Odds, Sods n ……Stuffs. A Medley of Mayhem

Right so Pt 2 …… again…….. as someting went wrong the first two times and Pt2 deleted/didnt upload >?<  Anywho…. where was I……… Ah!! With Loretta Amata our cleric zealot all finished and stomping on the old religions, I turned once again to the Twitchers and asked my #1 troll who should be next for the paint. He, ofc picked the Fighter, knowing that was my least favourite!
She is clad in plate armour with a chainmail hauberk and a heater shield (derpeist name for a shield ever – bloody Victorians 😉 )

One of my sponsors, the nice folk at Pk-Pro had kindly sent me the Scale75 metallics sets so thought twas a good opportunity to give them a try out..

one of my sponsors, the lovely folk at Pk-Pro had very kindly sent me the Scale75 metallics sets which I havent tried before so thought twas a fine time to give them a bash. I did her plate using the emerald and cobalt alchemy paints to give the armour a nice greenish tint and then to contrast used some of the paints from the copper set on her sword hilt and the cross nose guard on the helmet. For the mail I went back to Darkstar’s steel and graphite paints. The S75 metallics are really nice but defintely thinner and need a second base coat compared to the darkstars which usually base with a single coat. The colours are really nice though and lend to doing tmm with a more nmm technique.

For her heater shield I decided on some simple freehanded livery – the hell I was gonna be freehanding a lion rampant or some such fiddley heraldry so went with a single jade green (from Pro-Acryl) bend and a maltese cross in the upper corner. Still looked a little plain so using the S75 metallics again added in two thin lines to echo the other bronze elements on the sword and the helmet. All done was time to pop her on to her microarts’ base and Genevieve DelaCroix was finished!!

So thats us all caught up…… almost! With Genevieve done twas time to move onto adventurer #4. One of my mods was given teh power of choice and he decided that the elf thief should be next…… the grumpiest looking elf I’ve ever seen!! Even grumpier than Elrond! I want to go for a paler skin tone for the elf as all his leather armour is going to be done in dark brown/grey/black tones. He is a thief afterall. Bright armour would be kinda daft for him. So this is as far as we have gotten. And he has rope…… more bloody rope. I really hate painting rope!!!

D’n’D was somethign I have to date never had the chance/pleasure of playing in my youth nor adulthood. Way back when in school, there was some derpy kid a year below me who tried to get D’n’D going but we soon realised he hadn’t a clue what he was talking about so the whole thing fell apart.

I’ve had in mind for a while though to put together and paint a wee D’n’D adventure party to paint. Great mate of mine over on Twitch, M0rt75 put me onto Otherworld Miniatures for some nice old school metal minis for it.

So, I ordered up a few of the classic classes’ minis;  a cleric, a fighter, a magic user and a thief and those nice folk at Otherworld threw in a ranger for freebies when they arrived!

The sculpts are lush!! Really impressed with the quality. Dead on sculpts, cracking casting (barely any flash, gates etc to clean up at all) and some nice old school metal for the heft!

The only change I really needed/wanted to make was the tabs. I hate tab/slottabase minis so I snipped off the thrice damned tabs, filed down the feet and drilled in a pin each so they could be mounted on some snazzy bases from……..

So with the bases painted (I usually paint the bases before the minis bcs…… reasons!!) I set to painting up the minis on stream.

First up was the ranger who has been named Medb Ní Foraoise (Maeve, Daughter of the Forest)
What a gorgeous mini to paint. Really nice change of pace for me as well to what I usually paint.

With Medb finished, one of my subs decided the next to be tackled was the cleric. Another lovely sculpt, I just loved the juxtaposition of the holy cross in one hand and the brutal flail in the other. With the cleric i wanted a more drab, plain palette; going with creams and worn browns for her clothing. The only really bling been used was on her two crosses which i did in a slightly dirtied gold/bronze. On a side note – I chose a base which had one of the metopes from the Parthenon showing a scene of the battle between the lapiths and centaurs from Greek mythology which represented the battle between civilisation and barbarism and also a mosaic of a greek hoplite. Having the cleric standing on pieces of art from the old religions seemed to suit her character.

Recently had an awesome commission come across my desk which was a seriously cracking blast from the past adn my youth – Some Dredd minis from Foundry!!!

Judges Dredd, Anderson & ofc the quintessential bad guy Judge Death!!

The 2000ad range from foundry is now OOP but Warlord now has the rights andfollowing on from their superb Strontium Dog release, a Judge Dredd game is in the works and on the way.

Anyways…………..

Here’s the ones I got to paint for a client. Had such a blast on these 3! Aprt from getting rid of the horrid retro metal tab bases so I could mount them onto some MAS bases. That part was a pain in the files 😉

Well that was bloody irritating – somethign turned all the photos on their sides. Fixed now I think……….

Been working on this chap for a wee while. One of the best commissions I’ve ever been asked to do but crikey he’s taking a while!!

Still WiP and still a bit to do but as I was sending some progress photos to my client I thought I’d share them here too 🙂

The bases, Corax’s flight pack and the dying son of horus are all magnetised so Corax can be slipped out of his display base and used in game or all put back together for display. The POWER of magnets!!!

Righty – Life has been a bit of a mad hustle recently and I haven’t got around to updating my project blogs in a while. I’ve still be streaming and painting constantly so I now have a big ol backlog of stuffs to get put in.
Last time I mentioned BSF I had just started on the first model, the man of iron UR-025 and was formulating how to do the bases! Ohhhhhhhh there has been progress!!!

I’ve been pottering away on teh lovely BSF minis – doing an odd one or two here and there in between other minis and commission work to the point that have now completed 19 of the 44 core game models and the mighty Ambull expansion box which arrived the other week. More about him in a future update. So here’s the BSF progress so far!

For this project I’ve been trying to speed up my painting and do them just to tabletop level rather than obsessing over every mini and ending up spending 10+ hours on each and every one.

This has worked out sometimes better than others but still am happy at getting a decent tabletop level achieved for what are to be gaming pieces not display….~ish!!

Well thats about it for now for BSF 19 down, 25 plus the Ambull and her wee gribblies to go!!!!

Another model recently(~ish) finally getting some photo love. This time a mini from Grimskull/WargamesExclusive. Had such a great time with this one. Lovely sculpt, cracking cast without any real flaws or prep needed. Painted her mostly live on stream so could show a few differnt workups to folk like aged metals, chipped paint, plasma glows and subtel OSL etc etc. Really enjoyed painting her up. The base that she came with was a bit naff so sub’d it out for some MicroArts goodness instead. Hope you like 🙂

Next up…. a little Inq54 deliciousness 😉

Blackstone Fortress finally arrived the other week  and it’s a peach!! Beautifully produced with a quality narrative setting and certianly leaves itself wiiiiiiiiiiiiide open for further expansions (sic ‘quests’)

My darling wife has even agreed to give it a go!~! Hopefully this will go better than her the last time I attempted to gateway her into the hobby with what turned out to be the completely and utterly cack game that is Rum & Bones 2. God bless her she tried her very best to get into the game and gave it her very best shot but a lump of shite covered in glitter still stinks the house out.  Stupid CMON!!!

Anywhooooooooooooo – Blackstone Fortress is open, sorted and preperations are being made!! But the minis, ohhhhhhh the minis. They are lush! None of this bung some aged sculpts in a box and hope no one notices/cares (yes Execution Force and a few others I’m thinking of ye)  – all brand new sculpts, characters and even foes!

Now, they are quickfit/snapfit which I am not a fan of usually BUT…… once you trim the psots, get past the halo mouldlines and the slotta bases – you have 48(?) cracking minis to get stuck into. I totally get why they went with snapfit and slottas and it does make sense so no harm no foul there.

As per usual I have a horribly full WiPping Shelf (actually it’s now expanded to 2 shelves) and a load of stuff way ahead of BF but I really want to get stuff into the new shiny!!

So……I decided to try doing them TT – tabletop quality/style. Something I’m not very sure how to do or if I can as I have never done before. So I’ve limited myself to 2 hours per mini max. MAX!!!! MAXIMUM!! (never gonna happen I know but I shall try)

For the first trial of doing these beauties quick and easy I picked out the Man of Iron – UR-025. A robot – gotta be quick n easy and most importantly QUICK to do …… I think I got him done in under 2 hours in total but as I painted him totally while streaming the time may be a bit wonky as painting while streaming takes longer than painting alone.

Still – I’m really happy with my first TT painted mini. Lovely mini to paint, not painting in sub-assemblies was a bastard for me though. Just not used to it at all. But still I think he came out pretty well.

Next thing was how to base them. I abhor slotta bases and just cant be arsed with filling the wee gaps and trying to even out the slotta tab to base and all that nonsense. So have decided, with the exception of the spindle drones, to base them all on standard 25, 32 & a 40mm blanks. This way I can paint all the bases in bulk (or  in 2-3 batch lots) together and then pin/glue the minis to them after.

But how to paint the bases. TT remember – so now fancy smancy base work. Having a look at teh game tiles I wanted to be able to do something that while not identical to the patterns and background on the tiles, would at least blend in and look in place with the tiles during play.
So I broke out the airbrush, some paints and a piece of plasticard and had a play around and the above was the result.
It’s not perfect and does need some refinement and tweeking but I think its gonna work and can be done pretty damn quickly and in mass numbers.

One other thing that have been working on is a (not)Noise Marine.  A group of us who stream painting minis over on Twitch are doing a bit of a collaboration to make a ‘band’. Spellcrow very kindly have sponsored us with the minis and each painter gets one mini to build and paint and then the whole band will be brought together at Adepticon next March. Even though have loooooooads of time, I couldnt wait and jumped straight in.

Below is the progress so far. He’s not quite finished but getting there. I just need to polish up a few details and then build a base for him. I’m thinking of some sort of scratchbuild large Slaaneshi amp for him to stand atop of……….

Bit ….well…… fair bit of ….progress on the 54mm Eldar Ranger. Started plotting in more colours, glazed the back of his outer coat a gazillion times to get that old oiled leather look I mentioned in the last entry and then started on his inner coat (which is bothering the hell out of me….too clean….) and then last night was in teh mood for some detailing so did some runes on the tabbard, started on teh leather belts and sketched in the sword. He’s coming along 🙂