No Painting Round-Up This Month

As you might guess from the title, there will be no pics of August's painted mini's. At least, not for a while yet. Between running two distinct campaigns, writing up game notes, writing encounters and locations for the OSRIC campaign, writing fiction and dealing with real life very little lead has been decorated in August.

My painting ADHD hasn't helped matters either. I have the last thirteen 15mm colonists half-painted and about a third of my fifteen 28mm lizardmen have been base-coated. I've sixteen 15mm Earth Alliance guys undercoated as well as seven 15mm civilian vehicles, three 15mm AFV's, forty-six 15mm Space Orcs and eight 28mm Foundry Argonauts all in various stages of prep or painting. Oh, not to mentioned thirteen ships from an eighteen ship Noble Armada fleet awaiting base coats. If I'd just concentrated one one or two things at a time I might still have reduced my lead mountain somewhat. Hindsight is perfect after all.

So I propose to combine September and Augusts painting efforts in a single post next month. In other words, there will be 62 painted miniatures to be photographed by the end of this month. Which means I still have to finish 45 miniatures to stay on target. Who wants to bet that I'll end up painting at least one miniature that isn't even on the prep table yet? You know, rather than finish the stuff I've already started.

July Painting Round-up

July was a fairly good painting month, at least to start with. My painting efforts tailed off towards the end however. In the last half of the month, I painted exactly zero figures. So while I'm ahead of the miniature-a-day target over all, I could have done a lot better. Especially considering that most of these mini's are 15mm and a lot less time consuming to paint.

 First up we have a number of hoplites and amazons painted for the upcoming Isle of the Eathshaker Expeditionary campaign I'll be running. The fabric on these guys (and I do mean guys, the girls are hardly wearing a thing) has been painted in my traditional "mook" blue. That is, the dark blue colour I paint most of my RPG minion types in. Clearly, that means none of these hoplites will represent PC's (I have the Foundry Jason and the Argonauts figures for PCs) but one or two amazons might wind up with better, non-mook paint-jobs depending on how character generation goes.

 Next up we have some 15mm Critical Mass aliens painted up and re-modelled with milli-put for my Mass Effect theme science fiction gaming. These guys already appeared (in a different photo) on my Terminus Omega blog last month. So that'll explain any sense of de ja vu you might be experiencing.

 I love these rats. Otherworld miniatures produce some great sculpts but these little guys are my favorites, hands-down. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that they are some of my favorite sculpts from any range. And very simple (and quick) to paint too.

 Finally, here's the first of two shots showing my 15mm science fiction gaming colonists from Ground Zero games. I bought eight packs of various sci-fi civilians, techs and security guards from GZG last month. They come eight miniatures to a pack, with 2 each of 4 poses. So half are being painted up as Corporate clones (19 done so far, 13 left to go) while the other half will be painted up as normal, non-corporate types.

And here's the corporate wage-slaves again from a second angle.

In case you're wondering why I need so many civilians in overalls, well, the answer is simple. I'm building a 15mm "moon-scape" scenery set right now. One of the major terrain features (it'll take up roughly a 4ft x 4ft area all by itself when completed) is a generic production plant/power station facility. The guys in orange get to be the staff on duty. The other civvies get to the off-duty inhabitants of the "company town" I'll be building to take up the rest of the table. There will be a post on my Terminus Omega blog with more details on this terrain building project soon.

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.

Game Over

Well, they didn't make it out of the dungeon, so it's out with the old campaign and in with the new. The guys have asked me to run a zombie-based one-off for them, and since none of my players are particularly interested in having to read any rulebooks, I'll be adapting Greg Christopher's Cascade Failure rules [link]. This has the advantage of using a rule-set similar to one they already know, and lets me try out a new system I've been wanting to play-test for a while.

One of the things that first struck me about this system when I first reviewed it [link] just over a month ago was how flexible it could be. So I don't imagine converting the rules to a modern setting should be too much trouble.

So in just over a weeks time (come the end of my night shift) or possibly longer depending on how much background I have to do (and the fact I need to read the rulebook again) we'll be enjoying some good old fashioned zombie mayhem on a Caribbean cruise.

In other news I met my painted miniatures quota for the month (pics to follow) though my goal of painting up the colonial marine platoon I've been collecting for tomorrows war was subverted by the need to paint more miniatures for fantasy gaming. I only managed four marines, but I take consolation in the thought that my army of evil gribblins has been expanded with the addition of four kobolds, six hobgoblins and ten skeletons. Add in the random collection of misc. figures and I painted 31 altogether in the month of may.

Pictures will follow just as soon as my dearly beloved gets her camera out for the lads.

April Mini's Photoshoot

Some photo's taken by my (far, far) better half of the miniature painting efforts from last month. As mentioned before, a good wad of them are StarWars pre-painted miniatures with re-paint jobs ranging from a light touch-up to complete re-works from the undercoat up.

Thats me painting the first batch of figures for May in the background in the second photo. The first photo is another batch of robots sculpted by Mark Copplestone. The EM4 range this time, I think. They'll join the other five robots from Copperstone Castings as the main-stay of my Terminator army for Tomorrow's War.

I couldn't see me ever having a use for Naboo Troopers, even in a Star Wars game, so the Naboo Flash Speeder and crew got a repaint as generic cop types.

I had to remove the pilot that comes with it, standing at the steering wheel. Don't worry, the Rebel Hoth Trooper in question won't go to waste. I'm sure I can find some use for him.

 (Okay I'm cheating a bit with this one. I never did get round to doing the base. Probably because I can't see how I'll ever get away with using something as iconic as this in anything but a game of Star Wars).

Miniature-a-Day April Roundup

This month saw me fall far behind in painting terms - painting just 19 miniatures (9 of which were actually repaints of pre-painted miniatures) in a month of thirty days. Not altogether surprising considering I had the wedding this month but still, only month two of the challange and I'm behind already.

So, with the five extra miniatures painted in March, that puts me six miniatures behind for the years running total. I will simply have to do better next time. Look out for a photo update of the painted figs just as soon as I can persuade my good lady to dig out the camera.

Edit: I've got a platoon of colonial marines all based up with no-where to go. but to be honest, the thought of painting 30 odd guys in cammo with identical colour schemes in one month is a bit meh. So the plan is to alternate a batch of five colonial marines with 5 of something else. Let's see if it works.

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.

The Miniature a Day Challenge

Last month I (foolishly) declared my intention to paint the equivilent of a miniature a day from the time I left Oman till the end of the year. Well, fear not. I shall rise to that challenge. It's four days since my return, so I have a four miniature debt. Yet I have the weekend off, and it was never the intention to paint one miniature every single day -only to average a minaiture a day over the course of the year.

So, today, I am going to paint five Mordor orc miniatures (including a captain and standard bearer) to add to my hobgoblin horde (which, with my Moria goblins, also doubles as one of my Lord of the Rings armies).

But fear not - I have one last edit to finish for the 1st Level Thief's Survival Guide, more spells for the Necromancer class and seven nominations to announce for the versatile gamer award. Which means there will be plenty more posts over this coming weekend to make up for the relative drought over this last month.

Photographic proof of my painting efforts will be posted as soon as the missus is back in country with the camera. Or rather, as soon as I can persuade her to set up the tripod and click the magic button.

The Miniature a Day Challenge (and Merry X-Mas)

Merry X-Mas one all. Now, on to something gaming related.

I know that many of you out there share my perennial problem: motivating yourself to paint your mini's. Now, even thought I love painting, I'm quite often too tired, too bored or else too busy to paint more than a few dozen a year. Well, no longer.

Up to know, my motivation has come from the "Paint 'em as you need 'em ,"school of thought. In otherwords, if I know I need twelve orcs for an adventure and have just ten painted, I'll go paint two more. Likewise, my wargaming armies only ever seem to earn a lick of paint whenever I have a tournament to go to.

But this coming year, starting on my return from Holiday on the 24/01/2011, I am going to paint a Miniature a day! That's right. 351 Miniatures by the end of 2011 -and you can follow my progress on this blog. Now don't think for one second this means I'll actually paint a miniature every single day. Some days I'll paint four or five (or work on four or five), others day I'll paint nothing at all. But over the course of the year, it'll work out at an average of at least one a day.

Which means that, assuming I keep this rate of painting up indefinitely and don't go buying any more figs in the meantime, I should have cleared out my unpainted boxes by about 2020. Ah well, I can hope can't I.

January 24th. You heard it here.