Work in Progress Wednesday - Stormcast Characters

 

I recently noticed that the Mortal Realms magazine gives you some really good value on some issues for the Stormcast you can get. As my longer term plans include a Cities of Sigmar force for Age of Sigmar, I decided to pick up one or two and paint them up as I go.

Of course, with Stormcast being such a low model count army, I think that once the other pre-ordered issues I've paid for turn up, I'll have a playable force. Whoops!

For this flying boy, I've decided to do the wings separately because I really didn't fancy painting them on the model.

Look at the size of these! He's going to look fabulous once he's done!

Woah, the Halfling's there . . .

Various bits and bobs are getting assembled as part of operation "stop having half finished stuff cluttering up the hobby space". (It feels like it needs a catchier name, but oh well.) But I'll post those out for Work in Progress Wednesdays rather than the general weekly progress blog...

So, that means that today's progress is this Reaper Bones Halfling, who is apparently called Bergamot.

I realised after I finished him that as well as being a useful character or NPC for D&D games, he'll make an excellent thief in Frostgrave. Double use for miniatures is always good!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Gnoll Tracker and Friends

I picked up a bunch of metal Frostgrave gnolls from the Bad Squiddo bargain bin ages back. Then a while back, I got them back from my assembly guy. I've only just started finishing up sorting out the basing mixture so they're ready for painting.

This is a gnoll tracker. Due to his unusual pose I needed to put him on a larger base than usual, but I rather like it. When he's alongside the hyenas, he blends in with them a bit. It's a really nice touch.

And here are some hyenas. One came with the tracker and one came separately. I'll paint them up together so they match.

There's a bunch more gnolls who just need their bases finishing up and I'll have a whole bunch more, but I only had this one finished and ready for photography at time of writing . . .

Stay on Targe . . . Oooh, squirrel!

You know how the plan was to finish stuff up this month and not start new things? Yeah, that's not gone well. In fact, it's gotten worse. It's Stress Awareness Month, so my work kindly organised a "Crafternoon" to encourage people to think about using crafts and hobbies to keep their stress down. I thought that scraping mould lines or plugging through some weird alien models no-one knew wouldn't be that interesting so I grabbed a couple of D&D models and blitzed them with contrast over the hour of the online event. They just need a few minutes each to tidy up and finish them off, but I've not found the time since.

Warlord Games then mentioned they had a sale on, and I spotted that they had a whole bunch of Mantic "Terrain Crate" boxes at half price. I probably went a little overboard with these, and my numbers have suffered as a result.

To try and "fix" the problem, I started trying to assemble them all - although most are single piece models that just need a little clean up. Then I started running out of space...

When I started using the lids of storage boxes as well, I realised it had gone a bit far so put the work in progress away until I have a little more space.

I also picked up an assortment of large bases from Fenris Games. The idea here is that I'm going to paint these up to use to mark areas of special terrain on Infinity tables.

I also got an assortment of widgets for scatter terrain.

And finally, I picked up this "bee fairy", because I really liked the sculpt and thought I'd use her for a D&D fae NPC. A little pamphlet included in the box indicates that she's a bit of a preview of an upcoming Kickstarter, so keep an eye out for that...

Salute Weekend: Support a Small Company

It "would" have been Salute this weekend. Salute is the biggest wargaming trade show in the UK, and a major source of income, particularly for smaller companies. If your funds allow, please consider doing a little shopping this weekend to help out.

You can have a look through the companies who would have been at Salute 2020 on their trader page, but I have a few suggestions too. While I do have a "Support Small Companies" page, I thought I'd do a post (or maybe more than one). Hopefully I'll remember this weekend to write some more posts, but lets start with covering the companies where I remember I know someone who works there...

If you follow my blog you'll recognise Bad Squiddo Games, as I regularly paint their stuff and post about it here. Annie produces a lot of excellent miniatures that I'm really found of (and also historicals, which are less my thing). Conveniently, there is currently a Bad Squiddo Kickstarter running for Women of WWII Soviet Russia which still has a few days to run.

I first ran into Anvil Industry when I discovered that their old office was on my walk home from work and they weren't against me just dropping in to say hello. Then I discovered that they made a bunch of cool minis I liked. I should really fix that because I love their stuff and they're putting out a really good selection of interesting models these days.

Poor Fenris Games has had a pretty rough time of the pandemic, with a workshop move and all sorts of nonsense impacting the business. It's a shame, because Ian is an absolute sweetheart who both makes his own miniatures and imports several US companies that would otherwise be impossible to get hold of. Sci fi scenery, Cthulu inspired stuff and Sword and Sorcery style things are the big draws here, but there's such an eclectic mix you'll surely find something.

The other side of this post is that it keeps reminding me of companies where I haven't painted their stuff recently and I should definitely fix that! Heresy Miniatures does a good range of sci fi and fantasy stuff. I have their Kickstarter, a giant and a dragon lying around here somewhere. I should definitely paint some of it soon...

How do I not have anything painted up by Hasslefree yet? It's probably because I'm intimidated by the amazing sculpts Kev puts out in fairness.

Another company I haven't painted anything from yet is Master Crafted Minis. Admittedly, that's mostly because they do conversion pieces and scenery, but it's still an oversight!

It's now annoying me that I've painted one of Alex's lovely sculpts for Arcworlde and taken a lovely photo of it and I cannot for the life of me find it. The company name is Warploque Miniatures and these characterful sculpts are well worth a look. I really need to get the models from the Kickstarter put together!

Zinge Industries do a wide range of clever bits, detail kits and conversion material. Particularly good for the sci fi gamer, but they have some minis and fantasy stuff too.

And from the most recently painted figures, lets not forget Diehard Miniatures, who've got a good range of fantasy and sci fi miniatures. They've got their own particular style and hopefully I'll get to painting a few more of them soon.

Well, that was a whole lot of typing. Help me feel like it was worth it and go and buy some of their stuff, will you?

Work in Progress Wednesday - Old School Robot

I picked this robot up off a seller on Facebook. He's got a nice old school feel to him. I might use him in Stargrave or something? I don't know. I threw him in the box on a whim the last time I was bundling up models to go to my assembly guy.

Definitely one of those "paint the model when I feel in the mood" things.

Success and failure all at the same time

My goal for March was to get a small bunch of Shasvastii painted. They're not done. Whoops. Still, the start of my White Company arrived from White Weasel painting studio, and they look gorgeous.

I did get a few models I should have finished ages ago finished instead. But the whole idea of this month was to try and focus on projects rather than the side stuff.

So, the goal for April is going to be focussing on finishing things up. I've got a huge pile of half assembled stuff sitting, and the Shasvastii have been started, just not finished.

If I do particularly well, I'll look at getting an Underworlds warband painted as well, but that's definitely a bonus rather than something I'll aim to definitely complete.

I may try and do the odd individual model here and there as well, but I'm less concerned about that this month. Really want to get these Shasvastii done!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Infinity - Foreign Company

The last of last year's farmed out model assembly! Corvus Belli are now semi regularly discontinuing older ranges when they bring out new models to keep the number of models they produce under control. One of the recent lines to be affected by this were the Neoterra Bolts.

As a result, I ended up picking them up for when I do the Foreign Company mercenary force, which I'm planning on doing in the future. I don't have plans to paint them any time soon, but I had them assembled and undercoated so they'd fit more easily into a storage case.

The ORC Trooper on the left and the Akali Commando on the right were from a now out of production starter that I also grabbed so they could do some work in the Foreign Company. In the middle is an out of production Croc Man I found lying around in Dark Sphere when you could just browse the shelves.

I wrote this in December 2020. Are we allowed on the streets again yet? Was there a before time when we went outside?

And finally, the Kaplan Tactical Services, of which I have several versions for different paint schemes - for Qapu Khalqi, for White Company and for Foreign Company. Each of which have different paint schemes, because I am not smart and don't think ahead.

It's December. I don't know what I'll be doing by March. I wonder what Infinity stuff I'll be painting by then? I'll have probably changed my mind three times between now and when this publishes.

A burst of productivity

 

I've finally finished the oldest "overdue" model I had in my paint queue. This is the wonderful undead centaur by Diehard Miniatures. I picked it up from their Kickstarter, but he's now available from their webstore.

This was an experiment in drybrushing and contrast. The whole model was heavily washed and drybrushed before I started using contrasts. Sometimes I'd then drybrush again and contrast again to build up depth of colour.

I'm really quite pleased with how he turned out, and I'll be doing some more experiments with that sort of thing.

This Daemonhost was also well overdue for painting. Having finished the centaur by this stage, I experimented with a purple wash to give a really weird tone to the model I was expecting him to be a paint to paint, but by keeping the paint scheme simple, the contrast was able to work with the fiddly detail without taking forever.

I was pretty pleased with being able to drop in the colours on the two syringes stuck into the daemonhost's leg. I managed to get a weird green liquid and the blue of the glass painted in by hand first time.

I also painted up this Otherworld Miniatures Wererat. I hadn't realised when I picked her up that she was definitely female, but looking at her chest, that's definitely not in doubt! This was a lightning fast contrast job, with a quick couple of pupils dropped into the eyes.

I basically got her done over two evenings with drying time, so doing more paint jobs like this on a week night will be a good way to get through the backlog.

I'm really pleased with how much I got done over the course of a week, so here's hoping it keeps up.