Shadows of Brimstone - The Monsters

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Shadows of Brimstone - The Monsters

Board Games - When it comes to board games with miniatures there are two – three distinct varieties. First is the pre-assembled or single piece miniature. These pass the "Christmas Morning Test" meaning you don't have to do anything other than open the box to get started playing. The second type are snap together, these models require a little assembly but not necessarily glue or filler to get them in a playable state. The last type requires some significant modeling, gluing and filling just like a standard tabletop miniature game. My current board game project, Shadows of Brimstone falls into that last category.

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Weird War I - Scythe Boardgame Heroes

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Weird War I - Scythe Boardgame Heroes

Board Games - It's taken me a bit longer than usual to wrap up the heroes for Scythe. The detail on them is a little soft so it took a bit more to get me motivated to put them on the painting table to finish up. Don't get me wrong the models are great they're just smallish so the faces weren't the most fun to paint. It didn't help that in the same batch I have a bunch of Shadows of Brimstone and The Others to paint. (both of which are more forgiving and easier to paint).

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Scythe - Steampunk-style robots

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Scythe - Steampunk-style robots

Board Games - Scythe is a new board game that features steampunk robots and cool characters with animal companions. It's set in the 1920's in an alternate reality just after World War I.  One of my regular board game clients just dropped these off to me to have painted. Her primary request was to make the robots look beat up and mostly metal with chipping paint and grime.

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Feed your Greed - The Others: Seven Sins

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Feed your Greed - The Others: Seven Sins

Board Games - Sometimes you get the coolest effects without planning on it. My latest batch of board game bits comes from the Greed expansion for The Others: Seven Sins. For those of you unfamiliar with the game it pits Hellboy-esque agents of FAITH against the otherworldly threat of The Others. It's a bit Cthulu-esque mixed in with the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. The core box gets you two of the major sins with their minions and the other five sins are available individually.

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The Others: Seven Sins - Core Heroes

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Board Games - I'm a bit bummed I haven't had a chance to put The Others: Seven Sins on the table. The game look great and from what I've heard it plays well too. I've already painted a Sons of Ragnorak hero set for one of my board game clients. This time around she gave me the core heroes and  the large sin monster: Pride.

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On the painted table - Fortune and Glory

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Board Games - The sheer number of board games on the market with good quality miniatures is pretty amazing. I don't have anywhere near enough time to play all of them so when a client brings me something I haven't seen before I get pretty excited. Theminis from Fortune and Glory remind me of Indiana Jones a bit. With mobsters, cultists and Nazis it seems the heroes will have their hands full.

These are painted to my basic tabletop standard. After blocking in the base colors and applying a wash I went in and applied highlights and details on each piece. Once you get paint on them they don't look like blobs of colored plastic and feel closer to a standard tabletop miniatures game.

If you pick this game up I suggest painting or having the pieces painted to bring the experience to life.

Off the painting table - Shadows Over Camelot Expansion

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Board Games - With King Arthur coming out I think this game might get a second look for people looking to do a theme night before going out to see Charlie Hunnam trade in his hog for a horse and suit of chainmail. ThisDays of Wonder title is one of the traitor mechanic games that seemed to be all the rage a few years ago.

This set of models is from the Merlin's company expansion that introduces Merlin as a character and gives Sir Bedivere his own figure with special coat of arms.

Mad in the Mansion

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Board Games - Mansions of Madness looks like a pretty amazing game, that is if the game is anywhere near the same level of quality as the miniatures. I'm going to have to check this on out if I can ever get to a board game night and demo the game. I've heard there may be some type of deck builder that feels similar to the board game but I haven't done my research to confirm. (currently my game nights don't have room for another game of this type, however after painting these up I might need to see if I can squeeze it in.)

These are painted to a tabletop level. Some basic shading, highlighting and variety of colors across the full range. I kept the bases black as my understanding is the game carries across several different types of terrain and as such it makes more sense for a simple black base to frame the models.  

We're all Mad Here ... Mansions of Madness WIP

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Board Games – Fantasy Flight certainly knows how to fill a box with cool little extras that add a ton to a game. Case in point Mansions of Madness could function just fine with paper cut outs, or wooden meeples but going the extra mile and doing 3D sculpts of every monster and character really takes it to the next level.

My regular board game client recently dropped of the core game and what looks to be all the expansions. There's something like 75 pieces to this batch that need to painted to a tabletop quality. 

With a big batch of models like this I start by separating them into models that will share similar colors. For example Cthulu and most of the deep ones are green, the cultists are red etc. This lets me assembly line the base coats and shading quickly so I can get to the detail stage which takes a little while with board game minis as they don't have the level of detail that pops out after a wash that traditional tabletop models do. Which means I need to work a little harder to bring out what's there.

 

On the painting table ... A Touch of Evil

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On the painting table ... A Touch of Evil

Boardgames – It's always a bit odd for me when I get a painting job and I know very little about the game system the models are used for. Lately that's been happening quite a bit with board game miniatures. My primary focus has always been on table wargames so many of the cool board games fall off my radar. 

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Angels of Death - Space Hulk Complete

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Angels of Death - Space Hulk Complete

Warhammer 40,000 – The second half of the Space Hulk commission I've been working on has wrapped up. These are really basic Blood Angels. The whole job is a simple 3-Color job with a wash. Since they are just board game pieces my client didn't want anything fancy. I have more photos of these in the 40K Gallery.

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Stealing Genes ...

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Stealing Genes ...

Space Hulk – Genestealer Cults are back and I for one am excited. One of my regular clients recently dropped off a set of Space Hulk miniatures from the most recent version of the game to have me paint up to a basic standard. I never managed to pick up a copy of the game for myself, partially because a friend owns it and partially because I have a full bug hunt corridor set that I can play Zone Mortalis 40K on to get that type of feel. Or so I thought ...

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