Cupboards and Creatures (and Nuns)

Cupboards & Creatures &Nuns... Is this the name of a new RPG? It could be or it just might be a description of what I've painted in the last few days?

I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide.

I'll start with the nuns:

These figures are the Frostgrave Sigilist set (wizard and apprentice). The wizard is an interesting sculpt and not what I'd really expect. I think both figures would actually work better as a Thaumaturge & apprentice. Despite what I think I like both figures. The wizard has a very unique look.

Next up are these dark and evil looking creatures. These are Shadows from WizKids. They come in a pack of two and they are actually transparent. I guess some people might like to use them as invisible ghosts or whatever. I decided to make them black/grey and I guess they can be used for various evil creatures. They are pretty chunky for your typical WizKids figures. 

Some more Frostgrave Snakemen. This lot gives me 10 figures. I might make another pair of them armed with bows and that should pretty much do it. I don't think I'll need more than a dozen of them.

And some furniture: Cupboards and book cases from the Mantic Terrain Crate. I still have plenty of little bits to paint from the crate. It does, after all have a ton of stuff in it. These are pretty roughly painted. I can't see the point of doing them in great detail because they're really just background things.

These can be set as a corner unit or as individual pieces. There's enough of them to fill out a good sized room. The furniture in my previous posts goes well with them and they'd make a nice looking study for a wizard or they'd look good in a pulp game.

And just for scale here's Sister Mary Elephant

checking out one of the dusty tomes.

And that's it. There is a chance that some of these cupboards might have monsters hidden inside them, or within the pages of a musty book or mouldering scroll. If that happens to be true, we'll deal with them as we find them. In the meantime, thank you for reading.

A Fountain. A Flower. Some Tentacles

I resumed my solo campaign of Rangers of Shadow Deep and I'm keen to keep going (you can follow the campaign here or via the page in the header above). However one game into it and, I found that I needed a specific piece of terrain and somewhere along the way I also need a specific monster. So, if I wanted to continue I needed to make them. So I got busy.

The most pressing thing I need is a fountain. I made this using the lid of a yoghurt container glued onto a cardboard base and some odd bits and pieces. I've had the figure sitting around for a long, long time. I think it came from a set of 15mm ancient slaves. The problem is, is that the figure is about 23mm tall. It took a while to find a place for it but here it is:

The water is just a couple of thick layers of GW 'Ard Cote. I would have liked to a use some water effects but there's two problems with that: 1) I've never used water effects and I don't know how to apply it. 2) I don't have any water effects. So that solved that problem. 

And here it is with a couple of figures for scale. 

The plant I need is called a Darkroot (or something like that). It needs a body and a bunch of tendrils or roots or something. I got a set of large plants last year. They are Reaper Bones figures and they look suitably weird. I only painted one of them and the other has been sitting on the bench waiting for its time to come. So I painted it this week.

In the game the plant has a bunch of roots or tentacles that attack the player characters. These I made by rolling up some greenstuff and twisting them into weird shapes. I then flattened their bottom edges and glued them onto bases. Add some paint and that was it. They look suitably slimy and threatening.

This is the first plant I painted. I think it looks better than the opened up version. It has a very Lovecraftian look. I'm not sure which scenario it turns up in during the campaign, but at least I have it ready for when it makes its grand entrance.

A Quick Post ~ Stuff I've Painted

 Just a quick one to post a couple of figures that I painted over the weekend. Again, it's a bit of a variety which seems to always be the case when doing stuff for skirmish games.

First is this guy: He's from Reaper miniatures and he's great. I was really struck by the pose which conveys a "no nonsense" attitude. He could be used as a ranger character for Rangers of Shadowdeep but I think I'll team him up with another similar Reaper figure to make a Wizard/Apprentice combo for Frostgrave.

Next is a Frosgrave figure. This came in a set with a much better figure. As it turned out this figure has been sitting half finished on my table for several months. I decided to finish it just to get it done. It's not one of my favorite figures. I think it's too busy and looks cluttered and it's feet are awkward and out of scale too. But who knows...? It may grow on me in time. Then, and only then, will our true love blossom.

Skeleton Archers: These are Reaper Bones. I just picked them up a couple of days back and painted them immediately (I picked up the top figure at the same time). They're really simple and I like the look of them. I was inspired to grab them after painting the Mantic skeleton archer I did in my last post. I figure 4 archer-skellies should be enough for most skirmish scenarios.

Some treasure: More from the Mantic Terrain Crate. Nothing really special but the plinth with the crown are actually two separate small pieces that I glued together. They make for an interesting and pretty little treasure token. All of the pieces are based on the plastic bases that I removed from the Terrain Crate figures. 

Another Fantasy Interlude

Whilst I've been putting together my zombie apocalypse rules (Infection Z) I've also tried to keep doing a bit of painting every day. At the start of the year I was painting at a really fast rate but that slowed as I spent more time typing on the pc. But now the typing has eased off and it's tiem to get back to the brush!

So what have I got?

Well, first up I have a couple of barbarians from eM4 Miniatures. These are old Grenadier sculpts and I use to own these 30 odd years back. Great figures and at a nice price. Very clean casting. I have a few more to do and I hope they come out as nice as this pair did.

A man with a big horn. I'm not sure if he's making up for his short comings or if he thinks he's the barbarian equivalent of John Coltrane or Eric Dolphy.

These are a pair of town's women from Reaper (Black Bones). Nothing special but they're okay for what they are. They came in a set of 3 and it was mainly the third figure that I really wanted.

Another Reaper figure (metal this time). I wanted a grim looking wizard/warlock for Rangers of Shadowdeep. I want to make up a new ranger character that is more magic centered rather than the regular combat type. This guy looked like he could live out in the wild lands without too much worry. I don't know what his name will be yet.

And finally, some heavy archers for my elfin army. These are Oathmark plastics and they took a while to paint (mainly because I lost interest). But I forced myself to paint them because I didn't want them to spend years sitting on my desk. I'm glad I did get them done because they do look nice. I need to get my act together and paint up more of the Oathmark orcs and elves that are sitting in boxes in my workroom. I might get some of the light elf figures too.

EDIT: I forgot to add this figure to the mix. I don't know what it is but I'm pretty sure it came from Old Glory. I think he'll be a superhero or something. Something to do with negative energy (black hole space energy?) or maybe something to do with coal or oil or something. I don't know yet.

In Which I Bear All

Once again I'm here with some more fantasy figures that I've finished over the past few days. As usual these are a fairly mixed bag with some of them being very, very new (I bought one just two days back) and one that has been waiting for a few years.

First the old: This hag figures is from the original Malifaux range and I've had it for ages. It has sat with a few coats of paint, getting dustier and dustier every day for the past 8, 9, 10, 12 years? (I don't know). Anyway, I picked it up, dusted it off and gave it a very basic paint job. It's not great but it looks okay.

These next few are from the  Frostgrave range from Northstar - First up a bear. I don't know much about bears except that they like to eat honey and salmon. A nice figure. Easy to paint so you can't go wrong.

A barbarian and a rogue. I think there's a bit of a  Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser thing happening here. These are a Frostgrave set. They're nice figures with plenty of character and they were nice to paint. They have enough detail to make them interesting but not so much that they're overwhelming. I don't have anything specific in mind for these two at this stage. Maybe I make them fight the Thieves Guild in Lankhmar.

And the last one is a Wizards of the Coast D&D figure. This is the one I bought two days ago. I got it as a new character figure for my Rangers of Shadow Deep games. For what it is, it's a reasonably decent figure but, just this morning, I discovered that I have a couple of better Reaper figures that I could have used. Oh well. This one will do for now. (It does have good hair).

And that's it for now.

Oh no! There's Another Nasty Bug in the Air.

I've been back to painting figures again over the past few days. A combination of being housebound & playing Rangers of Shadow Deep has me looking at my lead pile and finishing things that have been waiting for a long, long time.

For instance: these bugs have been waiting for a couple of years. I did buy them to make a bug army for FireFight but lost interest. But I found them and thought that they'd be good for a near future game of RoSD. I think they came from Khurasan Miniatures and I think they're supposed to be 15mm beasts. I'll be using them as giant flies.

 And a couple of grounded cousin.

These are a kit-bash. I found a bunch of armless torsos of  of some of the Hawkmoon figures I sculpted for Eureka Miniatures a few years back. I added some arms from the Oathmark plastic goblin set and a little bit of green-stuff. They came up really nice. I have a few more of these torsos so I might make a few more.

I bought a bag full of ghostly GW figures from a friend. They are sort of weird flimsy things but they look okay. I need a creepy ghostly knight for the next RoSD scenario so I thought I give one of them a quick paint job. I think he came out nice. I did some reflective light source stuff on him. This isn't something I would normally do but, I have to admit, it really made a difference on the figure.

Yes, I know the base is very, very basic. I just wanted something fast and easy so I just settled on paint. I know it's dull but it will work well for the scenario he's going to appear in.

And that's it for the moment. I still have plenty of lead I hope to get as much painted as I can while. I'm also making a fair bit of terrain and my next post will probably be about some of the terrain I've recently done.

Cheers, and stay well.