Merry Christmas to all! And to all another night...

...the fire from the wasteland nomads slackened for the first time in what seemed like days...there was a loud series of explosions and gunshots from their lines and then a few moments of relative peace.  The siege of Old MacDonough's farm had lasted for days and moments of peace had been few and far between since it began.  

Skeezics took the moment to slap one of his last two magazines into his smoking auto gun and then peered over the top of the baracade again to see if he could discern the source of this moments respite.  But in the chemical and shell blasted remains of the crop fields he could see nothing.  In the small clump of battered woods beyond he heard another series of explosions and cries from wounded nomads.  Skeezics couldn't see who....but some one was giving the nomads hell.  This brought a breif smile to his face...the first of those in many long days as well.  Frankly he didn't care who was killing nomads...he was just happy they were dying.

Suddenly from the billowing clouds of smoke and fire that now filled the woods beyond emerged a strange figure.  He was trotting nonchalantly across the blasted wasteland toward the defenders baracade.  Skeezics drew a bead on the man...but realized that he wasn't armed and didn't seem to be a threat.

"Hold fire" he shouted to the few remaining defenders of the baracade and glanced to either side to ensure that no one blasted this stranger before they determined his intentions.

Suddenly several lines of tracers emerged from the woods directed toward the stranger.  He increased his pace and sprinted nimbly toward the baracade.  Skeezics could now see that he was dressed in a red coat and hat and seemed to be carrying a large sack of some sort over his shoulder...his face covered by a gas mask...a reasonable precaution when traversing the chemical wastelands.

The defenders stared in shocked silence as this strage figue approached and then hopped over the baracade...bringing his heavy load with him.  As the defenders gathered around, the stranger said nothing but reached into his sack and handed each a package. Some received boxes of ammo others med kits and some were given MREs.  They all muttered their surprised thanks at this unexpected, and much needed, resupply but received no response in return.

Once each defender had received their packaged the strange man gathered up his sack and hopped over the baracade once again and disappeared into the fog of war...he hadn't said a word...but as his silhouette faded into the mist they heard:

"Merry Christmas to all and to all another night!"

The defenders all stared at each other in stunned silence...not sure what to make of this unexpected experience.  But the moment of peace was suddenly shattered as several mortar rounds exploded near the barn and nomad fire once again began to shred the baracade behind which they sheltered.

Skeezics checked his weapons load...racked a round into the chamber and peered back over the baracade looking for a target, the surprised smile still on his lips a new found feeling of confidence that they might actually survive to see another night...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my Oldhammer friends...I hope you all enjoy whatever time off you have and get a lot of painting done!

Cheers,

Blue

Dragon Bait Miniatures Executioner and helper...WIP

After I finished up working on Johann (pic forthcoming once I finish his base) I turned my attention to working on some of the Dragon Bait Miniatures from their ongoing indiegogo campaign.  https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dragon-baits-second-28mm-fantasy-campaign

In particular I've been slapping paint on the executioner figure and his halfling helper. I'm really loving these Tim Prow sculpts.  

So before I left for my Christmas holiday back in Ohio with my parents I managed to get the flesh and black cloth areas finalized.  I'm not sure how well the shading on the black will show up on these iPhone pics but here is the current status of these two figures.

Work will resume in these as soon as I am back in VT after Christmas.

Be sure to stop by the Dragon Bait miniatures indiegogo campaign page and offer your support if you want some character figure to use in you Dungeoun adventures.

Cheers,

Blue

Johann II...Update 2...Nearly there!

Just a quick update to show how Johann is coming along.

• I added a couple more highlights to the armor to make it stand out a bit more.
• I painted his chest plate Bronze
• Wood grained the axe handle
• painted the chain mail and axehead with my typical metal system
• highlighted up the shoulder pads and gave them red eyes. 

All that is really left to do are a couple of touch ups and the base.

Johann II ...Update 1...Shield Work

Howdy all,

I've been plugging along with the variety of models that I previewed in my last post.  My main effort has been focused on finishing up a copy of Johann from the Ewal Dvergar Range that Clam has graced us with.

I've had this miniature for way too long...mostly because I've had a hard time figuring out what color to paint him.  Obviously I painted my copy Blue...but I couldn't decide what would look good on this copy.  Finally I decided to go with Dark Green armor with Copper/Gold and Grey accents.  To this end I set in on Johann's armor first and then got to the base coats on the wood, metallic, and grey areas....

Here is how he looks right now...

Not looking particularly stellar yet...but once I start to highlight everything else up it will improve greatly....

...However...I really put a lot of work into his shield.  As I mentioned when I painted my own version of this figure the Shield is one of the best parts...John Pickford really seems to have enjoyed making this fantastic face.  With looking at the design of the shield ...and the fairly tame colors of the armor that I chose for Johann... I decided to go a little wild with the shield colors.  In really staring at the shield for quite awhile I really started to see how it looked like flame...

...perhaps this is a demonic piece of armor containing a fire daemon of some sort? ...forced by one of the Chaos Lords to protect Johann from harm....

...thats right...FLAME SHIELD!!! :)

This turned out to be a lot of fun to paint...and it took a TON of layers to make it look convincing.  Having never really attempted to paint flame before I'm pretty happy with the results.  The main portion of the shield is orange flame while the eyes and tongue are meant to look like blue flame.

Here is a quick look at the final product....followed by a short movie showing the steps of the process.

Yes...he has a Gold tooth...my daughter suggested it...who am I to deny her...?

For those who are curious about such things...here are the paints that I used to achieve the flame effect...

I'm not really sure what the Orange paint is...some old citadel color...?  Blood Angel perhaps?

And here is a shot of my wet pallet showing all the different layers that I created with these paints and their sequence (ignore the green...that's from the armor).

I think that is going to look pretty sweet on that green armored model...so...

I better get back to it!

Cheers,

Blue

What's on Blue's table now?

Still nothing finished to show off yet...so I wanted to give you an idea of what will be coming in the near future.  I'm pretty excited about the figures I have in my painting queue right now. For once it's a rather eclectic mix of different races and types of figures which I hope will help with keeping my motivation up.

The first thing I have to finish up is another copy of the fantastic Johann sculpt that is available from Clam's Ewal Dvergar Range.  This one is going to a long-suffering client and I'm anxious to get it back to its rightful owner.

I have also been asked to paint a few figures for the Dragon Bait miniatures Indiegogo campaign. This is the second campaign by Dragon Bait miniatures and once again will be offering a lot of interesting and humorously old school style sculpts.  

I have agreed to paint the dwarf inquisitor... who definitely has that van Helsing feel to him.

Then there is the halfling scout...who has a great country bumpkin thing going on.

I will be also working on the small vignette of a executioner and his halfling compatriot who is luring the next victim to their death with a tasty doughnut.  I am particularly excited about these figures from the campaign...I just love the sculpts...which I believe are by Tim Prow.

This set comes complete with a block and a basket with a couple of heads already in it.  Just genius!

Next I have my entry for the Oldhammer forum's community war band. This is a very old-school citadel sculpt that makes me laugh because this archers quite pudgy!  I forgot to check his name before I glued him in...I think this is Edwin...?

Another odd duck figure I have ready to go is one of the really early citadel slotta Elfs...Gildor?  Who I will be painting up for thebinman's Averland warband.  You've got to love his Elvis style hair do.

Next up is the one remaining 5th edition Bretonian Squire with bow that I need to complete my unit.  The group has been languishing at 17 for the last year...it took me awhile to acquire another copy of this specific sculpt...so it will be nice to actually finish this unit off.

Finally I also have these fantastic mid 90 Perry sculpts of Bertrand and his compatriots. Obviously styled after Errol Flynn's Robin Hood movies and just loaded with bags of character even for relatively "newhammer" figures. These will obviously be becoming character models for my Bretonian army.  I've had them for a while now and I'm very excited to finally get them painted.

So you can expect to see all of these figures again in future posts hopefully in various stages of progress.

Of course I still have the Knights to finish that I showed earlier as well as half a squad of Orks that need their final coats of paint too!!.  My work schedule should finally be opening up a little bit as we approach Christmas and I hope to be quite productive during my downtime.

Cheers for now,

Blue

Game On! A Rogue Trader Game happening tonight!

Just a quick post to show you the basic setup I've put together of my Battle Systems Sci-Fi terrain.  I've had this stuff for months now and have just not had the opportunity to put it together and start enjoying it.  This week I forced myself to spend several evening focused on producing at least a basic board to play on.  With the help of a couple of committed friends we produced this set up.

I will try to get a few more room items put together before things kick off but either way this will be a fun little set to get some experience adapting the RT rules to interior spaces.  I see running a number of quick scenarios tonight...snatch and grab, meeting engagement, sabotage the reactor, Get to the Chopper!, etc.  With only 2 1/2 squads of figures painted up they will obviously be limited in scale but should allow for fairly fast games that we will learn a lot from.

Here are some more pics of some of my troops trying out the terrain.  Please forgive the iPhone pics.

hmm...looks like I need to adjust those Struts in the background!

 

I'll post up some pics and breakdown of the nights events over the weekend!

Cheers,

Blue

Joining the "Horsey Set"

Despite the lack of obvious evidence in the form of Blog posts...I have been plugging away at a number of hobby projects but have failed to finish anything of late that is worth writing a post about....

...So I'll do a quick post about my continued efforts to find decent horses for my 3rd ed Brets....and show that I actually have been painting.

I've never been a big fan of Citadel's plastic horses...They vary drastically in proportion depending on release date and the number of variants possible is usually quite low.  For this reason I've been searching high and low for some decent metal horses that I could mount my knights on.  After a detailed discussion of this topic on the Oldhammer Forum...and encouragement by fellow Oldhammerers who have trod a similar path I've placed a sizable order for 20 metal, barded horses in a number of poses from Front Rank Miniatures...


...and they showed up while I was away for Turkey day!  here is what I received.