The scariest ghosts EVER!

Several months ago I bought a bunch of Super Dungeon Explore sets with a number of thoughts in mind.  I was still considering whether or not Zoe would eventually want to play a game (or paint some more figures) and I thought the cute chibi figures might be more appealing to her.  I stuck with horror-themed sets as it still tied with all the scenery I have and at the time she was on a big Hotel Transylvania kick.  It never quite materialised into anything but I keep looking at the figures and thinking they would be fun to do and play with anyway so I decided to get started today.

The first set I got was Beatrix The Witch Queen who also came with six ghosts.  I decided to kickoff my Super Dungeon Explore collection with the ghosts because I felt they tied in with my Halloween theme and I also knew they would be quick and easy to paint.  I've always found that if you can start off on a roll feeling good about getting something done it makes it way easier to keep energised and moving on to the next thing.

I undercoated the models grey and then went back to ghetto-airbrushing (I've got to copyright that term...) the white on top.  After that I simply filled in all the holes in the sheets with Thraka Green and painted the eyes and bases.  Easy-peasy.

They're basic but I'm happy with how they turned out.  My plan for tomorrow is to try to get 10 of the Stilt Town Zombies done.

It makes Halloween feel a little more silly and a little more fun!

-Jay

More Grave Guard!

Yesterday was a bit wonky timeline-wise so even though I was able to get these guys done yesterday morning I didn't end up doing any non-work stuff on my computer for the rest of the day so here we are.

As I mentioned in my last post I actually split my first box of Grave Guard so they're not very functional as an Age Of Sigmar unit but should see lots of other uses.  The funny thing is when I built the models I actually preferred the look of the models with the double-handed weapons but now that I've painted them I think the hand-weapon and shield guys turned out a bit better because I was able to inject a bit more colour.

I'm going to be sticking with the horror theme but I'm going to go a slightly different direction with it for the next 3 days and paint some figures I've had for a few months for a game I still haven't played yet.

New shiny stuff!

-Jay

The first of the Grave Guard

I've decided to put all my current ongoing projects on the shelf for a few days and get some more seasonally (Halloween) appropriate stuff done.

Not much of a stretch for me given that I've got a lot of horror themed gaming going on in general but its an excuse to circle back to a few things.

Last year I touched up and re-based my armoured skeletons for Age Of Sigmar but I've had them for years so I ended up leaving them with my friend Darren in Vancouver.  That created a gap in my collection that I've been meaning to fill with some of the current GW plastics for a while.

So last night I finished my first five Grave Guard.

In my initial box of 10 I split it as half hand weapon and shield and half double-handed weapons as I am more likely to use these figures for Frostgrave or an RPG before I need a unit worth of them for Age Of Sigmar.

If all goes to plan the next 5 will show up here either late tonight or  early tomorrow.

-Jay

MI-13 is full of character(s)

As part  of my ongoing project to get a Konflikt '47 force done I need to get a command section done.  I'll be using the MI-13 commandos from Incursion for my actual squaddies but I also need to get some officers to lead them.  The truth is I'm painting ahead of getting my rulebook in hand so I'm not 100% sure how I'll stat these guys out but I'm sure at least one or two of them will work.

First up is Black Jack.  Black Jack is a named character for Secrets Of The Third Reich and although I got him painted awhile back I circled back and repainted about half of him to make him blend in with the troopers I just painted.  I also removed him from the 40mm base I originally had him on and re-based him on a 32mm base.

Black Jack is basically a diesel-punk cyborg and general all around hard-man.  He's got an over-sized revolver and a big chunky power-fist.  The figure can with a variant gun hand but it was firing a Vickers machine-gun single-handed and that honestly looked ridiculous to me.

Next up is Zip Kelly "The Hurricane".  I bought Zip just because I thought he looked cool and until I got him out of his blister pack I just assumed he was going to have a jet-pack.

Zip looks more like a pulp-era hero than a soldier to me.  I can easily picture him being the star of a radio drama and if someone was looking to set a DC Comics game of any sort during WW2 he'd make a perfect Spy-Smasher figure.  Unfortunately for me Zip is yet another case of 'he looked better before the photo' for me, at a distance he's fine but on closer magnification his chest emblem looks rough.

Last but not least is Paddy Mayne.  Paddy is the named character/leader that comes in the MI-13 starter for Incursion.  My instinct tells me that Paddy is the least likely to end up serving as an officer in my force as most games don't allow for leaders and single characters to be armed with heavy weapons.

Of the three figures Paddy is the most basic, that's probably why I like how he turned out the best.  There's absolutely nothing fancy about Paddy and he feels like he suits the setting perfectly.

I've got 6 more commandos to paint and then I'm think I'm done with weird wars stuff until I can find an appropriate robot for Konflikt.

I think I might detour off my plans for a few days and get some Halloween-y stuff done before Monday.

-Jay

 

Pip pip, cheerio, steady on, etc, etc

Over the years I keep getting interested in retro-sci-fi takes on World War 2 but I never get off my butt and actually paint anything.  The problem for me historically is that I'll pick some obscure rules that aren't available through my FLGS and then act genuinely surprised that no one else is jumping on board.

It seems after years of small press game companies thinking this would be a good idea a larger company has now gotten in on the act which means more accessibility for the average gamer.  Warlord Games has published Konflikt '47 which is sort of a "what-if" super-science take on the ongoing Second World War.  The other times I've brushed up against this have been AE-WW2 by Darkson Designs and Secrets Of The Third Reich by Westwind Productions.

Roughly 9-10 years ago I bought a bunch of stuff for Secrets Of The Third Reich and today I finally got enough of it painted to be useful for both Secrets Of The Third Reich and Konflikt '47.

What I've painted will be used (depending on your way of looking at at) as four five-man sections or two ten-man squads.  To make the figures useful (or maybe just more useful) for both systems I actually ended up painting 24 figures.

In Secrets Of The Third Reich each five-man section will have either a Sergeant or Corporal armed with a Bren-gun, one trooper armed with a Bren-gun and 3 troopers armed with Enfield rifles.

In Konflikt '47 each five-man section will have either a Sergeant or Corporal armed with a Sten-gun, one trooper armed with a Bren-gun and 3 troopers armed with Enfield rifles.

When I started this project my original intent was to use Warlord's Bolt Action British Infantry with some gas-mask heads but they didn't look super-sciencey (I just made up a word!) enough to me.  One of the things I really liked about the Westwind figures was that they were all depicted as wearing flak vests which might be historically inaccurate but feels better to me to go with the background.

I'll probably make a command section out of the Incursion MI-13 figures and then I just need to lay my hands on some suitable looking robots/mech-suits.

I've got to say specific projects aside it felt good to actually get a sizable number of figures painted in one sitting for the first time in a long time.

-Jay

Imperial reinforcements have arrived!

A little while back I painted an Imperial starter box for Warzone, since then I've been building the odd thing here and there and contemplating what to add to my small force.

After shooting a video with Ash for his channel Guerrilla Miniature Games Prodos decided to hook us up with more models to play with so it looks like instead of my scattershot "buy what I can" approach I'll be fielding an Imperial Regular Army force.

Big thanks to Prodos and I'm hoping to  be showing these off painted within the next 2 weeks.

-Jay

Happy...I'm going to say...Columbus Day

Here in Canada it's Thanksgiving today, in the U.S. it's Columbus Day.

But even though I'm in Canada I'm going to spend my Columbus Day painting some super-patriots!  Pulp City is a superhero miniature game I first got interested in years ago (7 or 8 years, I can't really remember) when it first came out but it never really gained any traction with my gaming groups so I slowly moved away into other superhero game systems.

A Kickstarter was fairly recently concluded for Pulp City to launch two new Cold-War themed superteams.  My buddy Ash will be working on the Soviet themed team while I will be working on the forces of the good ol' U S of A.  What I really enjoy about this launch is that while many of the figures will seem familiar or may even feel like direct rip-offs of existing characters to casual comic fans the truth is most of them represent tropes or archetypes that have been used by multiple characters in multiple different comic companies over the years.

For example the team leading, shield bearing Spybreaker will immediately put most people in mind of Captain America but he's also reminiscent of Agent Liberty, Spy-Smasher and The Shield.

I just started these figs this morning but I'm hoping to finished at least one or tow of them today.

-Jay

If you go down to the woods today, we'll flay your friggin' hide!

That's how the song goes isn't it?

So in addition to finishing my Dark Avengers this morning I was also able to get my first unit of Dryads done this evening.  So if nothing else this feels like a productive day hobby-wise.

My struggle thus far with getting my Sylvaneth force really going has been that how I picture it doesn't entirely align with the background.  Rather than just fierce or militant forest spirits I actually like the idea of evil haunted woods (you can take the boy out of Sylvania but you can't take Sylvania out of the boy).  To that end I have gone with a bare minimum of vegetation on my Dryads and I've based them with a scorched malignant theme with the odd bit of scrub peeking out.

They're very basic, and honestly a little flat, but I actually like the overall effect.  I'm definitely doing at least one more unit of basic Dryads but I'm not sure what's next after that.  I've got some Treemen but the more I look at them the less I like the models.  I'm feeling a bit more inclined to maybe try using the Lord Of The Rings Treemen instead of the Warhammer Treemen but I want to start with one first and see how they scale together.

More on this to come?  I think?  Maybe?

-Jay

Don't worry we're here to help, after all we are "heroes"

I managed to finish my Dark Avengers team with nearly 37 minutes to spare before the first game I'm using them in.  I've got to say, its been a while since I did that.

I'm really excited about having these figs because much like the Secret Six they will feel "right" whether they team they are fighting is made up of heroes or villains.

Knight Models does really nice well detailed figures but I have to say for the first time I encountered some minor problems with that.  The Iron Patriot has a well designed star-shaped unibeam on his chest but I found after priming and applying a basecoat to his chest plate I could barely find the outline to paint it afterwards.  Having said that at arms length on the tabletop it looks just  fine, it would just be nicer if the awesome sculpting work on this model was slightly better defined in the final casting.

Anyway, I'm off to fight mutant terrorists!

-Jay

Dark Avengers WIP

This morning before work I got a good start on my Dark Avengers team for the Marvel Universe Miniatures Game.

The "Dark" Avengers were Norman Osborn's (the Green Goblin) team of heroes that he led once he became head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comics.  The great thing about the original Dark Avengers concept was that the team was very much like The Thunderbolts or The Suicide Squad in that it was primarily composed of not reformed villains but also had the added twist that they were actively trying to pass themselves off as established heroes.
Ares and The Sentry were two morally questionable members of The Mighty Avengers team that immediately preceded The Dark Avengers.
Moonstone put on Ms Marvel's old costume as they already looked similar and had similar powers.
The assassin Bullseye  dressed up as Hawkeye.
Venom toned it down a bit to pass himself off as black suit Spider-Man.
And Norman Osborn himself hijacked a suit of Stark-tech armour and re branded himself as The Iron Patriot.

The Dark Avengers were one of my favourite comic runs of the past decade because it had everything that made comics great.  It was full of awesome art and action, had tons of story going on in both the background and the foreground, and managed to be dark while still having a sense of humour.

I'm looking forward to finishing up in the next day or two.

-Jay

Should I use this figure as a mutant or a raider? I think the answer is yes!

I'm slowly transitioning away from straight up mutants and into raiders for This Is Not A Test, but to be perfectly honest a few of the first few figures I've selected are clearly still slightly mutated but don't show signs of any true beneficial mutations.

So the first example of that (second? do I count Mean Machine?) is Coke another awesome Neuroshima Tactics model.
Coke is a classic scavenger/raider type but his pinhead marks him as not quite purestrain human.
I'm probably sounding like a broken record on this at this point but the detail and character on this piece make me ask once again not only why I didn't but every Neuroshima Tactics model I could get my hands on when they were available but how this line failed in the first place?  This is a better fig than what a lot of successful companies are out there producing now.

Also I generally don't go in for showing off different angles on the same model but I had to show the "armour" that those straps are holding on his back.

Maybe he can be a post-apocalyptic Captain America?

-Jay