Upsized Giant

My first completed Drewtember figure is the recently released cloud giant, a tribute to the old Ral Partha figure by Tom Meier -- which happens to be one of my favorite oldschool miniatures. Both together, Drew/Satyr Art Studio on left, Tom/Partha on the right.

 

Besides painting, one of my joys has been the enjoyment of our modest gardens - both flower and vegetable. At times it's a bit of a train-wreck due to the neighborhood wildlife and neighborhood fungus plague, but we've managed to pull through. The most plentiful of our "crops" has been one of the basil plants that's grown to an insane size, and three hot pepper plants. I've been making and freezing (or giving away to friends) pesto made from the former, and recently I've been experimenting with hot sauces for the latter. This past weekend's production, in addition to the painted giant:

Drewtember

In recent years I've jumped onto a lot of painting challenges. I just finished my second Old World Army Challenge. Most of the rest are monthly challenges like Orctober, Deadcember, etc.

After a painting slump in August, I'm working up some motivation for September. I just received the Satyr Art Studio tribute to Tom Meier's old cloud giant figure. I've also received Lempo the giant forest troll from Sandstorm Miniatures, and the trollwives & trollkids, also from Satyr, a few months ago. All sculpted by Drew Williams. Thus...

Drewtember!

I know... Even more contrived than most of the others. Whetever. I have a bunch of his recent sculpts, I'm going to challenge myself to paint them this month. Good enough for me. ;)

Trollwives & Trollkids

Cloud Giant next to his inspiration from Ral Partha.

Lempo from Sandstorm Miniatures. As much as I hate to do it, one arm will need to be painted separately.

Maybe a bit hard to see, but the tiny baby birds in the nest in Lempo's antlers have their beaks open ready to feed while (presumably) mamma bird looks on. Little details like this are one of several reasons why I'm a a huge fan of Drew's sculping.

Oldschool trolls & giants on my desk? I'd better replenish my stock of 'shrooms.

Big April Approaches and Solo Gaming

April is almost here. That means Big April, what has become my traditional giant painting month. This year, I may still try to paint something for the Old World Army Challenge, but would still like to paint a giant or two.

But I haven't prepped or even decided what to paint. Here's some of what I'm looking at...

Otherworld, Mantic, a few Reaper Bones. Also, not pictured are a couple of giants sent to me by Shadespyre, but they got buried in a late night shuffle to avoid basement flooding last night.



I've still got some more photos & reports from my recent dive into solo gaming with Sellswords and Spellslingers. I just haven't had much time or energy to write anything up. I'd like to play a few more games as well.

I've also got a bit distracted reading the Frostgrave rules, since the author posted a free download code for the rules, plus a couple of downloads for solo play/solo scenarios.

https://therenaissancetroll.blogspot.com/2020/03/frostgrave-is-free.html

At any rate, once I put the basement back together and get access to my table, maybe more solo gaming as well...

Giants to Sea Elves

Richard aka "Orclord" of Stuff of Legends posted an updated photo of some of his giant collection on a few Oldhammer FB groups and it got me thinking about the fact that I've been meaning to do the same thing. End of "Big April" seems like a good time to do it. My own collection is not nearly as large, and I don't have any where good to photograph them all, but for what it's worth...

(click to enlarge)

FWIW, the unpainted giants I still need to work on are: the Mantic giant, the Otherworld giant, and three Reaper Bones giants.



Also, following up on a request for a close-ups of the victim who is about to become lunch for the Heresy giant:

Speaking of giants... not getting any more painted this April, but prepping the next giant(s). I'm debating a head-swap on the Mantic giant -- still undecided.

I've also started prepping minis for the last two months of the Old World Army Challenge. The next two months are going to be horribly busy at work, and I will be doing a bit of travel. So finding time for painting will be challenging.

Since this photo a couple days ago, I've got the separ unit, champion, and the rest of the chariot prepped & primed. Plus I sculpted a new top for the wand on the elf witch, and primed here as well. Just the wardancers to clean & prime now.

Here's the broken wand, with a bit of wire on top to give me something to sculpt on. The idea will be to give it an oyster shell, with the globe in the other hand being a pearl.

Big April '19

Mucklegeet the Giant, from Heresy Miniatures.

Troll by Artizan Designs from Northstar Military Figures.

Comparison w/ Satyr Art Studio & Marauder trolls.

Almost April - Something BIG on the Horizon

I'm currently wrapping up my OWAC2 entry for March. (No peeks until it's up on the OWAC site.) But I'm also looking ahead to April. Although I will continue to prep minis for the OWAC, I will probably take April as my month off for the challenge. (We get one Mulligan.) Why?

Well, after joining in on different monthly challenges (Deadcember, Orctober, etc.) I've been doing my own thing every April. Big April as I call it. No puns or wordplay. Just painting giants in April because I like giants and one year it was April and I wanted to paint a few giants, so the idea of doing it every year stuck. Last year I got off half-way through painting the Heresy Miniatures giant, Mucklegeet at the end of the month. An awesome and imposing miniature (and I have Shadespyre to thank for mine.) Here's where I left off...

I don't expect that it will take all of April to finish him. So the question currently in my head is what to do with the rest of the time? I have a coupe of ideas:

• Get a head start on some OWAC minis so I'm not stressed out trying to finish them the next few months. Bwahahahaa. (Not likely. Where's the fun in that?)
• Paint more trolls. While not giants, they are relatively big when compared to humans.
• Paint more giants. Makes sense, right? I've still got a few:
• Otherworld Giant
• Mantic Giant
• 3 Reaper Bones giants from the last Kickstarter
• Goremaw. Also from Reaper. It's big.
• Sculpt my own giant. I've really been wanting to sculpt more, and the idea of sculpting my own Big April giant has been in my mind for at least a couple of years.

I've got about a week before April, and obviously the above giant will be on my table while I sort it out.

Kill Team & Memories

Over the weekend I played my first two games of Kill Team and enjoyed it quite a bit. There's a lot to like in the game. It was also great seeing old friends as well as meeting some new players. I'm looking forward to playing some more.

My 40k minis are all gone, and I have not yet painted my Meat Hating Robot Pirates -- and from the look of it, they're not very suited to proxy for anything in Kill Team. BUT, I did have something else, something old. My old Nurgle chaos cultists, which were built from old Skaven. I used them as proxies for the Genesteal Cult. Thus: Cheese-stealer Cultists. I just needed to paint two large aberrant (didn't get the second one completely finished... yet) and a model with a mining laser (old half finished jezzail conversion.)

I played two games, one against Eldar, the second against Tyranids. Opposite styles of play, and my Cheese-stealers were right about in the middle it seemed - not overwhelmingly good at close combat or shooting, but decent at each. So they did well.

I'm now looking into acquiring some legitimate Adeptus Mechanicus minis. (Though I may turn them into AdMech renegade meat hating robot pirates...)


In addition to playing a few games and visiting with friends, I rummaged through my friend Rich's collection and pulled out a few things to take home. I picked out some wormie things and some beat-up chaos knights, and a pair of old warriors. But the most important thing to me was to have one of his WWI planes. He's the reason I got into WWI aviation, both in terms of gaming and history. I chose an Albatros D.V -- my first love in planes of the period. I never had much luck with it, but I used this model many times over the years (decades!) in games of Blue Max & Canvas Eagles. It's a fine looking model of a fine looking plane. Maybe someday I will finish my own planes (currently stalled... haha) and play some more. Until then, I'll have this one out on display.

I couldn't pass this next one up...

The Grenadier giant on the right was on display in Rich's living room at both houses he had while I knew him. In the latter, he was on a hill facing a dwarf giant slayer (I should have looked for the dwarf so I could recreate the scene at home!) situated on a table beside the TV/entertainment center. He will obviously have a place of honor in my giant collection. If not for the memories, then possibly as the heaviest model I own! I'll need to find a spot for him in our family room.

I also picked out the second giant, on the left as well. It's based on a Larry Elmore painting, a print of which hung in Rich's game room alongside many others.


One final, totally unrelated item. I picked up this from the local craft store...

The Marienburgers need an airship. The basket will be replaced with a suitably sized armed & armored gondola.

Mantic Giant

My Mantic giant arrived today. It's the only thing I got from the KS. I showed great restraint.

A quick dry fit to check the size compared to some of my other giants. I happen to have the Otherworld giant on my desk, still awaiting assembly. I think they will be pretty close in size when assembled, though proportioned somewhat differently (as just about every giant seems to be.)

And another quick check against a couple of the finished giants. I think the Mantic, Otherworld, Warploque, and Ultraforge giants will be of similar size when they're all complete.

I will need to get a new group photo when those two and the Heresy giant are done. But for reference, below are a couple of previous group shots.

End of April - Giant Progress

This is as far as I got by the end of Big April.

Slow Progress Giant

Next Giant...

Next up for Big April '18 is the big guy from Heresy Miniatures. Was a very quick cleanup & assembly. Clean casting and fit together well. Didn't even bother pinning, as everything seemed keyed and/or seated very securely.

A pic next to the Marauder giant and my usual handgunner scale reference...

Need to wait for better weather to prime him. I'll also be back in Texas (Houston, this time) for most of this week, so I won't get to work on this one until next weekend, at the earliest.

Walter

Done. May write up some background for Walter in the near future.

It seems like I say this about half the giants I own, but this is one of my favorite models.

Walter's Loot

Slowly painting Walter's loot. (Yes, that will be his name - or some variation of it.) He's got a pig, goat, goose, maiden, sausages, and a bunch of other little details...

Big April Progress - Warploque Drunk Walter Skank Jerk Matthau

Progress on the Warploque giant. Big colors blocked out, with various levels of shading & highlighting. Decided that the keg should be full of a nice rich porter. Still a lot of detail to work out on this guy!

As I'm painting, I can't get a certain old image out of my head (stolen internets image)...

...just swap the head with that of Walter Matthau (another stolen internets image)..

Marshing into April

No more marsh-y themed minis for March. I'm still working on stripping the paint from those old Marauder trolls, and looking for the remaining two that I still don't have.  In the meantime, I am soaking the other four in some Dawn Power Dissolver, at the recommendation of Blue. My usual go-to, Simple Green, just wasn't cutting it this time.

I did manage to strip, prime and start on the MM41 ogre that finally completes my collection.

While that's all going down, I also, miraculously quick, finished the Westfalia goat knights!

Although I do think I will be turning one of these into a standard bearer at some point. Or maybe I will try to get a few more to create a standard, champion, and musician...

So with Big April coming up, I'm looking forward to...

Giants! (And the above-mentioned ogre.) A bit ambitious, and slightly out of focus it seems. First will be finishing the paint on the Warploque giant. While that's going on, I will prep the other two -- from Heresy and Otherworld.

IF, by some miracle that all gets done, I have more in mind. I would still REALLY like to sculpt my own giant. Given the timing, that's been on my mind again and I think I've got a decent picture in my head of that I want to do. Also, I've got some more giants here, still waiting to be painted. I have several of the Reaper Bones giants from their last KS. These are a bit larger than the older sculpts, and in fact one is a resculpt of one I've previously painted.

I've also got the extra heads from the Otherworld giant. The web site says to select one, but they ended up sending all three. I could try to magnetize them so they're swapable. Or maybe I can work out a way to get an extra giant out of the deal...

...oooooor maybe not.