New Year New...?

2023 ended not with a bang, but a whimper. But over the last week of the old year and the first week or so of the new year, I did get a little painting time in. 

I did some more painting and basing of "unaligned chaos daemons." I've been thinking about that idea since I received the Drachenfels figure a few years ago. It/he has long since been painted, and I even (finally) finished the novel! Lately my mind has turned back to the idea of chaos as chaotic, like in old Moorcock novels & early fantasy gaming. Not a bunch of organized, uniform creatures.

This will be a slow, ongoing project. I'll just keep adding any odd figures that seem like they belong as I continue to work on other projects.

Since I started this entry a week or so ago, I've added some more. Most are actually for a potential D&D campaign, but I feel they will fit the chaos vibe. The undead gnoll things I just got because I thought they looked cool. :)

The ochre jelly is homemade from some wire and melted hot glue, similar to some I did previously with different paint. The flameskull is just a plastic skull with some crudely sculpted flames. I liked the floating skull thing I did the same with a Bones cow skull painted blue. The rest are soft plastic D&D figurses

I also finally painted a pair of figures to represent our current two dogs. I had one but had been searching for the other for over a year before painting. On the left is Moji-Tater, our Corgi-Sheltie mix. He's the youngest. In the center is Cookie, a shelter rescue dog who we think may be a mix of Boxer & Border Collie. On the right is Sasha aka "Muffin Butt", another shelter dog who passed away almost 10 years ago. She was a German Shepherd-Husky mix. Cookie was the tough one to find, but since I was recently looking at D&D figures I found a pack of three dogs, one was a pointer with a pretty close body & head shape, but I had to cut off the ears and re-sculpt them to fit the real thing.

I've also painted a few sci-fi figures of mixed quality & complexity. The first is an Eru-Kin and jagual figure from Knightmare Games. I will be using Eru-Kin for K'Erin in Five Parsecs From Home. You can almost rearrange the the letters to shift between teh two names. Maybe the apostrophe is for the "u"? This one will be a member of my crew. 

I also finished the space goblins/Malig from Alternative Army's Ion Age range, which will serve as pirates in Five Parsecs. I painted a test figure earlier in 2023, but never got any further until December. One more faction down, and another month of "Five Months From Painted Factions" under my belt!

Lastly, my slacker painting from this week. First is Orbus, a sentient sphere of what appears to be some sort of plasma like matter. No one knows for sure. Orbus is literally a pearlescent bead on a stick. I didn't even paint it. Just drill a hole, make a base, and glue it on the stick. Next to that is the second of the two D&D nothics that came in the pack. One is for D&D, the other I thought would make a good sci-fi alien or mutant. Super quick paint job, mostly just abase coat, wash, then a few details. I almost want a whole squad of them now.

Sci-Fi Mix

A little bit of recent painting...

I've recruited two chaos champions as sci-fi ne'er-do-wells. Mssrs. Scum & Villainy. Nothing stopping me from using them for fantasy gaming either, but they do both have firearms and I've based them to match the recent sci-fi/Alt Trader stuff.

 

 

 Eye, Robot. Quick scratch built light hoverbot.

 

Fourth color test figure. I like this. Maybe a bit more towards the brighter end of the gradient, a little less area of dark end showing. For the most part I think I'm going to stick with the green, blue and purple for the infantry. I don't think the yellow fits in, even without the purple present.

I'm working on a couple more space adventurers. Here's one...

miscellany

I'm trying to get through the last month of the Old World Army Challenge, but struggling. I've already met the minimum requirements, so I'm technically in the clear. But I had some remaining figures I wanted to include, and would like to finish them for the sake of "completing" the challenge army. (I know full well no project is ever "finished." But I'd like to complete what I have on hand.)

Along those lines, I painted a tiny "bonus figure" to go with the OWAC wood elves. Because I'm easily distracted. I believe it's from a pack of familiars from Reaper.

While digging through bins of old figures, I came across most of an old Nurgle chaos warband, painted long ago....

STUFF! IN THE MAIL!

I finally received this giant forest troll, Lempo, from the Sandstorm Miniatures KS. Another Drew Williams sculpted troll to add to my growing collection. The little details are amazing. For scale reference, the grid on the cutting mat is 1" x 1".

I also made a couple of impulsive Clearance Sale purchases online. One was a couple of sample packs of Scotia Grendel (former Harlequin sculpts, I think) orcs that I've been eyeing as possibilities for more half-orcs/hob-orcs. Here's a scale comparison pic. The Stygian orc (left) is at the smaller end of the scale, the Greater orc (Uruk) is at the larger end, especially if he was standing up straight. Accompanying them are painted orcs/half-orcs/hobgoblins from Grenadier/Mirliton, Black Tree, Midlam, and Reaper

The other thing I bought was a bargain purchase of a resin inn from Blue Moon Manufacturing. Looks great, but trying to do a dry fit today I couldn't get the parts to align like they do in the second pic (stolen from the online shop.)

Switching Gears for a Moment

If things go according to plan, I'm going to try out Kill Team this weekend and get to spend some time with some old friends.

Most of my 40k stuff is long gone, and my pirate 'bots don't really fit within the 40k framework, so...

Dusted off my old cultists plus a few half-baked conversions that I'm going to try to finish.

What, no Spaven in Kill Team? OK... let's call them a Cheese-stealer Cult. Mostly shotgun (and a couple of flamer) armed neophyte hybrids, with a couple of Aberrations. That bell? The biggest power hammer you've seen.

Working to tidy up the conversions, not sure they've be 100% painted in time.

Went to the soon to be going out of business (since Michael's bought the chain and then killed them) craft store and spotted these!

I've got some bits that I had (years ago) started trying to pull together into a fantasy airship. I think I'm going to grab a couple of these....

Man O' War For Sale

For sale, my entire Man O' War collection. (Photos below.)


Price reduced: $400.

Sold against my better judgement, and if I wasn't screwed for cash at the moment I would still be enjoying all of it taking up space in our basement/attic, like it has for... I can't even remember how long. You know what... I don't deserve to own this stuff. Buyer must promise to actually play games, otherwise I won't sell it to you. In fact, I require photos posted online within... Let's say six months. I think that's a generous amount of time to put a game together. It's a total waste of realy fun gaming and cool miniatures just sitting in boxes. Don't make me come hunt you down and repo these minis for lack of games. I will do it.

Included is:

Rules:
Man O War, Plague Fleet, and Seas of Blood Boxed sets. Almost complete, missing are the Seas of Blood box and the original Man O War rulebook. I may have the latter hidden away somewhere, but at the very least I will include a reproduction of the rules in a folder or binder.

I haven't played in a long time, but everything else should be present, including some copies of White Dwarf articles for shore forts, maybe other extras. I don't remember. Maybe dwarf ski troops? Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong rules. Most of the chits are sorted in a plastic bin. (You should probably look up the PDFs online, laminate them and use dry erase markers anyway.)


Painted Ships:

(Like I said, it's been forever since I've played, so forgive me if I can't remember all of the proper names...)

• 2 Empire great ships
• 3 Empire wolf ships
• 6 Empire plastic galleys
• 3 Empire converted big-ass cannon galleys
• 3 Empire mortar ships
• 1 Slaanesh whirly-slicer ship
• 1 Slaanesh deep penetrator ship
• 1 Dark Elf black ark
• 3 Dark Elf big lizard tower ships
• 3 Dark Elf small lizard tower ships
• 2 Dragons (I think these were Grenadier miniatures from another game)
• 1 Water elemental (old WFB mini, cooler than the actual MoW mini)

(For what it's worth, the painting of the Empire fleet was inspired by the Great White Fleet. Had a whole backstory/concept behind it...)


Unpainted Ships:

• 3 Empire plastic galleys
• 3 Empire metal wolfships
• Masts for all of the above
• 3 Empire griffins plus flying bases

Extra stuff:

• Blue cloth. Has some subtle stripes. I think it fits a 4x8 table.
• Islands - a few with shore forts, and the Crushing Rocks of SkullDoom or whatever that special bit of terrain was called. The dark rocky ones could use a little touch-up paint. This was one of my first terrain projects, so I made the mistake of using that crappy floral foam. The only reason they survived fairly well is because they're covered in a shell of sand & PVC glue.
• Icebergs galore. More than you probably need. Useful for other games as well. At this point, I learned the superiority of extruded polystyrene insulation as a terrain material, and owned a hot wire cutter. And I think it was only used like three times, so it looks great.

Price: $500. $400. Buyer pays postage. If, by some odd coincidence, you live within an hour or two of Cleveland, OH, I'm open to discussing delivering it to you. Or meeting somewhere within that 1-2 hour range if you're more like 3-4 hours away and we can agree on a half-way point an delivering to you. Or if you live even further and want to meet somewhere within me driving an hour or two.


Photos:
I'm too mopey about this whole thing to bother sorting them into a logical order, just browse and click to enlarge...

Ma Khorne & Little Oswald

The village matron affectionately known as “Ma Khorne” started the village orphanage after her husband, “Pop Khorne,” recently met his unfortunate and explosive demise on the wrong end of an Imperial fire mage and a halfling hotpot full of butter . In anger and sorrow (but mostly anger) she turned to the convent of the Sisters of Perpetual Bloodshed, where she has assumed the role of caretaker and disciplinarian (strict disciplinarian) of the village children whose parents have died or mutated to such a degree that they can no longer care for their own young. Here is Ma Khorne with Oswald, one of the adorable young tykes under her care.

This is my submission for the Oldhammer forum's 2016 Legacy project. This is the first time I'm participating. I love the concept (sort of like a figure lottery) and this year's theme: "C49 Chaos Villagers." 

My old chaos figures are/were mostly generic chaos figures, or Nurgle & Slaanesh once the RoC books came out. Khorne always seemed a bit dull to me, both in terms of painting and background. But I'm amused at the idea of devout Khorne followers trying to take part in village life. Unaligned mutants and followers of the other three major chaos powers, sure. But Khorne? So here they are. 

Resin, Chaos, Fomorians, and Greeks

After many roadblocks, I finally managed to make a test mold and casting of one of the next round of Fomorian heads I've sculpted up (and there are more on the way.) I used one of the heads I didn't like, so if it all went bad I wouldn't be worried about the loss. (Original head, resin cast, and mold on right.)

As it turns out, things went better than I hoped. Both mold and resin cast were easy. And not a single bubble. Not bad considering that not only was it done without a pressure pot, but I also forgot to include a vent and had to poke the resin down into the head a bit! But I had planned on this being a learning experience, after all. Now on to a few more molds, more sculpting... and maybe I can eventually start cranking out bits for converting a swampload of Orcs-to-Fomorians!

I've recently finished a 120mm Greek hoplite for a friend. Just like my adventures in mold-making, this kit put me up against a pile of problems (including getting a decent photo.) But I'm finally done and hope to deliver it sometime soon. I haven't seen my old gaming friends in a very long time.

I've thrown my hat (or paintbrush) in with the Oldhammer Forum's chaos village project. I'm going to submit a converted two figure set, and have finished the first, Oswald, one of the the village children "orphaned" when his parents became chaos spawn.

Next on my table... more experiments with sculpting, mold making, and casting. The other half of the Oldhammer pair, some dwarf light artillery for the Marienburgers, some commissioned beastmen and fantasy medieval type humans, work on an overdue vinyl toy commission, and there's still a pile of undead waiting. I'm also starting (or trying) to really pull together ideas for solo & remote gaming. Could there be an actual game in the near future?!

Knight

A very quick paint job on one of the current Citadel plastic chaos knights. I had this single knight left over from other projects & figured I could use him as a leader of some sort. Stuck with the usual color palette.
 

Also, a little behind the scenes photo from when I was painting the horns on his head. I used a few layered washes and hung him (and his magnetic base) upside-down from my light (which is steel.)
 

Speaking of my light, I finally replaced the two fluorescent lamps in it. They were probably older than I am. I got the same lamps as I had, but the new ones are so nice and bright!

Chaos Things, Engineer and Architect

A work in progress shot of some chaos Nurgle terminator things I'm painting for someone. There is so much going on with these figures, they're a real challenge to paint. Even just in terms of getting my paintbrush to where it needs to go!



Some English Civil War infantry command figures...



And for myself, I've painted a WFB Engineer. They're far more useful in the game now. They don't occupy a hero "slot" any more. Previously there were more important choices to take. They are relatively inexpensive, and their "master of gunnery" ability has been made more useful. Actually, artillery in general is more deadly, and even more so with this ability added in. Cap that off with the Engineer's equipment options. The two I currently like are the repeater pistol, which can be used to help defend against small infiltrating units hunting the vulnerable artillery, or the pigeon bombs, which can be devastating against lighter infantry units now that figures only partially under the template are automatically hit.

So this is the first of several engineers I plan on painting up.




I was digging through an art box full of drawing and modeling stuff and I came across this old model from school. It's a 1/2" = 1'-0" scale model of a chair. It was for a first year architectural projet. We designed a house, and in addition to drawings and a smaller scale model of the entire house, we had to select one room/space in the house and build a larger scale, more detailed model. I did a studio/study, and for some reason had an urge to build this chair as well (it related to the form of the room.)