The current state of Tray

Actually the current state of tray has a lot of colour on it. The photo below was taken on Saturday and I did some base coating on some figures on the weekend, and a bit of painting every evening after work so far this week. Now that the Chaos Marines are done, everything on the tray is a WizKids Nolzurs/Deep Cuts figure.

 

There’s a deliberate, strong beholder-kin theme here. A few months back I looked at the new releases that WizKids had. Last month I found a Oz store with the proper Beholder to go with my undead one, and they had a few more figures I wanted. The “Gazers” (Eyeballs in my ‘Monsters of Faerun’) are almost complete after I painted eyes tonight, and the Spectator has his base coat and ink. I’m not sure whether to highlight him now or start base-coating his big brother.

I bought a pair of boars mostly to use in Frostgrave, though I’m sure I’ll use them for D&D at some point. At least one blog I follow has mentioned this game before, but I never looked into what it involved. With more time at home to myself this year, I’ve been sorting through the myriad game resources I’ve collected over the years, especially looking at stuff I hadn’t actually read. Back in April this year, Osprey offered three PDF’s (including the Frostgrave 1st Edn rulebook) for free. A month or so ago I was sorry I hadn’t actually looked at it when I downloaded the copies. I really like that I already have most of the figures that anyone would likely want to play (Wizards) or encounter. I’ve developed a single session game for my gaming group. A multi-wizard delve into the city ruins (with more monsters than usual, and possibly less PvP fighting) using Frostgrave is basic enough (rules-wise) and similar enough to our D&D that everyone should get the hang of it really fast and have fun. An actual campaign would also be a nice change for the occasional get together with one friend instead of playing Zombicide. I have the second edition rulebook on my personal wish-list now too.

Painting Chaos Warriors (GW Space Crusade)

After painting my Genestealers, I got my Chaos Warriors ready from ‘Space Crusade’. At this rate, I may end up painting the Space marines too!

The five figures – three standard warriors, one with a heavy weapon, and a commander were all simple black plastic. The three marine squads in the game are blue, red and yellow. I didn’t want black painted figures. I wanted the detail on these figures (which is quite good for a board game) to be noticeable, and decided on green as a contrast to the actual marines.

Space Crusade is the closest I’ve ever come to playing anything Warhammer 40,000, though I have read a fair number of novels. So, I don’t really know (or care much) about chapters and colours. Oddly enough, a little bit of digging on the web turned up a renegade chapter of chaos space marines with a basic colour matching what I was planning on. (Green isn’t a popular colour apparently, and I only found two separate posts with painted figures.)

The Children of Purgatos: Their Power Armour is painted emerald green trimmed with gold. They often decorate their armour with images of golden flames projecting from their armour’s golden trim. A renegade Chapter of Chaos Space Marines of unknown Founding and origin, that was declared Excommunicate Traitoris for reasons that are not listed in Imperial records.

I could have tried hand detailing flames on armour plates, but as it is I’ve spent a lot of time on them over a week and I’m very pleased with the results.

 

Star Wars painting finished!

It’s taken me three years to finally have all of my Star Wars boxed figure sets painted. (3 boxes of 10) I started with Stormtroopers back in June 2017. Of course, I’ve owned these figures for just over thirty years! This weekend I decided to just get the last few finished, regardless of anything else happening. They have been on my desk/painting tray for way too long.

From the 1988/89 25mm figure sets released by West End Games (sculpted and cast by Grenadier) here are:

SW25 Zardra (Bounty Hunter from ‘Tatooine Manhunt’ adventure)

SW28 Boushh (Leia in disguise from ‘Return of the Jedi’)

SW29 Rebel Merc

SW80 Kid

and…. I have absolutely no idea who the male with a blaster is. He’s not actually meant to be in any of my boxed sets! His base says Ral Parth 1988. He fits in perfectly with all my Star Wars figures and I hadn’t realised until today he wasn’t one. I guess someone gave him to me at some point. My best guess is shadowrun. If anyone has an idea, I’d like to know!

EDIT: A friend helped find him! #20-963 Battletech, Dropship Crewman – Marik.

Most of these sat around because I didn’t have an idea of how to paint them. Boushh was easy and finished back in July, but I couldn’t come up with a colour scheme for the others. In the end I went with simple stuff and haven’t fussed about detail. They aren’t aliens, and if they are used in any of my games it’s likely to be as NPCs standing around in the background. So, no fuss, no highlighting, no eye detail, done. I did enjoy doing the female rebel merc, once I decided to paint her in camouflage. Hers is the only figure I spent a lot of time on.

This leaves seven figures on my tray, but I expect to double that once something arrives in the mail this week. This will also mean the tray is full of stuff I want to paint.

My Little Scythe #2 – Painting board game figures

Another four figures painted for the board game “My Little Scythe”. My mate and I managed to workout a way to exchange figures during stage 4 restrictions. (It helps when someone is a nurse working at a hospital very close by.) A pair of monkeys and muskoxen. The monkeys were fairly simple to paint. The muskoxen are carrying a lot, so there was a bit more to do with them.

The only tricky part with any of these figures has been getting to the lower bits of the figures – like behind robes/cloaks, and the bottom side of jackets or pants. The figures are standing low on the base, and there’s not much room to get a brush in underneath. The only complaint raised with my painting (from by the young lady receiving these) has been that the “girls” should have eyelashes. Otherwise they are “so pretty!” I did consider eyelashes, but even on figures this size, that a stretch for my skill and brushes.

Eight painted and six to go: wolves, tigers and bears… oh my!