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