June Painting Round-up

I finished way ahead of my June quota for the Miniature-a-Day challenge, so June was a good month for painting. I'm still on schedule for July as well. This month, I'll be finishing off the last two squads of "Alliance Marines" for my 15mm Mass Effect games [link] and making a start on some Hoplite and Amazon figures for the Expeditionary campaign. But for now, here's June's minis:

First up we have some giant centipedes from Otherworld Miniatures. Expensive figures but great sculpts. Giant Centipedes are a mainstay of low-level dungeon encounters, so how could I pass these guys up?

More figs from Otherworld, Giant Beatles this time. I left off the antennae since they seemed too fragile for table-top play. The coat of gloss varnish over the black seemed like a good idea at the time, but it pretty much destroyed my careful highlighting. Ah well. Them's the breaks.

 Here we have another six of Mark Copplestone's wonderful colonial marine sculpts. These are available from a variety of companies. Pity, but now that I'm moving over to 15mm for my sci-fi games I doubt I'll ever get round to finishing the platoon.

The three photographs above are my Ground Zero Games 15mm New Israeli infantry, painted up as Alliance Marines for my Mass Effect Games. At the top we have first squad. The command team (Lt, NCO, Medic, RTO, 2 AT troopers and 2 snipers) is in the middle picture. The third pic shows my special teams - two dug in sniper teams and a Forward Observer team.

 

I'm not normally a huge fan of dwarfs. In fact, I doubt I've played a dwarf character in all my life. But these guys will feature very heavily in the Expeditionary campaign (in their traditional role as the "Gods' Own Builders") so I need to get a batch painted up. These two LOTR figures from Games Workshop were the test-run.

Finally, we have some lightly converted Critical Mass 15mm Mercs. It's not clear from this photo but if you look at the head of the pointing figure you'll see I've converted these figures into an Asari Commando unit for Mass Effect Gaming,

Shameless Plug: If you want to know more about my Mass Effect Wargaming/Roleplaying project, please visit my other blog, here.

May Miniatures Round-Up

Right, as promised here are the thirty-two painted figures from last month. Some of them look unfinished (the banner bearer and one of the pyramids for example) but they're not. I need a painted and unpainted pyramid for gaming and the hobgoblins banner is blue because, well, because I'm too bloody lazy to paint heraldry freehand.

 First up are ten Skeletons from Mantic Games. When I first bought these guys a year ago and opened the box, I felt gutted. They just looked awful on the sprue. Now though, with them all based up and painted, I think the miniatures actually look pretty damn good.

 Some more of my LOTR Moria Orcs painted as hobgoblins.

 Reaper kobolds, painted orange. What can I say, I'm a traditionalist. Kobolds are goblinoids and goblinoids mean orange. You'll note that many of my dungeon beasties have the same blue livery. That's because they do double-duty as my generic evil-wizard army for wargaming. Now.... if only I'd been smart enough to mount them all on the same shaped bases. That would have helped.

 My wife has an odd sense of humor. Comedy juxtaposition: a half-ogre and a pair of female dwarves/gnomes from Reaper.

 My joint-favorite of the bunch. In the photos the metal spillover on the habit from painting the cross is more noticeable. In normal light it's invisible.

 I think of this one as my King of Scotland figure. Not Robert the Bruce, he preferred an axe. Maybe William the Lion?

 Rear view of the shield. I'm quite proud of this one. Think it's from a Reaper accessory blister pack.

 Re-painted D&D figure. All my Drow figures have this same color scheme.

 Displac....er...uh. Are there any copyright lawyers around here? No? Er. Good. It's a Reaper Displacer Beast (think they call it something else though).

 The Colonial Marines Strike Team I painted. Same scheme as last time, but with MP Umber added to the camo pattern on the armor.

The aforementioned pyramids. Dungeon scenery purchased for the grand total of £2.00 at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.

Miniature-A-Day: March Roundup

Last month, starting from the 20th of March, I re-started my miniature-a-day challenge: a last ditch effort to paint a swathe through my considerable lead mountain. This month, I've concentrated on painting miniatures for my forthcoming Tomorrow's War project, in which I paint and collect several small armies for the Tomorrow's War system from Ambush Alley games.

Starting on the 20th gave me eleven painting days this month, and I'm delighted to say I painted 15 miniatures in that time: 5 Copplestone Terminators, 5 Infinity troopers, 4 "Colonial Marines" (repainted Viridians from Urban War) and 1 wizard/illusionist PC for our OSRIC game (which remind me I've still got to write up the last two sessions). Anyway, here are some some pics as provided by my dearly beloved:

A Muchness of Musings

Having been back in the blog verse for about week now, it seems like a good time for a quick round-up of where I am on current projects and which ones I'll be looking at in the future.

First up, the 0D&D campaign is going well. I'll have the last two sessions posted in the next few days as a single article on Obsidian Portal. Suffice to say my rookie players blew the Trial of Champions out of the water, beating every NPC team by a mile in the team category and winning three places on the podium in the "class" competitions. Seems my players like puzzles. Damn. That means I'll actually have to sit and think up a few.

Secondly, I've had to reboot the Miniature-a-Day thing. With no George (and therefore no blog) to give it impetus it ever so slightly died a death. So I've restarted my year from 20/03/2011. Meaning that, having painted the D&D campaigns newest PC miniature AND five Copperstone terminator miniatures for my upcoming Tomorrow's War Project (more on this tomorrow) means I'm at least slightly ahead of the game. More so once I've finished my first fire team of Colonial Marines for the same project over the next few days.

The Necromancer 0D&D project needs a Raise Dead spell, and that'll be along shortly in the form of another batch of spells. Finally, the 1st Level Survival Guides are almost  complete -only the cleric to go. If there's enough of a demand for it I might branch out into sub-classes such as Paladin, Cavalier, Assassin etc, but I'm not sure how much mileage there is in that. We'll have to wait and see.

Anyway, more pics of painted mini's coming soon. Soon as I can persuade the missus to set up her gear and take a few snaps.