Finishing up that lot of skeletons, here are the archers:
Ended up being a bit heavy with the drybrushing on the bows, but can’t be bothered to fix them.
12 Skeletons with bows
Warhammer Fantasy Battles, undead faction
Games Workshop, 1980s and 90s
HIPS plastic
30mm bases
Painted so far this month: 61 / 30.
Painted so far this year: 146 / 365. Just 219 to go!
I recently bought a lot of 50+ older style plastic Citadel Skeletons off Ebay for less than the price of a single squad of 10 new ones, and have spent a few evenings plonking away at them. When I received the horde in the mail, many of the minis were reduced to parts, with many a broken arm and leg. A few were painted, but most were not. All needed thorough cleaning with both knife and with soapy water.
After the requisite cleaning up and prep-work was done, I had enough parts to build 45 skellies with hand weapons or spears -one with battle damage where the arms would be, plus 12 archers. Most of the parts were from the second style of skeletons made by GW in the 90s, but a few were from the older style made in the 80s. Those brought back many fond memories, as I built a box of them way back when.
The original builder of these had also converted a few of them to have, say 4 arms, or battle damaged weapons and many shields were glued to the hands at an angle to suggest the builder did not know how a shield actually is held. No matter. I left these as they were.
Painted in batches of 10, 20 and then 15 over the course of three evenings.
Archers to be painted at a later date.
I used some 30mm lipped “display” bases that I bought in bulk from Reaper some time ago to prepare for the third Bones KS shipment (that is several months delayed, but should soon be in hand, hopefully already in May or in June.)
And, yes, the 30mm bases do take up more space on the shelf and lets fewer models into base contact in game, but they do look so much better than 25mm rounds or even the original 20mm squares.
45 Skeleton Warriors
Warhammer Fantasy Battles, undead faction
Games Workshop, 1980s and 90s
HIPS plastic
30mm bases
Painted so far this month: 49 / 30.
(which nicely covers the 10 leftover from last month and then some!)
Painted so far this year: 134 / 365. Just 231 to go!
Down, down to Goblin Town! Time for another stab at the Great Goblin.
The first time around, I bungled up the skin colour completely, leaving the Great Goblin a dank, purplish mess. Especially as the thing is mostly skin.
Disgusted with my failure, I threw the mini into the Drawer of Shame to fester for many months.
Time to set things right, this second try to fix the skin turned out better. Too bad I could not be arsed to fill and smooth the lines from where the parts went together.
Now it can lead the matching Goblins Town Goblins I painted last year.
The Elephant Man The Great Goblin
from the Hobbit: Escape from Goblin Town game set
Games Workshop
HIPS plastic
50mm base
Painted so far this month: 19 / 31. 12 to go!
Painted so far this year: 83 / 365. Just 282 to go!
Last year I bought a unit of unbuilt Chaos Hounds off Ebay on a whim. Which turned out to have no bases and missing a horn. Sigh. When you buy on the cheap, youse gets whats youse gets.
First I stuck them on square cavalry bases, but that looked just wrong. I think I have decided not to use square bases any more, as I prefer the round ones, so I took them off again. Then I tried some 40 and 50mm round bases, but the 40mm ones looked too small, and the 50mm ones take up too much space on the shelf for my liking, what with there being 10 models. Shelfspace turning out to be coming somewhat at a premium with all the minis getting painted these days…
So I tried oval bases from warbases, which did the trick. But still. Those square-cut edges clash stylistically with the chamfered/lipped bases I have come to prefer. So the dogs got stuck in a box with all the other “not entirely inspired to paint these yet, something is not quite right, need to think a bit” miniatures. Too bad no one seems to make plain, chamfered oval bases. And I have searched extensively for such.
And then in December a paradigm shift occurred. I got a 3dprinter. I started off happily printing out terrain piece after terrain piece, discovering that there are massive amounts of models of tanks on thingiverse, so printing a few of those, all the while learning what the printer can do.
And then some days ago it dawned on me. Why not print the bases I want myself?
well, the first reason would be I don’t know how to 3D model. My first admittedly very cursory foray was into a free program called blender. Woah, talk about your steep learning curves! How to even set up a working environment there? I will need to spend some serious time before making either heads or tails of that. Or start with a simpler program.
But the printer’s own slicer program does let me scale things, so if I only had a base model to work from, maybe…*search search search*
Some playing around with an excellent base model I found on thingiverse later:
Voila! One 50mm x25mm oval lipped base. That’s the same footprint as a cavalry base. I had to change all three dimensions to make this, as the original model was too tall. But it turned out all right. And is easily resized for other dimensions as well. So now I can get the best of two worlds, both my preferred, esthetically pleasing chamfered base for individual viewing and skirmish game enjoyment, and backwards warhammer fantasy / kings of war compatibility for practical mass battle game functionality. Just stick them on a movement tray and off we go!
and so I rebased the Hounds of Chaos yet again. One and a half speedpaint session later:
To quote Lord Flashheart: “Woof! Woof!” Here are a few of the dogs:
Yes, there are some very fine print lines, but I can’t really see them IRL, just in the close up pictures.
You can download the oval lipped base model from thingiverse here.
Hounds of Chaos
Warhammer Fantasy Battle/ Age of Sigmar
Warriors and Beasts of Chaos / Grand Alliance Chaos Faction
Games Workshop
HIPS plastic
50x25mm bases, remixed and 3dprinted by me
Painted so far this month: 27
Painted so far this year: 27 / 365. Just 338 to go!
Doing something else:
The 20 goblins from The Hobbit: Escape from Goblin Town game set. These were fun to do.
all are different from one another.
Mustn’t forget Nux with his little friends Barry and Larry, scratching away at his throat…
Goblins from The Hobbit: Escape from Goblin Town game set.
Games Workshop / Citadel Miniatures
HIPS plastic.
25mm bases.
Painted so far this month: 30
Painted so far this year: 185
I took some time out to join the Lead Adventure forums Weird Wars painting club with a nazi zombie. All I had to do as a registered member of the forum was to paint up a single mini and post it to the board before entries reached 100. So here is the
#089 Studio Miniatures Die Verdammten WW2 German Soldier Zombie
that I posted, and his trusty companion, Jürgen
whom I painted at the same time.
These Nazizombies are really quick to do, with the uniform being of uniform colour (sic!). Just a quick wash, some detailing and an even quicker drybrushing to do.
Die Verdammten
Studio Miniatures
HIPS plastic
25mm bases
Painted so far this month: 22
Painted so far this year: 124
About a year ago, I bought a set of Mantic old convert-your-own sci fi zombies off ebay, and combined with the plague zombie sprues I got from the deadzone kickstarter I spent a day building a ton of them.
They have been cluttering up my to do-shelf ever since, only being nickled-and-dimed in small groups, getting in the way and generally being a nuisance.
So I decided that enough is enough. Here are the last 18:
which brings the total up to 63 of the poor space hurps sufferers:
But is this a Herd, or a Horde?
Converted from Old Mantic Sci Fi Zombies set + New Mantic Plague zombies + DreadBall MVP Anne-Marie Helder.
Mantic games
HIPS plastic and restic
25mm bases
Painted so far this month / year: 65
