The Toad of Truth and a Demonic Hoodie

A few odds and sods (literally) this post.  First up are the two demonic familiars from Heresy that I purchased  back at Salute.  I've named this ugly little fellow "Scrat":

He's painted to fit in with any evil/chaos/nurgle/necromantic warband I could think of, so intentionally dark and dirty.  I basecoated the whole model all at once, and then washed the whole lot with Agrax Earthshade - it's a lazy way of doing things, but it got the result I was looking for.  The flesh was a base of Rakarth Flesh, highlighted with the base coat and Pallid Wych Flesh - the Earthshade wash gives it a nice grey-brown tinge, like something just this side of the grave.  The yellow was my usual Tausept Ochre base, but with the darker wash, and highlighted with more and more Rakarth Flesh.  The green is the same old method with Castellan Green, Death World Forest and a little Karak Stone.  Here's Scrat with Garg as a size comparison:

He's maybe a little big to be a familiar, I like to think of him as an Evil Sorceror's lackey...

Next up is the "Toad of Truth":

Fans of the quite fantastic "Big Bang Theory" (a big favourite in the Walker household) may recognise this as a quote from Sheldon Cooper, which was the start of an in-joke between a few of us in our little gaming group, so once I saw this miniature at Salute, I had to get my hands on it!

Very similar colours to Scrat, the major difference was that I used Kislev Flesh rather than Karak Stone to highlight the green, with a lot of the flesh tone added for the mouth and throat.  I've seen "human" flesh tones used to effectively highlight Orc/Ork skin, so I thought I would give it a go here, and I'm really pleased with the effect. As an additional little detail, I gave the eyes a coat of gloss varnish to finish him off.

Both of these Heresy sculpts are lovely miniatures with HUGE amounts of character, they were loads of fun to paint, and I can't recommend them highly enough.  Also, they've got me back on track to get everything I bought from this years Salute painted before next year's Salute, AND with two miniatures down, it means I have space for two purchases...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Bones and a Beastman

In the last ever issue of the Ancible, I wrote an article reviewing a Reaper Bones miniature.  For those unaware, Reaper are reissuing large swathes of their range in white plastic, making them much cheaper and supposedly easier to work with.  In the article I expressed the concern that this new material was a softer plastic than we've come to expect from GW, Privateer or Mantic, and is prone to bending.  On a recent trip to London, I popped into Orc's Nest and they had a good range of the new Bones line - so I picked up an Ogre (one of their original, pre-kickstarter Bones figures), and Michelle the Human Ranger character.

At £2.50 each they seem good value, especially for the ogre - he's a little flexible but nothing much to worry about.  Pinned to a 40mm base, he'll be sturdy enough.  I guess Michelle is still good value for £2.50, but the arms and sword blades would have been enough to make me balk at buying her in plastic form had I known previously.

In the first picture you can see there's a little bend in the sword blade anyway, but as demonstrated inexpertly in the second picture, even a little pressure causes everything (sword blade and arm) to bend alarmingly.  I'm not convinced that the paint will bend as much without some cracking, but I'll put some paint on her this weekend and we'll see how it goes.  I'm tempted to replace the swords with some old Empire swords, but that won't stop the arms flexing.

The Bones kickstarter was really successful, hitting quite a few stretch goals - were people aware of what the miniatures were made of before they pledged?  This would have been an absolute deal breaker for me, and I'm a HUGE fan of Reaper miniatures...

In other news...

I've given myself a new rule - I'm not allowed to buy a new miniature until I've painted one I already have.  Therefore my lead/resin/plastic mountain doesn't actually increase, and it's some extra motivation to get stuff painted.  One of these completed miniatures is an old Marauder Beastman:

"Garg" is not the most dynamic of figures, and he's quite obviously a Marauder sculpt rather than a Citadel one.  He's on a round base, as he'll be another member of a Nurgle(ish) warband for whatever skirmish game I might end up playing. If this plan falls by the way side, it will be relatively easy to transfer him to a square base if needed.  

It's a quick and dirty paint job, with P3 Beast Hide, Stormvermin Fur, Dryad Bark and Deathworld Forest providing the majority of the base coat.  The metals were dry-brushed onto the Dryad Bark, splotched with Chestnut Ink, and then dry-brushed again.

The shield is another Marauder product (Marauder shields were the business back in the day), specifically an Undead shield, but I think it works well for a Nurgle Beastman.  The green was shaded with Agrax Earthshade, and then highlighted with the base coat, and then mixing in more and more Karak Stone.

The skin was washed with Seraphim Sepia, and then highlighted with the Beast Hide, and mixing in more and more Rakarth Flesh. Across the model I glazed on a little Druchii Violet in places to mix up the colour a little, and then gave the whole model a very, very light dry-brush of white, just to pick out the top edges.

His brother Harg (another Marauder sculpt) will be started soon, alongside the first two of my Salute haul.  I'm well behind on my plan to paint up everything I bought at Salute, so I need to pick up the pace...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Testing mobile blogger app...

Hi all, nothing much to report due to DIY commitments (laying laminate flooring is not as bad as I thought it would be). The purpose of this post is to test the mobile blogger app, and to let you know I'll be at Games Expo in Birmingham this weekend. A couple of the Ancible team are entering the X-Wing tournament, and I'm going to be trying out some new board games, and doing a little light shopping...

The attached (I hope) picture is of some Victorian British Bobbies I did for another Ancible team member quite a while back. They are for his "Gentleman's Club masquerading as Police" Empire of the Dead faction. The cobbled bases were made with green stuff, and worked really well for my first attempt at that sort of thing - the recipient was happy too, which is the main thing! The miniatures were a royal pain in the arse to paint and put me right off Foundry miniatures...

As always, comments are very welcome! !

Salute Post 2 (Delayed)

Well, it's been a while since Salute, and I completely forgot to post up a picture of my haul...

From the top, I got Ticket to Ride for Mrs Walker as part of her Birthday present.  It's a lovely, simple, yet elegant game that's loads of fun - if you've watched Wil Wheaton's TableTop show on YouTube, it's featured in an episode.  Very highly recommended (both the game and the show)!

The first row of blisters are all from Micro Art Studios.  Two packs of resin bases (which will appear in posts soon I hope), and Moist Von Lipwig and Adora Belle from their Discworld range.

The next row starts with Guillermo, Kaylee and some leather shields from Hasslefree.  Next is a rather stunning miniature from Origen Miniatures, and "Live by the Axe...Zombie Hunter" from Ax Faction.  I got to chat to these guys for a bit which was very cool - I find it more interesting to talk to the small companies, they seem to have more time for people.  You'll also see the Orange special Salute 2013 dice in that row too.

Along the bottom is the Salute 2013 model (which is rather nice actually), and then a couple of Demonic Familiars, Sebastien the Apprentice Mage, and a Wood Elf Sorceress from Heresy Miniatures.

Now, my cunning plan (OK, it's not cunning, and it's barely a plan...), is to get all the miniatures you see here painted before Salute 2014.  Now that doesn't seem much of a challenge, but as you may be aware, I am easily distracted by new things, and my haul from Salute 2012 is probably only 25% completed, so I have work to do, and focus to keep.

There are 11 miniatures in the picture, so I plan to do one a month (with one month off for good behaviour), interspersed among my other projects.

Wish me luck...

Salute 2013

I have to say I had an absolute blast at Salute this year, and I think it was a much better event than last year.  The stands were better laid out and I was able to see much more, talk to people, and it didn't feel quite so manic, even though there seemed to be more people this year.

Obviously the big highlight was the bloggers meet-up, where I finally got to meet the third corner of the Tale of Painters triangle, Mr Michael Awdry from 28mm Victorian Warfare, plus some new people I didn't know before (and new blogs to follow) and meeting up with some previously known reprobates (that'll be you Fran...and Mike...and Ray...).  It was really good to talk games, painting and blogging in general, comparing lead mountains and painting backlogs, and the joy of Oldhammer.

I'll give a run down of my purchases tomorrow (I spent quite a bit to be fair), but for now, here are a few demonstration/participation games that caught my eye.

Like a muppet, I didn't take note of who was running these games, so I'll have to take a look at the event programme when I get the chance and try and work out who was who, and what was what.  I do however know that this one was the Wolsung participation game, run by the lovely people at Micro Art Studio.  There was so much detail on what was quite a small board, it just blew me away.

I'm pretty sure this is terrain produced by Warmill, it's very "Starship Troopers" and would look good for games of Infinity.

These two were lovely Japanese themed boards - a few of our gaming group have Bushido warbands, so I may be tempted to give this style of architecture a go at some point (yeah I know, yet another potential project which will get listed and never see the light of day...).

Last but not least was this rather fantastic Dungeons and Dragons terrain piece.  There seemed to be unpainted D&D miniatures available to buy (I think they were called "Collectors" or something, I don't know, I haven't had much sleep the last week...), which I hadn't seen before.  The purple light was provided by LEDs, which was really effective.

Fran told me I had to post more (he gave me "the look" as he said it), so this is my attempt at posting more.  Hopefully tomorrow you'll see my addition to the lead mountain, with a few comments on retailers and stands and then I'll try posting something I've actually painted recently...

As always, comments welcome!