Heresy Miniatures Centaur

 

Here we've got a centaur made by Heresy Miniatures. I've had him sitting around for a long while, and was looking around for bits and pieces for Brushchewer to paint for me.

He's a big lad, but should do well as a war leader or champion of a group of centaurs.

Brushchewer definitely put some time into making him stand out as a big deal.

The fur pattern on the horse part is taken from genuine horse fur patterns, which I didn't realise at first. It's definitely something different!

A handful of D&D figures

 

To get back into painting post LARP season, I decided to knock out some quick tabletop paint jobs on some of my fantasy figures for D&D and skirmish games, some of which may have been hanging around for quite a while...

First up we have this Liche from Heresy Miniatures. He's a nice simple sculpt, with a couple of alternative heads to let you make a warlock or an apprentice mage. For the main robe, I used the new "Stormfiend" Contrast paint. Without watering it down, it turned out to be quite blotchy, so I used a couple of GW Air paints to add some highlights. I found that they didn't blend well, leaving tide marks as I tried to feather the paint into a blend. I eventually got a paint job I was happy with, but it took a bit more faffing than I'd have liked.

Next up was Enrieth, Harefolk Rogue, a Reaper Bones USA model. I'd based her with Zandri Dust, then gave her an Agrax Earthshade wash followed by a white drybrush. I then "coloured her in" with contrast paints. This worked very well and I had very few problems at all. She was an absolute joy to paint without too much detail to have to pick out.

Finally I painted the human cleric from Oathsworn Miniatures "Heroines in Sensible Shoes" line. The hair has come out a little glossy, but I think that will be fine once she gets some varnish on. This was another contrast paint job, with a little bit of highlighting on the face. I've not quite got the hang of non white skin tones just yet, but I'll definitely be keeping on practicing.

The contrast orange wasn't quite light enough for the torch, so I drybrushed it with Kindleflame then used yellow contrast, which turned out really nicely. I also added a few dings and scratches to the shield with a metallic paint, though I think I needed a brush with a better point to make it work.

I reckon with another half hour you could really step her up to a really nice paint job, but I'm happy enough with what I've got here to leave it as is.

This was a good weekend's work, and I'm cheerful about my progress. I've got a few more models painted and ready to use. If I can keep this pace up over the winter, I'll have a whole bunch of models finished.

Planning the last quarter

As it's three months since my "half year check point" in July, I thought it would be useful to pause and take stock. There's still a bit too much untidy around the place. I've done some tidying, but there's still a bunch to be done.

The Combined Army I got back in July from assembly are still not undercoated and prepped, for paint. I'm focussing on my White Company for the first part of ITS 14, but I'd like to get them ready for paint before I put them away.

You can also spot the three Nox and a Cadmus that are still not done. I'm taking a break from them before picking them back up to finish.

Some have even only had basing paste added. They've become a bit of a mental block, so I've got a new plan of getting four or five a weekend along another step in the process until they're all done.

Thinking forward with Infinity, I'm quite happy with the idea of playing my White Company for a good while, and as they're commission painted, there's no real painting obligation for my gaming now. That feels like a little bit of a weight off, so I'm going to spend a bit of time focussing on my other projects. I've dropped them all into an "on hold" column in my Kanban board for now so they don't stress me out.

Putting all the undercoated Infinity models that were out away has left me with just one tray of "ready to paint" models. There's another tray of part assembled metal models I'm going to need to look at at some point, but that's also in a little box of not thinking about it for now.

In my rolling "twelve months of projects" tracker, the Corvus Belli painting competition is more than twelve months ago, and as I've not managed to hit that pace of painting, the 'forecast' of what I'm likely to get done in twelve months has dropped down again.

The current "ready to paint" project column are two Horus Heresy characters, a Battletech Griffin, the Defiance crates and corpses, my Malifaux crew and three 54mm figures - and that's already more than I "should" get finished before the end of September next year.

Lined up to get "ready to paint" by September next year are the Dungeons and Lasers figures, the rest of the Defiance scenery pieces, the Battletech Armored Combat box, a Siocast Sargosh for Infinity, the Fenris Games Rubble City and my Halfling Blood Bowl Team project.

I'm hoping to get more done than that, but I need to accept that history currently tells me that's a realistic goal.

So, I've cleared my hobby tray to help clear my mind, and settled down to get some painting done. Sometimes it's best just to put all the half finished stuff aside and pick up something new that you're going to get done and finished in one go.

Rather than finish off the ever-stalled Nox Troopers, I decided to start off by painting some of the little things from the paint queue. Here's a work in progress shot of this Heresy Miniatures Liche. You can pick one up yourself if you want, and the original model comes with some alternative heads to make him a warlock or apprentice mage depending on your preference.

He should be finished in time for next week's blog. And some time soon, I'll get back to those last handful of Shasvastii...

Work in Progress Wednesdays: Oldhammer, Heresy Miniatures and an Out of Production Mini

 

I've been finishing up the prep on an assortment of models I sent off a while back, and it's a bit of an eclectic mix. First up is Aenur, the Sword of Twilight. He was an Elf Ranger for Mordheim who came free with White Dwarf many years ago. He's a lovely sculpt, and I need to look at what he could be in Age of Sigmar before I decide on his paint scheme.

This dwarf berserker was originally made by a small company I found online called The Miniatures Apprentice. I think they're now out of business, sadly. They mostly did sci fi things, but this dwarf was their (only?) fantasy offering. He's a bit chunky, but I love him.

I've had this liche from Heresy Miniatures sitting around for a while. I've had a few miniatures by Heresy assembled over the years but rarely finished them. It doesn't help that a bunch of the older ones I had done on square bases, and I now much, much prefer rounds. I'll probably sell off the square based models and buy a new one from Heresy in those cases. In the meantime, I want to get paint on this creepy boy!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Heresy Miniature Inspector Knuckles

A while back I mentioned that I was missing one of the Heresy Miniatures Inspectors set.

Well, Knuckles has arrived and been based and undercoated ready for paint.

Work in Progress Wednesday - Heresy Miniatures Inspectors

Continuing through the various minis I've got prepped and ready for painting, these are some Inspectors by Heresy Miniatures.

If you followed the link or know the Heresy range, you'll notice that there's only four of the five here. I have no idea why, either. I've since ordered the missing one and got him off to be assembled in the meantime.

I'm planning on using these models to test a super quick blue and gold scheme for my O-12. I reckon they'll look really good in it!

If you can, please do pop over to the Heresy Miniatures site and see if anything takes your fancy. The world is still in quite a state and the small businesses will appreciate whatever help you can send their way.

Tale of Gamers: Alternate Chaos Warriors

So, for my Tale of Gamers challenge with James from Gonzo History Gaming, I need ten Chaos Warriors. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the current Games Workshop plastics, and I keep picking up potential alternates, so lets see what I can find lying around...

Well, this is a good start. It's a Barbarian Warlord from Heresy Miniatures, and a Chaos Warrior from the Circle of Chaos Kickstarter. Even better, these two are already assembled, so less work for me!

This sealed bag contains a smattering of old Harlequin Templars. I found them during a trip to Foundry some time ago, and picked them up as they're not a regularly stocked item, but something they'd found a few spares of and had put up on the shelves in the hope someone would buy them. So I obliged...

And then, to round up, two miniatures I bought from Bad Squiddo Games. You may know BSG as "The Dice Bag Lady", but she does miniatures, not dice now! She stocks an assortment of awesome female sculpts and other useful stuffs. I'd picked up a "Gray Maiden" by Reaper from her at Salute, and had ordered an Adira Dark Champion from her own range when it came out recently.

So, there you have it - ten miniatures, old and new to form up a small unit of Chaos Warriors. There is a ton of choice out there at the moment, and I can strongly recommend both Heresy and Bad Squiddo.

Malifaux Changeling Proxy finished, and an Age of Sigmar scheme...

So, first up, I've managed to get the last Malifaux Changeling proxy finished. Apart from that bit of grey at the front which of course I only noticed as I was uploading the blasted thing. It'll be gone by the time he hits the table, I promise. The miniature is, as with the other two proxies, from Heresy. You should buy his stuff. It's pretty darned good.

I did have a bit of a disaster at the weekend with this model, though. Here's a WiP, just as I'm trying to blend the highlights. The hot weather was murdering my blending!

This is the wonder-juice that fixed it. It's amazingly good, though can be frustrating if you're trying to speed paint! I used a bit too much with another model I was painting that weekend (not finished, so no pics yet), and it took forever to dry!

I also finished assembling this lovely swamp witch. She's available from Krakon Games, should you be of a mind. She's going to go alongside a Troll Outpost sculpt I picked up a Kickstarter a while ago.

Next up on the painting table is this lovely tree person from the Circle of Chaos Kickstarter. I mostly grabbed him as a quick speed paint with a grab bag of assorted paints I've not used before to see what they're like. He's not quite finished yet, so once he's done, I'll get a post up about him.

Age of Sigmar Tale of Gamers

So there I was, chatting away on the social medias about the new General's Handbook and all the models I hadn't painted when up popped James Holloway of Gonzo History: Gaming Edition. He suggested perhaps a joint blog thing, wherein we would get some Age of Sigmar stuff painted up. After a bit of maths and checking of my busy schedule, I accepted the challenge!

We're not against other people joining in, though, so this is a call for other shmucks / bloggers to join in. We're looking to try and get 1,000 points of Age of Sigmar stuff painted between August and December - with 5 months, thats about 200 points a month.

We're both using models we mostly already have (apart from maybe fixing an under strength unit or so), but if you want to be buying new stuff, feel free and go ahead. I'm also hoping in January that at least James and I will be able to get a game in against each other with our newly painted complete playable force.

So - if you're interested, drop James or I a note, and we can have a chat about people getting involved. If it's just the two of us, though, I'm sure we'll manage, like some kind of super nerdy buddy cop movie. Except with wargamers.

Heresy Miniatures: More than a little awesome

 Last Sunday, I headed down to Dark Sphere, as they were having a day of assembly and painting - primarily for Age of Sigmar, but really for anything you fancied. They had staff on hand for beginners, but as I pretend to know what I'm doing, I got on with assembling the massive pile of stuff on my 'to do' pile at the moment.

In an effort to keep my stash under control, I've been giving Peachey Models some money to assemble some of my stuff. The latest batch they got was a bunch of figures from Heresy Miniatures.

I'd asked for the models not to be based, so I could be fussy and do my own thing with the basing. So, in between the other projects, I got all the basing on the Heresy stuff finished off and them all ready for undercoating.

With larger orders, you will sometimes get some extra figures. These zombies were free with this order - I've not quite worked out what I'm going to do with them yet, but they're really nice, so I'm sure I'll find a use for them.

Some of these models are going to find their way into my Chaos forces - these will probably serve as marauders or thugs, depending on which edition I'm playing at the time.

This delightful lady would not be out of place in many Frostgrave warbands.

I got her on the principle that you can never have too many wizards, and she can serve as a fantasy civilian just as easily as a spell caster in an army.

This fierce cheiftan will be leading a warband of non GW figures in my Chaos forces.

Whereas here, we have a ragged, undercover member of the Ordo Chronos. The xenotech he's holding is probably dangerous. Filthy radicals!

And another cool female wizard figure. Looking forward to painting her up in time.

Plodding along

 I took advantage of the Bank Holiday weekend over here to get a bit of painting and modelling done. I finished prepping and assembling a couple of goblins and got them undercoated, but didn't take a photo of that.

I completely swear by Vallejo Coarse Pumice and Sandy Paste for my basing, but I've noticed James Wappel really likes the Oxid Paste. So, I picked up a small jar of it to give it a go.

I used it around the edge of the base of the radical Inquisitor that Whiskey Priest sent me. Before it dried, it was hard to see what the texture was going to be.

I then painted it up with some Rhinox Hide, then a wash, and finally a light drybrushing of some other mid tone brown I had lying around. XV-88, maybe?

Once the wash was dry, I dropped in the last few details, and ticked the box on having at least finished something this weekend. An easy win, to be sure, but I'll take an easy win over nothing. ;)

Myth, my Tiefling, had his trousers re-coloured and the yellow slashes dropped in on his sleeves. I also added another layer to the yellow fastenings on his coat, as the first coat hadn't really properly covered things.

I also start blocking in colours on my last Malifaux Changeling proxy. (SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE: BUY STUFF FROM HERESY MINIATURES.) When this chap is done, I'll have a full 50 Soulstone list fully painted, and I'll move on to assembling and painting the rest of the models my current crew can use to start give me some flexibility in list building.

Finally, one of the Arco-Flagellants I was given for Christmas has been fully assembled. I fitted the trailing arm first, and pinned it, but the leading arm was then fine to forgo a pin. Happy to get him done, just a couple more to go!

Getting back on the horse, and a surprise guest

So, threatening myself with a complete lack of potential content, I finally knuckled down this weekend and broke the painting block, finishing off the second Heresy familiar I'm using as a Changeling in Malifaux. Sure, there's things I'd touch up, but he's a gaming piece, he's finished, and I have more to do!

There is pretty constant assembly going on at the moment - but scraping mould lines and pinning to bases and assembling multi-part plastic kits isn't hugely good blog reading. Hopefully now the pace will pick up and I'll retain some consistency.

I am glad I can't see the future. I got home today to this gorgeous chap waiting for me on the mat. He's an Inquisitor kitbash by Whiskey Priest from The Leadpile. I won a competition a while ago, and, as a fellow sufferer of hobby block, there was a bit of a delay before I got him. Solidarity!

This wretched fellow just needs a little basing love, and then he'll be ready for the table. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get a game, but if I can get him done soon, I'm tempted to try and sort out a game of some sort down at the Overlords in May some time and get some nice photos for a battle report on the blog. I've had a few commissions come back that haven't fired a shot in anger yet, so they'll need their bad luck draining off from their paint.

Still, positivity abounds, and you all have two nicely painted miniatures to see on my blog. Onwards!

Changeling Proxy finished, and a bit of a dilemma

So, this little trouble maker is why the blog wasn't up on Monday. I'd taken the original photo to display him, and suddenly spotted a horrible splodge of purple on the orb he's holding! I couldn't cope with this, so had to take some time to fix him, by which point it was too late to finish the blog post.

He's a demonic familiar from Heresy Miniatures. I'm using him as a proxy for a Changeling in Malifaux until the correct model comes out. The base is a Scibor "rocky" base. I spent a bit of time on the base experimenting with washing and stippling, and enjoyed learning a few new tricks I might be able to use.

I also learned a little bit about going the extra mile. Here's an earlier version of our creepy little friend, back when I spotted that splodge of purple on the band of the metallic gubbins he's holding. When I patched it up, I also did a teeny bit of edge highlighting in Runefang Steel to bring up the metal, and I think it really worked. Before I even did this, I'd asked my wife for feedback, and she felt the face was too dark. That resulted in the highlight on the lips, and the yellow edge highlights on the bottom lines of the hood side flaps, and over the joint of the nose and eyes - again, adding stronger, better highlights to a tiny extent really improving a model!

My weekend productivity was helped by, when I finally did get down to some serious Forsaken assembly, setting up my iPad to watch the Beasts of War 2015 Gaming Awards, then their latest Infinity battle report for Operation Flamestrike.

I found this particularly helpful as it meant I had a second thing to focus on while I scraped mould lines clean, but also it meant I didn't get tempted to read blogs, Twitter, Facebook and G+. I suspect that if I was actually manage to focus for longer, I'd get a lot more done. I'm hoping that the watching videos plan improves productivity.

Meanwhile, my most productive avenue for Getting Stuff Done, the ever reliable Paying Someone Else To Do It has continued with a bit of assembly. I decided to give Peachey Models a go to start clearing some assembly work. I started out with these desert insurgents by Miniatures of the North. They came back well assembled for the price - a tiny bit of clean up missed (less than I'd usually miss and have to fix halfway through painting) and one gun knocked off by my particularly brutal local post office.

But this leaves me with a problem. I'd originally planned to use these as chaos cultists . . . but they just don't feel right for that. There's nine of them, so they don't suit as Imperial Guard veterans. I think they might work as a "Renegade Marauders" squad from either the Lost and the Damned or Tyrant's Legion list - but I don't know off hand how many models that needs.

I really like the models and want to paint them and think they deserve to see some table use - I'm just hard pressed to work out what to use them for...

Anyone got any suggestions?