31 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Batman Miniatures Game - completed figures so far...

A nice group shot of my completed BMG figures so far - It really shows size of the Bane figure! Hopefully I'll finish more soon.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

30 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Batman Miniatures Game - Bases

I thought that I'd give some close-up shots of the bases. I decided that I needed a bit more on them, other than the lovely grass tufts - to that end, I had a look online for newspapers from the Batman films and wanted posters
TDKR Bane's base - this is a wanted poster for Batman, which I thought suited the figure very well after the final events of The Dark Knight. I saved the image to my laptop and then pasted it into a Word document and rescaled it to a number of different sizes, which I then printed to see which would best fit the base. I cut out the best one with scalpel, distressed some of the edges and then applied it to the base with slightly watered PVA.
This was a newspaper with a headline along the lines of "Harvey Dent Joins Race for DA" - I followed the method noted above and glued it to the base.
This was another newspaper - in this case, the headline was "BATMAN saves whole family". Once the glue on them was dry I then washed them with Army Painter Strong Tone (very similar to the old GW Devlan Mud), followed by a later wash that I refer to as a "shit wash" - it's a pot of greyish-brownish watered-down paint that I use to finish off the gravel/sand on my bases.

I hope this inspires some interesting ideas for basing! Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

29 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Batman Miniatures Game - Mobsters

These Mobsters are part of the reason I decided to start collecting figures for the game - I love the poses and the retro style of the suits and weaponry! I was immediately reminded of the wonderful opening sequence of Batman: The Animated Series, with the bank robbers in the darkness. I once again used Google image search to find interesting colours to paint the clothing - these look like pretty well dressed criminals!

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

28 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Batman Miniatures Game - Black Mask Thugs

The first two Black Mask crew members - I'm enjoying picking out colours for the clothing on these figures - Google image search has been my friend when picking these out. The green tufts are new for me - they're from an order I placed with Gamers Grass, which is a company I would highly recommend to any wargamer! The prices are fantastic and the product is top notch.


Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

27 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Batman Miniatures Game - Bane

This is the first in a number of posts regarding the wonderful figures from Knight Models...
The first Batman Miniatures Game figure I purchased, approximately 2 years ago - Bane, as portrayed by Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises. I loved the treatment of the character in the film and the miniature captured him perfectly. I had originally only planned on getting him from the range, but a friend offered me the Black Mask starter crew at a very reasonable price and I was unable to resist. I then added a bunch of other figures to them...
I followed the costume in the film as much as possible, finding some great reference pictures (stills from the movie and also pictures of the various 1/6 scale action figures) and mixing paints to match them. One thing I would say about my experience with the Knight Models figures so far - the casting leaves something to be desired, especially for figures which are on the premium side of the price scale. The hands, for example, were fairly miscast. With regards to the bases, I wanted to go for a sort of scrubland feel across the collection, so they'd fit my terrain collection nicely. I also added some detritus to some of the bases - more on that in a post in the future.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

26 July 2015

Work-in-Progress - SAGA Revenants Warband

When Gripping Beast recently announced the new one-off SAGA Revenant warband I was immediately hooked on the idea! It also just so happened that I'd picked up a huge bag of plastic skeleton parts at a local wargames show earlier in the year and that the bag would just about cover a full 4pt starter on it's own! 
I started off with my usual SAGA basing method - especially where plastics are concerned - 1p coins glued to the top of a Renedra plastic base to add a little weight.
I happened to be going to visit my parents for a couple of nights, so I packed up some tools, some polycement and the bag of skellies, plus all the extra skeleton parts and misc. fantasy shields I could find in my collection. I still need to find another few skeletons to make them up to the full 48 figures needed for the force, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find them.
Starting to take shape, with shields from the most recent Warhammer skeletons, beastmen, marauders and even some arms from the original plastic skeletons.
The bag of bits I got was a mix of the Mk2 Warhammer plastic skeletons and the Mantic plastic skeletons - handily, the original owner had already carved off the built-in shields that come attached to the Mantic skeletons, allowing me to use GW shields of similar designs to tie both the plastic sets together. Note the interesting goblin wicker shields here and
The horde assembled! 
 
The Necromancer - the original figure is a Warhammer Chaos Sorcerer and the head is from the Putrid Blightkings set and is normally hanging from one of their shoulderpads - it's a head wrapped in sacking and reminded me of the Batman villain, The Scarecrow. I like it, but the folks I have shown him to have expressed doubt. It'll look better once I get him painted...
On the subject of painting, here is how they current stand and have for about 6 weeks now.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

24 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages/Fantasy RPG - Townsfolk Characters

These are a selection of characters which a bit different to the rest of the dark age villagers - they're a mix of the brilliant Reaper Bones range and some misc. metals.
From left to right - a blacksmith, a tavern wench, a lady of the night, an innkeeper and finally, a squire (although I may use him as a travelling pedaller). These are all from the Reaper Bones range - they're more to be used in Fantasy Skirmish/RPG games where suited.
A farmer - possibly Grenadier? I'm not sure - he was part of an eBay lot of mixed figures.
An executioner - I've been informed that he's actually from the Foundry Miniatures pirate range. I picked him up from Midlam Miniatures.

The last metal figure in the group is a Maid Marion-esque figure from the Edric the Wild pack from Foundry - I wanted her to stand out in a bright white dress, but I seem unable to take pictures of the figure - all of the pictures come out with just a plain white dress, leeching away the shading and highlights.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - The Clergy

I needed some clergymen for various SAGA/dark ages scenarios - I picked up a blister of Gripping Beast monks and a blister of Foundry Anglo-Saxon characters which contained a Friar Tuck-esque fellow whilst at the Vapnartak wargames show in York back in February and then the scribe from the CP Models.
This is the monk from the Edric the Wild blister - a real chunky figure (that's a 30mm base) and holding a ham shank! He's apparently inspired by Friar Tuck.

The CP Models scribe - quite a slight figure, but I don't mind a bit of difference in the height or build of figures. CP Models have since added two new dark age monks to their shop, which I will eventually add to these to round out the collection.
The Gripping Beast monks blister - sculpted to be walking in the classic religious procession I think! Some of the casts on these weren't too great, but they'll do!

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

23 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - Male Villagers pt.3

The final group of male villagers - Gripping Beast and Black Tree Design.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - Ladies and Children

The women and children for my dark age village - from what I can remember, these are all from Gripping Beast.
The ladies of the village - I would guess that the one with the bundle of sticks is a slave by her clothing.
The children - the one in the hat broke off at the ankles during assembly so I ended up pinning them.

Another batch completed as part of the 6MMRPC.
Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!


Dark Ages - Houndmaster

I finished this a couple of months ago, in some painting I was doing for the Game of Thrones project, but he was originally purchased to be used with my dark ages villagers - a hound master for the town. I picked up the models quite cheaply from eBay - it's a blister sold by Warlord Games. There was also a third hound but unfortunately the legs snapped and were far too thin to pin back together. 

I think he'll be useful in certain scenarios - I can imagine him being used by the local lord to track down a werewolf's lair or to hunt the last survivors of a failed raid.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

22 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - Male Villagers pt.2

More bog standard villagers - quite a dark picture! These are once again a mix of Black Tree Design and Gripping Beast. Oddly enough, one of them didn't have half of his facial hair sculpted on - I only realised this after they'd been basecoated so I just decided to leave it. It's not really noticeable unless you look very closely!


Many more figures to come in the next few weeks - slowly getting through the backlog of figures I need to post up! These were completed as part of the 6 Month Mountain Reduction and Painting Challenge - comments and suggestions are most welcome and thanks for reading!

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - Livestock

I wanted some animals to populate parts of the planned dark age settlement - I finished painting these a few weeks ago.
This donkey and foal are from Forlorn Hope Games - nice enough figures but perhaps a tad small alongside the rest of my dark age figures - not too bad though. Very simple paintjob, but then there isn't a great amount of detail on the figures.
I needed these for the Song of Shadows and Dust rules from Ganesha Games - my plan is to reskin the game from Roman/Greek towns to a Viking trading town. In game, the donkey can kick folks that get too close.
Chickens from Warbases - in SoSaD there are rules for geese/poultry - they can muck up a stealthy approach by kicking up a racket in surprise. 
Finally, hogs! These are the lovely Iron Age Pigs from Warbases. I really enjoyed painting these - I now need to build them a pen.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

21 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - Levy Bowmen

Levy Bowmen - these will come in handy for Dux Britanniarum Vikings - the figures are from Black Tree Design and were kindly sent to me by David of The Spider Web of History. They will also come in handy as villagers who managed to pick up bows as their settlement was attacked.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

Dark Ages - Anglo-Saxon Earls and Flemish Mercenaries

These figures are from Gripping Beast - the Anglo-Saxon historical figure Hereward the Wake, a unit of Flemish Mercenaries (a heavily-armoured Warrior unit choice) and another gentleman that I decided to use as a potential leader too - he's from the Welsh Teulu pack from GB and is a lovely sculpt.
I decided that I was going to paint them in the same sort of scheme - the plan being that the characters are father and son and the unit is their personal bodyguard. In SAGA I'd be using the Flemish Mercenaries as Hearthguard - I think they look suitably well-off and hardcore. The Mercenaries had the "open hand" that lots of historical figures come with - I generally very much dislike the look of this when the weapon options don't look properly gripped. With these, I removed the open hands and replaced them with suitable plastics from the GB range - I pinned them into place to make sure they wouldn't snap off in a slight breeze. The shields were part of the casts.
Not much in the way of changes to the base figures - Hereward's shield was originally the classic round shield, so I gave him a kite shield to fit with the rest of his bodyguard. This is probably historically inaccurate, but I'm pleased with the outcome! The colour scheme is probably inaccurate too (the uniform-look) but I wanted it to be easy to distinguish between these and the less professional soldiers in the army. 
Here's a close up on the shields that I've painted - I stuck to some pretty simple designs and added weathering.
Comments and suggestions are most welcome - many thanks for reading!

20 July 2015

#6MMRPC - Dark Ages - Male Villagers pt.1

Civilians for my dark age projects - these are a mix of Black Tree Design and Gripping Beast. Lots more to come over the next few weeks - I'm aiming for a post of new stuff each day until the end of the month.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thank you for reading!

19 July 2015

Future Project - The Giant Crocodilian

I always like the section in Toys R Us with the Schleich animals and Papo knights/dragons/random creatures - this is one that I always considered picking up whilst perusing them - a Papo Crocodile Mutant - but it always seemed just a bit too pricey compared to what I could buy from the Reaper Bones range for the same sort of price. I decided to search for it on eBay a few months ago and found one going for less than a fiver including post! So obviously he got added to the mountain... He'll make a brilliant giant for use with my Fantasy Skirmish stuff - that's a 28mm Gripping Beast miniature with him for scale!  Thinking about it, he almost looks like a Hordes Skorne creature with that armour and paintjob!


Comments and suggestions for paint scheme and weapons are most welcome - thank you for reading!

17 July 2015

The Wasteland Doc

"Need stimpaks? Radaway? Uppers, downers, blues, reds? 'Slaught? Frenzon? Jet, Hydra, Fixer? I've got what you need..."
- The Doc

The final figure from the Copplestone Castings Wasteland Characters set. Painted a long time ago, just recently found in the box of Dark Eldar and other figures that had remained in hypersleep since moving to my current house. 
Comments? Feel free to leave one below!

16 July 2015

The Jabberwocky

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son 
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 
This is easily one of my favourite figures that I've completed in some time! Finished a few months back, it's the brilliant Reaper Bones Jabberwocky. I had it undercoated and washed for about a year before I finally found the courage to tackle it!
I broke out the old Citadel Inks to get a glossy finish for the creature - I wanted it to look sickly and ill to match the unnatural look that the creature has in general. I'm especially happy with the result on the eyes. 
I had to add the piece of branch to the base following assembly and undercoating - I love the Bones plastic material, but the leg joint on this particular figure was sadly just a bit too weak and it began to slump forward over time. I'm very happy with the end result!

Comments and suggestions are most welcome!

15 July 2015

Terrain - Grave Mounds

A recent quick terrain project, inspired by a scenario over at The Stronghold Rebuilt.
These were really easy to build - MDF round bases, some washers glued to the top for weight, a chunk of polystyrene foam carved to the required shape and then rounded off with sandpaper. Glued to the base with No More Nails-type adhesive and a little stone was carved out of cork sheet and glued into place as a sort of entrance to the tomb. Sand and gravel was then added around the sides with PVA and then sand was added all over the mound with PVA. Leave to dry overnight and then paint in your normal basing method.
The final stages are to add flock (various types) and then I added a few green stuff mushrooms that I made a while back and the urns following the tutorial over at Gardens of Hecate. I searched online for esoteric alphabets to find the symbols to add to the entrance stones. It helped that I was watching Constantine at the time.
What really helps with these is the various types of flock that I used - a blend of static flock, a blend of sawdust flock and then some sawdust flock with a high amount of yellow - this makes for perfect patches of buttercups and similar weeds.

I used these recently in a grave robbing Song of Blades and Heroes scenario - it was a good one!
Comments and questions are welcome below!

14 July 2015

Undead Warriors vs Spider-Worshipping Tribesmen

Just a nice picture from a game a couple of months back - Oldhammer Skeletons, my Game of Thrones (GW LotR Morannon Orcs) Wildlings and a Heresy Miniatures giant spider clash.

13 July 2015

Merric Tealeaf, Halfling Rogue

I gave my housemate the recent starter set for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons as a Christmas gift - neither of us had played it before and he expressed an interest in running a campaign of it - here's the character I put together for those games:
Meet Merric Tealeaf, Halfling Rogue, Thief, ex-Brigand. Not a bad man, as such, just willing to do some bad things every now and then. His warband-mates tended to express some disgust at the fact that he wasn't usually to be found in the front rank in most fights, but he tended to work best from the shadows and by using his wits rather than brawn. 
Amusingly they left him in charge of the coinage and treasures they discovered...
Sadly, after 3 or 4 sessions the rest of the players seem to have become distracted and my housemate apparently struggles to keep to one setting for an extended period of time...

The figure is a Reaper Bones Hellakin Gorecutter. I changed the short sword he was previously wielding for one that looked a bit more vicious and stealthier (from the Dark Elf Witches plastic kit).

Comments are welcome!