A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Historical – Flint and Feather is a skirmish style tabletop game produced by Crucible Crush. The game pits two factions against each other during the “pre-contact period.” The two bands I have to paint are Huron and Iroquios.
Read MoreHistorical - It seems I will be dipping more of my toes into painting historical miniatures. This latest batch is a group of modern US soldiers and Insurgent fighters for Force on Force, Elhiem Miniatures makes the figures.
Read MoreBoard Games – Nostalgia sure is a powerful motivator. Picking up a licensed property from the 80’s and 90’s to bring out as a board game seems to be all the rage right now. Some of these games are really good and some just like the licensing craze of the 80’s-90’s are just cash-grabs that slap some movie art onto a box with some loose rules destined to fail before they launch. The latest of these nostalgia-based games to cross my desk is Highlander the board game, by River Horse productions.
Read MoreBoard Games - Folklore is a pretty amazing deal for some old-school looking minis. I completed the first half of the set a few weeks ago. This is the last portion of the set. As I noted previously there are just a ton of minis include. The detail level is a little lacking compared to most modern miniature games, but for anyone that has been playing/painting for a significant amount of time these bring back a bit of nostalgia to the minis of the late 80’s early 90’s.
Read MoreKingdom Death – The Gold Smoke Knight is the newest Monster to grace my painting table. I believe this guy slots into a Kingdom Death Campaign as a replacement (or after-boss boss) for the Watcher. I could be wrong as it’s been quite some time since I was able to convince my group to play something other than Warhammer 40k.
The survivors are painted in the same manner as the others I’ve done. Pretty straightforward with some minor glow effects. I really like the variety of survivors you have once all the kits have been assembled. Being able to represent any item card in the game on your model is also a cool concept that’s harder to pull off.
Warhammer 40,000 – This should be the last of the Hivefleet Levithan Genestealer Cult. (Well that is until my client here’s some other crazy list idea and decides to add to this one). These guys will be filling in the missing pieces from what I’ve already painted.
It of course includes the obligatory nine mortar teams that fills up the heavy support slot in a brigade, camps on objects and locks down your backfield. Besides the three guard infantry squads this is probably one of the most common units you see on 40k tables.
Also in this batch is a Patriarch (which is painted in the opposite colors as the Broodlord he runs in his Leviathan force), the Biophagist, Kellermorph and Sanctus.
Board Games - Shadows of Brimstone is a game that just keeps on giving. The more of these expansion sets I paint the more I’m reminded of RIFTS or GURPS, it’s probably because the mismash of enemies I’ve seen run the full gambit of old west Indian to weird space robot suit back to giant mutant animals. At some point I need to get a demo of this game because while the minis aren’t the best quality, they’re decent and varied.
Read MoreBoard Games – I think Folklore: The Affliction dances a fine line between miniature Game, RPG and Board Game. Prior to this coming across my painting desk I’d never heard of the game. As part of a larger batch of miniature Folklore was nestled in a small box and a simple bag of terrain. I was quite surprised to option up this tiny box and find over 96 individual models in the box. More surprising was how detailed these were for “inexpensive” miniatures they feel similar to Reaper Bones but it’s a different material that is harder, the doors and walls are a very hard plastic. It seems like a decent value for the cost.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Since the release of the 8th Edition Genestealer Cult Codex I’m been trying to figure out a list that works for me. Initially I looked at doing the Tyranid, Guard and Cult force … but that’s not really where I wanted to go with my force. To me GSC is about hidden mutants and dissidents rising up to overthrow the Fascist Imperial Oppressors. The dark Cthulu-esque nature of a cult from beyond the stars is really where the GSC thrives narratively. For me unless it’s part of a campaign or the later part of an uprising allying with Tyranids doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. I’m sure there’s probably a good way to justify it as you can usually rationalize any story hook.
Read MoreBoard Games – Prodos Games has a pretty solid property. Aliens vs Predator remains a popular property regardless of the quality of the sequels, prequels and reboots. This year is the 40th anniversary of that lovable chest-bursting monster making it’s big screen debut, although with the current shake-up of Disney buying Fox, I wonder if they’ll make a big deal about the anniversary. Sadly it looks like the House of Mouse has killed all existing licensing deals so AVP goes out of print on May 1, if you’re a fan tracking down anything you don’t have now would be safer than waiting on clearance pricing to hit rock bottom.
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Warhammer 40,000 - I’ve run out of Tau puns it seems, sometimes I have projects that are complete forces that are provided all at once and it takes a little longer to complete them but when I turn the models back over to my clients they have a complete force. Other times I get things piece meal as my clients ad new parts or are acquiring the force in small chunks. With these I can typically turn the models around fairly quickly based on my work load.
As with the other models for this client I start with a white primer and work my way up from Ulthuan Grey to White Scar with Agrax Earthshade applied to the lines.
Board Games – I’ve now painted the complete set of minis for The Others: Seven Sins. The final expansion bring out the four horsemen and the avatar of the apocalypse. Just like the rest of the models for this board game these are pretty amazing. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves, if you have any questions about the technique post in the comments below.
Read MoreAge of Sigmar – Khorne is always cooler in a world without guns. Rushing in a meeting your enemy with a giant axe while screaming like a maniac isn’t for everyone. But is you worship the Blood God well it’s a way of life. As with all the Underworld warbands these are really great sculpts. Bulked up and dynamically posed these guys just drip flavor (and blood I suppose).
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Age of Sigmar – Barbarians at the gate, well rather Chaos Marauders reimagined into something cool. The old marauder kit is just plain ridiculous at this point. One can only hope that the Underworlds warbands are a test bed for a new direction on some of the old fantasy lines from Games Workshop.
This was a fun set to paint up, I opted to keep them relatively brown monotone as that’s the first thing I think of when I picture a barbarian.
Age of Sigmar – Warhammer Underworlds is a combination card/miniature game, my understanding is that the mechanics and cards were created to have a competitive game that would support events with a shorter play time, balanced factions, small model count and a smaller play area. Given that the game is onto it’s second season I’m guessing it was a hit. Regardless of how the game plays or how balanced it may or may not be the models are pretty amazing.
The first set to come across my table is the Tzeentch warband. I really like the avian design aesthetic that carries through all the new sculpts for the disciples of the god of sorcery. A beast man, some cultists, some horrors and a wizard make up this set.
Historical - My second batch of historical miniatures are some Waffen SS soldiers for the German WWII army. With this batch my client started painting a few models and soon realized he didn’t have the patience or time to do the detailed camouflage work that he wanted on this set. Lucky for me he was using Scale 75 paints and gave me the set of paints he was using. I’ve never had a chance to use Scale 75 since most of my projects veer more towards the bright end of the spectrum so a bunch of greens and browns aren’t in my wheel-house. I do have to say these are really nice paints. The dropper bottle is useful and they thin down beautifully,
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I’ve painted Hivefleet Leviathan and Black Legion for one of my clients who was clever enough to plan ahead and have me paint his “guardsmen” to work with both forces as cultists. Now that the Genestealer Cult book has dropped his forward thinking has a good portion of his force done.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - The story in Vigilus Defiant is quite good, the idea of Raptors infesting the spires as a precursor to the Black Legion invasion is great. Haarkon Worldclaimer is an amazing model with pretty “MEH” rules, which were intially “FAQed” to make him significantly worse. A tragic tale that seems to repeat itself over and over with the Chaos factions in 8th Edition. That said the model is pretty amazing and was quite fun to paint.
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Historical - As a country founded by immigrants, rebels and outlaws it’s pretty amazing the place this country is at today, for good or ill our founding fathers made this all possible by standing up for what they believed. (of course now-a-days they’d just whine about it on Twitter and Facebook … ) So it was a pleasure to get my first batch of Revolutionary Patriots to paint. While I have no interest in playing out historical battles painting them for someone else is pretty fun. My understanding is these tend to be HUGE armies with ranked up models so my client was looking for something inexpensive and easy for my to replicate on 100’s of models.
While the first batch is only 24 models, I’ve been told there with be many more. To make painting easier I used a tiny dab of super glue to stick them to some Mantic bases I had laying around. PROTIP: If you use super glue for temporary bonds you can put it in the freezer and the models will pop off easily.
To get these painted quickly and affordably I started with a grey primer. I then did a quick base coat of a bone color since the majority of the model would be cream and blue. (Obviously blue covers cream better than vice-versa so I start with the light color) Once that has dried I painted the coats with Kantor Blue, as one of GW’s base paints this cover in one coat and thins pretty nicely to flow over the deep fold in the arms. Next up I fill in the face and hands with Kislev Flesh, and then paint the gun in a silver, followed by a chocolate brown on the boots, gunstock and hair.
Once that dried I did a heavy wash of Agrax Earthshade to bring it all together and give the figure some depth. The bases on these models are temporary, as my client likes to do the basing himself on these, which is why they look so sloppy. They’ll be popped off the base when i turn them back over.
Using this method I was able to paint all 24 in one sitting while binge-watching something on Netflix. I’m very happy with the results and look forward to the next set.
Warhammer 40,000 – I’m really happy to see Deathwatch lists popping up as part of the competitive scene, its one of those forces that has so much flavor but tends to get over-costed to make up for all the “extras” they get. With bolters now being more effective I feel you’ll see more of these Men in Black popping up in Imperial Soup armies if not as a stand alone force.
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