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!
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!
The second and third Spirit Hosts from the Malignants starter set I bought some time ago.
Their small joints did not appreciate my heavy-handed drybrushing of these models, and so they kept breaking apart, needing repairs. Again and again. Argh! Malignant models indeed!
I do not like to paint larger models identically, but using similar basing and techniques still lets me keep a sort unit identity.
Group shot including the one I painted earlier.
Spirit Hosts
from Warhammer Age of Sigmar, the ghostly undead faction Malignants
Citadel miniatures
HIPS polystyrene plastic
50mm bases
Minivember tally: 3 (as these count as one)
Painted so far this month: 4
Painted so far this year: 328
And the award for most pretentious name given to a class of model 2016 goes to…
The Ogroid Thaumaturge! ’cause GW can’t own the more classic Ogre Mage.
(“Traumaturge” would have been a great name for this one)
After a harrying time fighting through the streets beating up all the little girls and beefy men around the Silver Tower, Blanka finally found his way in and entered the service of the Gaunt Summoner. Here his innate ability to give electric shocks was enhanced to include many other magical attacks and he was blessed with horns, hooves and a ram rod.
Ogroid Thaumaturge
from the Silver Tower game set
Games Workshop, 2016
Polystyrene plastic
50mm base
Painted so far this month: 28
Painted so far this year: 324
This month I have been painting just small drips and dabs here and there in between everything else in what little time I have had for such things. So I have not really been able to do all that much. But I did get few hours in yesterday, and so I managed to actually finish off the Skaven from the Silver Tower:
I should have taken individual pictures, as the left mini is chronically a bit out of focus.
Anyway, I did not want to make them too different as they are supposed to be identical in the game, one being an illusion of the actual assassin.
With the deathrunner scurrying about in his tower I imagine the Gaunt Summoner goes like this:
Skaven Deathrunner Assassins
from the Silver Tower game set
Games Workshop, 2016
Polystyrene plastic
32mm bases.
Painted so far this month: 27
Painted so far this year: 323
Between receiving both the Conan and the Others 7 Sins KS pledge rewards, I have been spending my time gawking at all the lovely new shiny plastic minis.
My first impressions, both Conan and The Others:
The Mins are awesomely detailed, even though they are in preassembled “board game plastic” I can see very little flash, just a few pieces with visible mould lines. Some of the abominations have mould lines running down their long thin arms and/ or tentacles though. I also see that some minis have a small hole or mark where the sprue has been cut or broken off, and this is usually somewhere around the midriff or thigh-areas.
Qualitywise the minis are on par with the level of excellence achieved in Blood Rage, and for the most part better than Cthulhu Wars (the latter do have some mould line issues but are otherwise great (…old ones). Keeping in mind that all these minis are made in board game platic and not resin.
Some of the preassembled minis will be problematic to get access to paint all visible details, what with all the mouths within mouths and great big tusken teeth, especially the Others’ Avatar of Envy.
Game components seem to be well printed and in good quality board game cardstock. I must admit I have not bothered with looking too closely at the boards books and bits yet,.. still ogling those fabulous minis. The books seem well laid out, in full glossy colour and have lots in illustrations though out. Whether the game itself is worth playing remains to be seen.
Also, there are rather a lot of minis here! Enough to keep one occupied for months to come!
At any rate, as far as the minis go, both thumbs and a fair amount of tentacles up!
so, with that off my chest, I painted some old Citadel Ghouls that I recently traded in.
I just love these old Warhammer 5th ed Ghoul sculpts. The best Ghouls ever made in my opinion. I do have a bunch of these from earlier, but on those itty bitty 20mm square bases they originally came with. I painted these quite differently. And quickly.
Ghouls
Warhammer Fantasy Battles, the Vampire Counts faction
Games Workshop
Metal
30mm bases
Painted so far this month: 24
Painted so fer this year: 320
