Cheers!

This guy is probably a very appropriate mini considering Christmas and New Years just past. He was completed on the Christmas weekend, but he’s only been taken outside this morning for a varnish where the bright sun and 30 degree heat (celcius) probably won’t do his hangover any good.

I was looking through mini boxes for some other figures and found him mixed in with painted figures that were being used in a D&D campaign run by a mate a few years back. He got my attention over the other three figures (started but not finished) on my desk.

I’ve done a bit of searching but can’t work out the manufacturer or anything on this specific dwarf. When he was chosen as a character to play, I filed the base flat taking off all the interesting things like names and dates. I’m sure that I’ve had him for at least thirty years… so he should be 1980’s, or early 90s. One piece metal with a round base. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a Citadel Bugman’s dwarf, but he’s not cluttered with detail like I expect from most of their figures and should also be slotta-base. I’m guessing Ral Partha.

Painting was fairly easy, and straightforward and not fussy like the two soldier figures I’m still working on. To give him more balance on the table top, the original base is glued to a 25mm thin round, with a little bit of extra stone decoration. I like the figure, and he certainly looks much better painted than as dull metal. This is very likely the only figure I have holding something as simple as a tankard, and not some weapon or magical device, etc.

Happy New Year!

Painting BattleTech (Part 2)

BattleTech has been around in multiple forms since 1984. The closest I got to it myself was watching Robotech (and similar anime) and playing a little bit of the Robotech RPG (Palladium 1986).

These metal figures were produced by Iron Wind Metals in 2011-2015, though I noted the Gurkha actually had Ral Partha 2002 on the frame.

Separation and clean up was pretty easy. Lots of flash and a fair number of mold lines, that meant I spent a fair amount of time with clippers, knife and file.

The Roadrunner is the simplest of the lot, but the other three are exactly what I don’t like with multi-part figures. The only advantage I see in multi-part is if it allows alternate posing or positioning.

The Gurkha is 5 parts, and could have been two. (I would think the arm with the sword is good being separate)There’s really only one way to put it together without bending the metal.

The Lament is 8 parts and the feet should have been part of the legs. You can, at least, swivel this at the waist, and with careful filing possibly tilt the arms.

The Dola mech is the best and worst simultaneously. 8 parts, almost all with ball and socket joints, do allow some potential for posing, but making sure it all stays together and can still stand upright is going to be… interesting!

Two of the figures had no bases, and I’m not using the two small thin bases that were supplied. I was thrilled to find some good sized metal hexagonal bases (and a round one that’s had some filing) in my stuff to better suit the size and weight of all this pewter!

Left to Right: Dola, Gurkha, Roadrunner, Lament. From assembled but unpainted, through varying degrees of painting.

Making sure that legs line up in three dimensions has been harder than I’d expected. I’d been mostly concerned with gluing the legs “straight” and having the mech stand properly on the base. What I hadn’t considered was doing this and having the rest of the body in a balanced looking position.

The Lament intentionally leans slightly to one side because I positioned it with one leg slightly raised as if stepping forward. The Gurkha has legs cast in different positions and he ended up with the feet somewhat closer together than they should have been giving him a bit of an unintentional lean. (I’d done him first and once I realised this, didn’t want to break or dissolve the bond to try repositioning) The Dola was last, and all looked good until I realised the arms when joined to the rear of the broad flattened torso, would make it look like it was leaning back. It is sculpted to be stepping forward, which isn’t as bad as if it was meant to be standing upright. Not the effect I wanted, but only distinct from a side/rear profile. My image from the net has the torso at a steep forward angle that I didn’t like, and this is likely the reason why that was done. I’m going to re-do the base with a slant that he’s walking down. I’ve got some nice pieces of slate that need trimming and filing/cutting.

Painting Battletech

I haven’t really had the interest to paint much this year… the summer heat, the distraction of reading, computer games, and writing role-playing stuff have all been factors. My tray of stuff to paint has been nine figures (four of them daemonettes I’d prefer to sell or give away) for months and aren’t inspiring me.

On Friday I had lunch with a friend who gave me four Battletech mechs to assemble and paint. These are quite different from my usual figures, but are interesting enough to keep my attention for a while.

These are a Gurkha GUR-2G, a Dola Mech, a Lament LMT-2R and a Roadrunner RD-1R. The first three are Inner Sphere mechs, and the last a Clan mech, all from slightly different Era’s – Jihad, Civil War, Dark Age & Late Succession War. That all means very little to me, but I’ve only started my research so that I know both what I’m painting, and how typical colour schemes should look like.

All are metal figures produced by Iron Wind Metals. Finally some painting to look forward to!

 

 

 

 

More Undead

Three more undead completed yesterday. These are all Citadel metal figures – Wraith, Ghost and Zombie.

Wraith, 1985 C18 (66) from ‘Night Horrors’; “Spirit 3” of the 1999/2000 Spirit Host (Vampire Counts) and  Zombie, 1988/89 130608 “Kand-Meet”.

The wraith is a typical “death” figure but would (I feel) have benefited from either holding a sword or scythe rather than the over-size sickle. I do like the absence of hands, feet and head. Painting was very straight forward being a mid-grey with black shading and then lighter gray highlight. This goes in a slotta-base very nicely, so that only a bit of robes actually seems to be in contact with the ground. I should have glued it to its final base much earlier – painting while it was held in its old base with ‘tack wasn’t balanced or steady.

The “Spirit”, which I’ve always termed a ghost was a gift from a friend who’d bought the full 3 figure spirit host. My web-search to identify the figure brought up Azazel’s painting of these and I used his painting as inspiration – just a bit more green! Also fairly simple to paint. I went for some lighting on the base (as if the spirit glows) which didn’t come out quite like I wanted but it’ll do!

The zombie took the most work since he’s fairly detailed. The plastic shield may or may not be the one I originally bought him with, but it had a depression for the nub on his arm and fitted perfectly. The armor is marked and has holes and rents, so I did the same for the shield. I thought some battered heraldry would also suit.

I dug up three metal and four plastic Daemonettes of Slaanesh for my painting tray earlier in the month. The metal ones probably got a bit of use for Warhammer Quest a decade ago. I had 8-10 plastic given to me back then that I assembled, and then sold most of on eBay. I rather doubt I’ll ever use them… ended up selling the three metal ones on Gumtree, and I’m down to the last four plastics. I may try eBay for these, or end up painting them. It’s time to dig through my figure boxes and see what isn’t painted… I know there’s still a few adventurers, and a bunch of Citadel Beastmen.

…and stay dead!

This isn’t the post I envisioned… this is a painting project that I’ve given up on before even spraying the figures with undercoat.

A long time ago, a mate bought a box of multipart plastic skeletons and assembled them. He gave me four, that haven’t seen much use in that time. As part of my three-day weekend, I decided to paint some more undead. I  cleaned up three metal undead and started work on the skeletons…

I’d say these fit most of the things I don’t like about multi-part figures – fiddly and fragile. (Why do this with Skeletons!) If I’d been the one assembling them I likely would have cleaned up the mold-lines, etc at the time. Doing that after they are assembled is much more of a mess. I’ve cut off a thumb, broken two in cleanly in half (at join points), and detached an arm. A third’s upper/lower torso is glued slightly out of alignment; just enough to annoy me that I want to break it and re-glue correctly. He also has the tip of his bow missing. (Probably me in the past, or moving around in storage.)

I’ve decided that I’m not happy with the way this is going, with the expectation that painting them would be annoying and I’d probably break something else. So, it’s into the bits box with them for future use as base decoration or whatever – skulls, bits of skeletons, bows and quivers.

The suns out, so I’ll spray the three metal undead so they’re ready to paint. Then maybe I get all my Warhammer Beastmen out of their storage trays and start preparing them.

Mantic Dwarfs

These guys are Mantic Dwarfs, multi-part plastic figures, that I was given (years ago?) by Azazel. (Mantic calls them Dwarfs, not Dwarves.)

I generally dislike multi-part figures, mostly because when I was first buying miniatures they were mostly metal, and awkward to assemble – often because parts didn’t fit smoothly together.

This lot were mostly assembled when I received them and look to have been two or three pieces – just enough to give a good variety of poses, weapons, etc. I have nine dwarfs, and while there are similarities, all are unique! I may have to watch out for some more of these. I like the style of Mantic’s dwarves; they were easy and fun to paint and it would be really nice to have more of them. I really like the idea of building a dwarf army, but I don’t know if I would ever get to do anything with it.

When I eventually decided to add these to my painting tray, I found I had three headless bodies, two loose heads, and two figures with no weapon. This is an excellent reason to put figures into plastics bags when you get them and not have them lying around on a shelf or mixed with other components in a box! I’m certain that I’ll turn up a dwarf head sometime in the near future.

I took the head-less body I liked the least, and cut his hand off to get a hammer for one of the other figures, and cut down a long spear in my parts box for the other. Heads were glued, a few small gaps were filled and many images of Ironclad, Sheildbreakers, etc were browsed on the ‘net.

I decided to try something different when undercoating – spraying with black from the sides, then white from overhead, aiming for the contrast of zenithal highlights that I’ve seen in many painting videos. (“A technique that quickly reproduces the light and shadows produced by an imaginary light source directly over the subject.”) I didn’t like the final effect. White undercoat makes detail stand out more – very helpful with my eyes when painting fine detail – and black means the final result is dark. I might go for this with monsters, but I don’t like the idea for characters. If do it again, it’s going to be with less black, and much more white.

Armour is primarily antique copper, with bright bronze for highlight. Gun-metal and silver highlight on some armour and weapons. Various browns, a few greens, some red and silver (chainmail) to add some variation.

I have very few decals left in my parts box, with nearly all of those being chaos related. At some point I think I need to look for some decal sets that would go with more “good” aligned forces, or that are more general in style. My free hand painting can’t do the fine detail that people like Azazel have achieved. I went with a variation of an online shield design. I’m glad I only had four shields too, not a whole unit… even when pencil lines marked in advance, trying to get all four looking the same wasn’t easy. A hammer or axe symbol on top would have been perfect.

These are also an entry in the Mo’vember challege by “Rantings from behind the Moustache“

Painting: Warhammer Forces of Chaos #2

My second set of five Chaos Warriors. These are all Citadel / Warhammer single piece plastic figures. I think these came from a friend who’d bought extra figures. If I’d bought them they should have been packs of four or six the same. Two distinct sculpts, but not too different from each other or the original Hero Quest figures.

The chaos warriors got gun-metal armour like the previous sets. Axe wielders (0737 Citadel, 1997) then got their armour lightened with silver, and silver highlights. The halberd wielders got green ink on their armour and gold highlights. I wanted to do something different with the shields, and went with a two colour diagonal pattern. That was still a bit plain so I thought about putting an image or something over the top. Digging through my bits and pieces turned up a sheet of decals marked “Dark Elf Shields” – and these three white symbols (and only three) were just the right size.

I’m very happy with the final result. This now gives me an assortment of nine chaos warriors, who will also do as general evil/undead warriors, or even magically animated suits of armour since there’s no visible flesh (assuming you excuse boots and gloves). After taking photo’s I (of course) realised that I’d missed something – the silver on the chainmail of the halberd warriors! That got remedied before I took them out for a spray of clear acyclic.

Next off the tray: Probably the Hero Quest “Gargoyle”. I’m thinking of doing him as a statue, with a little bit of modification so that he’s not so balrog-like.

Painting: Warhammer Forces of Chaos #1

I’ve just completed five figures from Hero Quest as my first project for 2021: four Chaos Warriors and the Chaos Sorcerer. I’ve got five more Chaos Warriors started, and I think this is only the beginning of a lengthy run of Warhammer figure painting.

These five figures were fun to paint. The main reasons I’ve enjoyed doing them, and will continue are exactly why I got just past halfway through my Space Marines last year and haven’t gone back to finish them. These are all one part plastic figures with simple poses, nothing complicated but they do have interesting armour design and quite a bit of detail. While I’m going to have similar painting themes with the three different sculpts of chaos warriors, I’m still enjoying this and thinking of ways of making each have a distinctive look. (The marines, while being three chapters, were essentially fifteen identical, very simple and boring, sculpts. Maybe I can pick at them in between my warhammer fantasy painting.)

I particularly like the Chaos Sorcerer. I started out with a darker flesh/grey skin colour, that I thought was too dark, and lightened it to the very pale grey it is now. (It looks a bit whiter in pictures than it really is.) His hands are a little too big… a lot of the painted versions online have these painted as gloves, but there’s a lot of texture on both sides that I wouldn’t expect if you wore gloves. This figure is a perfect figure for any undead caster in my D&D games. The base decoration was fun too – I’d cut some skulls off the helmets of some of my other chaos warriors and one remained in good condition. I thought it would be fun to use. It sits of a pile of small broken sea-shells.

The chaos warriors got mostly gun-metal armour, with a bit of red ink to tint it, then silver edge highlights. The armour can look fairly dark, or lighter and shiny, depending on the amount of lighting.

 

Background: Hero Quest (Milton Bradley & Games Workshop) came out in 1989. I had both this and Warhammer Quest (1995), while a friend had both of these, and Advanced Hero Quest, and most of the expansions for the games. A group of us played through the initial games, and spend years on and off with Warhammer Quest. Over the years I collected a lot of figures – frequently to have them for these games and be able to use them for D&D.