2024 Painting Log

I had the whole weekend to myself so I managed to knock out a few more Star Schlock models. These took a little longer since they’re all unique characters.

For the second landing team set I settled on a slightly different color scheme. The science/medic characters were inspired by a combination of Nurse Chapel’s outfit on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the lime green that these characters wear in the Star Schlock artwork. For no particular reason I’ve decided that the engineers wear bright orange.

The rest are a fun mix of scoundrels and villains. For some of them I went with the Star Schlock game artwork, and for others I just did whatever came to mind.

Initially I resisted doing the armored bounty hunter in silver — I didn’t want him to look too much like the Mandalorian. At the same time, I didn’t want to use bright colors because I want to differentiate him from the Explorer Corps. Neutral colors like browns and greys seem to fit the model best.

These were all done in a mixture of techniques. I seem to be bouncing between base color then wash and highlights, speedpaints over a drybrushed base (AKA “slap chop”), and the tricolor method of building up from a dark base. I’m finding that the tricolor method is often best for skin or light colors, where washes or speedpaints can often look too blotchy. It’s also better for cloaks, where washes and speedpaints tend to pool at the bottom edges unless you keep brushing away the excess as it’s drying.

Speedpaints are great for darker colors with a lot of texture like hair/fur, weapons, and belts or bandoliers with little pouches, but with lighter colors or areas with less detail I’m finding that I often end up going back in with traditional paints to smooth things out.

2024 models painted so far: 247, for 7 different games

Next up: who knows? I’ve got a lot of models I’d like to get done before the end of the year, and I’m working on a last minute Terrainfest project, so my hobby time is being pulled in a few different directions.

Presenting Arandura, the Maxan Queen, one of many great looking miniatures from Lucid Eye.

Lucid Eye’s Savage Core is a game that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. It’s a quirky skirmish game that’s easy to set up and play, with a simple rule set that centers on one unique leader and six followers. But the selling point for me was “Double Trouble,” a rule where any time any player rolls doubles, players choose or roll randomly from a list of weird events that affect the whole table, anything from a rampaging NPC tyrannosaurus to a lava flow that slowly creeps across the board, destroying everything in its path.

By a complete coincidence, I had just read a tutorial in Kevin Dallimore’s painting guide about doing jaguar spots a few days before I started on this. Doing the spots was actually pretty relaxing.

I’ve got a few more Savage Core models based and waiting for primer. I’m going to try to get to them by the end of the year, but I have a lot of other stuff pulling my attention in different directions, so we’ll see…

2024 models painted so far: 238, for 7 different games

I’d like to finish up the Ragnarök core box by the end of the year, but my short attention span may get the better of me — I’ve just received a second round of Star Schlock models, and I’ve got some Savage Core figures that have been languishing on the shelf of opportunity for way too long. But I managed to get these done at least.

Here we have Bödvar Bjarki in his polar bear form, along with Skuld, followed by the last two groups of troops.

With these 10 done I’ve got 21 left to do, all of them the large god and monster models. It should be doable, although they’re all individual characters (none of the duplicate troops), so I won’t be able to assembly line them like I did these. It might go faster if I group them by similar color schemes, we’ll see…

These were all done in more-or-less the same way as most of the other MBR models I’ve done this year: black primer, drybrush in the most dominant color, then fill in the details with either speedpaints or regular paint, or a combination of the two.

2024 models painted so far: 237, for 6 different games

I don’t think I’ve ever agonized so much over what color to paint a batch of miniatures. At first I was going to do these as the characters are pictured in the Star Schlock game artwork, but the cut of the uniforms doesn’t quite match — I think the models would end up looking like they’re wearing painting smocks, or cooking aprons.

I’m a huge fan of the 1980s Star Trek movies, so I thought maybe I’d try doing them in the red jackets the crew wears in those. Although not as colorful as the original series or Next Generation TV uniforms, the movie uniforms are still color-coded, but it’s just the collars and shoulder and sleeve trim that denotes the department, with white, beige, grey and light green replacing yellow, red and blue. I decided against this, however, as the collars would be too small to really see on the models, and having them all in maroon and black would look pretty dull on the table top.

I looked at some of the uniform variations from the ’80s movies, and also at some fan-created variations. I even went as far as grabbing images of the unpainted models from the Star Schlock website and scribbling on them in a paint program just to get an idea of what they might look like with different color schemes. I also looked at similar shows like Space: 1999 (far too much beige).

I finally settled on a mix of Star Trek original series and movie-era colors. I switched the red and yellow department colors to what they use on Next Generation, so the command officers are in red — I thought this would make them easier to spot on the table. The group of 5 landing party officers are one unit in Star Schlock, but I decided on a mix of yellow and blue just to give them some variety. The robot was a no-brainer.

That’s all the Star Schlock starter set models painted — now to find time to actually play the game…

Next up I’ve got some more Mythic Battles Ragnarök figures primed, and also a pretty impressive Savage Core model. But I really should start on my Terrainfest project…

2024 models painted so far: 227, for 6 different games

It’s unsettling, just how susceptible I am to Gerry’s unboxing videos. Star Schlock is at least the third game I wasn’t going to get into, but changed my mind after seeing Gerry talk about it.

In this case, I did look at the Kickstarter but decided against it, for reasons that elude me at the moment. It was probably due to the overwhelming nature of most Kickstarter campaigns — “here’s a whole ton of stuff, you need to commit to buying all of it right now or you’ll never see any of it again.” It’s also possible that I was in the midst of another project, or had too many crowdfunders going at the time.

Just buying the boxed game direct from Wunkay was a very satisfying experience compared to Kickstarter. I decided I wanted the game on a Monday, ordered it on a Tuesday, and had it in my hands by the weekend. A far cry from the usual two year wait…

Anyway, enough about crowdfunding. The models in the boxed game are a lot of fun, very characterful with a reasonable amount of detail. I decided to paint the gorilla soldiers in classic Planet of the Apes livery rather than the gold outfits shown in the game’s artwork.

I used a mix of techniques for these, starting with a base coat of purple and brown (or black for the lead gorilla), with a middle grey for the hands and faces. I then used Army Painter purple, strong tone, and dark tone washes. The strong and dark tones worked okay, although I had to do two coats to darken down the grey I used for the heads and hands, but the purple left their arms and legs too dark, so I painted in some purple highlights before a final yellowed bone drybrush.

I’m very much looking forward to painting the Explorer Corps landing party, but I’m having a hard time deciding on the color scheme. I like what’s shown on the box art, but at the same time I’m a huge fan of the ’80s Star Trek movies (well, most of them), so I’m tempted to do them all with maroon jackets…

2024 models painted so far: 219, for 6 different games

I seem to be jumping around randomly between games and projects as I work on clearing my shelf of opportunity. The challenge with this approach is in making the models from the different games and ranges look consistent, as I’m often finding myself using different painting styles depending on the game.

For Gangs of Rome I’ve been fairly consistently using slap chop (are we really okay with that name now?). I thought the last batch I did were a little too dark (although Ben seemed to like them), so this time I started with grey primer rather than black, and drybrushed up from there for the base coat. I finished them off primarily with Speedpaints, but I had some issues making the skin look right so I went back over the faces, arms and feet with a more traditional base coat then wash approach. The final step was a drybrush with Reaper Yellowed Bone to bring up the highlights just a bit.

The Speedpaints definitely lived up to their name — I was able to get this entire batch of 14 models done in about 10 hours (from bare metal to finished and varnished), spread out over three sessions. Not bad considering all the different colors involved.

These Roman civilians are from Warlord’s Hail Caesar range. They don’t have any rules or stats for Gangs of Rome, so they’ll most likely just be for table decoration. Maybe I should count them as a TerrainFest project? I may do up some gang fighter stats for a few of them — the Celtic bodyguard certainly looks like he could start some trouble, and who knows what that merchant has hidden in his treasure chest?

2024 models painted so far: 211, for 5 different games

Shatterpoint seems to be doing a mix between well known characters and deep cuts, so hopefully they’ll get to Baylan Skoll and his apprentice eventually. Technically Ray Stevenson is already in the game as Gar Saxon, but one could argue that the relationship between a tiny plastic miniature and the actor who voiced the character in an animated TV series is tenuous at best.

In the mean time, we do have Mr. Stevenson represented in what is arguably the best role of his career, that of Titus Pullo, the weirdly lucky Roman legionnaire from the TV series Rome, along with his co-star Lucius Vorenus.

The models are from Warlord’s Hail Caesar range. If I use them for anything it will be Gangs of Rome, but I decided against the usual cobblestone bases just to keep my options open. These were painted using the triad method, starting with black primer and working up through three different successively lighter shades of each color. I’m still playing around with the technique — so far I think it looks pretty good at tabletop distance (the only thing that really matters) but less so under the camera’s much closer scrutiny. It also takes a good deal longer than my usual base coat → wash (or speedpaint) → drybrush method, and while I appreciate the increased control over where the paint goes, I’m not sure the end results look any better.

2024 models painted so far: 197, for 5 different games

I’m starting to play around with different painting techniques, but I want these to all look fairly consistent so these were done the same as most of the others for this game: black primer, drybrush the main dominant color, then fill in details with speedpaints, regular paint, and/or washes as needed.

Goddess Sif and Heroes Egill and Sigmund

Dwarves, Light Elves, and the human form of Bodvar Bjarki, who apparently manifests a giant armored polar bear when he’s asleep (unfortunately I haven’t painted that one yet).

I did a bit more layering than usual on the Light Elves in an attempt to give them a glow. Same for the Dwarves, as I was trying to match the source artwork which is of course very dark and has them lit in blueish light.

With these done I’ve only got 40 more to do in order to get the core box done, then another 16 to cover the Asgard and Destroyer expansions. I’d love to at least finish all of the core box miniatures by the end of the year, but I’m not sure if I can manage that and a Terrainfest project, especially since I’ve just started prepping another batch of Gangs of Rome models…

2024 models painted so far: 195, for 5 different games

I backed Crooked Dice’s 7TV ’80s Genre Guide Kickstarter, but none of the new miniatures in the campaign really interested me that much — they were all either characters I already had versions of, or couldn’t think of a way to use in a 7TV cast (but seriously, if “Neutron Nelson” had come with the rest of Prince’s ’80s band, I would have been all over it). So instead I decided to add on some of Crooked Dice’s older ’80s stalwarts, the Paranormal Exterminators, plus some adversaries to go with them.

I’ve been trying to move into more deliberate painting and less drybrushing and washes, and these are a bit of an interim step in that process. The four main guys were done with a brown base coat followed by layers of beige, but I did end up wiping out most of the shadowed areas so I tried to bring them back with a strong tone wash, then some highlights. The faces and equipment was done more or less the same way, but for those I managed to get the shading right (building up from dark to light) so no course correction was needed.

Same technique for the Harbingers — I actually painted the Gatekeeper first as a test piece, and the Keymaster last.

The Ectoplasmic Entity and the Demonic Dogs were done with my usual technique of black primer → drybrush base color → fill in details → wash and highlight as needed.

I believe I’ve got enough models now to do a Ghostbusters scenario for 7TV — I did some ghosts earlier in the year, and I found a Playmobil Marshmallow Man that is close to the right scale. I didn’t pick up Crooked Dice’s Ecto-1 car, thinking that it would really just be a terrain piece, but I’m kind of regretting that now. Maybe time to put another order together…

These two titans of ’80s cinema were also add-ons from the Kickstarter. The Coach was the early bird bonus for the campaign, and the Cyborg Enforcer is an earlier figure that seemed like a fun add-on, although I’m not sure what I’ll use them for, if anything. I do have some questions about the scale between these two though, the cyborg looks a little small…

2024 models painted so far: 184, for 5 different games

I usually watch (well, mostly listen to) the Weekender and XLBS while painting. I had a full weekend so I didn’t get around to this week’s episodes until today. It’s always a huge thrill when I hear my name on the show!

I’ve finally come to the end of my current backlog of Star Wars: Shatterpoint miniatures (at least until November when the next round comes out). These were a lot of fun to do — as they are characters from a cartoon show, they are more brightly colored than a lot of the Shatterpoint characters have been. I certainly got in a lot of practice painting yellow and orange, two notoriously difficult colors.

I tried a few different techniques on these. For Hera and Chopper I tried to step away from my usual over-reliance on drybrushing and washes, instead doing most of the work by layering from dark up to light shades. Kev Dallimore is one of my favorite painters, and I think I’m finally starting to understand what he is doing to get the effects he gets.

Sabine, Ezra and Kanan were done using the pretty standard basecoat-wash-drybrush technique. I did that mainly because all three of them have source lighting from lightsabers and explosions, and that’s pretty easy to do with a little drybrushing.

Zeb was done using the old black primer-drybrush-speedpaint technique. Speedpaint yellow is just as hard to work with as regular yellow (for different reasons) and I ended up painting over most of it with a few shades of regular yellow paint. I’m still not 100% sold on speedpaint, but I’m going to keep working with it for now.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with how they came out. Now if I can just make time to get a game in…

2024 models painted so far: 173, for 5 different games

I wanted to make sure Thrawn looked as good as I could make him look, so I saved him for after Princess Leia and the boys, thinking they would be good additional practice. I went for a warmer white, starting with Reaper’s Wolf Grey, drybrushing lighter, and then using a warm off-white in thinned down layers. The black boots and blue skin were done using Speedpaint.

Agent Kallus and the two ISB Agents were very easy by comparison, just black primer and drybrushed gunmetal for the armor. After Kallus was done I looked at a picture of him from Star Wars: Rebels and noticed that his shoulder pads aren’t metallic armor, and his tunic has a wide lighter grey stripe down the front. It was easy enough to correct.

2024 models painted so far: 167, for 5 different games

I just have the main Rebels crew still to do, then I’ll be done with Shatterpoint for a while. Next up I’ve got some 7TV and Gangs of Rome stuff to do, and eventually I’ll get back to Mythic Battles: Ragnarök — I would really like to finish that up before the end of the year.

Some time ago I posted on a wishlist forum for Shatterpoint that I wanted to see a set of the four main characters escaping from the Death Star in the original film. While I don’t imagine that my post influenced Atomic Mass’s decision to make this squad pack, I’m still happy they did. I’ve had a lot of practice painting white armor so this one was a breeze to do.

I started with grey primer, then a base coat in a slightly lighter, cooler grey, then drybrushed up through light grey to white. I used speedpaints for the skin, hair, weapons, and the dark areas between the armor plates.

For Chewbacca I started with black primer and drybrushed brown, occasionally course-correcting with brown speedpaints and washes. If you look at photos of Chewbacca he’s not a uniform brown color, he’s got patches of dark grey across his torso and shoulders. I’m not sure if I quite managed that, but I like the way he looks so we’ll call it good.

2024 models painted so far: 163, for 5 different games

Soldiers, samurai, gunslingers, pirates… Star Wars really does have it all. I love the variety of different types of characters in the various Star Wars media, and Hondo Ohnaka is one of my favorites. Whenever he shows up you know you’re going to get that perfect blend of humor and danger that is Star Wars at its best.

These are a lot more colorful than the majority of Shatterpoint characters I’ve done so far, and they were quite a bit of fun to paint. Rather than starting with a single color I went for a more traditional method of blocking out the base colors and then adding shade and highlights with a combination of washes and brush work. The fellow in blue gave me the most trouble — I did his shoulder pads in a silver that ended up being pretty overwhelming, and then spent a lot of time trying different ways to dull it down. The other three went well though, especially Hondo himself who was an absolute treat.

2024 models painted so far: 159, for 5 different games

You can hear that meandering theme tune now, can’t you? I like The Mandalorian, it’s like watching two kids play with their Star Wars action figures in the sandbox. Which should make it perfect for a skirmish game, especially Shatterpoint which doesn’t get too hung up on details like what era we’re in…

These all went very quickly. Most of the characters are a single color with a few accents, so my usual technique of starting with a single color drybrushed over black primer worked very well. Assembly was pretty easy except for Moff Gideon’s Dark Troopers. Sometimes I swear Atomic Mass is just messing with us, there is no way the models need to come in this many separate pieces…

I’m happy to have these done, they’ve been parked on the shelf of opportunity for a long time. Now to get a game in…

2024 models painted so far: 155, for 5 different games

Out of these four, Boushh and Lando were the most satisfying to paint. Luke in his all-black outfit just wasn’t all that interesting, and Artoo was pretty difficult — for some reason I got really hung up on the blue stripy bits on his front.

For Boushh and Lando I started with black primer, then drybrushed in brown, then basecoated the lighter colors (Lando’s pants, Boushh’s tunic and boots) and the smaller details like belts and weapons. Then hit them both with an Army Painter strong tone wash, followed by drybrushing with Reaper Yellowed Bone for highlights.

Luke was even simpler, with black primer, dark grey drybrush, and then filling in the lighter colors on his head and lightsaber. I tried painting in some lighter grey highlights but it didn’t look very good so I dulled them down with a Dark Tone wash.

Artoo was done more or less the same way as the Stormtroopers and Clone Troopers from the previous post: light grey primer, a slightly darker grey wash (made using Reaper’s wash medium, which is pretty good for making their paints into washes), then white drybrushing and filling in the details on his dome, chest and feet. The serving tray was gold and silver followed by a Strong Tone wash.

I am somewhat tempted to pick up a second copy of this pack. Not because I relish the idea of painting Artoo again, but because all four characters have alternate options. Luke can be with or without the sort of tunic-vest he wears at the beginning of Return of the Jedi (I didn’t realize this until I was halfway through assembling him), Lando and Leia have no-helmet options which I think might be interesting, and Artoo has an option to skip the serving tray and add his third leg and tilted body for when he’s moving at speed. Maybe if I find a discounted copy…

2024 models painted so far: 148, for 5 different games

Finally, Darth Vader enters the Shatterpoint continuum. This batch of figures wasn’t all that interesting to paint, being as monochromatic as they are, but at least they were quick. I did use blue rather that grey for Vader’s highlights, but the most exciting bits were the Trooper Sergeant’s shoulder pad and Vader’s lightsaber. This is a problem that isn’t going to go away, especially as the game delves further into the classic trilogy, so a challenge will be to start finding ways to make single-color characters more interesting. The characters from Rebels should provide some relief from that, but they almost go too far in the other direction.

This time I did the bases first instead of leaving them for last, which was the right move. When drybrushing the figure it’s a lot easier to avoid “splashing” onto the base (as opposed to the reverse), and it was nice to finish each figure and not have to go “oh wait, I still need to do the base.”

These were done almost entirely with drybrushing over a base color. For the troopers my base coat was a little too light, so I got a chance to experiment with some wash medium that I bought last year but never got around to using. I mixed a warm grey wash to darken them up just a bit, then drybrushed white over that. I used Speedpaint black for the armor gaps and weapons.

I honestly can’t remember why I bought the Lead by Example set — it certainly wasn’t because I wanted to paint more clones. I’m hoping that if they do any more of the prequel-era Jedi Masters for Shatterpoint, they stop putting them in sets with more clone troopers. There is a Jedi Council set coming soon that looks to buck the trend, so here’s hoping.

The clones were done the same way as Vader’s stormtroopers (in fact, I did them first to get the technique down). For the dark grey decorative bits of armor I used Gravelord Grey Speedpaint.

Plo Koon and Ahsoka started out with black primer followed by brown drybrushing, then the usual base color – wash – drybrush. I sometimes think I rely too much on drybrushing, so for Ahsoka I decided to try painting in the shadow areas and highlights, and only drybrushed the green lightsaber glow. I think it looks pretty good, and I did like having more control over where the paint goes. I will probably experiment further with this style on the next batch, especially the Rebels crew.

2024 models painted so far: 144, for 5 different games

Although it plays on a printed board and doesn’t generally use terrain, Mythic Battles does have a few characters who can pick up trees and throw them or smack their enemies with them, so the game comes with some scatter that needed to be painted. The rocks interfere with ranged attacks, so I suppose the 3D pieces are just there as a reminder.

I recently received this miniature of Skadi as a damage replacement. Since the color scheme looked fairly simple, I thought I might as well go ahead and get it painted before putting it in the box. One less thing to worry about later.

2024 models painted so far: 135, for 5 different games
2024 pieces of scatter terrain painted so far: 36 (but are we seriously keeping track?)

The new edition of Gangs of Rome has rules for throwing roof tiles, amphora (clay jars), and sacks of grain, and a terrific set of accompanying scatter terrain. They’ve also got Talavus, a non-player character who will cheerfully throw bricks at passing gang fighters if they get too close to him.

This pack mule is part of Warlord’s Hail Caesar range. I don’t play that game and I’m not likely to get into it, but I was trying to get to the threshold for free shipping and thought this figure might be useful for Gangs of Rome. It’s generic enough that it wouldn’t look out of place in a wild west game, or a medieval fantasy setting. Anything that uses mules to carry stuff, really.

2024 models painted so far: 134, for 5 different games
2024 pieces of scatter terrain painted so far: 18

I’ve finished up the current queue of Mythic Battles: Ragnarök figures, meaning that I now have enough painted miniatures to play the next two scenarios in the game. I’ve got some trees and stone slabs mostly done (just waiting for varnish), but after that I’ll be taking a short break from the frozen north to catch up on Star Wars Shatterpoint.

Most of these were done with the same method I’ve been using all along, black primer and lots of drybrushing. Fenrir took no time at all (I even painted his alternate head). Thor and the Ulfhednar were a little more involved but still relatively straightforward. The source lighting on Thor was done to match the card artwork.

I tried a different approach for the Seers. I’ve been playing around with Speedpaints but so far only over black primer/drybrushed (still not calling it Slap Chop, seriously, it’s a kitchen gadget). This time I thought I’d try the Speedpaints as they’re meant to be used, over white primer without any pre-shading. The results came out okay, but I did end up doing a lot of touch up and drybrushing with traditional paints after the Speedpaint had dried. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do a model using only the Speedpaint method, but they’re good to have in my toolbox — if nothing else, they’re great as highly pigmented washes.

2024 models painted so far: 132, for 5 different games