Purple Worm, Purple Worm *Guitar Solo*

John Dennet blessed us with this cunning looking Purple Worm from Grenadier.  I have had this mini for many years, and it just sat on the shelf with a grey primer coat looking miserable.  It was time to do it justice.

The metal cracked earth base is under the augmented one I made using bits of broken dried putty and crackle paint.

I painted a faux gloss effect on the model by trailing little specular highlights down the body, catching the ridges.  These become more purple as they reach the head, giving an opalescent chitin feel.

God I love this mini. It looks like it is happy to chat to the adventurers.

Playing With a Stranger's Thing: Grenadier Demogorgon

One of my favourite minis of all time, The Grenadier Demogorgon by John Dennett has gained a wider audience after it appears in the TV show Stranger Things in the kids' Dungeons and Dragons game.

In this version I went with simple and bold colors, with the goal of getting the entire thing done in one sitting.

I have two others, one of which is joining my From The Pitt style red demon army of Dennett demons, and the other is getting ray guns for some future skirmish action.

I may grab a few more next time I swing by Mirliton because I keep thinking of cool conversion ideas.

Brilliant mini.

Barbarian warband

Oh just found this on my phoney thingie.  My barbarian warband work in progress.  I think there is butter on my lens.  Very romantic.

I popped by the Garema place game store in Canberra today and picked up a pack of warmahorde skorne girlie figures in dresses with drum hats that took my fancy.  I plan to beat the fancy out of them with some converty type skillage.  Does it annoy people I don't give a crapette about minis official names?  All part of my evil plan.

So as you can see the barbarians are at various stages of paintyness.  I am planning to push them along with my dwarfs in a wantom baccinnalia of flesh painting- then once varnished on to my high and tunnel elves.

Skulldred Raid Project part 1

First up I have to apologise for the camera work this post.  My proper camera is not charged and I have only a short window to blog- buts since this stuffs all work in progress, it will do for now.

The gaming project I have decided to work on first is my Skulldred family battle board- the one I play my wife on.  I decided to complete everything associated with that core game first.  That means some choice scenery items, player models and tokens for things to rescue and loot.

So the project kicks off with a baggage train for adventurers to protect and raiders to raid.  My pack mule collection was rather thin- especially since I picked up a boxed set Bill the pony without reading the text and found, well... something out of The Cell.  Turns out the boxed set was incomplete by one half of bill.  If you ever list things on ebay that are incomplete, I think its polite to write that in the title for lazy people like me in general and specifically for me.  :)

Citadel packhorses- adventurers boxed set and bill the pony... uh, make that half a bill.

Fortunately for our little Demi-Bill I can rebuild him.  I have the technology.  A pointy implement, paperclip and some epoxy putty.
That leads me to a great tip... I have been using 5 minute epoxy putty to do armatures and building understructure for bases.  Its like having a slightly smelly, milliput that understands my patience is limited and behaves accordingly.  The brand I use is Knead-it.  Though it should be called Knead-it-wearing-gloves-or-you-get-a-nasty-rash.  Great stuff.
Once I get some sculpting time (commissions at the moment) I am going to place the model in front of a mirror and sculpt the B side using a bit of green stuff.  I probably will stick my tongue the corner of my mouth whilst I do so, just to enjoy the cliché.

I also started tacking down some resin treasure items to poker chips, but think I will post them once their are done.  Besides, I ripped them off from Phreeds treasure tokens on his blog.  ;)

The Adventure Ends
Citadel FS28 Slain Adventurer, Grenadier Death Giant, Citadel WF6 Aggressive Aardvark (Cerebus)

Last to begin but first to finish is my slain adventurer token, played here by a citadel FS28 slain adventurer.  The cause of his situation is Citadels, well, shall we say blatant 'omage to Cerebus.  I have decided to rebase him.  I realised he really should be on a bar room flagstone base standing on a pile of dead folk and spilt tankards.  I am also going to strip and resurface him like I did the pack mule above -he is just too rough and will look great with smooth blending and some properly defined fingers.  Still, no time for that right now, so I will leave him be- and perhaps get some Skulldred sessions in with the little guy first.
The Grenadier Death statue is is inspired by the recent Citadel Garden of Morr statue.  I realised I had just the thing for my scenery, so a quick repaint later and voila!  Again, it needs rebasing on a stone plinth methinks.  I find many of these figures on ebay that are broken.. thinking I may make a bunch of these at some stage for the table if I can get these cheap enough.

Now the progress on the main stars.  I am going to do myself a bandit warband, though since I do not have the figures I need, I decided to finish off the small Realm Of Chaos warband I started so I can game with them.

Kats Amazons rebases.  A mix of Reaper and Citadel figures
Daves Chaos raiders:  Mainly converted and Augmented Citadel 1980's chaos champion figures

So these are the best ones so far- rebasing them took the majority of time here, but I have pushed the painting along a little on my team, and scratch sculpted a chaos shield for the horned champion and blended in the new Reaper weapon swap for Big Bertha.  Lots to do still.
A spike backed chaos warhound arrived the other day, which I think will make a great addition to the team.

Well thats my hobby time all used up.  Back to sculpting figures for other people.  Hope your enjoying the blog so far.

Witchhunter cross dressers, bugbears and Nuns (oh my)

This is my AD&D 4th ed character, Regan Black... a male paladin witch hunter trapped by a spell in the body of his worst enemy - the witch who killed his wife.  Without muscle memory his sword skills are useless- and fearing for his life in close combat without his brawn to save him, he is desperately trying to get the witches body to learn the longbow and start off as a first level ranger so he/she can hunt down his real body and find a way to switch back and defeat the witch.
Very dramatic, and EXTREMELY hard to roleplay- considering my GM is a woman and very happy to step on a dodgy portrayal of her fair kind.  So much fun it almost makes up for the horrible AD&D 4.0 system.  Going to convince her to switch to something mega retro like Labyrinth Lord.  :)
Our whole gaming group are digital artists, so quickly we got into painting our characters...

Regan Black.  Day one.

Since the adventure takes place in the frozen north, the effect of being mind switched into a witch wearing a skimpy Frazetta style sorceress costume was instant hypothermia as her protective warming spells vanished.  Having staggered back into town and scrounged up some clothing from the villagers, I ended up stuck with a red / blue ensemble.  She still has the witches red corset and gloves on, but with a male puritanical witchunters eye for fashion, I constructed the rest of her costume with practicality in mind...

Regan Black... as depicted by me.  Now I have to find a mini...

 I needed a figure quickly, but the only thing in my collection even close was an AD&D thief.   A little green stuff and she has a corset, fur shoulders and fur lined boots. The great thing is I can peel off this stuff and the figure underneath is unharmed!

Converted Reaper 'Callie' female rogue and Converted Citadel 1980's AD&D Female Thief

After a few sessions, all the guys got bigger, chunkier modern figures.  Mine was getting a bit lost on the gaming table, and besides, I mainly use a bow - so I decided to get a new figure.  Callie from Reaper minis was close, the had a dorky face.  I dremmelled it out and replaced it with a little green stuff.  Again, a corset and fur was added to give a frozen north look.  Its going to be fun keeping my miniature up to date.  Considering the figures only around 8 bucks, I wanted to keep figures for all stages of her growth.  At the end of the campaign I have some reminders!

Grenadier Bugbears

On a more retro adventure, I picked up these three mystery figures from fleabay.  I found out they are Grenadier bugbears.  To be honest, they are very old school, ugly looking chaps... stiff with a weird head... but hey, I just love painting up old awkward figures.

Polishing turds, some call it.

Anyway, there was a touch of character about them that drew me in.  I tried a little something different here with the bases.

And now... demon nuns.

Reaper Battle Nuns

Ye Systrs Infernale, my Hordes of the Things 28mm army made up of demon possessed nuns expands with another blades unit.  These are straight out of the box Reaper battle nuns.  I love these figures... having converted a bunch into 40k style Sisters of Battle elsewhere in this blog- I have a bucket load of the things in my bits box.

The other units are a little too rude to post- having been lovingly converted to show a little more flesh, and one having snapping jaws where a woman shouldn't have them if you catch my drift.  The army features bits of Slannesh figures, Reaper figures and lots of scratch built stuff- insane nuns tearing at their clothes, changing into succubi and generally enjoying the battle.  Its a scream to do, but not sure if it should be brought out at a family orientated gaming convention.
Its a big time commitment considering I have yet to play Hott- but I figure I can always use them in Skulldred- as multi based models are perfectly acceptable!