Church Of Morrow

Father Dumas is now done!
I experimented with a new way of doing off-white robes and it almost/mostly worked out the way I wanted.  In hindsight I should have washed each section individually and then moved on to the next section after the first dried but that's a lesson for next time.

My two key representatives for the Church Of Morrow will be Father Dumas and his young acolyte to be named later.

So far so good, now off to work on a villain or two!

-Jay

Get by with a little help from my friends

When I was younger (teens and early 20s) I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons.  When I was playing a lot, and in school for that matter, I had tons of friends who played and we all had similar schedules and availabilities.  Since I've gotten older (I won't say more mature) the biggest struggle with RPGs I've had is getting a group of 4-6 friends who can all find the same time so sit together around a table and play.  When D&D 4th edition got released I really wanted to try it out so I decided to just get together with the 2 friends who were immediately available and play.  The challenge wasn't scaling the adventure back for 2 characters, I found the challenge was making sure that the adventure could be completed with the 'roles' that the characters fulfilled, this was further complicated by both players choosing to play wizardy characters (so no fighting, sneaking or healing in the group).  My Band-Aid fix to the problem was to have an NPC fighter and an NPC cleric accompany them on their adventures, although this was a workable solution over time it lead to an almost comedic need to constantly replace the 2 NPCs who were getting killed by the players choices and circumstances.

So fast forward to 2014 when I'm kicking off my Witchfire game.  I will again be running a small (2-3 players) group but this time one of the first players to commit has chosen to be a fighter so that's one key role filled.  The only other role that is essential in my opinion to a low-level Pathfinder group is a healer of some sort so I realised if another player doesn't choose that role I will have to dip back into the NPC pool, but this time I don't want the adventuring NPCs to represent a pool of Hit Points to be expended when the PCs don't want to risk themselves.  To this end I've decided to write and paint up a non-adventuring type of Cleric who may (if necessary) accompany the PCs on the adventure.

Basically our intrepid (yet to be named) Cleric is a young acolyte who although academically well  versed and knowledgeable is not a fearless walking spell-casting tank to supplement the party in combat.  If you think of the character Carl from Van Helsing you're probably not too far off.

The miniature is another from the Rusted Heroes line and was perfect for what I had in mind.  He certainly doesn't look like an Iron Kingdoms bad-ass warcaster/priest but that's exactly what I was trying to avoid so I'm happy.  The paint job was super-basic this time out, monk's robes and next to no gear lends itself pretty well to quick paint jobs.

-Jay

Knight Of The Rose

I finished up my Knight Of The Rose from Fantization tonight.  The original plan was that he was going to stand in for Captain Helstrom in the Witchfire Trilogy but now that he's done I feel that he looks too young and once again not steampunky enough.

In spite of that I think he's a great looking figure and I'm really happy with how he turned out.  I'm not sure when I'll use him for a game but next time I'm a player (rather than a GM) in a fantasy RPG I might use him.  I'd say probably close to 50% of all the characters I've ever played in fantasy RPGs looked like this fig.

-Jay

Hobby Grab Bag: More Fantasy and Superstuff!

I've been "away" for awhile but wanted to show 3 of the 4 new projects I've been working on and share my thought on a couple of others....

First up I've decided to replace one of the Thralls I just painted for my Witchfire Trilogy game.  When I looked at the 3 models I had done together the smallest one really didn't fit in with the other two.  The size wasn't really the issue what I noticed stood out was how the swords looked on the other two with their glowing runes and realised that having one model without was going to look out of place.  So I've got a bit more work to do on this fig and then he'll join the team.

Next is another fantasy fig I'm not still not sure if I'm going to use or not.  The figure is a knight from Fantiaztion's "Rusted Heroes" line.  It's a skirmish fantasy game that I don't know anyone who plays but it was on discount at one of my local retailers so it gave me the chance to pick up some knight and cleric models on the cheap.  I'm considering him as a Captain Helstrom model (again for the Witchfire trilogy) but the absence of a pistol or any other techie bits makes me a bit hesitant.  At any ate he's a cool figure so whether or not he makes it into that game I'm sure I'll be happy when I finish painting him.

Here's a thought most gamers have experienced at one time or another; you walk out of a movie theatre and your first thought is "boy I sure would like to game that movie/battle/scene/etc".  After seeing the trailer (JUST THE TRAILER!) for Captain America: The Winter Soldier I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to game a big throw-down between the forces or order and chaos in the Marvel Universe at least once.  So I've decided to re-base and touch up every SHIELD agent figure I can get my hands on.....now if only I can get an actual Winter Soldier figure somewhere....
*Incidentally for those of you unfamiliar with the Heroclix line I think this is the first time I've ever posted a 'before' picture.  You can see the paint jobs are serviceable but will look out of place as-is next to actual painted figures.

I also want to touch on a couple of other irons not-quite in the fire yet.
I'm really eager to continue work on my Blood Angels but after my plastic cement fiasco of a couple of weeks ago I'm not super-excited about the idea of gluing together a bunch of 10+ part tactical marine models.  I had decided to ease myself back in by buying some of the boxes of 3 plastic marines with bolters (which are simple 3 part models) only to find they are now special order only.  So I will be doing up some tactical marines after I'm able to get my hands on some of the simpler style models.
Warlord Games has just released their new Judge Dredd Miniatures rules, so I will also be getting cracking on getting those done ASAP.

A lot going on hopefully I'll have some completed models to show for some of this before the end of the week!

-Jay