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?

More Terrible Photographs!

That's a group shot. There are two 'true' 25 mm figures there. The snake man on the far left front row and the gladiator on the far right right row.

These three are 'lesser' orcs from the Reven faction in Warlord. Basing is done with Army Painter Black Battlefield with some flock and ash thrown ontop of it.

Reven lesser bulls spearmen. Did them at the same time as the sword wielder.

True 25 mm snakeman priest. Don't even remember the company. He was in a state of 'almost done' for well over a year. Finally finished him off.

Female gladiator from Mega-Minis. Another true 25mm figure. Some great detail on the shield.

Drow warrior from the very short lived Chain Mail line from WoTC. You gotta hand it to WoTC, when the going gets tough, they quit. ;-)

Type 1 demon aka the Vrock from Otherworld miniatures.

As I continue to read Bulkheads and Blasters, a d6 based game that uses # of successes to determine if you make a roll and if you beat opposition who also uses d6, I'm still painting up figures that may be useful for such a setting. Thankfully some of the Superfigs can pull double duty in being useful for Mutants and Masterminds or another, in this case, minis game. As you might be able to tell from the group shot, he's also a rather large bastich!

So still messing around with the camera. If one of these pictures is the least offensive, let me know!

More Miscellaneia: Grenadier, White Wolf, and Others

That's a Ral Partha Giant (Storm maybe) and a White Wolf figure. I didn't initially have the Trinity figure from White Wolf set up, but one of our regulars publishers a game called Blasters and Bulkheads, review here and I picked up the PDF and decided since I had a few sci-fi dudes sitting around anyway, might as well paint them up. I haven't gotten too far into the game, it seems like a good ole Space Opera with 'jedi' style characters as an option so I may be looking into that in the future more. Its main appeal to me is its skrimish level!

I included the White Wolf guy just for size reference in these pics. The musician orc here is from an old 3rd party company that was doing unofficial Warhammer fantasy style figures. I have a few of 'em around. The horn on this sucker was NEVER going to fit properly so I figure the orc is just getting his breath for another round.

The orc is not necessarily that tall, but damn is he beefy!

This is the dragon from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol Fantasy Lords set by Grenadier. I threw him on the other base that came with the daemon prince. I added the surface effects on his, and the Trinity figure, with a Happy Suppuku mold. I also threw on a few more skulls, a shield, and that big old cross.

The dragon didn't turn out too bad. I hated painting him though and probably will NOT be using him in a game. His wings are super heavy and I hate to green stuff them with a lot of material.

Opinions on D&D Next and Miniatures?

If I'm way off topic here let me know but as a fan of miniatures and someone whose done repaints on the prepaints I had the following thoughts:


1. No core races that are rare or very rare. Yeah, I'm looking at the Dragonborn here. The only way to get a 'common' one, was to buy the resculpt in the visible packages that was overpriced compared to what had come previously. Why WoTC decided to make a brand new core race and not have a ton of figures out for it right away I'll never know. If there were sculpting problems, get better sculptors. They're out there. I don't need to post to dozens of sites to prove it. What's worse was at the same time we were still getting dwarves and elves that absolutely no one needed.

2. Adventure Support: Call me crazy but having a miniature of some of the big bads come out a year or later after the adventure has been out doesn't strike me as good marketing. Having an adventure come out that has immediate support with miniatures on the other hand? Especially if they are well done and can be used in other venues? Win.

3. Dreamblade. What the hell? Miniatures of a similiar size but with prize money that blew anything the D&D miniatures were hosting out of the water? Well, we all know how that ended but man, talk about trying to have your cake and eat it too. If you're going to make another minaiture game, make sure it either doesn't compete with your other one, or make sure that it it extremely useful to the other miniature game and doesn't require people to clip the miniatures off these massive oversized bases.

4. The China problem. Some people hate the idea of anything being made in China due to the various human rights issues. Some people look at current events and see that American workers appear to be more productive, that there are real savings to be had on transportation costs and that the lead time is cut down by months thanks to that improved transportation time. Might be time to you know, start making things in the US again as labor costs on the overseas markets increase. Be a good PR move as well.

5. Bags of miniatures. There has been a Zombie game out for years that allows you to buy a bag of zombies. They have a few other bits as well. These zombies are cheap. Well, relatively cheap. Why WoTC hasn't been able to make something like this is once again, beyond me.

Anyway, that's some things I'd like to see as there has been some talk of miniatures coming out 'soon'.

Priming The Night Away

The top one is the dragon with some green primer thrown over the black primer from below. I'm still messing with underpriming as a paint type. We'll see how it goes.

Latest Batch and Prep Work

Finished off some miniatures and prepping some more.

The gnoll is a touch up from Wizards of the Coast. The thing was initially almsot all black so while I was painting other figures I would throw some paint on it.

The demon next to him is the Heresy one. I had the red on him done for a while as he was my test figure.

The little dragon didn't initially come with a base but if I wanted to prevent it from chipping and tipping over... that's a creature from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol set in the Fantasy Lords box by Grenadier. The last one is a Games Workshop Armored Archer for the Empire done up in Nordland colors.

Same batch just from a different angle with the camera.

These are the guys I was waiting for the inks to dry on. Lots of inks involved with these Chronopia Black Orcs. They have kind of a middle east thing going on. I made the leader stand out a little by changing his base. The figures are some interesting sculpts but I thought these were bad casts. The bases on the 'grunts' are done using Happy Suppuku and green stuff. The leader's base is done up with some army painter flock and gale force 9 dried grass.

And on the workbench...

Yeah, I still haven't hit the daemon prince yet. The dragon in the middle is the large dragon from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol set. I threw him on the round base that the daemon came with if you use it for 40K. Fits well. Threw some skulls and other debris on the base. The last guy is I believe a Mountain Giant from Ral Partha. The original date on the base is 1977. We've come a long way. Have to at least let these set overnight. There's a ton of green stuff on the dragon and a ton of glue. Messing with it, especially it being all metal and only two pieces, wings and body, made me remember that despite my love of these old figures, they could be a huge pain in the ass if things didn't fit and man, those wings did not fit.

Washes, Inks, Glazes or ?

When painting up your miniatures, what does everyone use in terms of washes, inks, glazes and other additives?

I started off with inks for the most part. I bought the really small Citadel pots that were drop squeezer bottles. They were fun stuff. I've never really 'mastered' that process but I still pop inks out to add some 'depth' to a color, to intensify it I guess.

With washes, they seem to do a lot of the work. Games Workshop dropped their inks and went to washes. I remember hearing the collective sigh of the internets that chestnut ink, long a favorite of gamers everwhere for flesh, fur, leather and other bits, was no longer available, but a sigh of relief that the washes, especially sepia and mud seemed to work pretty well.

I have some Andrea paints. Two of the sets I have, silver and gold, come with inks. These are old school and have to be thinned down tremendously. I've been using them a bit with these black blood orcs from Chronopia that I'm trying to finish off. That won't happen tonight as I'm up way past my bed time and waiting for the last round of black ink to dry off. For silver, there's brown, ultra-marine blue, and black inks. For gold, there's chestnut, black, and yellow. That yellow is the last touch I'm looking for but when I do it, I'll also touch up the yellow clothing on the orcs at the same time so it'll be a double purpose use.

And Privater Press has inks and washes. They have a flesh wash and an armor wash and all their other colors are inks. They recommend a lot of thinned down ink glazes over the red for the Khador forces and the thing that is terrible about that, is first, preventing the ink from pooling and creating splotches, and second, waiting for the ink to dry between layers.

Oh well, enough of my rambling. What's everyone else do?

Secret Weapon, Grenadier, Wizards of the Coast

Still messing around with the settings on the camera. Let me know if one of the pictures here strikes a particular balance of, you know, being visible and useful.

The top one is a Dream Blade miniature. That game crashed hard despite WoTC throwing money at people to play. I still have a few figures I'd like to touch up. Happy with the way this one came out. It's very 'Cthulhuisq'.

The second one is an idol from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol in the Fantasy Lords series by Grenadier. I'm working on the small green dragon in the set next. The large one I'm kinda puzzled by what to do with it. I'd need to find a base for it and some putty and pinning for the wings. It's in a kind of goofy standing straight 'what up' pose.

The last one is a nice big chunk of resin from Secret Weapon Games. The skull is actually pretty large. It had no fractures, cleaned up easily and took to the paint well. I used... what I think they call underpriming on it. First black, then ivory, then white. Then the bone triad of paints and then some washes. I only did the spines/horns black because I wanted some contrast with the rest of the skull and red dragons for instance, often have black horns.

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.