The long cyber-arm of the law

Work continues on my new Enforcer team for Necromunda.  Kind of a strange outcome to my painting for that today though.   I had planned on giving all of my troopers the white helmets I typically reserve for the riot squads in my Arbites army just to brighten up the overall look of the figures and provide more contrast but the figure I painted today is the cyber-mastiff handler and he doesn't wear a helmet, so he looks much darker than I had planned.

The cyber-mastiff handler is a nice addition to the Enforcer/Arbite range because it gives them their first genuinely new looking model in decades.  That being said I have built 3 of these previously and was never happy with how they turned out.  I always found that the weapon hands that were available always ended up making the figure look like a Proctor who had left his coat at home.  This time rather than going for the min-max weapon hand choices I simply gave him a bolt pistol in one hand and a cyber hand snipped from an older heroclix model on his other hand.  Obviously a second weapon or a riot shield would have been far more advantageous but I think this looks alot better and more natural.

-Jay

Have you seen my dog?

 

Fall Of The Necromancer: The second mustering

Back with more elves for scenario 2 of our Fall Of The Necromancer campaign.  This time I've painted a dozen Galadhrim Warriors (armoured wood elves) who will be standing in for the plastic High Elves that are supposed to make up Elrond's forces.

The Galadhrim are really nice armoured elf figures that I was happy to paint and I'm looking forward to adding another 12 a bit later on in the campaign.

We should be playing our second game tomorrow night when either I will continue pushing the forces of evil back or Stan will avenge his earlier loss and prevent more of my elves from living to see the end of their age and the beginning of the age of men.

-Jay

Galadhrim with elven blades

 

Galadhrim with elven spears

 

Galadhrim with elven bows

 

 

 

There's a little Santa in all of us

My buddy Darren's shop Strategies Games & Hobbies www.strategiesgames.ca in Vancouver is currently running an awesome pre-Christmas event; miniature painting secret Santa.

Basically the idea is you sign up, drop off a model to be painted by another participant chosen at random and pick up a model chosen at random to paint for someone else.  It's awesome because it guarantees you will get something that you want for Christmas, but there's still the element of surprise when you get the finished product.  I will be painting a Gun-Mage-Captain-Adept for the Cygnar faction for Warmachine.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to mention that in some upcoming blog posts I will be showcasing some terrific hobby shops and their events in the hope that some of you may check out a deserving store you've never been in before.  Personally I've always felt that brick and mortar retaillers are the lifeblood of our hobby and without them our community would be alot smaller and alot less rewarding.

Tomorrow I'll get back to showing painted models (didn't want to ruin anybody Christmas surprise today)

-Jay

Gun Mage Captain Adept (before)

Come back December 25th for after photo

 

This time a blast from the blast gets new life.

A few months ago I was playing an Arbites officer in a 40K rpg game and decided that even though I had a pretty decent sized collection of Arbites and Enforcer models already painted I would paint up a new figure and put a little extra effort into him.  For the same game I painted up a Cyber-Mastiff that sadly ended up never getting used but was fun to do anyway.

Fast forward to this morning when I somehow talked my way into playing in a Necromunda game I wasn't actually invited to (sorry Chris, in hindsight that seems a bit rude on my part) and again I decided that rather than putting together a selection of my painted models I would use these 2 figures as a jumping-off point to paint up a new Enforcer team for Necromunda.

In addition when I pulled out the figure case I have my Arbites in I also found my Judge model in there which I thought would be cool to showcase because everytime I see Arbites being discussed on various forums people always seem to be looking for good ideas for Judge models.

-Jay

Proctor & Cyber-mastiff

 

The Judge

 

 

The first of many (I hope) civilians

I have always used miniatures in role-playing to help sell each scene a bit more but the one thing that has always been lacking is civilian/bystander models.

When I started playing RPGs many moons ago most encounters happened in dungeons, or tombs, or abandonned space ships and what not so it made perfect sense for there to be no panicky civilians around generally milling about and making "heroes" rethink things like automatic weapons fire and area attacks.  But now that I'm doing some modern gaming as well as some superhero gaming (where saving the innocent is generally the name of the game) I find myself needing an assortment of generic unarmed civilian types to become the crowd that the group needs to be careful not to injure or kill while they're being saved.

This is another area where Heroclix models really came through.  Over the past several years they have begun inserting 'secret identity' figures (like Peter Parker, Clark Kent, etc) in their sets as well as adding in non-powered supporting characters (like Mary Jane Watson, Rick Jones, etc) so they have quite a variety of figures to choose from.

I just finished touching up my my first 3 tonight and I think they're great.  Unless you're a Heroclix collector or die-hard comics fan it's unlikely you would recognize any of these figures for who they were originally supposed to be.  I'm hoping to get atleast a dozen of these types of figures done before Christmas so I have a decent selection by the time my first DC Adventures game hits the table.

-Jay

"Gee, I hope no one throws a bus at us today"

 

More from Mirkwood

Hello again!  It's been a few days since my last post because instead of painting a few figures I've been working on  assembly-lining (sure, that's a word) 12 figures at once.  For my ongoing Fall Of The Necromancer game I'm currently painting 12 Galadhrim Warriors to stand in for the original 2nd age High Elf figures that I've never been a big fan of.  The Galadhrim seem like a reasonable substitute (they're heavily armoured elves in the same colour scheme) and in future gaming they will fit better with my unarmoured Wood Elves as a coherent force.

In the meantime I realized I never showed my last 4 Mirkwood Elves (the bowmen) and I also just finished touching up their new champion Legolas as well.

In the next few days I hope to be showing my completed Galadhrim as well as some of the civilian/bystander models I'm doing up for my DC Adventures game. 

-Jay

With elven archers it's quality over quantity.

 

Final appearance of the Zombie Vixens....for now....

I have finished my first sprue of Zombie Vixens (except the crawlers, more on this later) and I'm very happy with the variety of figures I ended up with.

I'll be re-visiting the crawlers later after I've finished all my Studio Miniatures zombies.  I'm still trying to decide how I want to base my crawlers which I why I skipped them on my first Studio Miniatures box as well.

So for now zombies will move to the back burner as I have impending Pathfinder and LOTR games to get figures ready for.

-Jay

Last 2 Zombie Vixens

 

This is what you can make with one-third of a box.

 

 

Ms. Marvel

My goal with superhero models over the next few weeks will be to focus on characters I can use for my DC Adventures game but I had 1 figure from the recent Avengers set I really wanted to get finished; Ms Marvel.

Ms. Marvel has been one of my favourite comic book characters of the last few years for the same reasons I really like Captain Atom in the DC Animated stuff, having a superhero who is also a serving member of their nation's military seems to give a great jumping off point for interactions with other characters in the comics.  It always seems interesting (and usually funny) to me when a bunch of people who have collected themselves together to serve the common good then seem to immediately start disagreeing over whether or not that requires autonomy or structure.

Don't really need this figure for anything right now.  Just think the character is great and I love the model so why not?

-Jay

Ms. Marvel reporting for duty.

 

Fall Of The Necromancer: Everything old is new again

As part of my preparations for further gaming in the Fall Of The Necromancer campaign I dusted off some old figures I had painted when LOTR first came out 11 years ago.

I painted these three members of the White Council when they were first released over a decade ago but because I've always had a preference for scenario based gaming in LOTR I honestly don't think I had ever used them in a game.  So after a few touch-ups to freshen them up a bit they are ready to stand against the forces of Sauron!

-Jay

Thranduil has found some allies

 

 

Return of the Zombie Vixens

Got 2 more zombie vixens done tonight.  That leaves me with 2 more regular zombies and 2 crawlers and my first sprue will be done!  I think after that I'll take a break from these and do another box of Studio Miniatures zombies.

-Jay

Doing some shopping ladies?

 

DC Adventures anyone?

I've been toying with the idea of running a PL8-10 DC Adventures RPG if/when I can find enough interested players to run a game.  To that end I just picked up 10 of the new Batman single figure blind packs from the Heroclix line.

First up let me just say in my opinion the Heroclix models have been getting better and better with every release over the last couple of years.  The 6 figures I'm presenting tonight not only had an excellent level of detail but they barely required any re-painting.  They all got cleaned up a bit but none of them required full repaints.

For anyone who is considering running a superhero, sci-fi, or modern RPG I'd also like to recomend the Heroclix starter packs.  They come with 6 figures and include a double sided battle map that is perfect for RPG use.

And now without any further ado, please allow me to present the first 6 members of my supporting cast...

-Jay

Wanna hear a joke?

 

Two of Batman's oldest allies.

 

Batman & Red Robin

 

 

 

Fall Of The Necromancer: Scenario 1

It looks like miniatures and paints have been joined at last by dice and tape measures.

Stan and I got together and played our first LOTR game the other night and it was a blast!  We were both a little rusty on the rules but I was able to restrict my screw-ups to one per turn so it didn't go too badly at all.  In the first scenario Thranduil and a force of his wood elves encounter a group of monsters in the forest and it is basically a sudden fight for survival.  The winner is simply the player who drives off or kills his opponent's force.

The forces are set.

My elves have moved into position (or so I think) and Stan's bats and first (of four) spiders have arrived on the scene.

 

Let battle commence!

After a decent first round of shooting on my part tempered by some slight cowardice on the part of 1 of my elf warriors and 1 of my sentinels the forces of darkness advance to first contact.  I was supremely confident in my superior Fight value until Stan reminded me that the bats halve my fight value.

 

Time to nut-up or shut-up.

Okay...now I'm in trouble.  Six of my initial sixteen models are out of the fight, if I lose 2 more I'll be getting hammered potentially taking 2 Courage tests next turn.  And fleeing is brutal on a 2' table.  If only I had some special ability I'd been forgetting to use for the first 3 turns.....

 

Victory from the jaws of defeat!

So after my moments of panic about how quickly I could be made to flee off of a small table surface I realized that my Sentinels songs can push my opponents around the board if they are the cowardly sorts like spiders and bats.....I was able to drive off 1 stand of Bats and 1 Giant Spider and then use the room it openned up to trap and kill Stan's remaining spiders.

 

All in all a fantastic (and really close) game.  I'm looking forward tp playing through the rest of the campaign and I'm working on some more elves to bolster my forces in the coming weeks.

 

Thanks for checking in and I hope everybody's enjoying my hobby rambling and dodgy photography.

-Jay

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall Of The Necromancer: Part Two

It looks like all did not in-fact go according to plan tonight.  I've got Thranduil and the 3 Sentinels done but my 4 remaining archers are nowhere near table-top ready.  I'm going to spend another hour on them tonight before I call it quits and try to get them finished but I've got an early start to my day tomorrow so if I can't finish tonight it looks like 4 of my metal wood elf archers from the Fellowship Of The Ring days will have to stand in.  I'm definitely hoping to avoid that because they don't match my new paint scheme and I think my painting has improved a little bit in the last 10+ years so my old figs look a little 'flat' next to my newer ones.

No matter which archers hit the table tomorrow I'm sure the game will be awesome and I'm really looking forward to finally getting back to LOTR which has been my favourite GW game since it's release.

-Jay

Thranduil

 

Wood Elf Sentinels

 

 

 

Fall Of The Necromancer: Part 1

Tomorrow after work I will be playing my first game of Lord Of The Rings in about 5 years.  My buddy Stan has been interested in playing the Fall Of The Necromancer campaign (which is one of the last generation of GW Lord Of The Rings supplements) and it gave me a good excuse to start painting a new force for LOTR.

I'll be playing the forces of good, which means for the first time in my 20+ years of fantasy wargaming I am collecting an elf force.  For our first scenario I need to finish 16 elves; 12 of the plastics from one of the box sets, 3 sentinels and Thranduil.  So far I've completely finished my first 8 elves, Thranduil is 90% done and my archers are...less than done....but our game isn't until tomorrow so I'm sure I'll be fine.

If all goes according to plan I'll put up a second post tonight showing the rest of my force completed and then if I can figure out how to do it I'll hopefully have a battle report for all of you that are tired of looking at shots of static models sitting on my desk by Thursday.

Wish me luck!

-Jay

Wood Elves with swords.

 

Wood Elves with spears.

 

 

Every good hero needs a villain (or two)

I have been collecting a decent sized force of superhero figs over the last few years but have struggled to find really good villains outside of the Heroclix line.  The main problem with using well known villains in a superhero RPG is that invariably somebody in the group knows pretty much exactly how to defeat them based on 60-70 years of comic history so even if the main mastermind villain is Apocalypse or Vandal Savage I prefer to have most of the baddies doing the fighting being new or original characters that my player's won't be familiar with.

Luckily Reaper (again their excellent Chronoscope line) and Comfy Chair Games have produced a couple of awesome "brick" type baddies for use in superhero games.  These type of guys don't have very complicated power sets but when you need to punch a hero through a wall or throw a car at somebody they definitely fit the bill.

-Jay

It definitely looks like clobberin' time.

 

This guy looks like he has old-school underwater mines for fists!

(Comfy Chair Games)

 

This guy has nodes for inserting chemical vials all down his back.

(Reaper-Chronoscope)

 

 

 

 

Pulp City - Deadeye & Vigilantes

Back in Pulp City (which I suddenly realized last night could easily be made out of my Plasticville buildings!) there's a new hero on the street; Deadeye!

In Pulp City there are a number of different hero and villain factions, the heroes from yesterday's post are all members of the team Heavy Metal, in addition there are also freelancers who can fight on their own or join up with other teams.  Today's hero is a freelancer named Deadeye.

I was first drawn to the Deadeye miniature because the short hair and cybernetic arm immediately reminded me of Cable who was one of my favourite comic characters from the 90s but what really sealed the deal was at the time I bought him I was playing in a low powered superhero RPG that made his henchmen ideal player character figures.

I also (finally) finished Solar another hero who was actually in the very first Pulp-City pack I ever bought but I just hadn't gotten around to him until recently.

I'm hoping in the next week or two to vary up the content here on the blog by including a battle report of some sort....keep watching this space!

-Jay

Deadeye & Vigilantes

(insert your own "Batman" joke here)

 

Solar

 

 

Pulp City - Heavy Metal

One of the recent superhero miniature ranges I've been really excited about is the Pulp-City range from Pulp-Monsters.

Pulp City has a range of different models from homages to new and original characters and so far all of the figures I have gotten from them are outstandingly well sculpted and cast.

The 3 characters today are members of a super-team called "Heavy Metal" which relies on alot of technological heroes but also includes some aliens and a few others.

I'm finishing up a few more figures that have been 'mostly' finished over the next few days so you should be seeing a few more superheroes (and villains) around these parts.

-Jay

Nuclear Jones, Iron Train & Androidia

 

Space Facists!

Watching Iron Sky tonight was a great reminder that every gamer, whether they play miniature games or RPGs needs a selection of pseudo-Nazis in their miniature collection.

A while back I started on a painting project comprised of a mix of Wargames Factory Greatcoat Troopers, Warzone Bauhaus figures and Urban Mammoth Viridians to make up a generic space facist army for whatever I needed them for.  I finished 18 of the Greatcoats several months back and dug out another 18 to finish up over the last few days.

The paint scheme is very basic and I probably spent as much time on the basesas I did on the figures themselves but overall I'm still very satisfied with them and my first 18 troopers have already appeared in 3 separate and entirely unrelated games.

Also....you should all watch Iron Sky

-Jay

Hello boys, you look friendly.

 

Oh...so, not so friendly then?

 

 

More Zombie Vixens!

I managed to finish 3 more of my Zombie Vixens from Wargames Factory today.  I am definitely still really pleased with these models.  Today I built a life-guard, a waitress and a nurse and they look like they should blend in fairly well with my existing zombie miniatures.

For tonight I'm deciding between a couple more zombies or taking a serious run at painting my 4 Ratchets for Dark Age.

-Jay

I'm not sure if the term "life"guard still applies here...

 

Always happy to be of service!

 

 

The brood is coming.....

I have been off and on trying to convince myself to finish a force for Dark Age for over a year now.  While sitting at my desk deciding yet again that I should get off my butt and actually finish some Dark Age figures I finally decided to put the finishing touches on my first 5 figures.

For those not overly familiar Dark Age is sort of a sci-fi skirmish game set in a world which has fallen back into a new Dark Age (sort of A Canticle for Leibowitz but with monsters).  The Brood, which is the force I've chosen are soem of the monstrous inhabitants of the Dark Age world.  I have 5 more Brood models sitting on my desk as I type this and I can't help but thinking this should also light a fire under my butt to finish some Helldorado models that have been "almost done" for so long it's embarassing.

Somehow everytime I convince myself to do a new project I find an old one that's crying out to be finished.

-Jay

First 5 done!

 

A closer look at the Mandible and 2 Brood Hounds