ATZ Survivors

Some painted survivors for All Things Zombie and other, near-future games. Just to prove I haven't been entirely idle over the last few weeks. You'll note that two of them look a bit green. That's because the big guy also doubles as a Troll for Shadowrun games while the purple-haired lass doubles as an Orc. I like to think of the guy second on the left as my mate Andy. He has that "Meh!" look about him. The guy winding up the baseball bat is scarily similar to my mate Danny. More significantly, the dark-haired girl fourth from the left, is the painted mini' that represents my missus. Complete with her favourite tights. I'd better try damn hard not to get her killed. You can't see it very well but the little yellow object at her feet is the "button-box" from a pedestrian crossing, complete with little green man crossing the road.  I like to think of the Gurps fan on the right as a Game Store clerk defending his beloved store from looters. That's why he based on carpet rather than tarmac. I'm very happy with how the T-Shirt design came out. I tend to shy away from freehand work.

Alas, I also seem to have gone a little overboard with the Quick Shade on the Gurp's fan. I'm still not all that familiar with using the stuff.Sometime's I seem to do a decent job with it. Sometimes I use too much. Either way, it doesn't seem to save me that much time on the highlighting. I still end up putting on at least two layers.

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.

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: 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:

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 Shorn

Here are the painted miniatures of the Shorn, as the party stood just prior to the events of Session 5 (before the deaths of Vaslav and Uric).



From left to right: Elra, Klara, Uric, Boindil, Tungdil, The Mule, Vaslav, Hans.

Here's a slightly less arty shot, one which hopefully shows the details a little bit better.


Many thanks to my dearly beloved for the photos.

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.

Henchmen Horde

I've finally managed to acquire some photographs of the (now painted) henchmen and retainer figures I mentioned in an earlier post. The assembly and painting process required a total of four hours (not counting the time it took for the mili-put to harden). The miniatures are Wargames Foundry Normans. Not bad for a price tag of £8.2 of the figures are unique. The other 6 are two "doubled" up miniatures. Fortunately the 6 doublers all wear cloth coifs under their helmets so I've painted each hood a different colour for ease of identification (and hp tracking) on the tabletop.

Old School Miniatures: On the Cheap

Times are hard. Metal figures are expensive. Buying enough lead figures to make up a decent band of brigands, for example, can set you back forty or fifty euro's. And then, of course, there's the whole new issue that most modern fantasy rpg miniatures are targeted for the modern audience/gaming industry. By which I mean late medieval armour, dress and accoutrement's as opposed to the more traditional "old school" dark-age style.

However, all is not lost. You can still acquire decent looking miniatures for your RPG while keeping up that all important Old School feel -and without putting too much of a dent on your pocket book. The answer: wargames miniatures.

Plastic mould technology these days is so good that it's possible to produce plastic figures that rival (or even exceed) their metal counterparts. Moreover, even metal wargames miniatures (from historical specialists at least) tend to be cheaper than roleplaying miniatures and even most fantasy wargames ranges.

True, you can splash out ten or twelve pounds for a pack of random pre-painted miniatures, but going down that route might cost you a veritable fortune before you get enough figures of a given monster type to use in an encounter. Plus the paint jobs tend to be terrible. Contrast the painted miniatures at the beginning of this article with any of the D&D figures available on ebay. I bought a pack of 32 of these plastic vikings from wargames factory's Hammer of the Gods Range for £18 (You lucky Americans can get them for $19.95). These figures here, 8 of them, took four hours to assemble and paint and cost me the equivalent of £4.50. If I'd bought 8 viking looking types in single figure Reaper miniatures packs, it would have cost me at least £24 (probably as much as £30, depending on where you shop). How many packs of D&D boxes would I have had to fork out for to obtain 8 human warriors in chainmail? A heck of a lot, let me tell you.

As it is, I intend on painting another four of these guys for gaming purposes. The last twenty (plus 8 figures from the Saxon Fyrd box) are going to make a Viking Mercenary unit for my Norman WAB army. The remaining 24 Fyrdmen are going to be split into a unit of 8 archers (on stone, roleplaying bases) and 16 unarmoured RPG melee types. And voila, for a grand total of £36 quid, I've got myself another wargames unit AND all the armoured and unarmoured human NPC warrior-types I''ll ever need for an Old School RPG campaign.

Of course, it would be nice to have some more disciplined looking armoured warriors as well. Which is why I bought 8 metal Norman spearmen from Wargames Foundry for a grand total of £8.00 as well. I'll paint these guys up and use them as henchmen and hirelings for my PC's. Pictures to follow when I've finished painting them.

I also forked out another £8 for a pack of Saxon "outlaws" from the same firm -giving me a nice mix of armed civilians for use in gaming as hapless civilians, prisoners, mule-skinners and even torch-bearers for the party. I'll post up my painted versions here at some point too,

Grand Total: £52.00 for 80 gaming miniatures. How much would it cost to order all that from Reaper Miniatures eh? £300 quid at least, I reckon.

First Knight Photos.

No, it's not a re-run of Richard Gere's worst movie (thats not saying much, really), it's the first batch of mounted milites.

Today was vaguely productive, even with the return of the old dears from their hols` (naturally, they wanted to tell me about it and naturally I was interested enough to listen). I managed to complete my first set of four mounted milites. Special thanks to the folks over on the Warhammer Ancient Battles List for pointing me in the right direction (i.e towards a web-article on painting horses).

It's hard to believe, but in fifteen years of painting (well, 19, but the first four years don't count because I thought undercoats were an item of clothing until I was about 12) these four beasts constitute my sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth horses! Yes, fifteen years and I've only ever painted NINE horses! I know, I know. I`m not the only gamer with a near-phobia of painting the damn things, but how I manged to go so long avoiding the job I'll never know.

Well, yeah, I do kinda. It comes from all those science-fiction and late medieval-style armies I've collected and 9rarely) painted. Barely a horse in sight in those and the ones you do see are covered head-to-foot in War of the Roses style barding anyway.

I've very fond of these four. My efforts may not have produced spectacular miniatures but I am painting for gaming purposes here and not for display. The really surprising thing I that I quite enjoyed painting them! I dont know why this was ever such a bugbear for me!

Well, no doubt you guy's will let me know what you think. I have five more on the table at the moment and when I finish those (hopefully early tomorrow) that will leave me all afternoon to sort out the command group, arrange an army list for Tuesday and prep the Libre spearmen for basing and painting.

It'll also give me time to do a little repair work on two spearmen I accidently spray painted rather than varnishing. Yup, I managed to have a good stab at re-undercoating two of the newly shielded spearmen you saw earlier instead of varnishing them. It'll take all of five minutes to cover up the minimal damage ( I realisedsomething was up right after the first sqoosh) but the worst thing is, they weren`t even in the FIRST batch of spearmen to be varnished. Oh no, they were the very LAST TWO!!!!.

Note to Self: Never Spray Varnish after midnight. Especially when your Spray Varnish and your Spray Undercoat have the same colour of lid. Bad, bad idea. Even for me.

Thought for the Week: "Your only goal in playing a wargame should be to make sure your opponent has a good time." - Jervis Johnson, quote courtesay of the WAB list.

Damn straight!

Shields Done: Spearmen pics

Well, Thursday and Friday were mostly write-offs as far as painting was concerned, but I had expected that anyway. Between house hunting and the Opera Thursday saw painting squeezed right out of the schedule, with more house hunting and visiting on Friday. I did at least manage to take advantage of the transfers which arrived on Friday to finish the shields on my armoured milites. Pictures have been included.

I have to say I`m very happy with the result, although a few of the shields need a little touch up here and there before I'd be willing to allow people the option of close-scrutiny. I`ll do that later today in between painting horses and knights. So the new, wildly optimistic targets are to finish the knights over today and tomorrow (complete with shields) and at least prep and base the libre spearmen. That will give me a good (mostly painted) 1000 point force for Tuesday night. A little weaker in terms of missile troops and skirmishers than I would have liked, but thats life with little lead men.

Now I just have to work out how to get the bl;oody things to G3 without trashing them. Especially since they'll be sitting under my desk at work for most of the day. Really should have thought of that before painting. Or arranging a game. But I`ll just leave some of my other miniatures sitting on the table at home and borrow the packaging.

Archers Done. 1st Game Arranged.

What a busy day it's been.

Today started with a little (very, very minor) disappointment. My Gripping Beast banners and LBM shield transfers still haven't arrived. But given that it's (, well, was) only Tuesday I can hardly grumble. Maybe they'll arrive tomorrow (later today that is, since its well past 1am). The day improved considerably though. I now have seven flats to view over Thursday and Friday (yah!). On the other hand, considering I have Bill's Ebberron game tomorrow night, Pirates of Penzance at the Theatre Royal Glasgow on Thursday night and my Uncle to visit on Friday, I`m not going to have much time for painting.

Together with having popped along to G3 tonight for an hour or so to arrange a game against Colins vikings next tuesday ( a double landmark: my first game of WAB AND my first game with my new army), this means I've had to rethink my painting schedule. Especially since I absolutely hate playing with unpainted miniatures. Doesnt matter if the other guys figs are all shiny lead, just as long as mine arn't. If I fall back into the habit of playing with "naked" miniatures I`ll never get anything painted.

So, now that the Archers are finished (as of about ten minutes ago: I`m still waiting for the paint on the bases to dry so that I can add the cork. Once thats done I`ll edit this post and put up the photo's) I`m going to start work on the mounted milites, rather than the liberi spearmen. Purely because I`m going to need them as a core unit and can muddle by without the Liberi if I can't finish them all in time. I reckon that if I can do four complete cavalry models (rider and horse) each day for the next three days I`ll still have time to paint the spearmen. It will be tight, and it would probably be quicker to paint the 12 axemen I have from Perry plus their command group, but I dont think 15 Serjents with handweapons are going to cut it against Colins Vikes. I`ll have to think on what to do next, after the horsemen.

Anyway, I'm glad I had the chance to challenge Colin. For one thing he has a good reputation at the club for being patient with beginners and, despite having some pretty impressive facial hair, for not being as "beardy" as far as rules are considered. He should be a good teacher - but I`m still expecting to be soudnly thrashed. His glee when he discovered I had no armoured crossbowmen painted (or even unpainted - they'll be on order at the end of the month, as soon as I get paid) was altogether unholy. Note to self: buy more crossbowman than originally planned. Tweak army list accordingly.

One extra consideration that was brought to light by my quick visit came about from a chance conversation with Spence. Spence, the guru of "keeperdom" (on the grounds that he needs a second house just to keep his lead in - this guy has no danger of dying from painting his last miniature any time soon) reacted with some degree of surprise when I mentioned "diluting" my Perry force with Crusader figs. Spence seems to reckon that while Perry figs do indeed go well with the occasional Gripping Beast or Foundry fig, Crusader figs are far to "chunky" by comparrison to look right in the same army, let alone having the two product lines in the same unit. Colin on the other hand, (whose question's about my new Army more or less initiated this particular conversation) feels that why they're not suitable for fielding in the same unit, they look fine as seperate units.

I truly hope so, because I think the Crusdaer figures are more than merely "very nice" and I especially want some of their archers, axemen and spearmen for my collection. I was even thinking of using Crusader or GB to supply my light cavalry unit as well, but the Perry Twins will probably edge in to another fine victory over my pocket book once again.

Anyway, back to the basing and the photo's. In case your wondering, all the figures shown were painted using Vellajo Model paints, with a few colours (the dark browns and the blue-grey) from the MP "Miniatures Paints" range. Actually, I was surprised by how quickly these were to paint ( exactly three hours for each batch of six - same as the armoured spearmen) especially since there was nothing to drybrush. In fact, I seem to spend more time waiting for the "White Stone" textured paint to dry out than I do actually painting. Just so you know, I use the white stone to blend the minaitures molded-on stands into the plastic GW bases that I`m using, so that there isnt an odd bump. Ive found that if I build up two or three layers before gluing smaller "true 25mm" figs to the base, the extra 3mm or so of height can create the illusion of scale and make the different figure lines more compatible. Provided I only sprinkle two or three throughout the unit, that is.

I would try this with the Crusader miniatures as well, but Spence tells me the issue is one of breadth rather than height. Apprantly, they are just proportionally broader than the other miniature lines Ive been using. Ah well. I`ll order a pack or two (probably one of archers and one of those quilt-wearing spearmen Ive mentioned a few times) just to try them out together. Even if they dont go well together in a unit, I still hope that (for once) Spence is wrong and I can at least use them in seperate formation. If anyone out there has any experience of combining Crusader and Perry figs, I`d love to hear from you.

Pics will be up shortly (not that anyone out there is crazy enough to be reading this right now). G'night.

Edit: Pics didnt come out right due to poor lighting. Will take the pics later this monring when the sun (and I) have both risen. Ill put up another progress report tonight (most likekly in the early hours) and report on the Ebberron game.

First Pics

After taking a break from painting I finally got round to sorting out my camera and taking a few pics. As you can see, I`m far from an expert photographer. Out of about 15 photos, these are the only two that came out in focus and clear enough to make out. The first pic is of those two "sample bases" I mentioned in my previous post. The one of the left is the "european" style base and the one on the right is the "hybrid" style base. I know the undergrowth is a bit OTT but like I said I was experimenting.

The photo on the right is on just two of the six Norman Milites on foot that I have fully painted. More pics to follow.

Personally, I thought the George Foreman grill in the background was a very nice touch.