32mm (1:48) scale miniatures.
It has been a while since we did a blog post about anything other than what has been happening or upcoming events. I thought that I would share my Ice bases I made for my Nords from Para-bellum games. I am expanding that army now in our very own slow grow event I thought I … Read more
The month of May saw the beginnings of two campaigns within the club for Necromunda: Underhive and Frostgrave. Other Games included Battletech Alphastrike, Conquest, ADLG, Car Wars and Star Wars Legion
Just one figure in this Mythic Battles Pantheon update. This time it is one of the hero figures: King Leonidas. You might recognise him as he’s gained a fair bit of notoriety as a bit of an arse-kicker. I don’t have a huge amount to say about him, so I won’t write much. The colours … Read more
A little continuation of the Mythic Battles Pantheon project. Another troop unit, but this time it’s time for some Hoplites. Now, historically the Spartans would have been called Hoplites (and also probably would have had a spear as their primary weapon) so the last post and this one are a little mixed up. However, this … Read more
Mythic Battles: Pantheon (MBP) is a miniature boardgame produced by Monolith Board Games. MBP features characters from Greek Mythology in a 2-player boardgame; essentially collecting items from a board and controlling areas. Monolith are a French mob who Kickstart games with heaps of miniatures and end up with pledge totals in the millions. Not miles … Read more
A long term goal of mine is to build a tropical island game board for my 28mm games of Star War Legion (Scarif) and Legends of the High Seas. The most obvious part of the landscape of any tropical paradise is palm trees and other lush ferns and bushes. So I set about creating some … Read more
Painting the Ludus Magnus starter set with Scale75 paints. Micon, Infelix and Marcus Furious.
The First contact I had with Kings of War: Vanguard was interesting to say the least. The books and miniatures arrived, and we jumped right in. When we started playing games it was with small 100 point forces to get used to the mechanics. I learnt the hard way, didn’t use the rules correctly, had to learn … Read more
My first batch of 10 walkers. I’m sure I will need more, and in fact I have another 8 I will paint up before too long. I’ve made these much darker and simpler than the heroes. Simpler because there are so many, they’re not the heroes and they’re dirty and grimy any way. I didn’t … Read more
These three don’t really belong together (OK, the first two do…). However, I put them together when doing pictures so they’re staying together. First the Governor (Brian Blake), he’s the origial scary bad guy from the comics. I wanted a prepper vibe for him, so it was a couple of muted colours with a bright … Read more
A couple of weeks back I had my first games of Mantic Games’ The Walking Dead: All Out War. I must say I quite enjoyed it. The game is set in the universe of The Walking Dead Comics (on which the TV show was based), so it’s not quite what you might recognise from TV. … Read more
After a little break to finish off the Russian vehicle commission, I have come back to my Malifaux crews.
Another product of the Cancon surge, this guy was pretty simple. He’s based for the Ramos crew, but gets a workout with Colette as well.
With the main act complete, I’ve moved on to the supporting act. This time it’s two showgirls.
I’ve been excited to paint Colette’s Showgirls for a little while, but also somewhat intimidated. Most of my painting is fairly earthy in tone. It’s mainly military camouflage which is usually pretty drab and green/brown (for obvious reasons). However, I’ve got a real chance with the Showgirls to step things out to brighter and more vibrant colours. So while the Orc State bloodbowl guys were a bit brighter, I’m now going to pretty it up a little and get a fair bit brighter.
A few simple models, and the start of my Colette crew. I haven’t finished every model I’ll use with Ramos (I haven’t even finished my core crew to be honest), but I’m keen to do some more interesting colours and the showgirls will give me plenty of chances to use some pretty bright and vibrant colours.
Before that though I wanted to just get some things painted – to whit I’ve quickly done up the three Mechanical Doves that come in Colette’s box. I didn’t go wild with these; they’re pretty cool little miniatures and I think adding to much more will just make them distracting. One thing I did do with these was to paint the base colour on with an airbrush.
First the colours for the dove themselves.
I painted another 3 steam arachnids and that now means I’ve got 6 fully painted up. I have another 3 I will paint soon, although I think 6 should suffice for most games. Still, maybe I just go crazy one time and throw spiders out for the sheer joy of it. As I was painting these I noticed 2 of them were missing their funnels. I have no idea when or where they fell off, so I think I’ve got to deal with them never being there. Funnily enough, none of the ones I am yet to paint are missing theirs. I’ve put all 6 completed spiders together for their class photo.
Howard is my favourite Malifaux miniature at the moment. In the game he’s amazing; expensive and fragile, but amazing. He’s pretty easy to get in position, works really well with Ramos, can do 3 attacks in a turn and has a instant-kill trigger. I suspect most of you who have played Malifaux will have either run or met him, so don’t need me to tell you what he’s capable of.
As a present the better half picked up a Plastcraft Games Train Station. This piece is part of their ColorED range and is designed for Malifaux. The kit consists of a number of PVC sheets that have had one side printed with the patterns you see on the box. There is also some texture on the printed sides that gives some nice 3D texture to what is otherwise flat sides.
There’s not a huge number of colours on this model. It’s mainly about modulating the colours. Again blue is a feature of the flame to tie it together with the other models (in particular the Electric Creation). The filters applied to the body were dilute and applied unevenly; the intent is to give some colour variation. The brown makes the pale yellow metallic richer. The brown blue wash hints at oxidized brass and adds some more depth and interest (in particular in some of the recesses).
I’ve shifted from Bloodbowl to Malifaux for a little bit. I’ve got a bye in Bloodbowl so it will be a few weeks until I play again. While, in just 3 short weeks I am playing in a Malifaux tournament (Twatifaux). As a result I want to get as much painted as possible so as to give me variety in what I run. This little guy doesn’t spend long on the board to be frank. I tend to be killing him in order to create a scrap marker that then starts my Steam Arachnid engine. Still, one day I might keep him round past turn 1.
I put 3 individual Steam Arachnids up earlier, and when I was looking for colours I noticed a couple of things missing. I’ve now painted a swarm and a little trial and error cleared up the rest of the recipe.
Another Malifaux figure done. This scheme is more like the box art, but I wanted to make the coat a little more of a sea blue colour to it. I’m going with a blue theme for this crew. It’s the Arcanist colour and I think it suits Ramos. I’ve used the same colour on the baby arachnid he’s holding that I used on the larger Arachnids that I posted earlier. Again blue to tie it all together.
Continuing my journey into Malifaux I spent a heap of time painting a bunch of bases using the same colours as the Arachnids, and now it’s on to actually painting some figures. I’ve started with Joss as he’s got a nice large area of easy to access muscular skin and I wanted to try a couple of skin techniques I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while.
Batman week continues with another scenery item. Our simplest piece yet – the Gotham Phone Booth. Sure it’s not much to look at, but it was a fair bit of work to put together. I had a couple of issues with this model. The main one being that it hadn’t been cut through all the way; it wasn’t too bad, but it took a fair bit of work to get the pieces out and clean up. The other issue is that there is an acrylic box that goes on the inside. This is made up of 4 sheets of 3mm thick acrylic and it’s just a little too big. As a result it had to be filed down to get it to fit. Neither of these was a big deal, but it did mean it took about as long to put together as the SWAT van and it’s a fraction the size.
The good people at Knight Models were generous enough to send a few terrain pieces for use at PAX Australia. While most of these are being assembled by Mind Games Melbourne (who are helping me out). One of the items I am assembling is Knight Model’s SWAT Van. This model is laser cut from 3mm MDF and went together really easy. I smoothed out the edges with some Squadron Green putty and added clear plastic sheet windows (old blister packaging). Aside from that it’s pretty much just been assembled and painted straight from the kit.
There’s been a little Batman progress over the last few days. The impending PAX deadline (end of October) has brought these guys to the front of the queue. Where better to start than a BFF for Batman?
I went for a fairly standard look for Commissioner Gordon: charcoal suit, light blue shirt, blue tie and a brown overcoat.
Another voyage into a completely different system. This week it’s Malifaux by Wyrd Games. First off I want to say I’ve never really given plastics much thought; I guess I was a little old school and hadn’t really moved on from metals. The quality of Dust’s figures hadn’t really sold me either: great vehicles, but soft detailed infantry. However, I’m in love with the Malifaux plastics. They’re on a par with the Knight Models Batman miniatures, but because they’re plastic they’re able to be much thinner without bending or breaking.
My progress with Batman miniatures has been painfully slow. Which is really a little sad, as they are spectacular miniatures and do paint up very nicely. Maybe that’s why – I do tend to paint them pretty carefully and slowly.
However, I have finished another one. I’m sure you’ll recognize Catwoman, and while there aren’t a thousand colours on there, she did take a fair bit of effort. It was well worth all of it, and I’m stoked with how she’s turned out. I think I’m happier with her than Batman.
Just a quick post with some photos of our Littlewars event. It was a great day. Thanks to Nic @ Eureka for doing all the hard work getting it going, JB my partner in crime, Lord T for the Axis and all the other players for coming along and making it a great day.
With Littlewars this weekend there has been a lot more modelling than posting. It’s been a little frantic with trying to do all the usual life stuff and also squeeze in getting as much as possible ready. However, I did take one quick picture this evening of the work on the objective so far. If you’ll recall from an earlier post this is meant to be a statue that will be what everyone’s trying to get close to in our King of The Hill style game. I’ll post some information after the event when I have more time, but it promises to be pretty cool so anyone in the Melbourne area should get on down this weekend.
Progress – happy progress. I’ve finally finished 5 KV walkers to finish the bulk of the painting. I’ve also shuffled the platoons around to introduce Winter Child and reduce my painting requirements. Any way I’ll detail the new platoons later this week and do shots of each platoon together. Progress is also being made on the scenery, so that will feature soon. Lastly I’ll preview how we’re going to run the day and describe a couple of rule alterations to make things flow for newbies.
Any way, that’s enough waffle – on to the walkers.
First the KV-3. This variant is not so good. The gattling cannons maul infantry and light walkers, but so do most SSU units so there’s no real need for this walker. Unfortunately it’s not much good against aircraft (apparently due to the arms not being able to elevate far enough – that’s one Soviet engineer who is Gulag bound). However it is sexy and so perfect for a demo game
The Littlewars event we are running is a King of the Hill style event where the aim is to be the only side close to an objective at the end of each turn. As such we need an objective that’s worth fighting for. With the plan to have the fight occurring in a city it seemed natural to have a square with a statue or fountain in the middle and that would form the objective.
A fountain seems a bit dull, and while a group of children playing ring-a-rosie a la the centre of Stalingrad might be poignant I’m not sure how I’d pull it off.
I made some progress this week with a couple of Dust Warfare units for Little Wars. I finished the Mi-47 transport walker that’s been the subject of an earlier post about Anarchy Models’s stencils. I’m pretty stoked with how this has come out. The stencils are great and I’m happy with the heavily weathered look I’ve gotten. The storey behind this helo is that it’s survived the winter’s skirmishing after a busy autumn and now as spring is arriving and the grass is starting to reclaim the battlefield it is off to collect a new walker.
I posted a picture of one of these buildings about a week ago. These are being painted for a Dust Warfare event at Little Wars that I’m running with a couple of others. The plan is to have an urban fight over the ruins of Zverograd (an imagined Russian city from Dust) and so we need ruins.
These are good little buildings coming as laser cut MDF. The one you see here is in 6 parts and all together are 22cm by 38cm. They’re the result of Commission Figurines KickStarter. They don’t yet have them up for sale on their website, but I’m sure they will soon. Any way on to some pictures.
I received some laser cut MDF buildings a couple of weeks back. These are from a Kick-starter done by Commission Figurines. They’re 28mm scale which is ever so slightly on the small side for Dust, but really it’s not very noticeable and without the height boost provided by the figure base would probably be perfect. These buildings are really just WWII, but I’ll be using them for Weird WWII, as I don’t play WWII.
In the interest of continuing to jump around projects like a mad man I’ve got a new project lined up. Myself and a couple of others will be running some demo games at Little Wars, which is a convention that runs down here in Melbourne (Australia). Now, where still working out the details of what we will be doing, but basically I’m going to need to paint some Dust minis and build some terrain. Fortunately I’ve been wanting to do these two things regardless. So Little Wars gives me a clear motivation and a deadline; two things that greatly improve my productivity.
It seems I am jumping around a fair bit at the moment, so let’s continue the pattern and introduce another line of minis. This one is by Knight Models who have the rights to produce Batman miniatures. Now, they’re not cheap, but Knight have done a spectacular job of sculpting these and the game around them is pretty good with a definite Batman feel to the combat. However, this is one of those ones that is almost completely about the miniatures.
This is a bit of a double post. First I want to talk about a recent KickStarter I got in on. Late last year Anarchy Models ran a quick starter to get some stencils produced. Their campaign was successful and ended up unlocking 38 stencils. Their stencils are designed to be used as masks on … Read more
After a long hiatus on this project I’ve finally made some progress. Not a heap of progress mind you, but still a decent amount. The next step after the base colours is adding a wash to bring out the panel lines, rivets and other details. I use oil paints as they have a long working … Read more
I finally decided how to go with the Ke-Ho and added the yellow lines. And, all in all I’m quite glad I did. I’m really happy with how the base colours have come out and now I’m going to give it a quick spray of gloss varnish to protect the model and make the washes … Read more
A little time with the airbrush has put the base colours on the Ke-Ho. It all started with a dirty green base coat (Green Brown VMC 70879). The Model Colours don’t work straight through an airbrush so you have to thin them. I’ve found another Vallejo product – their Airbush Thinner (VMC 71361) to be … Read more
A quick little update (mainly pics). I’m undercoated the Ke-Ho in grey and then done some shading. I’m using a technique called colour modulation. This technique involves creating exaggerating highlights and darks in the early stages. At the early stage it can look a little goofy, as it over-emphasises natural lighting and makes it look … Read more
Some colour thoughts: The following colours are inspired by Battlefront’s hobby article on painting 15mm WW2 Japanese armour. I’ve no idea how accurate this is and frankly don’t really care: they’re just inspiration for me as the Empire of the Blazing Sun never existed and ball tanks aren’t a real thing either. Base: Green Brown … Read more
Didn’t feel like painting this evening so I busted out the Ke-Ho and started doing some assembly. I had already done a fair bit of trimming and smoothing the parts and a close examination had revealed a couple of things: I had a few air bubbles, but these were very minor and only one part … Read more
I’m back after a bit of a hiatus spent travelling: both for work and fun. One thing that did arrive before my departure was a Ke-Ho tank for Dystopian Legions. I haven’t seen much in the way of online information about this little kit so I figured I might document my experience with it. This … Read more
Another Dust miniature, this is one of my favourites. The look of the miniature has grown on me; initially I thought it was a bit bulbish and rounded, but now I’m all for it. This look also fits in with the feel of Dust: there’s a 50s Pulp feel to the art and the Mi-47 … Read more
I’ve got another Dust piece completed. For those waiting for 3mm, soon I’ll have another couple of helos up and then it will be a couple of group shots ahead of some Hind Commander game. However, for the moment it’s about the big stuff: 32mm. The Dust vehicles are pretty cool as they come with … Read more
Winterchild is complete. I’m pretty happy with how he came up. The metallic effect has worked pretty well. I used an ink instead of the washes I’ve experimented with previously and it made things quite a bit easier. I needed fewer coats to get a nice colouration and the coverage is much easier to manage. … Read more
I’m going to step away from the 3mm stuff for a little while and continue to make a mockery of my title. Like many a wargamer I play a number of systems (too many if I’m honest). So we’re going to use this as an excuse to take a bit of a diversion (apologies if … Read more
