More Miscellaneia: Grenadier, White Wolf, and Others

That's a Ral Partha Giant (Storm maybe) and a White Wolf figure. I didn't initially have the Trinity figure from White Wolf set up, but one of our regulars publishers a game called Blasters and Bulkheads, review here and I picked up the PDF and decided since I had a few sci-fi dudes sitting around anyway, might as well paint them up. I haven't gotten too far into the game, it seems like a good ole Space Opera with 'jedi' style characters as an option so I may be looking into that in the future more. Its main appeal to me is its skrimish level!

I included the White Wolf guy just for size reference in these pics. The musician orc here is from an old 3rd party company that was doing unofficial Warhammer fantasy style figures. I have a few of 'em around. The horn on this sucker was NEVER going to fit properly so I figure the orc is just getting his breath for another round.

The orc is not necessarily that tall, but damn is he beefy!

This is the dragon from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol Fantasy Lords set by Grenadier. I threw him on the other base that came with the daemon prince. I added the surface effects on his, and the Trinity figure, with a Happy Suppuku mold. I also threw on a few more skulls, a shield, and that big old cross.

The dragon didn't turn out too bad. I hated painting him though and probably will NOT be using him in a game. His wings are super heavy and I hate to green stuff them with a lot of material.

Priming The Night Away

The top one is the dragon with some green primer thrown over the black primer from below. I'm still messing with underpriming as a paint type. We'll see how it goes.

Latest Batch and Prep Work

Finished off some miniatures and prepping some more.

The gnoll is a touch up from Wizards of the Coast. The thing was initially almsot all black so while I was painting other figures I would throw some paint on it.

The demon next to him is the Heresy one. I had the red on him done for a while as he was my test figure.

The little dragon didn't initially come with a base but if I wanted to prevent it from chipping and tipping over... that's a creature from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol set in the Fantasy Lords box by Grenadier. The last one is a Games Workshop Armored Archer for the Empire done up in Nordland colors.

Same batch just from a different angle with the camera.

These are the guys I was waiting for the inks to dry on. Lots of inks involved with these Chronopia Black Orcs. They have kind of a middle east thing going on. I made the leader stand out a little by changing his base. The figures are some interesting sculpts but I thought these were bad casts. The bases on the 'grunts' are done using Happy Suppuku and green stuff. The leader's base is done up with some army painter flock and gale force 9 dried grass.

And on the workbench...

Yeah, I still haven't hit the daemon prince yet. The dragon in the middle is the large dragon from the Dragons of the Emerald Idol set. I threw him on the round base that the daemon came with if you use it for 40K. Fits well. Threw some skulls and other debris on the base. The last guy is I believe a Mountain Giant from Ral Partha. The original date on the base is 1977. We've come a long way. Have to at least let these set overnight. There's a ton of green stuff on the dragon and a ton of glue. Messing with it, especially it being all metal and only two pieces, wings and body, made me remember that despite my love of these old figures, they could be a huge pain in the ass if things didn't fit and man, those wings did not fit.

It's All In The Prep

While I'm not a fan of the way Games Workshop is going overall, sometimes they make some products well worth the cost. Here, the boxed set innards of the Demon Prince, which goes for something like $33 a pop. Strangely enough, a resin Ogre character, with no extras, no sprue material, etc... goes for $38. Ugh. The stupdity. I can smell it through the internets.

Lots of pieces here. There are at least three distinct ways you can make this bad boy.

Okay, the guy on the left is a Reaper Stone Giant. The guy in the middle is the demon assembled. The green stuff is liquid green stuff. It's.... interesting. If you have large gaps, I think you're better off working with standard green stuff. You can't tell from this picture but that stone gian'ts left arm on the rear needed a huge chunk of green stuff. The little guy is a demonic champion from Heresy. Have to wait for the base material to dry, do some sanding on the green stuff, and then prime away! The stone giant should be a super quick finish while I suspect that the demon prince may take a little longer and the little guy I still have to put together. The bases are all done with Happy Suppuku by the way.

Anyone else doing any assembly of projects or other good stuff? I know that Dread Fleet by Games Workshop is consuming a lot of people's time.

First Miniatures of 2012

Another year of crappy pictures. Lighting was good but maybe I need to work on my Macro understanding. Anyway, these are two figures I bought many moons ago when I was going to run some Freeport. They are true 25mm so like like some halfling version of serpent men when sized up to the new figs. I also don't remember the name of the company that makes them.

A skaven slave, I think from the Mordenheim range from Games Workshop. He was about 90% done. I finished off those few parts there were not and threw some basing material on him.

Ah, Red Box Games. They make some 'evil' barbarians that would fit in perfect with a Games Workshop Chaos Marauder army. The base is done with Happy Supukku Broken Earth or Ice base. I'm fairly happy with how this one came out despite the horrible, horrible picture.

Back side shot. Also terrible. Ugh. New Year I'll have to start doing more camera work.

So:

Red Box: 1
Games Workshop: 1
Unknown Company: 2

Off to a good start already.

The Last of the Wine (2011 version)

This year, in many aspects, I cut back on my miniature spending. This doesn't mean it came to a stop or anything like that. I just recently picked up the prepainted Dragons collector set from WoTC and I've had the Paizo prepaints on preorder for two months. I've also bought supplies like Army Painter primer, micro-files, green stuff, and other tools. However, miniature purchases have not been where they were in previous years.  This has been a funds thing in minor aspect but the major aspect has been time. For the last two years, work has been beating my ass with a tire iron so I've taken to a lot of short cuts (hence Army Painter and Vallejo Dips) and not buying as much as I used to since the stuff I've bought in the past I still haven't even primed. While I won't say that in 2012 I vow to improve my painting skills, I will try to paint more. Anyway, onto the last pics I'll post for the year. I hope that next year sees more people posting here. We have some great talent on board here and I'd love to be inspired by more of it.

These may not be the last of my trinity figures that I've had since the game came out, but I ran across them and painted them up. Armor is the iron/silver Army Painter spray followed by Andrea inks; brown, ultra marine blue, black. Skin is Andrea skin tone pack. The base is done up with Happy Suppuku mold that does Hexes. Nifty stuff there.

Reven from Reaper's Warlord game. I didn't do the two beastmen (woodchoopers in Warlord) at the same time, but I like them anyway. The orc is something like an orc sargent but a pig faced one. The green on the orc's skin is Andrea's six pack of green. These guys are pretty standard in basing terms.

Some Menoth figures from Privateer Press. He was a dip. He is part of a pack I'm giving one of my friends for X-Mas. I know it's late as I haven't given it to him but screw him as he didn't get me anything.

Two of GW's figs. The elf is a wood elf from the command group. The pic is so clear I can see a spot I missed on his pants. The gunner is another one I found while cleaning up. And again I gave him the wrong dip. Should have been soft and I used strong. The base on the wood elf is cork. I tried to disguise it a little by clipping it at odd angles.

Two more mega-miniatures. The first is dipped in Vallejo's Sepia. The second in Army Painter Soft. I weep for the crimes I commited against that second figure's eyes but done is done!

Have I mentioned I love Superfigs? Another robot with some paste for the base. Andrea silver set on this one all the way.

I took all these pics at the same time with the same camera and lightning and this is the best of six pics I took of the Black Legion here. The guy on the left with the great sword was my old 4e character, Rus, a fighter from the core I played for a while under a solid GM. The rest I painted later on. The bases are Heresy or I should say, were Heresy. They are cobblestone tabbed that go into the standard 25mm bases. The price of metal has risen so much that Andy at Heresy doesn't even make them anymore and recommended I go to Fenris for some resin versions. I hope they are a good match as I want to buy a few more of these style figs for games like A Song of Blades and Heroes and Havok and others I've heard good things about, not to mention Warlord, by Reaper, itself. I like the simplicity of the figs. I like these guys much more than the halbred ones.

I've already got a lot of figures in various stages of painting right now including a Red Box figure that would go great with the Chaos Mauraders from the north from Warhammer as well as a set of Orcs from Chronpia I think the game was called, as well as many more figs to prep.

I hope 2012 treats everyone better than 2011 did and that the paint flows freely in the new year!

The update: Ral Partha, Games Workshop, White Wolf

Ral Partha, or Iron Wind Metals, had this figure as a Mage Knight one that they turned into metal. Went together very well. I wanted to try out some rust techniques on him and used several of the MIG rust, oil, and lots of metallics. He was sparyed down with an initial Army Painter plate mail metallic color and then worked on.

by the way, you may not be able to tell in that initial photo, but he's huge. Here he is alongside a Games Workshop lizard man and a Trinity soldier.

Some White Wolf figures. These are some Trinity soldiers. Once again, an Army Painter primer and I picked out the flesh and a few ot her details and gave them a dip. Notice that the bases are different because I lost the original bases that came with them. They were more figures that were just so old and relatively simple, that I wanted them done.

I had a pack of lizard men. They were the old type. I assembled them, sprayed them with one of the blue Army Painter Primers, did the necessary touch ups on the various scales, teeth and eyes, did all the weapons and shields in bronze and gave them a dip in the Army Painter Strong batch. Another group that I was tired of looking at.

So it was four weapons and five of each type so that was twenty down.

Happy Seppuku has some molds where you can make various bases. The one I used here was the Wood Planks. Very bad for Wood Planks. First off, there are bubbles in the mold so you'll have to make sure to smooth those out. Second off, the 'planks' are so huge that you'd be better off using them as concrete streets or painting them up silver for science fiction use. The guys here were sprayed again with the Army Painter silver/steel bit and then touched up with a dip in the Strong tone. Another group of miniatures that I was just tired of seeing not painted.

Another Mage Knight figure, this one is actually plastic. I was testing out the differences between some grounding elements. Here I used some green stuff in front of the left leg to try and make some ground that might look like a cave and then used some spackle for the rest of it. This doesn't count the repainting of the actual figure itself which was relatively simple as I didn't go for a lot of detail on it.

This is another one from Ral Partha/Iron Wind Metals, but this time, from their Vor line. He's a Soviet Officer who did have a back pack but it didn't fit and I wasn't going to play with it. Once again the Army Painter to the rescue but here AI tried to add some more depth to the armor with several shades of blue, brown, and black and some highlights with silver as opposed to the Trinity group that I just sprayed and dipped. The differences are sublte in person but in the photos? Not too sure. the ground is liquidex sand and I used several layers this time and I am more pleased with the results.

Not keeping track anymore because the twenty lizard men, plus the six dark elves, plus the Trinity figus more than shoot past the old 52 we go for. The Army Painter colored primers and dips really made this batch go quick and they've been done for a while.