Work in Progress Wednesday: Otherworld Miniatures

Here's something else I've got queued up for painting in the future. This is an assortment of miniatures from Otherworld Miniatures.

I really like a lot of the old style that Otherworld infuses into their miniatures. The guard looks like he's spent hours on duty and is Just Done. The scrawny henchman carrying all the gear doesn't look like he can heroically take out twenty goblins. He's just here to carry the heavy bags.

Meanwhile, the Satyr and Dryad cover different aspects of strange creatures of the wild. I like the classical style on the Dryad's dress in particular to mean that it ties in with the classical look of the satyr.

This dwarf mercenary was in the sale because they don't sell enough of them. I have no idea why, as he's just a lovely simple sculpt full of character. Some people have no taste!

I'm looking forward to these getting to the front of my painting queue. In the meantime, why not check out Otherworld Miniatures and pick up a few models?

Complete: Bandua Wargames Industry of Murder Containers

In between getting some painting done this weekend, I settled down to assemble these "Industry of Murder" containers from Bandua Wargames. They are MDF kits with designs printed on them, and while they recommend gluing, fit together so neatly that I didn't need to use any.

I used a little dark brown contrast paint to shade down the points where the MDF had connected to the sheet they were printed on, and they look great. I originally bought these at CanCon last year, and they were overdue, so I'm particularly pleased to get them done.

I'm not quite finished on my painting from the weekend, sadly. The old metal Queek Headtaker turns out to be a super fiddly model with lots of detail and is taking longer than expected. In between painting him I'm painting the Amazon Princesses from Bad Squiddo Games. They're much easier to paint but I'm experimenting a bit with contrast and taking a bit of extra time with them.

Not Salute Saturday: Arcworlde, War World and Battle Systems

Last Saturday should have been Salute, the biggest war-gaming trade show in the UK. It's a massive money maker for the small wargaming companies that attend, and its cancellation will have hit them hard. I decided to take a browse through their trader list and buy some bits and bobs to offer my support.

If your funds allow, consider doing the same!

Over the past week, some of my purchases have now arrived. Ironically, the first of these isn't really a not-Salute purchase, but rather the Arcworlde Second Edition Kickstarter, which turned up on the morning of what would have been Salute. I'd have counted it in my Salute-loot if the event had been on, so it's getting included!

Arcworlde is produced by Warploque Miniatures, who also produce a few fantasy American football teams as well. Arcworlde is a small skirmish game that's designed for friendly, rather than competitive play. It definitely has a whimsical feel.

I invested in two starter sets, in resin. I got the "Undead Raiders" for my wife, though I'll be painting them up for her as her job is being super hard work at the moment. I picked the new "Beastfolk" range, mostly because they have a hedgehog witch and a hare playing the bagpipes.

The resin cast quality is super clear and nice, and I can't see much in the way of mould lines. There's a couple of awkwardly placed gates I'm a little worried about, but nothing that should be a problem. There's a couple of small air bubbles in places as well. They should fix up pretty easily.

Arcworlde has a particularly good line of small critters. Whether they're miniature trolls, grifflings or Mjowls (cat owl hybrids), they're sensibly allowed to be taken by any faction and totally adorable.

I have a significant "adorable small creature" Arcworlde problem. They also do excellent big monsters but I've not picked any up yet.

Battle Systems make pre-coloured cardboard terrain. I'm looking at low effort options for populating Infinity tables so ordered a couple of small kits to get an idea of them.

Now they've arrived, I'm giving the "28mm - 35mm" label some serious side eye. They look more like 25mm size, though I'm going to assemble them to check.

I picked up a couple of things from War World Miniatures, as I'd not heard of them before finding them in the Salute trader list. They do a lot of scenery, but I decided to have a look at some of their miniatures.

I picked up this sleeping baby dragon, as he's a small and easy paint job, and I really liked the look of him.

Meanwhile, these are their "Sci Fi Renegades" set. They've got a very early sci fi look that I kind of like. I'm looking forward to them working their way through the queue and getting to the point where I can paint them.

That's all of the stuff I've ordered that's arrived so far. I've also picked up some stuff from Black Scorpion and XLC, so hopefully they'll be here in time for next week's post.

Work in Progress Wednesday: Bad Squiddo Games

In between my bigger projects, I picked up an assortment of recent miniatures from Bad Squiddo Games to paint up.

These are a champion and standard bearer from the Amazons range. I originally picked up their Kickstarter, but these models came out since.

Most of them are single piece, and came with an integral metal base. You can still see it here where I've not built up the basing texture smoothly enough. I'll get that corrected before I get her painted. This model is a berserker, also from the Amazon range.

These two are Amazon princesses, but they would work well as fantasy civilians in a lot of settings. There was only minimal mould lines, and hardly any clean up was needed. The castings were really high quality.

The beer maiden and scholar were released around the same time and I picked them up as well. There's been a few miniatures that have come out since these ones. Sadly, those ones will have to wait, because lockdown and my wife being allergic to the nickel in metal miniatures means I won't be able to get any more assembly done until I've got somewhere outside the flat to do assembly.

Here's "Secret Agent Annie" - a model that hasn't come out yet but was included as a freebie with my order. She's from the recent Women of World War II Kickstarter that Bad Squiddo completed. Those pledges are currently being fulfilled, despite global pandemics, and I'm expecting mine through soon...

Club Scatter Terrain

Last year, one of Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts passed away. Their family asked that we arrange a charity sale of their gaming collection, and I picked up a whole pile of crates to use as scatter terrain for the club Infinity tables.

I originally thought they were from Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, but an astute reader has corrected me that they're actually from a Mantic Games kit. A few of them had some small casting defects, but nothing major.

I did make a poor life choice and try and paint the entire lot as a single batch which meant I ended up spending a week burnt out and doing no painting at all. Still, they're done now, and it brings my total for the year up to 30 models painted. Halfway to the year's target, and it's only April!

As a side note - why is my camera going all "soft focus" on the shots in my light box? I know I'm missing the light strip due to a missing cable, but as you can see from this photo taken on my painting table, it's focusing just fine there!

If anyone knows anything about iPhone phone cameras and their mysteries, please do get in touch.

Work in Progress Wednesday: All Sorts

The HATE club Battlemasters project chaos archers are now all undercoated and ready for paint.

I still have three of the Shasvastii from Operation Wildfire to get painted. They're the more elite, detailed models, and I think I'm a little intimidated.

I have the Mordheim Pit Fighter to do at some point as a little quick paint job when something else is making me want a change.

I also have a classic Skaven Warlord all undercoated and ready to go, and will probably paint him as I start getting into the Skaven line infantry assembly...

Bank Holiday Hobby Halflings

Before I start on the main topic of the post, may I direct you to the Support Small Hobby Companies link at the top of my blog. In these trying times, there's a few suggestions of small companies you could support with a few hobby purchases if you have the spare funds. I'm also open to suggestions for additions, or corrections if they end up suspending deliveries.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I've managed to finish up the Wargames Atlantic Halflings that I've been pottering along with for a good while. I'm still relying on natural sunlight in my photo box because I can't find the cable for the lights.

 I still feel last week's photos came out better. Need to work out what I did differently!

Well, really, I need to just work out what type of connection it is and order a new one from the Internet, let's be honest.

In short - fun little break, gave me a good insight into how I'll need to stay sane while painting my Skaven. If you want cheap models that will give you solid rank and file Halfling infantry, they're a good pick. The detail is soft in areas and there's a very limited weapon selection - you won't be able to buy a box and make all archers or pikemen, for example. They're still quite characterful and I do rather like them.

I fixed the base edge of the undead satyr familiar from Diehard Miniatures, so I can take a photo of this side of him now!

This isn't everything I got done over the long weekend, but as I'm now out of battle reports, I'm going to space things out a little more through the week in the hope of starting to be able to schedule posts in advance again.

I now leave you with some glamour shots of the individual Halflings.

Infinity Tournament Practice Game: Custom Mission - Dahshat vs Spiral Corps

The last game I managed to get in before it All Went Wrong was a tournament practice game with Riker. The tournament he was going to was using the Halloween zombie mission Corvus Belli put out a while ago (with the exception that no, you do not get a free Avatar).

I was running my Dahshat Company, while my opponent was running Spiral Corps. You had to kill the zombies, who you could only harm in close combat.

My early move was to have my Zuyong move up and shoot at the "Chaksa" that supposedly only had a Heavy Flamethrower, sitting in a sniper nest linked to two other Chaksa. Unsurprisingly, it was a Taagma Schemer with a Viral Sniper rifle using a Holoprojector to pretend to be another unit.

("Unsurprisingly" because you need a Taagma to create the link in the first place, and there's not really a profile worse for putting in a sniper tower than a Heavy Flamerthrower!)

I then tried moving McMurrough up through smoke to try and take out some units, but I was already a few orders down and I couldn't quite get anything effective off, and pulled him back so he didn't get easily killed off next turn.

Unfortunately, doing that had left my Zuyong Haris a little over-exposed instead. First the Rui Shi, got hit (and shot again to make it stay dead given it was about two inches from an Engineer).

And then the rest of the link was picked off one by one from the left, leaving them out of cover. After that, I couldn't manage to get back into the game. McMurrough suffered from it being just a bit too long a run in the open to get a good hit in, but was successful in his more rarely used role of "being a terrifying order sync as you try and kill him".

In the end, I just couldn't get enough zombies killed. I brought out Saito Togan in the last round, but my troops had been positioned such that most of the zombies had ended up running away from him rather than past him. It meant he had too far to go and just couldn't get the kills in.

All in all, it was a fun, pretty balanced scenario. I could see that playing it a couple of times before the tournament would definitely help out a whole bunch as you avoided mistakes like "set up ambush for zombies and forget to bait it".

As I mentioned before, this is the last game I had before lockdown. I'm having a look at Tabletop Simulator, and may get in some games there - but I'm also kind of enjoying being able to focus on the painting!

Fancy Photos and a New Plan

I spent a bit of the weekend tidying the hobby area rather than painting, so I only managed to get the Shasvastii Mentor finished up. Various new projects have been undercoated and prepped, but I'm not showing all of those just yet.

I also found my light box, so took some slightly fancier photos than you'll have seen before. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found the cable to my light box, so the photos had to rely on natural sunlight, and are thus varied in quality.

The Mentor, I photographed with the Nox Troopers I've already done, and the look of them all together has made me very happy that the look of the force is coming together.

The Inquisition Cherub got a coat of varnish before he goes away, as I remain cautious about Contrast paint's durability without it.

My Diehard Miniatures skeleton also gets a nice photo rather than something weird taken on my parents' kitchen work bench.

The skeletal satyr, I sadly realised had taken a spilled wash to the base rim, hence the slightly weird angle. I've since patched it up, and I might keep him out to take another photo with the next batch of finished models.

The creepy scarecrow remains creepy.

I'm plugging through the Wargames Atlantic Halflings. They're not the most detailed of sculpts, but are fine for line troops. I'm really hoping to get these finished up this week.

My local wargaming club, HATE (Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts) has decided on a lock down project of painting up a copy of the old Battlemasters game. I enthusiastically volunteered to paint a unit of the Chaos Archers, because I've always liked them.

What I'm not loving is the 90s mould line that's very close to being an out and out mould slip. The line runs right down the face and over several key details, so it's pretty annoying to deal with. I'm currently at 3 down, with 2 to go.

In a fit of enthusiasm, the goal is to try and get these all assembled and ready to undercoat by next week...

In a second fit of enthusiasm (uh oh) I put in a small order to Bad Squiddo Games, run by my friend Annie Norman. The idea is I'm going to put in little orders for models to various small miniature companies that might be struggling in the current climate, then immediately assemble and paint whatever I bought.

I mean, it doesn't help that getting little parcels also helps boost my morale at the same time.

Here's what I picked up. Other than the amazing free colouring sheets that were a "must add" to the order as a present for my wife.

I've picked up the new "Amazons" as well as the more generic fantasy civilian types. Sadly, I put in the order before the amazing Dwarf shield-maidens came out, or I "might" have started stretching the definition of a 'small' order.

But what's this, a free gift?

Annie also sent me an early sculpt of "SOE Annie" from her Women of WWII Kickstarter. I think I've already ordered her in the Kickstarter itself, but I'm not complaining. She's cool and getting painted up!

So, the goal here is that these also get assembled this week ready to finish painting by the end of next week.

Have I succumbed to hubris?

Tune in next week to find out...