Work in Progress Wednesday: New Year Metals

 

Over the New Year, I got a whole pile of metal miniatures assembled. First up is this undead Ogre, which I bought over Facebook years ago. I believe that sadly the sculptor passed on since. His pose is reminiscent of a classic Games Workshop Ogre sculpt from way back when.

Next up is this mystery figure. I got it free in an order with some other models, possibly from Fenris Games? I don't know who or what he's meant to be, but he's got a nice grumpy feel to him. He, and the rest of the miniatures from here on, were undercoated in "PHR Bone" by TT Combat. I'm pretty sure I got it during my pandemic panic buying, and I wanted to use it up on models that weren't needing to match anything else...

This Reaper Human Fighter, Brigette was acquired from the Fenris clearance section, and will be joining the ranks of sensibly armoured women fighters and adventurers I've been amassing.

Miko the Vampire Hunter is a Bad Squiddo figure from the Feudal Japan range (though you may find her under the Horror section on the shop). Unlike many other Bad Squiddo figures, she doesn't have a puddle base, so I pinned her to one of the Archon Studio bases I had stashed away to try those out.

Next up are a couple of North Star miniatures for Frostgrave - an apothecary and Markswoman. I'm pretty sure this was a Bad Squiddo Bargain Bin special. Its worth having a regular nose through, as there's often bits and pieces where Annie has found some end of range bits and pieces, or ex show stock.

More Bad Squiddo miniatures next - this time a pair of Tiefling pirates. They do make me realise that with a bit of prep, characterful models like this can make much more interesting D&D encounters if you stat up monsters or characters to match random models you have. A Tiefling rapier fighter backed up by a second with a glaive and a breastplate isn't necessarily a combat encounter you'd have thought of if not prompted by the miniatures.

A lot of small miniature companies include random samples in with orders. In this case, Fenris Games sent me an urn. I've decided to throw it on a base for stability and paint it up to be a bit of dungeon scatter that might be an empty pot or might contain some loot.

Next up is a Dwarf Watchman by Bears Head Miniatures. Sadly, Bears Head are no longer trading - I believe the sculptor has moved on to producing stuff for other companies full time without having to deal with the general public.

Someone was selling an old Warzone Trencher for peanuts and I decided he'd make an excellent heavy baddy for Stargrave. Are they called pirates? Either way, its a good example of how the miniature agnostic nature of games like Stargrave give you opportunities to do non standard stuff.

Maximillian and Madelaine are sculpts that were made for members of the Rogue Emporium Facebook group some time ago. I think they're likely going to be joining the ranks of Stargrave pirates.

Finally we have the terrain pieces from the Mutant Marches Kickstarter, by WilhelMiniatures. These will be excellent scatter terrain for Terrible Places. Every time you look at them you find new awful things.

First models of the year

 

I did not expect, at the start of the week, that I'd have finished painting Corax Hasht. They were in my lists for the Infinity Tournament at the Wayland Games Centre last weekend, and I was fully expecting to have to varnish their half finished paint job to protect it some point mid way through the week.

In the end, though, I knuckled down and painted in evenings and over lunch breaks while working from home and got him completely finished. I haven't really used him much in practice yet - he's a list swap in from a test list that didn't work so well. I'm writing this before I went to the tournament last weekend (scheduled posts are weird from a time perspective), so you'll have to wait to hear how he actually worked out in practice.

I also finished this Blackmane Gnoll Ravager by Reaper Miniatures. He's just a quick tabletop quality job to get him ready to use in RPGs when needed. I had particular fun giving him a gold tooth on a whim, which I feel gives him a bit of extra character as a bit showy.

Upcoming Project: Dungeon Fiends

This is the Dungeon Fiends Starter set by Creative Sculpt Studio. I picked it up from their Kickstarter, though they're now available from retail.

I got these assembled while my wife was away over New Year, and I've now managed to get some photos of them before I start painting.

I picked them up for nostalgia reasons, so decided I wanted to go for an old school feel to the bases as well. I ordered some resin hexagonal bases from Fenris Games. Appropriately, I went with the "Dungeon Labyrinth" design.

There's a good selection of monsters. There's two zombies - one of a peasant or lower class corpse, while the other is a better armed and armoured figure, perhaps a guard or noble's retinue before his demise?

I had a bit of a dilemma for the cave troll miniature. This is clearly a more trained one, sufficient to wear some primitive armour and wield a weapon. The standard D&D stats for trolls have them all as large or above, so I had to consider if I'd find a larger base for him. Given the size of the model, I decided to stick with the hexagonal bases. I might come up with some fun rules and background for a slightly smaller troll, or just place him across four squares depending on how I need to use him.

The bug man is a fun weird model that isn't a typical D&D monster, but he should be an interesting monster to homebrew. The text for him suggests he might be a cursed noble, but there's plenty of options you could use.

The sentient slime is another interesting weirdness that should be a fun challenge for players. It's an opportunity for a weird paint job too.

One of my early hobby memories is reading "Best of White Dwarf Scenarios 3", which included an advert for Games Workshop's Adventurer's Starter Set and Monsters Starter Set. I never bought the miniatures, as I'd picked the magazine up as a back issue as it was, but there's a strong nostalgia feel to that.

This hobgoblin could definitely imagine being in a similar release or set at the time. It's not a style I've painted much, so I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

I'm less of a fan of the wraith sculpt from the set, but I'll see if I can come up with something that makes me like the sculpt a little more when I'm painting it.

Finally, we have the giant mutant snail. It's got a weird mouth and an eye stalk, so it shouldn't be too hard to make it pretty horrid.

I'm going to be treating these as a little "mini project" rather than as a set of individual miniatures to paint, because they have a bit of value to me as a set, even though they're going to have individual paint schemes.

Work in Progress Wednesday: O-12

 

I've had a pretty hefty stack of O-12 models for Infinity that I'd got various people to assemble sitting waiting to be undercoated for quite a while now. I knuckled down in December and got about half of them sorted.

The first plan with my O-12 is to get enough painted up that I've got two fully painted sets (along with my Combined Army) I can demo Infinity with to people. I haven't decided exactly which blues and yellows to paint them with yet, so I've got some models to test paint lined up once I've dealt with the half finished project mountain.

First up we have the Knight of Santiago (left) and the Raveneye Officer (right).

The Knights of Santiago are a PanOceanian troop that can be taken in the O-12 Starmada sectorial / sub-faction. They are a powerful Heavy Infantry model choices of a specialist operative with a Spitfire or a Killer Hacker, with or without Combat Jump. He can also duo with a Bronze, but a Bronze is minimum 1 in that fireteam, so there's no shenanigans to be had with a different profile.

I'm not going to get to Starmada for a good while yet as O-12 are difficult enough for me to get my head around. The Santiago is also a hefty points investment, and a bit of a niche pick at that. I grabbed him on release from Shae Konnit's split box service as I wasn't sure how good he was going to turn out to be and there was a real potential he'd end up being a huge faff to find split out at a later date.

The Raveneye Office was another "grab him when he came out to avoid inconvenience" as he was the release model with the Raveneye book. While he'll probably get a production sculpt eventually, I didn't want to miss out.

Tactically, the Raveneye is going to see a bunch more use. He's got a cheap Lieutenant profile in O-12, and can join a Security fireteam in Starmada. Add E/M mines and the Minelayer skill and he's likely to be chilling out running the operation from a secure corner of the deployment zone in a lot of missions!

In the "civilians" assortment we have the Bounty Hunter, an NGO worker HVT, and a Warcor. I got the NGO worker in the Dire Foes box with Knauf and Arslan and felt that she was an excellent choice of civilian objective for Space UN.

The Warcor is a familiar sight on the battlefields of 177 years into the future. A 3 point irregular model with a "Flash Pulse" stun weapon, they often end up being left out to slow enemies advancing with little loss to the force effectiveness if they die. I . . . feel that narratively, the number of embedded journalists the Human Sphere's special forces are going through as they're used to slow the advances of hostile troops must be raising questions somewhere. But they're too good a profile not to have and paint up.

Meanwhile, the Bounty Hunter is a pretty standard mercenary you can take in vanilla factions, and O-12 is no exception. A cheap profile with a regular order and a roll on a random equipment table can often fill a slot if you're short on points. I picked this one up cheap on a Facebook group and am looking forward in painting him up in matching colours with the rest of the force, irrespective of how often I end up actually taking him in practice.

Next up are the named characters. Left to right: Katherine Cho, Knauf and Casanova.

Cho is a command character who can either be taken as the force Lieutenant, or a Chain of Command trooper who can take over if the Lieutenant is killed. She's equipped with a Holoprojector so I can deploy a different model in her place until she takes an action, letting her hide away pretending to be someone else.

Knauf is a mercenary sniper who was the main character in the first graphic novel set in the Infinity universe. He's an interesting alternative to taking the Epsilon Sniper. He only has a Level 1 Multispectral Visor so isn't quite as good at dealing with smoke and high Mimetism. But instead, he gains an extra burst (and Shock) on his shooting attacks, meaning he's much more reliable at taking out mid ranged threats.

Finally, there's Casanova, NOC Operative. He's a forward deploying character with Mimetism -6, No Wound Incapacitation and Immunity (Shock), but no Camouflage. This means he's able to look after himself but is still quite vulnerable to warbands and other cheap template weapon troops. He's definitely not a model to take without support, as he probably needs some Mad Traps or other similar gear to protect him until he gets to act.

Next up, the Lambda units, the generic Doctor and Engineer units for O-12 with their Yudbots. They are both WIP 14, so a little better than the average specialist. I try and take a doctor and engineer in most of my lists, but I am noticing a lot of people don't bother to do so. I might give that a go in my list building but I really like being able to fix things if a model gets unlucky.

This is the O-12 Booster Pack Alpha. It consists of a Lynx, a Razor, and Psi-COp.

The Lynx is a Hidden Deployment, Mimetism -6 model that doesn't have any deployment skill so starts in the deployment zone. This profile has a MULTI Sniper Rifle, so is a long range attack piece that can either surprise a model out of position during the opponent's turn, or go on an attack run during your own.

The Razor is also a Hidden Deployment, Mimetism -6 model, but instead has Infiltration. This leaves him with a different role to the Lynx - either as a midfield specialist, or a midfield hunter who waits for the opponent's attack pieces to pass them while they're hidden before emerging to cause some damage. Given the specialists can also do the latter, I suspect I'm more likely to take the specialist profiles more often than not.

Finally, we have the Psi-COp. This is an intelligence unit in the universe background, and this model is the Hacker profile. With a high BTS, they're really quite survivable. While they cost twice the points of the Kappa Hacker, that survivability could be quite useful. I'm pretty sure I'll end up swapping between the two profiles while list building depending on what points I have left over. The Psi-COp is also a Wildcard model in Starmada, so gives a good flexible option during fireteam construction.

Remotes are a really important toolbox for almost all Infinity lists. You'll notice there's a significant difference in how light the two models are at this stage - this is a definite downside of spray can zenithals as you get some variation. A bit of tidy up with drybrushing will bring them back in line, I'm sure.

Here we have a Peeler Copperbot and an Oko Copperbot. The Peeler has a Heavy Machine Gun and Total Reaction, making it a key defensive piece, particularly to hold off light troops or warbands. The Oko is what's commonly called a Sensor-bot, with a package of specialist support skills and equipment, including Forward Observer, making it a fast moving specialist. These remotes have also been given a free upgrade during the current tournament season (ITS 14).

Finally, we have this big lad. The Gamma is a large heavy infantry who is a bullet spewing equivalent of a half brick in a sock. He's got a bucket of armour and a big gun.

This model is from the Defiance Outcast expansion, and isn't available any more. You can get a Gamma Feuerbach in the O-12 Action Pack. That's an excellent anti-armour gun that can put a serious hole in some of the more heavily armoured units. This model instead comes with the Heavy Machine Gun, which while high damage, will struggle to get through high armour in cover, and instead does better at winning firefights against light or medium armoured troops. It's an excellent tool for clearing reaction pieces (such a Total Reaction remotes) with violent weight of fire.

I hope you found this all interesting. I'm getting quite excited about starting to understand how to play O-12, but I'm a little way off having a painted force just yet. The next thing you're likely to see is the test models crossing my paint desk, and hopefully once that's done I'll be able to get to a playable force relatively quickly.

Clearouts and Assembly

 

I spent a good chunk of time the weekend before last going through all my KR cases, and pulling out painted models I intended to sell. I also grabbed a few abandoned part completed projects, too. I then spent a whole bunch of time this week photoing them, listing them on my eBay account, with a scheduled start time of Saturday (so they're all live now).

I've taken to scheduling the start times so I know I'm going to be available to package things up promptly once everything sells. Its all starting at 99p bids because I want the space back. It's an interesting mix of stuff and I hope it all goes on to good new homes. 

My dearly beloved was away for a few days visiting friends. I decided to take the advantage of her absence to have a bit of a metal assembly blitz. I didn't get everything here done, and I got a few bits and pieces you won't see here done too. I'll be throwing photos of those items up over the next couple of weeks as part of my Work in Progress Wednesday posts, so you can see them then.

Being back at work, I'm looking to get back into the rhythm of regular hobbying. My plan now is to try and make half finished things more finished. I'd like to get the test bases for my Alpha Legion prepped so I can get back to working on my test models. I'm also keen to finish another Gnoll who's nearly done and Corax Hasht for my Shasvastii.

I've been having trouble with models with integral bases having an obvious "lip" on the base, despite trying to pile basing texture around them to hide the line. Because basing paste loses volume as it dries, it wasn't really working. I saw someone online (I don't recall who) using green stuff to build up a more gradual rise to the model, and this seems to have worked really well.

I'm also about halfway through my O-12 prep. About half are now ready for paint, and you should see those on the blog soon. It would be good to get the other half done so they can all be put away, but I suspect that's more than a week's worth of painting.

There's other things to do too - undercoating a bunch of Terrain Crate scatter, finishing the prep on my Battletech box, assembling a bowl's worth of resin I cleaned over the New Year, and finally repairing some models I'd abandoned at the end of 2021 because they got damaged in the post. That's way more than can be done in a single week, though! I've started over-hauling my "Projects" page so it can start becoming a little more up to date, and put the tracking of those half finished things as the first item on the list.

Hobby Review of the Year

With UK lockdowns over, I managed to make it out to a few Infinity tournaments. It's important to remember Coronavirus has definitely not gone away and is still affecting many people. I'm certainly still making careful decisions about risk with what I choose to go to.

That said, I made a few Infinity tournaments over 2022, including St Albans Smackdown, the inaugural Red Star Blues tournament at HATE, and a return to EIC in Mallorca. I am still only OK at Infinity, but I'm having fun with the challenge of it.

I've also made it to a friend's house a couple of times to play One Page Rules Grimdark Skirmish, which has been great fun. We're having a nice little mini campaign, and while I still haven't quite got the hang of One Page Rules yet, it's good to be gaming with friends in a more casual environment as well as my competitive Infinity habit...

I did get a good bit of Infinity painted this year, playing a tournament with a full set of models I'd painted myself. This feels like a big achievement as even with 40K, tournaments I've played have had at least some models painted by someone else.

I was really pleased with how a few minis I painted this year came out. I got Candy as a present, and she's a mix of contrast paints and highlights, but for a simple paint job she came out disproportionately well and I'm happy every time I see the model.

The henchman from Otherworld, meanwhile, took forever for me to finish, because his backpack was so fiddly and full of details. That said, I was mega happy with how the face turned out, and I feel I'm getting much better at doing faces with practice.

Dagny the Viking Guard was a bit of an impulse purchase originally. I'm not as happy with her paint job as I was with a few of my other models - I think she's come out a bit dark - but getting her painted made me disproportionately happy for the effort it took.

I've done a few D&D models this year, including the Otherworld henchman above, but this rabbit folk by Reaper Bones turned out really nice for a simple contrast paint job. There wasn't anything special about the job in terms of painting her well or anything, I just really liked how she turned out for a quick tabletop quality paint job.

I also had fun painting some Battletech Mechs this year. It's a new scale I haven't tried before, but infuriating mould lines aside, they're nice simple sculpts that are really quite different to anything else I'm doing.

I've had three armies commission painted this year, and the mental load of getting that sorted by someone else has been really excellent for my general mood. First up, we've got the Deathwatch, which give me something other than my Imperial Guard to play 40K with. It will be good to get a game in with them as I'm curious how the current edition actually plays.

Its fair to say I've been AoS curious since it came out, but I've had huge trouble deciding on an army to play. In the end, cheap Stormcast deals meant it was easiest to get those painted up and ready to go. Maybe in 2023 I'll get to see what the fuss is about.

Meanwhile, I've gotten a good chunk of the options for White Company for Infinity commission painted as well. I took them to EIC and had fun, although I've not got in enough games with them yet to get the hang of their playstyle.

I got 85 miniatures painted over 2022, which is a pretty respectable number. I went over on buying models again, but nowhere near as bad as 2021! I'm feeling really positive, and have plenty of hobby plans for the coming year, which is probably the best place to be.

Bone Forest - A Review

 

On a bit of a whim, I bought Boneforest from Hollow Press. I've been following the folk horror style miniatures by Helge Wilhelm Dahl since he started branching out into them from doing grimdark Warhammer conversions.

This is a pretty huge box with a lot of contents. There's a chunky painting project here, or possible several small ones! Lets take a closer look...

Alongside a hardcover rulebook, there's 25 miniatures, 7 scenery pieces, a card board to play on and a bunch of card terrain tiles to supplement the resin scenery.

The miniatures are all hand cast resin pieces. They're nicely cast with a very hand sculpted feel. There's a lot of body horror aspects to the miniatures, and I suspect they won't be to everyone's taste.

The rule book is very well produced, seems to be clearly laid out and has some nice illustrations. The card tiles for the board and the supplementary terrain pieces are OK, but I do feel like they could have been a little higher quality. I'd have liked a fold out game board, but obviously, that might have cost a bunch more.

The dice are simple enough, with a single custom dice for random directions, and the rest standard D8s. There's also some tokens for bile, a resource you can use in the wargame.

All in all, this is an interesting project, a wargame packaged like a premium board game. The focus is definitely on the production of the rulebook and the miniatures. While the artwork on the card stock is nice, it does feel like a little more attention to detail could have really elevated the project. The card pieces could have done with being a little thicker, and having a better storage solution in the box. The dice are functional but could have been much more characterful to fit the rest of the production.

While Boneforest is currently out of stock, another print run is planned. I think it's definitely still worth getting if you're a fan of this sort of body horror wargaming, but that the price tag is likely too high for someone who is simply curious or casually interested.

Last week's painting - 100 miniatures challenge

 

I had a week off over Christmas, and had the sudden realisation that my painting total was sitting at 81 painted miniatures. That would mean I only needed to get 19 models painted to have done 100 models in a year! I gave it a go, but a couple of days before the end of the year it became clear I'd had too much else on to be close to hitting the target, and rather than try and crunch to hit it, and leave myself with a huge backlog of housework from neglecting that, I was better placed to redirect my efforts to tidying up and setting myself up to be in a good place going into next year.

That aside, I did have a productive week, getting four models finished. They all ended up being D&D models for no reason other than my painting whims. There wasn't a particular plan to what got picked out and painted. I'd already been part way through two of them, so I finished those first and got a couple more done.

First up we have this Griffin that I bought from Iron Gate Scenery at Salute back in 2021. She had a couple of small misprint areas on the feathers that I just darkened up to hide rather than do anything clever. The stone blocks on the base area from the Rubble City pieces made by Fenris Games.

Having a good "scary big monster" for low level D&D is something I feel I should get a nice bit of use out of, so I'm pleased to get this one done. It's the sort of "work horse" monster miniature that should see a good bit of use. It's not going to come out as much as bandits or goblins, sure, but having a bigger monster come out now and again for variety keeps things interesting.

Next up is this really lovely dwarf miniature I got from Otherworld Miniatures. I think he's one of the best dwarfs they do, as there's a realism and a character to this one eyed veteran wielding a hammer. I spent a bunch of time hand highlighting his coat and am really happy with how it turned out. A real contender for my favourite model of the year.

Another Salute purchase, this time a hag from Encounter Terrain. I really wanted to up the creepiness factor on her, so after painting her in contrast, she got a quite heavy off white drybrush to make her pale and faded, with a few spots then re-painted with contrast to add a little more tone where needed.

Her unhealthy skin tones were achieved by using Magos Purple for the first coat, the aforementioned off-white drybrush, then a second pass on some areas with Guilliman Flesh to bring it a little more towards human tones but still not quite right.

Finally, we have Hakkle the Gnoll Pirate from the Reaper Bones line. He'd be undercoated in Zandri Dust, and I gave him an Agrax wash before starting painting. This did leave him a little too dark for Contrast in some places - I ended up using a layer paint for the trousers and sash in the end. At that point, I'd have been better off basing the other colours traditionally, then doing the wash and adding some highlights. Never mind, you live and learn!

Still, he's a troublesome Gnoll ready for mischief and villainy on the table. In higher fantasy settings I like the idea of adding a sole Gnoll, Goblin or Drow into a Bandit party to change up an encounter. This fellow seems like the sort of down on his luck miscreant who might have thrown his lot in with a pirate crew or bandit band for a chance of coin and luxuries.

So, all in all, while I didn't manage to get 19 miniatures painted during my holiday, I did have a pretty productive week, and got some miniatures I really like painted and ready for gaming with, so it wasn't a bust. Hopefully you all have had a good holiday season and have a more positive New Year.