Advent Calendar - Day 9

Dire Wolf

Over the years one of the things I had struggled with is finding good models for Dire Wolves (or just wolves in general).  A ton of companies have made wolves over the years but for some reason they always strike me as much too small for Dire Wolves.  As an added irony most miniature companies (in my opinion anyway) scale their dog miniatures way too big which means that a wolf model comes off as even smaller.

About 5 years ago I found some pre-painted D&D miniatures of Dire Wolves that were PERFECT.  They filled a 25mmx50mm base and were roughly the same height and mass as a Games Workshop warhorse.  Those were fun but I need more and different wolves as well.

The Dire Wolves in Games Workshop's current range are a bit more like zombie wolves and although I really like their uniqueness they didn't fit with my image of a Dire Wolf for old school RPGs.  I wanted a giant furry but still living wolf.  Luckily for me Games Workshop actually makes exactly what I'm looking for in their Warhammer 40,000 range; the Fenrisian Wolves.

These wolves are huge!  They are slightly bigger than the pre-painted wolves I had from before but in addition they are far better sculpted and have much crisper detail.  I painted the first one in my traditional 'evil' wolf scheme but might try some wintery colours down the road on more wolves.

-Jay

The most wonderful time of the year!

I've been very scatter shot on my painting for the last couple of weeks (lots of Suicide Squad coming soon though...) but I wanted to show some non-painting I've been doing.

Last year in the late fall I first got into Frostgrave and joined a number of Frostgrave groups on Facebook.  One of the things that really stood out with the Frostgrave groups was how much they re-purposed non-miniature products as scenery.  Everything from birdhouses to aquarium features to Christmas village dioramas got used for Frostgrave.  Some of it wasn't great and it was obvious that the main appeal was that it was cheaper than conventional hobby scenery but some of worked really well.

The other day a friend of mine posted some street lamps that he had gotten and it made me think I should bust out some of the stuff I've acquired the past few months and share what (in my opinion) cool stuff can be had on a budget.

First up the thing that really got me to start considering this a year ago; trees.  There are loads of retailers that carry trees for Christmas village dioramas this time of year and last year I made the mistake of waiting too long to get some and by the time I circled around to it they were sold out everywhere.  This year my wife remembered that I had been trying to get some and one one of her trips to Michaels to get yarn got me a bag of trees.

This bag was $29.99 sticker price but basically went on to the shelf marked at 50% off so it actually cost $15.

Here are all the trees spread out and to give you some idea, those small trees in front are basically 1" tall so this is a lot of trees for the money.  I'm pretty sure that anything short of a full forest on a 3'x3' table can be done with one bag of these trees.

Also given that I play the undead for most fantasy games I figured Halloween clearances might have some options for me and they did not disappoint.  Again Michaels was the big winner with coffins, headstones and a cemetery fence (not shown).  Unfortunately I left the fence (which is really cool) at a friend's house so I don't have it to show off.

These packs were $5.99 at full price but by the time I bought them they were 60% or 75% off (I can't remember) so for some scatter terrain they're pretty good.

The only downside with the Halloween pieces is that they are a little big (only just a little) and they're unique looking enough that buying multiple packs isn't as appealing as for the trees.

Last but not least back to the place I started.  When I saw Tod's street lamps and I had just gotten the Suicide Squad starter for Batman which means I need a pile of street lamps.  Unfortunately by the time I decided to grab some my local Michaels was sold out but my daughter wanted a few things from the Dollarama and they had some lamps that look perfect to me.

These were $2 per pack (so super cheap!) and to be honest the reason I only bought 5 packs is because they only had 5 in-stock.  When I'm on the road over the next week or two I'm going to hit up other Dollaramas in my area and see if I can find more.

Well there you have it.  I think this stuff works great and it was really inexpensive which leaves more money for toy soldiers.

-Jay



  

Evil Treant (because why not?)

I hope my absence wasn't too long for everybody, I just got back from a much needed vacation and I'm back in the hobby swing with a small quick project tonight.

A recurring theme here lately has been my re-using and re-cycling pre-painted models but tonight I'm actually potentially using a piece of scenery from an old game as a gaming piece for  a new game.

Years ago after success with Mage Knight and then Heroclix the folks at WizKids started trying to make 'clix' games for every genre.  Some did okay and some did not.  One of the series that was moderately successful but never hit the heights of their big 2 was Horrorclix.  Horrorclix started out being a mash-up of B-movie tropes, classic nightmares and an assortment of other boogeymen before moving into the realms of Aliens and Predator and then falling off the map.  In the original Horrorclix starter set there was a map sheet and 1 piece of scenery included; a weird semi-sentient looking tree.  This piece sat on a shelf for years because I never knew if I would use it for anything but I couldn't bring myself to give it away or throw it out..  I took another look at it right before I left on my vacation and realized that it was much better suited to being used as a monster than as a piece of scenery....a few touch-ups and a base later and another model gets added to my growing collection of miscellaneous horror stuff.

It's good to be back and I'm looking forward to clearing off the remnants of my 3 outstanding painting projects from my desk and getting onto some new stuff shortly.

-Jay

A little bit of Frankenstein

Tonight I finished re-painting another D&D pre-painted model.  This time I have a number of potential uses in mind for the fig.

The figure itself is intended to be a Flesh Golem and it could be used as such for D&D or Pathfinder as well as being a suitable Frankenstein's monster for Chaos In Carpathia or Flesh Construct for Malifaux.

I've always liked this figure and he makes a great companion piece to the over-sized Werewolf from the other day.

-Jay

A giant (and I do mean giant) Werewolf

This morning I finished re-basing and touching up a giant werewolf I've had kicking around from the D&D pre-painted miniatures line for awhile.

I'm not sure when or if I'll use this guy (I'm sticking to my no horror models in my next fantasy RPG rule) but I really like the fig and figured I could use him for some Chaos In Carpathia games or possibly check my Bestiaries and see if there is some sort of giant or mutant Gnoll he could represent.

To give you an idea just how big this guy is I took a quick shot of him standing next to one of my Revenant Pirate crew which is a heroic 30mm model.

Cheers

-Jay

Project Vampire: A New Beginning

Yesterday I alluded to the fact that I was going to be starting a new project (really should finish Scrapheap first....) and today marks my first entry.

As I started getting away from doing the undead for RPGs I found I had accumulated a ridiculous amount of models for roleplaying, more than I'd ever be able to use in an encounter that would fit on my kitchen table.  So I've decided to do some chopping and swapping with the goal of turning those models into a mass combat army for games like Warhammer and Kings Of War.

My first project was to rebase and touch up a couple more wolves who will be joining the 5 wolves I did a few months ago.  On one hand this is great as it either gives me the start of a second unit or it allows me to bulk out my original unit to 10 models.  The downside of using blind-pack pre-painted models for something like this is that I don't know when or if I'll be able to find 3 more wolves to complete this.

The bulk of what will be getting painted for Project Vampire will be some D&D pre-painted Zombies & Ghouls getting touched-up and re-based for mass combat as well as a pile of Mantic Skeletons finally getting some much needed paint.

-Jay

The first of three fantasy crypts

I finished up the first crypt from my Garden Of Morr tonight.  I'm very pleased with the overall result and think it will fit really well with a number of fantasy games I'm currently either playing or planning to play.

Finishing up this crypt also got me to dig out my Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts book so my hobby A.D.D. might be about to get the better of me again.

-Jay

Hobby Grab-Bag

I've been bouncing from project to project lately so I thought rather than keep everybody waiting until something is done I thought I'd show off a few of the things I'm working on and let you know what they're for.

First up....Project Scrapheap Zombie Pirates
I haven't forgotten my undead pirates, I've just been back and forth on other things lately but my next 4 are almost done.  Here below I've shown the 2 that are furthest along.  I like theses figures because they look like a cross between actual naval troopers and Cygnar Gun Mages so I think they'll work great for Warmachine.

Next up....The first crypt from my Garden Of Morr
The Garden Of Morr is an AMAZING piece of Warhammer Fantasy Battle scenery that I will be using for Malifaux, Warmachine and Chaos In Carpathia.  The basic "garden" consists of 3 separate crypts and a statue all on really intricate bases along with an outer wall.  I'm doing up each piece individually so I can make use of it however I need whenever I need.  So far the base for the first piece is completely done, now I just need to get in an hour or so to finish the building itself.

 

Last but definitely not least....OWLBEAR!
Every year around the Christmas holidays I get together with some of my old gaming friends who don't game that regularly anymore and we play a game of D&D or Pathfinder.  Every year I end up DMing and we always end up playing some sort of horror themed game because that's what I have fantasy models for.  I've decided this year to get some more generic or classic D&D monsters done up so we can play a straight up heroes vs monsters fantasy adventure.  While reading my friend Darren's blog I was reminded that we had both painted Owlbears 15 years or so ago and I decided to dust off the extra Owlbear I bought and make him the start of my return to the old-school.

Well there you have it.  I'm all over the map today but hopefully there will be some cool stuff finished and on the tabletop soon.

Cheers

-Jay

I'M BACK!!!  Also, look at this werewolf!

Hi all.  First up big thanks to my friend Dave for "unpooping" my computer (I'm assuming I'm still good on these technical terms?).  Looks like everything is back up and running fine so over the next couple of days I should be posting extra-regularly to get caught up on all the stuff I failed to post last week.

One of the quickie little side-projects I managed to get done last weekend was basing up the werewolf that my friend Carmin painted for the Secret Santa painting event that Strategies Games & Hobbies ran in Vancouver over Christmas.  I decided to base the werewolf to match my existing Malifaux/Warmahordes/Helldorado figures as I will probably be using a selection of these figures to play some Chaos In Carpathia shortly.

To that end work has continued on my Garden Of Morr and a few more undead pirates are done.  All that and some cool Frankenstein figures should be appearing here in the next day or two....stay tuned.

-Jay

Dire Wolves

Wow.  This past week was brutal for non-gaming.  I had a Necromunda game and a Lord Of The Rings game both of which I had to cancel/postpone, I've got to say when your games start falling through it really takes the wind of your sails to paint.  Having said that it looks like I'm back on for Necro in 2 weeks, and hopefully I can reschedule my LOTR game for next week.

In the meantime I was looking for a quick easy project to tackle to get me back into the swing of things and something truly fantastic got done.  I have always liked an element of horror in my fantasy gaming (Ravenloft for D&D, Vampire Counts for Warhammer, etc) and the one set of models in my collection I've never been 100% satisfied with are my choices of wolves (Dire Wolves specifically).  It seems that when most miniature companies design wolves for fantasy games their inspiration is either a real-world wolf; which look to me like they would last about 8 seconds against an armed and armoured warrior, or they go they crazy route of giant mutant dogs with spikes and things like that.  What I always wanted was a GIANT wolf, something that looks big enough to be a threat to a warhorse 1-on-1 where the size is really the only thing that coveys it's unnatural nature.

In my box of pre-painted D&D miniatures I found about a dozen Dire Wolves from one of their old blind pack sets.  They were an uncommon in whichever set had all the Ravenloft minis so I bought quite a few and ended up with a decent amount of these guys.  The funny thing is as much as I wanted GIANT wolves I had always thought these were far too big, they would never fit on a standard cavalry base so I could fit them into 1" squares for RPGs nor would they rank up if wanted them to double duty in my fantasy army...but when you're bored and the hobby knife is in your hand it's amazing what you can do.

I am super-excited about these figures because I will be able to use them in; D&D, Pathfinder, Warhammer and Chaos In Carpathia and they took me less than 2 hours to turn from scrap in my bitz box into a cool unit/encounter worth of models.

For the rest of this week it's back to the Enforcers and I believe I may just have started on an unexpected journey....

-Jay

The bases are 2" long and 1" wide so these are in fact HUGE wolves.

 

....but they do manage to rank up!