The rising tide of post-apocalyptic mutants

I managed to get another Fallout-style Super-Mutant done tonight, this time Brother Vinni's take on the model.

This is another fantastic take on bringing the creatures of the Fallout gaming universe to the tabletop.  My one regret is as I was looking at the figure AFTER I finished it I found myself wondering if Space Ork arms could have fit on the existing torso?  Of course if that had occurred to me ahead of time I could have just dry-fitted it and figured it out.

The other thing I wanted to check once the model was complete was how it scaled against my earlier Reaper Super-Mutant.  Obviously at this point I have both so it's not terribly relevant to me but I thought a side-by-side comparison might be helpful to other people.  The Brother Vinni model is noticeably larger but not so much so that I couldn't image the Reaper model being a Super-Mutant and the Brother Vinni version simply being a Super-Mutant Boss.

Thoughts?

In addition I thought I'd show my entire "non-critter" mutant warband as it stands now.  In addition to the two Super-Mutants the other six mutants are Worlds End Publishing's own mutant models for This Is Not A Test.  

I feel like by using a reasonably coherent colour scheme it feels like they all tie together.

I'm pretty pleased with how this is shaping up.  I think I'll be looking to the Judge Dredd line for a few more mutants but overall it feels like a tidy little group to me.

-Jay

Forgeworld Imperial Enforcer

I've never been one of those gamers who has that collecting-gene where if something is "rare" or "limited" I feel the need to acquire it.  Having said that I am one of those gamers that gets disappointed when a cool "limited" piece is released for an army I actually play and I can't get my paws on it.

A couple of years ago Forgeworld did an event exclusive figure of an Imperial Enforcer with a cyber-Mastiff.  This was doubly frustrating for me because not only would I not be at any of the events the figure would be available at but to boot it was for an army that had so few different figures in it.

Luckily for me my friend Jordan came to the rescue and picked me up one of these AWESOME figures at an event he attended.  Thanks again Jordan and let us never speak of how long it took me to get paint on this figure.

So pre-amble aside I decided to paint this guy to match my existing Arbites/Enforcer models.  I'm happy with that choice because it means I'll actually use him in some games but I do have some slight (only slight) regrets given that he's a pretty spectacular piece and the lack of contrast I use on my Arbites models means he doesn't 'pop' like something coloured differently.

Depending on what army list I'm using he'll probably be some sort of HQ model.  I also got the chance to use the new 32mm Games Workshop imperial/urban bases that I'll be using on all my Arbites going forward.

If any of you have an suggestions for good unofficial army lists or models that you think would work with an Arbites army please share your thoughts in the comments section.  I feel like I've been painting the same models for this army for 20ish years.

-Jay

Best laid plans..blah..blah..got it done anyway

Yesterday I thought I had a pretty wide-open day to get some painting done and then life rode in and made a mockery of my reasonable timeline.  I ended up working for a bit on my day off, my wife was ill so I ended up taking care of her and then helped my daughter with a project.

I did however get some time to paint in between life-things and managed to finish my Death Company.

I've got to say if you're one of those hobbyists who ever stayed away from a Games Workshop model because it had too many skulls OR too many gem stones; the Death Company models may not be for you.

I built my Death Company as pictured on the box art with one minor change.  As I may have mentioned before in one of my posts one of my weird/personal pet peeves with Assault Marines is when they have the jump pack but do not have the jump pack harness.  So I substituted the Death Company torsos with Assault Marine torsos.

Two replacement sergeants and that brings my Blood Angels collection to 2000 points!

-Jay

Speaking of projects that just linger....

So about a year ago a friend and I split a Deathstorm box and decided to play through the mini-campaign.

To be clear my share of the box was a total of 12 models, and there were a  grand total of THREE scenarios to play.  A lot of different things got in the way (work, life, endless scheduling conflicts) but after nearly a year away from 40K we're going to do our best to play scenario 2 this week.

The first scenario featured 1st Company Captain Karlaen and a squad of Terminators racing across the table through an unending gauntlet of Genestealers.  The first scenario went incredibly badly for me as not only did I get unbelievably bad die rolls with Captain Karlaen himself (he was a disaster!) but I very nearly broke the model when I dropped it removing it from the table.

For the second scenario Karlaen is trapped under a fallen statue being defended by his Terminator squad while the forces of the hive-mind advance.  Basically the Karlaen miniature isn't even used, he is the scenario objective.  The Terminator squad on their own would be completely overrun by the forces arrayed  against them but their job is not to defeat the hive, their job is to hold the line until their rescue force arrives.  The rescue force is the proverbial 'sharp end' of the Blood Angels; the Death Company.

Today I need to get 6 models (that to be fair are 75% flat black) done.  If I don't get this done my man-card my remain intact but if there's a hobbyist-card I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to turn that in.

One of the struggles of being  a hobbyist with a child is fitting in time to get painting done.  However when your daughter wakes you up at 6am on a Sunday because she wants someone to go downstairs to watch cartoons with her you have some time early in the day to get some work done.  To that point Cassor The Damned got finished early this morning.

Cassor is the Death Company's dreadnought and features prominently in the supporting fiction for the Deathstorm supplement.  I'm really excited to try Cassor not only in Deathstorm but against other forces as well.  I've always chosen shooting space marine units rather than close-combat  units so I'm both eager and curious to see what a close-combat monster like this can do.

During the Jays game today/now I'm going to try to get the 5 men of the Death Company squad done.

Wish me luck!

-Jay
 

You know those projects that just linger?

Lately there have been a few larger scale games I have been wanting to play but I keep failing to launch on getting larger projects done.  Inspiration hit me tonight and while digging out figure cases I caught a lucky break on another larger project I want to do.

First up: Adeptus Arbites
I've been a huge fan of the Arbites for pretty much as long as they've existed.  Over the years I had collected a decent sized force but always felt like they weren't quite right.  Then earlier this year Games Workshop released their awesome Sector Imperialis bases and I got excited about updating the look of my existing models.  I will be re-basing my entire Arbites collection but it was also a reminder that 5 of my squads need new Proctors to lead them, so before I start re-basing these 5 models are going to see some paint.

I can't wait to get this done as I think once I start re-basing it will make my mid-80s collection looks very millennial.

Next: Konflikt 47 by way of Secrets Of The Third Reich
I assembled my first squad of Weird War Brit troopers awhile back but never got very enthusiastic about them.  No real reason why, just couldn't get energised to apply some paint.  While digging out my Arbites I came across 20 troopers I had started painting years ago (around 8 years ago I think) that captured the right flavour and were already started.

This should make my entry point into Konflikt 47 a little bit easier if I can just find a few more figures.  The big challenge in using theses figures for Konflikt is that the squad structure in Secrets Of The Third Reich is ridiculously Bren-gun heavy so as it stands I will need to replace about 4 of my Bren armed troopers with Sten guns or Enfield rifles.  Hopefully I've got at least one pack of what I need hiding in the depths of my basement.

Let's see where these new projects take me.

-Jay

This time a "classic" super-mutant fresh from the Capitol Wasteland

I've been hitting the wacky mutant humanoid/animal thing pretty hard lately so I've decided to back it up a bit and try to go a bit more 'classic' wasteland look for the next week or two.

First up Reaper does this mutant which is a spot-on match for the super-mutants from Fallout 3.

Way back when I painted my old school mutants I knew I wanted them to eventually match the skin from those Fallout 3 super-mutants so this guy should blend in pretty well with my existing mutants.  I followed Games Workshop's guide fro painting Escape From Goblintown goblins for my mutant skin-tone with the only significant change being that I also applied a red-wash around the eyes to make them look a bit more unhealthy.

I'm really happy with how this figure turned out, my only regret is that he doesn't come with extra arms so I could make more than one.  I bought a second one but the challenge in converting it will be finding limbs with matching proportions.

I think I might break from mutants for awhile and do some raiders so keep an eye out for that.

-Jay

This is what hickory maple vengeance looks like!

Tonight I finally finished the main man, Napoleon himself.  I had been debating for awhile now just how big and bad to make him (power armour?  some kind of mecha suit?  use a figure twice the size of normal?) but eventually I realized I was moving from fun and humorous to overly cartoony and decided to just go with an over-sized pig-man, with over-sized gear.

I'm pretty happy with how Napoleon turned out and he fits nicely with Snowball (the pig-man with minigun from awhile back) so even after his one-shot appearance in my current This Is Not A Test campaign he could get use again down the road.

I believe this will bring about an end to my wacky manimal shenanigans for now.  Its been tons of fun but it might be time to switch gears for my future This Is Not A Test games.

-Jay

Back to the future for more Warzone!

During my lunch break today I built my next Warzone unit; the Imperial Special Forces.

Prodos makes a number of specific special forces units but they also produce this generic special forces box to represent all of their lesser known elite units.  The weird part of the experience for me with this box is that I found the trenchers from the starter box to fit together extremely well and these guys were a lot more fussy and were not at all easy to get together in spite of having the same basic fits and builds as the trenchers.

These guys will probably end up being a bit of a speed painting project as I really want to get past them and get to my unit of Blood Berets and Blood Beret themed Doomtroopers.

So now that I've built theses I have about 5 separate projects on my desk fighting for my attention.  I'm as curious as you all are to see what I actually put paint to next...

-Jay

Two more Guardians Of The Galaxy

I'm trying to wrap up my "cosmic" hero team for the Marvel Universe Miniatures Game before the Dark Avengers become available.

For those of you unfamiliar with the modern Guardians Of The Galaxy there have basically been three versions of the team during the Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning run which revitalised the team from it's original run back in the 70s and 80s.

The first version was the team everyone knows from the first movie with; Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Drax, Groot, Adam Warlock and Phylla Veil in action with Mantis as their support back at their base on Nowhere.  For  this iteration of the team I finished Drax earlier today.  I've got to say I was pretty indecisive about how to paint Drax bouncing back and forth between a comic book look and the movie look and settling some where in between that truly looks like neither.

Drax's background in the comics is slightly different than the movie.  In the comics Drax was a real estate agent named Arthur Douglas who was killed along with his whole family as collateral damage of Thanos' arrival on earth.  Arthur Douglas was later resurrected and given super powers (immense durability and near Hulk-like strength) for the purposes of destroying Thanos.

The second version of the team  was basically the first team without Warlock (who'd turned evil) but the additions of Bug, Moon Dragon (Drax's daughter) and Jack Flag (a character simultaneously almost completely unknown while being connected to tons of A-list Marvel heroes).

After a final cataclysmic battle against Thanos and Death in the Cancerverse (seriously, I'm not making that name up) the realisation was made the the original Guardians team was made up of whatever 'spare-parts' happened to be lying around and they weren't really the kind of heavy hitters you would expect to actually guard the galaxy.  At that point of team was assembled of some of Marvel's most powerful "cosmic" heroes.  The final team was made up of; Gladiator, Quassar, Beta Ray Bill, Ronan The Accuser and Nova Prime Richard Ryder.

Nova Prime and the Nova Corps are Marvel's version of the Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps.  Both forces are cosmically empowered space-cops that travel through the galaxy maintaining order with little to no oversight.

I was really happy with how Nova turned out but I have to admit that once I took a photo with decent resolution his final highlight on his gold armour looks a little chalky.  The funny part is even though I can clearly it in the photo when I look at the model with the naked eye he still looks fine to me and I can't detect the chalkiness at all.  Maybe this is the benefit of getting old and having bad eyesight?  I can convince myself that I'm a better painter than I actually am.

Three figures down, three to go and then I can get to my three separate "are they heroes or are they villains?" forces.

-Jay

The pig, the myth, the legend...

We all like to pretend that we know what's coming, or we figured out the plot twist before it happens.  I'm not going to lie, if you had asked me when I painted my first miniature in 1986; "Hey Jay, at some point do you think you'll paint a giant pig-man armed with a street lamp and riot shield?" I don't think I would have seen that coming.

As Ash and I ramp up to what I suspect is the beginning of the end of our super-fun This Is Not A Test campaign I do need to bust out a "boss monster" type figure for the final encounter and this feels pretty right to me.

So Napoleon is a Wrath Of Kings Teknes model armed with a street lamp from the Malifaux Lamps pack and carrying a shock shield (that I found during my first post-game way back when) from a Games Workshop Ogryn kit.

I'm really impressed with how all the pieces came together and I think the figure looks suitably ramshackle while also being super-menacing.

He should see some paint over the next few days and then the mayhem is only a game or two away!

-Jay

There's only room for one dandy on this team....

If you understood that title you read the same comics I do.

I finally finished up the Mad Hatter today.  I'm pretty stoked because much like Bane the Hatter can be a member of the Secret Six but he is also the leader of his own gang (The Wonderland Gang).

Mad Hatter is very likely to end up in any version of the Secret Six I play with for the next little while.  Until more Secret Six members become available the Hatter's low recruitment cost should keep him in my warbands.

I'm a bit torn right now.  I've got Captain Boomerang on my desk as well as the Guardians Of The Galaxy and I'm also trying to sculpt a Pip-boy onto an Infinity miniature so it might be back to hobby A.D.D. for me.

-Jay

A boy and his dog....sort of, but not really

Back to post-apocalyptica!

With the shipping on the horizon for This Is Not A Test I wanted to get the last of my official Worlds End Publishing  models done before the next batch shows up in my mailbox.
Today's addition is Johnny Atomic wasteland-DJ (which is officially the coolest job title I've ever heard in my life!).  I mentioned a while back when I painted Gas-Mask Girl that she was "one" of the semi-official mascots for This Is Not A Test, Johnny Atomic is the other.

As a rule when I buy models from a smaller company (not to mention at a totally reasonable price) I'm really looking for 'good enough' in terms of the depth of detail and the textures and details in general.  Johnny retails for $6.50 US and I have to say he has a level and crispness of detail that is on par with the best metal models I have ever bought.

As part of my ongoing collection of animal-human hybrids for This Is Not A Test and Gamma World I found a bunch of Rifts models at a flea market my friend Spencer turned me onto.

I'm currently weighing three different options for additions to the Colonel's Revenge and a psionic golden retriever is one of the choices I'm considering.  I'm not sure if this figure will get used soon or not but regardless I'm super happy to have it done and it scratched a real nostalgia itch for me painting a Rifts miniature.

-Jay