Start as we mean to go on

 Or at least to try to go on.

2026 starts off with a short post on a small rpg miniature that represents one of the player characters in my current workplace DnD campaign. Britt's character is a foul tempered dwarven barbarian dressed in greens and brown, wielding a large nasty ancestral axe. The sculpt itself is part of a two-pack by Wizkids from their Critical Role "Deep Cuts" pre-primed plastic range with decent enough detail for such an affordable miniature. I had to rush the paintjob a bit as I wanted to get the fig done in time of Britt's birthday later this month. She'll do I think and Britt was very happy with how she turned out, so job done there I guess. 

A dinky little sculpt, obviously 3D designed so facial details are shallow meaning I did not even attempt to paint her eyes. The underskirt is supposed to be chainmail, but Britt's character doesn't wear armour so I painted it up that light lime green to maybe make it look like some sort of lace-like petticoat or something else feminine. 

Britt has dark skin so I tried to emulate that on this fig. Her character also has braided hair, but the sculpt has straight - am hoping the shallow detail and black hair from 3 feet away will create the illusion of this. 

The little sculpt has a sculpted puddle base but like all the Wizkids plastics is very light weight, so I glued her to a 1" steel washer to provide better stability on the tabletop. Basing materials were simple flock and some other floral stuff, not over the top.

Now that we are a couple months into my game, all four of the players have figures to represent their characters, so perhaps I should start working on my own minis to represent the baddies and their bosses my game group might face during my campaign? (I've been using printed paper tokens for these up until now.) We'll see - Too many projects....

I also managed to get a few sprues worth of WW2 Winter Germans to fill out some missing pieces in my German Bolt Action collection AND off-loaded all the WW2 French models I had collected as tournament przes to a friend who had expressed an urge to start an Early War army, so plus-minus my unpainted pile shrank some resultingly! (Cos I really needed to drop a new army project for 2026 - just too much already unpainted on armies I already own.)

Maybe there'll be another post next month and if there is, unsure of what it'll be on at this point in time?

That's it for the now. Stay safe out there all. 

- Dai

Skitterings and survivors

More random stuff off the paint desk. Tried to get some progress made on some WW2 Commandos, but after my puppy decided that a Bren Gunner looked like a tasty chew treat I quickly lost interest. (Lesson learnt there - he'll still work, but will just be a little lumpier than normal)

First up is a simple large Phase Spider. This sculpt is produced by Wizkids Unpainted in their pre-primed range of Dungeons and Dragons semi-hard/soft plastic range. Cool details on these and the price point is VERY affordable. Mold lines are a bit tricky to remove and the "pre-priming" only liked certain painted in my collection but otherwise this was a swift and simple job that will look good on the tabletop!

Next up is a nice Zombie Survivor published by Dead Earth Games for their Post Apocalyptic skirmish game. I named her Moira.

The next two are produced by Spectre Miniatures from their Modern Skirmish game. Seriously well detailed and realistic too. I felt that these two would make for some good prepper-types.

First up Dustin. As you can see, he has an affinity for a certain world leader. The "MAGA" is crudely applied, but after the 4th try I just said eff-it and left as is. That hat is a suprisingly small area!

This is Gordon. He felt like he was ready for the end of the world, that is until he forgot to bring his backpack. Fear not, pilfering a child's pack to make up for it is perfectly kosher during the Zombie Apocalypse! (Not like the Zombies will laugh at his style or anything, right?)

Last for this post is a small piece of terrain by Sarissa Precision terrain. Some sort of water container thing that was included in a nice little compound terrain kit I got this Zombie project. Simple construction and paintjob. Felt messy works really well when it's the end of the world.

And that's it for now. What's next? Who knows, the way my attention span has mimicked that of a rabid butterfly on speed anything in my extensive unpainted backlog might take my fancy.

Hope all are staying well and safe in this virus-y time.

Griffon

The Griffon is as done as it’s going to get. Not my best work, but it’s off the unpainted mountain so that is something at least. It’ll do for tabletop and rpg gaming I think.