Let's make a bet

One of the sub-challenges in this year's Painting Challenge was for Gamblers and Risk takers. Handily this also matches Curt's fee model as well. Following one of my themes for the challenge, Curt is getting one of the most well known gamblers in the Old West... Wild Bill Hickok

The model is from Great Escape Games and their Dead Man's Hand range.

Defensive Terrain

Defensive terrain was a very subjective and ever so vague title for a bonus round and caused some pondering. Inspired by the Epic Fail entry, I decided to keep this one fairly simple and add to the Old West project at the same time.

The cowboy is from Great Escape Games as part of their Dead Man's Hand range with a few pieces of terrain from various places.

From this angle it looks like a fairly big base for him, or a small diorama. Turn it around a bit and it starts to make more sense...

He pops off the base to be useful elsewhere, or allows someone else to take his place behind the barricade. I forgot to paint it up, but there is a second stack of grain bags on a base that fits into the gap so it can be used as pure terrain.

Epic... fail!

One of my aims for this year is to build up a small Old West project. With the kind present of some Black Scorpion models in the Secret Santa this year, the project had it's starting point, but the subject of one of the side-challenges this year gave me an interesting idea...

What could be more of an epic fail than a western gunfight with no survivors?

These six are all from Great Escape Games. Now I just need to find matching standing figures for them all, otherwise they are purely terrain or markers.

More monsters

This entry for the Analogue Challenge is a mixed bag of models. Some for Dungeon Saga/Frostgrave and some for Shadows of Brimstone.

First up we have the banshee from DS, which leaves one of the core set villains left to paint and 6 armoured undead. The banshee is quite a nice sculpt, with the exception of blobby hands and will see a lot of use in various games.

As a change, I decided to try some of the Dungeon Saga demons. These guys are the same size as the undead trolls and act as their equivalent in the demonic campaign. Again, very nice models to paint, though some of the seams are tricky to clean off as the plastic is slightly bendy. If the Kings of War ones are as nicely sculpted, they should be great models... not that I need any more of them. They will also be nice large size demons for Frostgrave. These guys suffered from a partial varnish fail. You can see the white marbling on the back of the middle demon; though in this case it adds to the texture rather than obscuring detail; so not so much a fail as an unexpected detailing!

Last and definitely least are two of the ghosts from Shadows of Brimstone. These figures are some of the worst I've had the misfortune to work with. The detail is shockingly soft, which makes them ugly lumps... so a quick ghost paintjob was done at the same time as the DS banshee to get them out of the way. Scale wise they are only useful in Shadows of Brimstone as they are 1/48 (ish), which makes them really tall when compared to any other Old West figures that I have, even Black Scorpion.

Because it was asked in the Challenge comments, here is the recipe for the ghosts:

1. White undercoat
2. HEAVY wash of GW's Coelia Greenshade. Add some black wash to the deepest, darkest areas if you want to get it really dark
3. Wipe of excess with fingertip
4. Lightly drybrush white. Make absolutely sure the wash is dry first, otherwise you get weird green marbling instead (which actually works sometimes)

Scatter terrain

It has been quite a while since I've posted any new painting  and with the upcoming Analogue Challenge, I thought it was about time to get the brushes back out again and put paint to plastic (or MDF in some cases) to I wasn't quite so rusty. The first two are some bits of scatter terrain for use in a muddy English village, or a railroad town in the Old West. The well is one of the pieces of terrain provided with Dungeon Saga. Thanks to the Kickstarter bonuses, I have three of these; which I think is highly unlikely to occur in any adventures... 

The other piece of scatter terrain was this little chicken coop from Warbases. Again, destined for an English village circa 1943, or an Old West town.  One thing I have realised is that quick snaps with my iphone are not going to cut it for the painting challenge as the colours in these are well off. I'll take some better pictures when I clear off the dining table and set up the lightbox.