would be if it weren't for the fact that I was determined to make the 7 man renegade guard squads into proper 10 man squads so that I can use them outside of BSF too:

Going has been slow though, and I'm still not sure what to do for their heads...