Critter kingdom

I was looking through the massive backlog of draft posts to see what was in there and it seems I got half way through posting quite a few things from the painting challenge last year... so here they are as some filler ;)

These rats and bats are from Mantic's dungeon Saga. These are probably the nicest things to have come out of it, besides the furniture!

 

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Goliath from Shadows of Brimstone. Like most of the other monsters from the SoB boxes so far, the detail is soft and it needed a lot of filling and resculpting... but he looks pretty imposing now he's finished. That base he's on? That's 70mm... he's one biiiiig critter. Sven once again provides a scale reference.

This week has been catching up a bit on the core Dungeon Saga figures in order to try and finish that off in order to get one side challenge out of the way. One of the most interesting things about the Dungeon Saga figures were the undead dwarf warriors... I'm not sure I've seen skeleton dwarves before. They, along with the three undead Basilean knights, can also be used as Armoured undead in Frostgrave. I just noticed that I forgot to do the flowing eyes... I'll have to go back and do those at some point!

After finishing those 6 skeletons, I figured it was about time for a few heroes and henchmen, so I started on some of the sneaky or different characters. First up is the assassin character from the Dungeon Saga KS. This is a once piece resin figure; nicely sculpted, but I think painting it with black armour was possibly a bad idea as you can't really see the detail in the photo. He'll also make a good thief henchman for Frostgrave.

Sticking to the thief theme for a second, I made one up for a cultist/necromancer style warband using the Frostgrave Cultist and Henchmen sets. These two plastic sets are great fun to play with and offer plenty of scope for swapping parts.

After the darker side of the henchmen list, I decided to go for some brighter souls. The smaller of the two is a halfling warrior from the Dungeon Saga kickstarter who is, I guess, supposed to be Tyrion Lannister.  He will make an interesting Templar. Next to him we have the warrior nun character from Zombicide: Black Plague. I tried to do some eyes on her, but failed... failed so badly. Unfortunately the face is quite open, so it really needed eyes as there wasn't enough depth for shadows to suffice. She will also be a templar option, or potentially one of the new Captains.

Finally is a massive flock of crows for Zombicide and Black Plague. They are a bit like Flock of Seagulls, but more goth. The plus side of finishing these off is that they can also be used as Blood Crows in Frostgrave. Technically the rules are for one crow, but it makes more sense for it to be a flock. One stand (in the photo somewhere) is converted as I stole one crow to make a Crow Master (which is in the painting queue). Painting these was a pain as crows are black with black and a bit more black...

This is 9 28mm figures, 1 halfling and 20 flocks of crows. The flocks are about the size of a 28mm figure, but I will leave it up to Tamsin to decide how to score them

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.

Nautical cults

Welcome to the Cult of the Tentacled One. 

In the challenge this year I've been working through a selection of fantasy models for Frostgrave. Some of the more interesting kits are the official plastic kits, especially the cultists. The last batch were a combination of thugs, crossbow, archer and warriors

These join the ranks of last year's small cthuloid cult

 And their new captain, an old GW WFB pirate captain who had been sat in my painting pile for years. The nautical these has certainly been a good inspiration.

At some point I want to find some modern weaponry that scales will with the cultist kit and equip some for use in a more pulp-y setting.

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.

Forces of Nature strike back

With the thawing of Frostgrave, spring starts to return to the city surroundings and with it come the forces of nature. These druids use the power of life to try and restore balance to the city ruins and find news of their elders who were in the city prior to the fall.

These models are part of the Dungeon Saga campaign. The smaller model is the regular version of Groot Kapoka, a dryad shapeshifter who comes with one of the expansion sets (I forget which one). The larger figure is a Legendary, resin version of the character to use when he has levelled up a bit. Unfortunately one of the issues with DS is the odd scaling of the plastic characters that makes them really small compared to the monsters. The resin versions are larger and fit well with other fantasy ranges.

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.

Lock up the church.. the Vikings are loose!

In the 2014 Secret Santa, some kind soul sent me a pile of Black Tree Design vikings so I could start a Saga force. Thank you so much, whoever you are! The models are really nicely done and scale well with the Gripping Beast plastics. I still find it weird that the GB metals are not the same size as their plastics...

This can be fielded as 4 points of vikings, if necessary, but I'd like to add another set of warriors (these are in the painting queue) and some levy.

The other thing to note is that unlike most of my models, I decided to actually put decorative basing on these guys as I really didn't want to spend weeks filing off the metal bases. The reason for the snow will become apparent later.

The warlord stand is three Gripping Beast plastics. You can't have your warlord going around unprotected now can you? The first bodyguard likes geometric, pacman style shapes for his design. The second bodyguard is obviously on some sort of mushrooms with the abstract design on his...

The main Heathguard unit is a mere 4 strong, but they look like the toughest of the tough. Worthy warriors to attend the Warlord.

We then have two more groups of Hearthguard that will go together into one larger group. They are here in multiple angles to show off their fancy shields. this group was bulked out with two plastic Gripping Beast models so that all of them, except Mad Karl and Slightly-less-mad Jorik, have chainmail. I think you can guess who Karl is...

These are accompanied by a group of 8 warriors. One of them is a bit camera shy as he wanted to show off his shield instead

I decided to use colour to signify the different groups. They might be family groups... they may just have a very picky boss who likes colour co-ordination... I'm not quite sure. When all 23 figures stand together, it makes a very satisfying sight

WW2 Heer infantry

These have been sat in the box of undercoated figures for the last two years, so it is a relief to have finally got them done. Each year I've been meaning to push them up to the top of the painting queue for the Analogue challenge, but each year I have something else to work on. Last saturday I was waiting for the varnish to dry on the vikings and was looking for something else to try and do for Tuesday's challenge entry. These guys were staring up at me with pitiful stares.

These are all Warlord figures and, with the exception of one figure, they are all the plastics from the old Bolt Action starter set. They aren't intended for use in Bolt Action, so the groupings below are all rough guesses. They will be used for things like 7TV, so the actual unit composition isn't relevant. This may change when the Bolt Action or Achtung! Cthulhu weird War rules come out, but for now... 

We have an officer with his two body guards. The one on the right is the only metal figure in the force. Somewhere there is a gestapo officer and a mad scientist from the same set.

 Next we have a medic, who would probably be shot by the allies if anyone spotted him with that pistol... but he needs to defend himself against the mythos beasts that he is likely to face in the future.

 Then we have a sniper team... not that headshots work on things without heads...

 Fire team 1 has 1 MG and 2 panzerfaust to add a bit of punch to the rifles

 Fire team 2 has 2 MGs and 1 panzerfaust instead. These are more fixed position troops.

In total this is 21 Heer to add to my small WW2 collection. This really needs some additions as they will be easily outclassed by the British Commando and Russian forces already sitting on my shelves

Nostalgia strikes

The Nostalgia bonus round was a tricky one to decide what to paint. I had a few different options available, but something for 7TV seemed the most appropriate as the whole thing is based upon Nostalgia. These guys are some generic mooks, the likes of which you'd see in a Bond film, or in an Avengers episode.

The models are some of their oldest, so also kinda fit from that perspective too. It isn’t clear from the photos, but they could do with a resculpt sometime soon as their feet are tiny and the hands quite big and lumpy… but they are perfect for the job. 

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)