Yul

Feline Force Five is done!

I've painted my final cat, Yul.  Because every successful post-apocalyptic warband needs a Siamese cat with an M-16.

I've got to properly points out my stuff for my This Is Not A Test game on Thursday.  I think I'm under by roughly 50 barter script so there might be a hired gun in my future.  Perhaps some sort of...robot?

Anyhow, probably a one or two day break before starting on anything new and then probably some more stuff for D&D.

-Jay

Cecil the Lion-Man

Four down, one to go!

My second last catman, Cecil The Lion-Man is ready to rock!

Reaper has a few figs on their site filled as a Steampunk Wizard Of Oz group that I thought were pretty cool.  The Tin Woodsman might be an add for later but as I was looking for cat-people their take on the Cowardly Lion was my first choice.

For his skin and hair/mane I went for a fairly basic lion colour scheme but once I was holding him in my hand it was super-obvious that had I painted his skin fist and goggles red he would look exactly like a certain boy from hell.

-Jay

Julio Jaguar

I've moved past the monstrously large cats and into the 'normal' (doesn't quite seem like the right word) man-sized cats.

Julio Jaguar will be my psychic mutant.  Julio is a figure from an old Pulp City three pack; the Dark Solar pack.  I bought that pack to use Solar as a generic superhero in a superhero RPG I was playing in a few years ago, I guess I lucked out that I had an extra catman laying around.


The nice thing is that Julio has way less (as in no) tech gear or equipment so although I'm painting him for a This Is Not A Test game in a few days he's more perfect than most of the figures I've painted for Mutant Crawl Classics.

Two more cat-people are hanging out on my painting desk and will hopefully be done before the weekend is out.

-Jay

Here kitty kitty kitty!

My first 2 mutant big cats are done.  I say big cats because both of these dudes are on 40mm bases and are closer to ogre-sized than to man-sized.

I finished up my Lykoi and although I'm not entirely happy with how the tartan turned out for a first attempt I'm relatively pleased.  I may have to dig through my box of unpainted models and see if I have another kilt wearing model I can experiment on.

I did these 2 first because I was excited about the models.  It's time now to start constructing a roster and figuring out what else I need to paint to make up a starting force for This Is Not A Test.

-Jay

Lykoi (WIP)

I was hoping to finish my second cat today but his tartan is taking longer than I expected (I honestly surprised myself that the words I just typed form a sentence).

My next cat, and probably leader figure is Lykoi.  A lykoi is a relatively new breed of cat that looks like a wolf.  This allowed me to use one of the awesome Infinity antipode models in my feline force.

I'm usually a fairly boring painter and don't try new things as often as I should but I decided to try something new and am working on a tartan.  I found a few great articles online about painting tartans and I have to say like a lot of things it becomes far less daunting when someone breaks it down step-by-step.

Tomorrow is a shorter day at work so with any luck I can finish Lykoi and hopefully get atleast one or two other models started.

-Jay

Tabby!

Tabby, the first of my mutant cat-people is almost done!  Just need to finish the basing and the eyes and he's good to go!

Tabby is a Reaper Miniatures Tigerian Merc armed with an axe, holstered sidearm and grenades.  You'll get a better sense of this in a few days when I post my full feline war-party but Tabby is also really big (that's a 40mm base he's standing on!).

Tabby is slated for use in a couple of upcoming games.  He's going to be one of my main mutant characters for my next This Is Not A Test game against Tom Carter and his warband of Alf miniatures.  There's also a 100% chance of feline manimals being discovered in the areas surrounding Port Dever in my future Mutant Crawl Classics adventures.

The next 3 days are 100% cat-people painting so by Tuesday a decent-sized force of cats should be on the prowl.

-Jay

Almost ready for my almost first Mutant Crawl Classics funnel!

I wonder how many times during the time I've been writing this blog I've used the expression "best laid plans of mice and men..."?  A small group of friends and I were planning on playing through our first 0-level funnel tomorrow but once again real-life called an audible and the game is off, at least for a change it's not my schedule disrupting things for everyone else :)

So I had today off and rushed through getting 11 of the 12 miniatures done we needed for tomorrow.  Six of them were just re-bases and touch-ups of some older models and I painted five new figures today.  It was a bit of a time crunch so I really just slapped paint on basic models but now that I have time before we're actually going to play I'm going to go back and add some debris and salvage to these guys to make them feel a bit more appropriate to the setting.

Having said all that let me show you what I got done today.

In Mutant Crawl Classics characters at 0 level start off in one of four categories; Humans, Mutants, Manimals or Plantients.  Today I was making due with models I had on hand so although I represented all four groups Plantients got the short end of the stick (pun intended).

First up the humans.

Three of these are re-purposed figures from previous games.  The guy on the left of the picture is my old Dungeon Crawl Classic character Jaqar.  Ironically he's no longer a suitable miniature for the fantasy game I'm playing because he should have more hi-tech gear.  The next figure over in the jeans and leather jacket is new, he's a Cursed Earth Desperado from the Judge Dredd miniature game.  Next in line is the jester I painted for the first round of The Iron Painter three years ago, and finally Bloody Brannigan a pirate model from Warmachine.

Next up the mutants.

Starting again on the left is a Reaper Tiefling Wizard.  Next in line is Junior Angel from Wargames Foundry's Judge Dredd line and finally is a nameless Reaper mutant who looks very Incredible Hulk to me.

Next up the manimals.
(these guys are my favourites)

One the far left we start with some sort of Reaper Lizardman (I lost the package).  Then in the center we have one of my Rangifers from Frostgrave touched up and slightly re-based.  And finally....why not Zoidberg? from Armorcast.

Last up my lone plantient.

This guy is a Games Workshop Dryad which I seem to be using for a lot of games lately.

I'm probably going to phase a bunch of these out and do some conversions that have some suitable looking scrap on them before we reschedule our game so keep an eye out for those.

-Jay

Mallard joins the Swinetrek expedition

The fourth and final 'new' member of the Swinetrek expedition for This Is Not A Test is Mallard the duck-man.  In my head he sounds exactly like Jason Alexander.  The figure is the Duck with S.A.W. from Black Scorpion Miniatures.

My starting crew for my This Is Not A Test campaign will be the three pigs I had painted last week along with one of my Gallus Gallus miniatures named St Hubert.

I'd like to find a few more sci-fi animal mutants to add to my warband as it grows.  Time to start scavenging around.

-Jay

The star is ready for her close-up

Link Hogthrob might have been the captain and the leader of the Swinetrek but the true star was always Ensign Piggy.

Ensign Piggy is the final of the three characters from my latest Interloper pack (I've got to think what to do next from them) and has been painted a slightly different hue than her two male companions.

This completes the 'core' of my new warband for This Is Not A Test, I do have one more character I want to add and then I think I'll have a look at the freelancer section with an eye to adding something different to add another flavour to my warband.

I can't wait to get these three on the table next week and stick it to the man!

-Jay

The doctor will see you now

The second member of the Swinetrek is now done; Doctor Julius Strangepork.

The doctor is the second figure from the Interloper Miniatures pack that contained the previously painted Link Hogthrob and the soon to be painted Ensign Piggy.

I need to pull out my This Is Not A Test rulebook and figure out exactly what role Doctor Strangepork will play in my warband but regardless of skills or abilities I'm just happy to have him on board.

-Jay

Captain Link Hogthrob reporting for duty!

Time to trek back to Swineland, a Swinetrek if you will.

After an extended time away from This Is Not A Test three things happened that got me stoked to return once again:
1.  Both of my regular opponents are excited to play once again.
2.  World's End publishing released a new supplement for This Is Not A Test.
3.  Since our last campaign ended Interloper Miniatures has released a super-cool pack of sci-fi Pig-People.

Today I started painting those new Interloper figs with the goal of the three of them forming the core of my new mutant warband.  This is a bit of a break from tradition for me as I actually painted my warband leader first, normally I paint up a pile of regular troopers first.

Our new fearless leader (no disrespect to Gallus Prime) is Link Hogthrob.  Link is basically a cross between Zap Brannigan, James T Kirk and a side of bacon.

This is yet another amazingly executed figure design by Interloper Miniatures.  Link's environment suit has a lot of well sculpted elements and really captures a unique look and feel.

I'm looking forward to getting my next two characters done (hopefully tomorrow) and getting back to the table for some This Is Not A Test next week!

-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

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

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

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

A few days ago I asked if Rad-Pigs were a thing, today I can confirm that they are!

Like most hobbyists there are tons of hobby projects I would like to do, but that doesn't mean I'm really all that motivated or energised.  The opposite end of the hobby spectrum is when I or a friend make an off-hand comment that we could do something and then it becomes an itch that I HAVE to scratch.

Lately I've been playing a bunch of games of This Is Not A Test by World's End Publishing and my mutant warband has a semi-Gamma World, semi-Animal Farm theme.  My buddy Ash and I were discussing how fun it would be to play one of the scenarios that's themed around a horde of zombies running wild in the apocalypse only with radioactive-mutant pigs instead of zombies.  It was one of those weird "what if" things that became a must do.  What was especially crazy about it (to me anyway) was that I'm sure over the years I've seen tiny plastic farm animal replicas literally everywhere but as soon as I had cash in my pocket and set out to find some they were nowhere to be found.  I'd completely given up finding the pig toys that I needed and then during a drive home from work I stopped into a hobby shop I hadn't been to in years to buy some spray paint and low and behold they had 18 or the 27 pigs I needed!

So now I'm officially back in the radioactive pig business!  The plan is to paint 20 basic rad-pigs and then 7 super-mutated-rad-pigs.  My first 10 basic rad-pigs are officially done!

I still need to find a few more pigs but I'm on the road for work this week so I'll fall into my usual pattern of trying to find toy/hobby shops near where I have to go and hope that have stuff I haven't been able to find locally.

Wish me luck!

-Jay

Neuroshima Tactics, you're my latest 'why didn't I love you more when you were here?'

In addition to buying a bunch of  cool new figures for This Is Not A Test I've been digging through my backlog looking for denizens of the post apocalyptic wasteland.  Meanwhile there have been two figures sitting on the corner of my desk for close to 3 years now that never quite got to the top of my painting pile that are perfect for games of This Is Not A Test.

Neuroshima Hex had been a popular euro-style board game for years and a few years ago they decided to venture into the realm of tabletop miniature games.  The miniatures are AMAZING but for some reason they never caught on and were never widely available.  The game quickly (very quickly it seemed) went out of production and died a quiet undeserved death.

I was only able to get two Neuroshima Tactics figures before my retailer's supply chain dried up but they are going to be great for tons of different games.

Both figures are very nice but the one with the drum magazine on his weapon is absolutely covered in pouches, accessories and survival gear.

I feel like finding more of these awesome figures will be my white-whale for the next few years.  I know they're out there (somewhere) and I desperately want more.

As an aside with the rise in popularity of post-apocalyptic gaming I'm surprised no one has bought the production rights and molds and put these back into production under a different imprint.

-Jay

Some Hogs for many if not all seasons

It's fun when you're playing a narrative campaign to decide on scenarios well ahead of time as it lets you customise your figures an build any scenery you need to fit the situation.

A little while back I painted four Mootant Cows for the Caravan scenario for This Is Not A Test, in addition to the pack animals the caravan also needs six guards.  For my six guards I decided to stick with my animal theme and do up some Hog-men.

These figures will be incredibly multi-use for me.  In addition to being my caravan guards they could also be a new type of Feral Mutant for me for This Is Not A Test.  They could easily stand in as Porkers for Gamma World and they might (probably will) be the starting  point for my new Gorka Morka gang.

I atually just let  myself get talked into starting another game so I should have some entirely new and different miniatures next week.

-Jay

Mootant Cows

Okay first up; that 'Mootant Cows' thing, not even my pun, that's the actual product name.

In the Fallout universe there are certain creatures (Death Claw, Rad Roach, Mire Lurk, Rad Scorpion, etc) that feel like a defining part of the background.  One of the most pervasive animals in the wasteland is the Brahminn which is a two headed mutated cow that functions both as a source of food and as a pack animal.

One of the scenarios for This Is Not A Test requires a caravan of four pack animals and six caravan drivers.  I decided to get the pack animals done first because I'm sure I have enough poorly armed survivors to sub in as the caravan drivers if I don't get something specific done in the next few weeks.

The figures themselves are part of Armorcast's Lance & Laser line.  The detail level is good but I suspect the molds are getting older as some of the parts didn't fit together quite as cleanly as I would have hoped.  Having said that I think they were great value for the price given that they look perfect and will be perfectly functional.

Alright, back to my desk.  What's next?

-Jay