Prepping the Next Batch

I have a lot of miniatures. I'm always buying more. Part of it is because I like the appearance of them or get a good sale or gifts. One of the things I've been trying to do, unsuccessfully to a point, is cut back on actual miniature purchases. While I'm still picking up brushes, paints, bases, textures, and other bits I'm trying to hold back on new minis.

This has been difficult for me. You see, I love a good looking miniature. While I don't play Vampire Counts, some of the new figures for the range have been fantastic. Really good stuff like the new Krell figure. It inspired me though to get out my old unpainted Liche Master and Nagosh and see if I can throw some paint on them. Avatars of War also has some great stuff up and coming and it requires a little will power to refrain from it.

But in the meanwhile, I still have a ton of unpainted plastic, resin, and lead around so I'm not suffering too much.

The ogres are part of a battle box I bought many moons ago. After I primed them, I noticed some mold lines so went back in. What's worse though is it is really bad primer. If they weren't plastic I might dip them.

The scorpion is for a Reaper miniatures Warlord faction. I hate it. It's not that it is a bad model, but the back legs are separate and the two sets in front of it, and the tail require a bit of patience and glue and as I've mentioned before, I am a bit of a clumsy oaf so glue on the fingers a few times tonight.

To the far right, you might notice a piece of cork with a shield in it. That's for my 3rd Griffin Knight that I've had almost finished for... I want to say three years? The drive to finish him off died when Confrontation went from an awesome skirmish game to some prepainted plastic crap but since I'm now trying to actually finish off some models....

The two red women are the same model from different time periods. One is the old metal model, the other the new plastic. Both hit up at the same time as the other Khador forces. I finished the others first because they were larger and I was able to hit large plates at a time. These two will require a bit more finesse and so take longer and don't hold my interest as much.

So what is everyone else working on? Anyone hold backing on purchases? Anyone wanting to pick up some limited edition goods but holding back? Everyone in overtime mode?

Khador Warjacks and miscellaneous

The warjacks are the plastic/resin from the new set. These are not dipped. The 'interesting' thing is that the initial red primer pokes through here and there. It didn't wear out like some primers do which actually caused a bit of a problem as when handling the model you get 'wear' spots and the red keeps poking through. These figures were much easier to assemble and work with than the classics that I dipped but have some minor flaws of their own. The lack of the Khador symbol for one should've been an easy one for PP to put on the hull of the beast considering some of the details here.

These three... ugh. The first one is something something the White Axe from the Celtos line. The second and third are from Reaper. I'd go into more detail about them but the pics are so hideous I think I'm going to try to take some better ones later and see if I can salvage it. But hey, they're done so that's the important thing.

Khador and More

Sorry for the bad lighting. I'm going to have to play with the camera.

Some Khador metal heavy war machines, a stone giant from reaper an an abomination from magnficient egos, who I believe is no longer in business.

The Khador figs were hit with army primer red primer and given a single coat of their base colors then dipped and touched up where the primer was showing through the base colors.

Painting The Night Away

While I love the funds that working overtime can provide, I found that I put in hundreds of hours of overtime last year and it really didn't improve the quality of my life so this year, instead of going to bed at 9:00 PM every Friday on a regular weekend day or 7:00 PM because I started at 4:30 AM, I figure, I'm going to try to hold down the crazy spending (not all the spending, just the crazy spending) and try to work that overtime only when I have to.

The Khador soldiers in front still just have the basic red Army Painter Primer. The ones in back have got some of the shading I'm working on to try and follow the Khador Army book for getting that 'Khador' red. It's supposed to take something like 14 layers of inking so we'll see how long my patience puts up with that nonsense.

The ones in front will get a quick dip in the Army Painter Strong Tone soon and that will be that for them. Well, I'll throw some basing material on them too and touch up the base, etc... but I don't anticipate any big issues.

If you look to the right of the photo, you'll see I'm still working on that stone giant from my earlier updates this year. He's a pretty good figure and I'm pleased with the way he's turning out so far.

The rest of the stuff is a mismatch of various bits and pieces I'm working on, all at the same time. When it comes to painting I'm afraid I've got really bad ADD because I hate to waste paint and I like the 'shinny'.

As you may be able to tell from my desk, I don't have a single favorite paint but use a lot of varieites. Despite the awesome things I keep hearing about P3, I'll tell you this, I'm using Reaper Master Bronze because my P3 bonze, like the Pig Iron (boltgun metal) I had before it, turned to gunk. Sure, I could post on Privateer Press line and get some more, but it's already the second bottle I've had and to be hoenst, most of the P3 metallics, in my experience, are terrible. Maybe it's because I've gotten bad batches or its old or I need to periodically open them up and check them when I'm not using them all the time but I consider it a lesson learned.

The rest of their paint line is pretty good and for a 'fantasy' range, I like their mercenary colors for 'realistic' style painting.

Red Rum! (Red Primer?)

A couple of quick shots from my new phone. These are some battle boxes for Khador from Privateer Press that have been hit up with the Army Painter red primer. These include the original metal and the new plastics as well as that demon from previous pics. The metal figures are smaller, but have larger heads and more detail. Still, I like the plastic ones because they have more sense of presence. At least for this boxed set.

That demon is from Heresy miniatures and I wanted to make him with the bone scythe but there were many gaps in assembling him and if not for Green Stuff, I would've broke him down into parts.

This batch... I'll probably do the old metals with Army Painter dip after I lay down the base colors and use the demon to test the red effect I'll be going for on the plastics.

First Miniature Based Purchases of 2012

So I've already spent some money on the hobby at my 'local' hobby shop, Games Plus. On the left we have some 25mm cobblestone square bases by Micro Art Studio. They have a lot of great bases and conversion bits. I'm not going to use these for my initial plans though. I wanted something to match the Heresy bases I've used on the Black Legion but while these are good, they are too peebly for my needs.

I also picked up a resin cleaning kit from the evil empire. The price wasn't too bad. The brush is longer than the standard other tooth brush in terms of the bristles and the mold cleaning tool has a very solid feel making it easy to use.

Not pictured is the new No Quarter, #39 by Privateer Press as well as the 'Eavy Metal Masterclass book by the evil empire again. It's a compendium of material from White Dwarf magazine but it's all in one place and is an easy reference when you want to see how they did a particular figure.

I suspect with Secret Weapon having a Facebook coupon, I wll be buying their washes soon. I like to support smaller companies when possible.

Anyone else start the year off with some miniature goodness?

The Last of the Wine (2011 version)

This year, in many aspects, I cut back on my miniature spending. This doesn't mean it came to a stop or anything like that. I just recently picked up the prepainted Dragons collector set from WoTC and I've had the Paizo prepaints on preorder for two months. I've also bought supplies like Army Painter primer, micro-files, green stuff, and other tools. However, miniature purchases have not been where they were in previous years.  This has been a funds thing in minor aspect but the major aspect has been time. For the last two years, work has been beating my ass with a tire iron so I've taken to a lot of short cuts (hence Army Painter and Vallejo Dips) and not buying as much as I used to since the stuff I've bought in the past I still haven't even primed. While I won't say that in 2012 I vow to improve my painting skills, I will try to paint more. Anyway, onto the last pics I'll post for the year. I hope that next year sees more people posting here. We have some great talent on board here and I'd love to be inspired by more of it.

These may not be the last of my trinity figures that I've had since the game came out, but I ran across them and painted them up. Armor is the iron/silver Army Painter spray followed by Andrea inks; brown, ultra marine blue, black. Skin is Andrea skin tone pack. The base is done up with Happy Suppuku mold that does Hexes. Nifty stuff there.

Reven from Reaper's Warlord game. I didn't do the two beastmen (woodchoopers in Warlord) at the same time, but I like them anyway. The orc is something like an orc sargent but a pig faced one. The green on the orc's skin is Andrea's six pack of green. These guys are pretty standard in basing terms.

Some Menoth figures from Privateer Press. He was a dip. He is part of a pack I'm giving one of my friends for X-Mas. I know it's late as I haven't given it to him but screw him as he didn't get me anything.

Two of GW's figs. The elf is a wood elf from the command group. The pic is so clear I can see a spot I missed on his pants. The gunner is another one I found while cleaning up. And again I gave him the wrong dip. Should have been soft and I used strong. The base on the wood elf is cork. I tried to disguise it a little by clipping it at odd angles.

Two more mega-miniatures. The first is dipped in Vallejo's Sepia. The second in Army Painter Soft. I weep for the crimes I commited against that second figure's eyes but done is done!

Have I mentioned I love Superfigs? Another robot with some paste for the base. Andrea silver set on this one all the way.

I took all these pics at the same time with the same camera and lightning and this is the best of six pics I took of the Black Legion here. The guy on the left with the great sword was my old 4e character, Rus, a fighter from the core I played for a while under a solid GM. The rest I painted later on. The bases are Heresy or I should say, were Heresy. They are cobblestone tabbed that go into the standard 25mm bases. The price of metal has risen so much that Andy at Heresy doesn't even make them anymore and recommended I go to Fenris for some resin versions. I hope they are a good match as I want to buy a few more of these style figs for games like A Song of Blades and Heroes and Havok and others I've heard good things about, not to mention Warlord, by Reaper, itself. I like the simplicity of the figs. I like these guys much more than the halbred ones.

I've already got a lot of figures in various stages of painting right now including a Red Box figure that would go great with the Chaos Mauraders from the north from Warhammer as well as a set of Orcs from Chronpia I think the game was called, as well as many more figs to prep.

I hope 2012 treats everyone better than 2011 did and that the paint flows freely in the new year!

A Few More

Starting with:

Reaper: Winter wolf.

Reaper: Female Pirate

Reaper: Rake

Games Workshop: Shadow Elf

Privater Press: Iron Kingdoms priest of Morrow

Privateer Press Three Shot!

I like the Circle in Hordes. The idea of using stone constructs alongside some savages and primal magics strikes me as awesome.

The guy in the middle is one of two I have of the fig and I went with a test run here. The next time I paint him I'll do the 'stuido' colors. He's from the RPG line.

The third one on the right is a bridge troll. I've owned him for many a moon and figured it was time to knock it out.

Little of This.... Little of That

First one here is two more of the gobbo command from the old Battle of Skull Pass. The dwarf is from some Dwarf Artillery set that I can't even find anymore. I just figured, once again, screw it. Get it done.
Reaper Half Orc with scalp filled and painted up as a goliath. The next two Mike painted last year. They are some weird type of flesh golems. Last up some mercenary cleric of Morrow I believe from the role playing side of Privateer Press. The way they're going through the figures thought I suspect it'll be for the table top version soon enough. Hand painted the yellow on there following the painted fig from the site.

Should old acquaintances be forgotten...

Okay... the ogres, the last of my current batch of Ogre Kingdoms Bulls and Iron Guts from Games Workshop. The little guy on the far side of the Ogres is some nameless lacky from the Mordenheim tabletop game also by Games Workshop. For a buddy so it got one layer and a dip.

Elf with bow from megaminiatures.

Fighter with great sword and plate armor from Reaper miniatures.

Fighter with two blades is from Crocodile Games.

Weird looking machine skeleton is from Magnificent Egoes.

The guy with the big axe is from Privateer Press. Second time I've painted him.

The oozes are from Otherworld Miniatures.

The Hook Horror and Frog Demon are from Otherworld Miniatures as well.

And thus ends the painting of '09.

Or at least the finished painting of '09.