HO HO, ER… HO

Happy Hogswatch Christmas everyone!

After having missed last year due to a house move, I’ve resumed the tradition of the festive miniature - this year we have Discworld’s Death as the Hogfather, which was actually a Christmas present last year:

 

Resin, rather than the metals I had previously had from this range, but quite lovely all the same.

Given how overcast it was the morning I took these pictures, they came out a bit gloomy, but the picture of the back is a better indication of the colour of his red clothes:

I was tempted to add a little snow to the base, but given how busy Christmas week has been that decision was largely taken out of my hands! Easy enough to go back and add though if the fancy takes me…

The Tally has taken hits in both directions this week though, as popping into our FLGS after work to grab some last minute bits I spotted that a D&D miniature I’d asked them to order in over the summer had finally hit the shelves - there was only one on the shelf, so it would have been foolish to leave without grabbing it:

The family fought their first Mimic last week, so Intellect Devourers seem like an acceptable escalation. 

This leaves the Tally at:

62 vs 195 = -133

Speaking of the family D&D game, after not managing to play for a few weeks, we managed to squeeze in a session the Sunday before last, which I shoehorned some festive cheer into having them fight a giant animated gingerbread man that had been taken over by an evil animated hand that the party had previously let escape. The gingerbread golem lumbered around battering people with his massive fists and vomiting tainted icing (full of black flecks and fingernails) over people - Christmassy!

A wizzard and his Luggage

Progress has been slow recently, despite my desperation enthusiasm to get fifteen miniatures finished before starting anything new, before Salute and May Fourth, largely because I keep falling asleep whenever I put my daughter to bed recently...

When I've managed to stave off narcolepsy though, I've managed to squeeze in the occasional hour painting while my wife is at work and finished painting Rincewind and the Luggage, only 62 months after I built them

Ah Rincewind, hapless protagonist of the early Discworld books that we didn't really see much of in later years...

And the Luggage, animated carry case and psychopath:

I really, really like this sculpt; if I had any criticism it would be that the detail is a little soft on the feet. They've also not photographed especially well, but I can assure you time was spent highlighting each of the many many toes!

Not much else to say about these really, except to note that these are the first miniatures that I've ever painted purely for display purposes - everything else has been intended for a game (although most of those plans haven't come to fruition, but that's neither here nor there).

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

8 vs -10 = +18

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (7/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (7/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old)
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

So, 8 more old miniatures to paint to finish off the top of the challenge before I can get started on the rest - but with Salute imminent, who knows how far I'll get before getting distracted...

Spartans Assemble!

So, rather than cracking on and starting to paint my converted spartans in fetching shades of red and blue, I thought I should probably convert some more to make enough for a four-player game. I'll use Master Chief for one player, but that meant I still needed seven more minis...

To start with, pistols:

I had to convert two, since there isn't already a Master Chief fig with a pair of pistols (although I'll use the Master Chief I'd previously converted for him, as that way it's only the M.C. figs that are stood on various large chunks of scenery...)

Whilst converting these I had a sudden thought: what if, rather than cutting through arms, wrists etc to convert them, I just wrenched the whole arm out? Turns out they're held in place with a handy Tetris-piece shaped plug (which you can sort of see here):

Which you'd think would make arm swapping fairly straightforward, no? Turns out they're positioned somewhat differently in different figures, resulting in the following:

All hail surrender Spartan! He amused me briefly, but a little bit of cutting, some liquid green stuff and a dab of superglue later, and he became the Spartan you saw in the first picture.

I won't bore you with individual shots of each of the other five:

From L-R:
Battle Rifle (that was originally going to be on the sniper model, but I just couldn't get the Sniper Rifle to sit right so they got swapped);
Shotgun (using a Brute Shot body so it looks like he's rocking back in response to some suddenly appearing threat);
Sniper Rifle (I think this one's the body of a carbine wielder on a random pair of legs from my halo bits box);
Needlers (legs from the leaping carbine figure, looks a bit like he's doing ballet though...);
Plasma Rifle (I used the energy sword body with an arm swap and some hot water repositioning to make it look like the rifle had just overheated and burned his fingers, because that's how I imagine it happening whenever I play the Xbox game...)

So with these done, that brings us to two dozen:

Bammo, I'll base the rest once this post is up and then they'll be ready for undercoating (which probably won't be until the weekend).

Before all of this happened though, I decided to base the discworld miniatures I had on the cobblestone bases I'd made:

I added a few patches of rough sand to mucky it up a little and voila, done! Well, not entirely. Note the green stuff under Rincewind's boots, where I made an epic fuck-up. After spending so much time coating those bases with PVA to protect them from the harshness of aerosoals and chemicals, in a moment of unthinking ridiculousness I pinned Rincewind to his base. Yep, I drilled through the protective coating into the poor, defenseless foam and poured in superglue. It promptly started dissolving, prompting a bout of swearing and and a rush to pour enough green stuff into the recently created holes to try and plug them up... I think I'm going to brush undercoat the bases before I spray them though, just in case anything else goes wrong...

Cobblestone Bases

Last night, I got some more painting done, and was determined that today I'd finish some miniatures.

When I woke up this morning though, I fancied something a bit different. I bought some Discworld miniatures a couple weeks back (Rincewind and the Luggage), and thought I'd make some cobble base inserts for them.

To start with, I gathered my materials:

A foam pizza tray, and a variety of cutting and drawing implements (not pictures is sandpaper and a pair of tweezers, which I didn't realise I'd need at this point).

Using a sharpie, I coloured in the lip of each base, and pressed it against the pizza tray:

Which I then cut off as a smaller piece, so I wouldn't look like an escaped lunatic when I went outside with it (more on this later):

Then comes the fun part - the stomping, to give it a nice stony texture (hopefully the animated gif works, if not, imagine me stomping):

[Edit: apparently if you click on it it opens in a new window and works...]

This didn't give as much texture as I wanted, so I pressed it up against a variety of bricks and gave it a brisk rub on the back to pick up even more texture. At which point one of my neighbours came out to take his rubbish out, to find me furiously rubbing on a bit of foam pressed against the wall, which my young lady thought was hilarious...

Totally worth it though, as my foam was now nice and stony:

And we're ready to move onto the next step. To make it easier to work with, I cut each circle out at this point:

and then tidied them up with some gentle sanding. Then comes the scribing. Using a Doctor Who pen (that has a floating Dalek in it) and a metal ruler, I scribed in the first set of parallel lines:

Then freehanded in the connecting lines to give it a nice, uneven cobble pattern:

Once I'd finished all the penwork, I went back over it with the point of a pair of tweezers to make sure all the lines were scribed deeply enough, and then added a few cracks and gouges to some of the bricks. Once that was all done, they get glued into the bases:

They'll get coated in a layer of thinned PVA to toughen them up (and so they survive a spray undercoat), and then once the miniatures are on, I'll add a little sand to grubby them up a bit. But until then, they're done!

I'm not doing what I should...

So, productivity has dried up to almost nothing- a little daubing here and there on some generic fantasy miniatures, but that's it. Still no resolution to my lack of basing sand problem either, so I've not been able to start work on painting the converted Halo miniatures either. Boo.

Even a brief stint in the creative doldrums can't stop the inevitable march of the post-man:

Rincewind and the Luggage, from a nice man in Finland via the Lead Adventure Forum. No great plan for these, just that someone was selling them and I thought I'd enjoy painting them (Although I need to make some cobblestone base inserts - hopefully my Instant Mold arrives soon).

Inevitably, that means the tally slides a little further away from zero:

12 vs 29 = -17

In other news, my eye has been wandering again, and it seems to keep landing on VBCW. Militia bundling around 1938 Canterbury, what's not to love? Macfarlane are releasing a whole range of dinky Halo figures and miniatures, how do I reject that?! Also, I'm off to Wales for the weekend for the SFX weekender, where I will likely see many many things to distract me from the bajillion projects I've already got on the go...