A Long, Strange Road

Six months is enough of a break, Get back to work, slacker.

First off, thanks very much to those of you who have emailed and made sure that I am still of-this-earth. It is nice to feel a part of a global community of like-minded individuals.

I am, in fact, still hard at work painting- it's just that much of the work I have been getting done minis-wise of late has seemed less-than-sharable via this blog. I've been exclusively performing all those mundane tasks that I know all serious hobbyists will nod their heads knowingly about: re-basing warbands (no, NOT for that!), prepping Kickstarter reward packages, and painting minis for other people. These things take time, and they are not the most exciting of topics . . .

Whatcha starin' at?

I have managed to get through two batches of commission work since the last time I wrote. Avid readers of this blog (hah!) will remember that I had given this up earlier in the year to focus more on my own collection. Well, the money is too good and I need too much of it, so it's back on that wagon for ol' VeronaKid.

The first group was this set of beholders. I can't imagine why my client would possibly need so many considering the monster represented is usually a unique addition to a D&D campaign, but hey- these were fun as hell to paint up. My favorite of the batch was certainly the Julie Guthrie-sculpted Reaper version in purple here in the back-left:

The three goofy looking guys that are painted in aqua were also great sculpts, although I have no idea what company or sculptor they come from.

After polishing them off, my client sent me this sweet batch of elementals and constructs, which I just finished off last weekend:


I know the picture here is dark, but I never managed to shoot a decent one of this batch before I sent it back. The huge rock guy in the top right is a killer sculpt from Reaper, and this one in particular was the Bones plastic version, so I assume it is very inexpensive to pick up. My favorite from this batch though is definitely the Albion Fenbeast who is right in front of the rock-hulk. The summer GW campaign that he came from was one of the highpoints of my own personal gaming career. That summer, I must have played WHFB at least three times a week with a really great group of guys. Good memories, and a great sculpt.

Other than that, as I mentioned I have been re-prepping older minis of mine for use as various Skulldred warbands. These were originally all based in very hap-hazard, non-matching manners (different basing materials; some round, some square, some hex-based; etc), so I am trying to "tidy up" the collection, so to speak. Plus, it's cheaper than buying new minis!

Here's shots of a few representative minis from each of the war bands my various family members play in our weekend games:

My older boys' early (Asgard) Goodwin barbarian horde

My recently painted up Skaven

Mostly Reaper lizard men, who usually are mercenary baddies

A couple members of my little guys' greenskin toughs

Wifey's Reaper Amazonians. I can't recommend this line of sculpts enough. Brilliant.

That's really about it. Life has been far too crazy to do anything like actually play games with any of these figures, but I hope to remedy that soon.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

I have to say, I am very amazed at the thunderous silence in this community (and it's associated blog-o-sphere) over the new Warhammer "Age of Sigmar" stuff. I would have expected a much louder outcry along the lines of "See??!!! We knew they would ruin it!!!" I would think that the quiet murmurings simply indicate that old-timers have long since given up altogether. I, for one, still check the GW site frequently. I wouldn't dream of purchasing a plastic figure at their prices, so I haven't ordered anything from them in probably five years now, but I do think, actually, that the new game indicates a step or three in the right direction. Smaller forces encouraged and therefore a smaller initial investment required to participate? Check. Easier-to-digest rules (a la Skulldred, or SOBH) which in turn encourages a younger audience? Check. Elimination of ranked models which in turn eliminates fiddly maneuvers and the subsequent "wait an hour while your opponent moves his entire army" syndrome? Check. It really does feel that the new game is headed back towards its more narrative-driven roots and away from things like Death Star units, killer combos, and out-of-control magic phases.

I do applaud GW for once for not just making the game more bloated and (worse) more exclusive. Blow it up and start anew. Good job.

Hope you are well, wherever you might be. Take care, leadheads. Hopefully the next post here will be before the winter holidays roll around again. :)

Anatomy 101

Nick Bibby continues to astound me. He shouldn't- the dude has a full time gig as a not-miniature-but-like-museum-kind-art sculptor. But those brief years he spent at the Citadel design studio needs to be celebrated. He is, in every way, a master of the craft.

I recently picked up the AD&D Minotaur he did back around 1987. It may not knock the Spined Dragon off its post as the greatest mini of all time, but it's not far behind.

Citadel AD&D Minotaur ADD86 by Nick Bibby

This model had two other variants that I am not such a huge fan of, but this one in particular is, to my eye, just about perfect. The thing that really sets it apart for me is Bibby's attention to "realistic" anatomy. The musculature is spot-on, and the pose has a sense of heft that, I believe, must be very hard to achieve.

Are you lookin' at my bum? Note the zit on the right cheek there. . .

There are veins in the arm muscles that my camera (and my inadequate paintbrush skills) don't entirely pick up. There are several pimples, great fur texture, realistic growth scars on the horns. . . it's just a really, really great sculpt that I can't recommend enough.

Early on in my painting of this fella, I had dreams of an homage to the classic version that Colin Dixon painted that is featured in Heroes for Wargames. I found out, however, two important facts:

1. I am nowhere in the ballpark as good as Colin was at painting flesh (actually, I kinda knew this one already).
2. Pale flesh tones look a lot better in pictures than they do in 3D.

After getting a tone pretty close to Dixon's classic original, I decided it was not deep enough for my tastes, so I added a few dark brown and reddish glazes to make mine more tanned. Like a minotaur not unaccustomed to spending time down by the shore. I settled for adding the rock path and Mario mushroom to the base to pay my respect.

This one will feature as a mercenary hire for Skulldred games in my house. I can't wait to come up with stats for this model. :)

I hope your own leaden pursuits continue unabated, brethren (and sistren!). Take care, all.

Rut Breakers

This whole post-on-Sundays is becoming a real habit.

This week, I decided I wanted a small break from my ongoing projects to work on something completely different- different color palette, different basing style, different subject matter entirely. In the past, this has usually meant turning to something evil- my normal slant is towards the good guys, so every once in a while, I break out of these types of ruts by painting up something for the good guys to fight against. In keeping with my recent Jes Goodwin museum curating, I turned to the leadpile and pulled out a pile of delicious old Skaven models.

I wanted to do a little experimenting with desaturating the colors on the robes, so thanks to a suggestion from Asslessman (Cheers, JB!), I mixed varying shades of grey into the primary colors for highlighting. I think it worked better with the green and yellow than it did the blue and red, but I am certainly excited to learn a new color idea. I really like the effect it has on fabric surfaces- quite realistic.

The bases are random hunks of cork, covered with grit and baking soda, and then painted & drybrushed. I finished them with static grass added along with subtle washes of blue and purple ink. All credit for this basing style goes to Delaney King (Cheers, D!). Not the last time you'll read those words in these pages. Since these rats are destined to be participants in Delaney's Skulldred game, I'm hoping she doesn't mind my shameless imitation too much.

I remember reading the original Skaven army book the first year I started in the hobby and being very inspired by Andy Chambers' description of their personality- always scheming and backstabbing one another. I don't know if it got phased out of their fluff over the years, but Chambers' original Skaven even had a mechanism in place for underlings killing off the leaders of the race and then assuming their position, inevitably to be re-deposed themselves. Their reliance on drug-induced sorcery mixed with steampunk-ish technology always hearkened back to one of my favorite 80's animated films, The Secret of NIMH.

Mrs. Frisby almost gets skewered by a pre-Goodwin Stormvermin

If Nicodemus wasn't inspiration for the Grey Seers, I'll eat a wheel o' brie.

Yet another conversation I'd love to have with the Design Studio from those golden days. . . If anyone has an old White Dwarf where Goodwin discusses his Skaven influences, I'd love to hear the issue number in the comments below. I'll search it out for sure.

Hope you are well, wherever you might be.

A Tough Pill To Swallow

This week's hobby goodness features one of my ten favorite Citadel miniatures of all time, Brian Nelson's incredible orc shaman. To me, this mini always stood as a kind of island of old-school character amid an ocean of slack-jawed, GIANT-AXE!!!'d, skull-festooned silliness that the greenskins turned into at Citadel circa 1997.

Citadel Orc Shaman; sculpted by Brian Nelson

My copy, bought as usual at great discount on eBay, lacked the sweet short sword on his back, so I had to sculpt a wee waterskin to hide the peg and open area on his back where the sword was supposed to go:

Given my extremely limited sculpting skillz, I am pretty happy with how the flask turned out.

The reason for the post title today, though, is because of an utter failure on my part to see this great mini through to its planned finish. I really wanted to do a nice checkerboard pattern on the hood opening around the face and on the sleeve ends, but after attempting said pattern six separate times, re-basecoating and starting over each time, I finally threw in the towel and went for this rather drab finish instead.

A few years ago now, I painted these Harlequins up, and they were covered almost head to toe in various check patterns:

So, I thought I'd be able to paint a little black and white patterning with no problemo. Perhaps it was the extremely folded and curved surfaces on the orc's robes, but I think my utter failure has more to do with my advancing age/decreasing eyesight/failing patience .No matter what I tried, or how slowly I went, I ended up each attempt just looking like a very messy painter. Oh well. The shaman will fit into a Skulldred warband just fine as he is. Alas.

It was not an easy thing for me to decide mid paint-project that my plans were too ambitious for my talent and skill to see through. I am sure it won't be the last time, unfortunately. . .

On the topic of Harlequins (by the way), GW finally listened to the 4 bajillion email, forum posts, and comments made in retail stores I have made over the years on the subject and announced this week that the Harlies are finally going to be their own army, with a brand-new hardbound codex (do they still call them that? Dunno.). I assume that there will be several plasticrud sets released as well, to go along with the $60 army book and $30 painting guide coming out in a few weeks.

Too little, too late for me, I'm afraid. I admit I got a little excited at first, but those price tags just hammered home how done with the current iteration of GW I am. When I paint more harlies, it will be my old metal Jes Goodwin figs languishing for too long in the pile. My checkerboard patterns will probably end up looking like crap, but I'll still love them so much more.

//End grumpy old man rant.

Until next time, brethren- may the paint brush gods grant you a nice pointy, hairy bit every time you need it.

Something Old, Something New

Greetings, all, from the land of sunshine and orange juice. Today I bring good tidings of reconditioned lead.

First up is a quick blast from my not-too-distant past. I've never been a huge fan of Chaos, much preferring to play good guys normally, but a couple of years ago my older son and I were playing a LOT of Delaney King's Skulldred, and I managed to put together this little war band to use in that game. They are all fairly common Citadel Chaos baddies from the eighties- figures I am sure you are all very familiar with, so I will spare any further discussion of where to get them. The standout here for me is the unmasking mage in the middle- that is such an inspired pose. I feel fairly certain that I read that that is an Aly Morrison sculpt- fantastic.

Next up is my most recent addition for my (very slowly) growing dwarf force. When I saw this figure listed for the first time on eBay, I was immediately struck by the Kev White-esque balance in the pose and the interesting visored helm. I am pretty sure that this is a more recent Ral Partha sculpt (please correct me if I am wrong) and I wasn't disappointed in the least when he showed up in person. Really nice details throughout, and I love the larger-sized crossbow on this model.

I got a few more Otherworld NPC's done this week- this time it's a couple of men-at-arms and a wee gnome thief/illusionist. They are all from OW's current range and highly recommended- the two fighter types are particularly well sculpted and have some very cool little additions like wood grain on their shields and rivets on their armor. Very well done.

And finally, my most recent commission job was this mostly resin Wizard's Den. No idea on the manufacturer here. The alchemist's desk was a fun piece, and you gotta love those anatomically correct demons; every thing else here was a bit unremarkable, but I suppose it will make some room in my client's dungeon a bit more interesting.

That's all for me this time around. I have a topic I am dying to write about, but family demands and no time and blah blah blah. . .

I hope you are well wherever you are. Thanks for the peep.

Building The Community

It's funny the way life works. Miniatures, too.

For the last couple of days, I have been reading all of Masterminis "The Future of Games Workshop" posts. If you haven't read through all of them, I highly recommend them (despite the fact that it will take a couple of hours reading time- they're really, REALLY good). The gist of the series is that the current downtrend being experienced by the great white tower is all related to their indifference to the miniature community at large. I happen to believe that the biggest problem that we mini painters, and the rest of this little niche community, have with GW is something totally different- to put it in a nutshell, they've ignored the fact that they are a company that relies on artists for their profits.

But that is a blog post that I don't really want to write. As far as I am concerned, it's already been written by a whole bunch of people who are far better bloggers than I.

What I want to talk about today is about community, something else that Masterminis, and his company Painting Buddha, are very interested in.

This morning, it was really, really rainy out here in beautiful central Florida ("The Sunshine State"). To pass the time, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do my own little bit of community building, courtesy of my four-year-old son Miles.

For those of you who have read through previous posts, you'll already know that Miles is a fanatical RPG'er. His exploits with his now-3rd level ninja character named "Kendo" are a thing of legend around my household. But he has never played a tabletop battle. . . until today.

The first steps in a brave new world

Using a simplified version of Delaney King's Skulldred game (which, again, if you've never happened to check this out before, stop reading this stupid blog now and go check out the best skirmish rules available in the whole friggin' world), little M and Dad played out a little dwarf v. orc grudge match.

We took 5 figures per side- a leader, two fighting types, and two shooters each. I gave each model only 3 stats to keep it easy- "Dice," which is simply the number of 6-sided dice they would roll to attack, "Power," which is the number that they need to roll under in order to succeed in an attack, and hit points- Miles is totally down with the concept of HP's, so I gave each leader 3 and everyone else 1 a piece.

Skulldred uses a fantastic activation mechanic wherein you roll a special 6-sided die marked 1,2,2,3,wild, wild- the number rolled is number of actions that the model can take during their turn. A "wild" means that we needed to check to see if the model was within range of the leader- if yes, they got 2 actions, but if not, they did something else. In our case, we decided that the brave dwarfs would get one action, while the cowardly orcs and gobbos would head for the nearest cover to hide. All the fighters got 2 dice to attack at power 2; shooters got 2 dice to shoot at power 2 (but would only get 1 die in HTH), and the leaders got a whopping 4 dice at power 4. That was all the rules he needed.

Daddy- I am shooting your leader in the face!

It was amazing to watch just how quickly the little man picked up concepts like activation, movement rates, and how important getting a lot of "action" pips was. He groaned whenever he rolled a '1' for his actions, and got up and danced for those lucky '3's. I made sure to use lots of funny voices and expressions throughout the game, and he joined right in saying funny things for his dwarfs ("Wait for me, boss!").

He pounded me. When it was all over, both leaders lay dead; all the orcs got finished off in roughly six turns, and he still had a shooter and a fighter left over. Victory dance time!

Take that, chump! (Asgard Dwarf King and Troll)

Of course, the genie is out of the bottle now. He is already making plans to stomp both his mother and his brother in Skulldred, and he has grand plans of a 2 v 2 game on Dad's big table "with the castle in the middle." Success.

I feel accomplished. Like I have done my part for "the community" today. Huzzah!

Have a good one, wherever you are. Thanks for the read!