New Terrain in Use! Orcs attack!

Howdy Ya'll!!

Before I had the excellent game of Donnyhammer with my local gaming group the other day I also took the opportunity to have a bit of a photo session with my newly completed houses and a couple of my Terrain boards.

For this effort I employed two of my completed Terrain boards and set them up with all the lights I have on hand and "decorated" them with all the buildings and rock walls that have been the subject of several of my last posts.

This is what the set up looked like before I populated it with figures...

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

Batch Painting II Part 5...and LPL 7 Announced!

Howdy all...

I managed to get a fair amount done on my batch of spearmen over the last two days.  I finished highlighting all the cloth areas (though I may add one more layer to the blue..) I highlighted up the padded armor and then gave it a good wash with a mix of Gryphone Sepia and ancient Chestnut ink...gives it a nice reddish brown look.  Then went back and picked out all the studs in the armor with a spot of black followed by some bolt gun metal.  I also highlighted the blades and armor with Mithril Silver and then washed these areas with a slightly diluted Badab Black wash (approx 75% strength).  Lastly I got the first highlight on the leather areas.  They aren't done yet but they are starting to come together.

Almost there!

...so just the brown areas to highlight...and then the faces and fiddly bits....oh yeah...and shields!  I haven't really thought about the shields! shit!

Anyway...on another topic....

The seventh edition of the Lead Painters League was announced on the Lead Adventure Forum this week... I greeted the announcement with mixed feelings. 

First of all the downside....the timing couldn't be much worse for me...I'm right in the middle of painting this unit and have to finish it before I can start on any more teams for the LPL.  Also, the late start this year means that the contest will stretch into June!  As a working archaeologist my summers are extremely busy and I'm often on the road and away from my painting desk. Then there are all the late nights and stress of trying to get a team done EVERY week...for 10 weeks... I dunno...its a tough call...

On the other hand...competing in the LPL pushes my hobby to new levels...both in the speed it insists on...and in developing my photography and terrain making skills (both of which need work!).  There is also a very collegial atmosphere to the League that is really fun to be a part of.  Plus at the end of it you have a lot of painted figures...which is the point of the whole thing right?!  I have no illusions of winning this contest...the skill level displayed by the top-tier challengers is out of this world!  Its more like a marathon...you know the Kenyan is going to win...but you have to compete and finish...just cuz!

So...yeah...I'm going to do it....you know I will...  I actually have three teams mostly painted and one complete and even photogrpahed.  that puts me in a better starting position than I've ever been before....and I still have the week and a half after I turn in my Bugman's unit and before the end of the LPL submission deadline to get more teams in the bag....I hope.  If I could have 5 teams painted and 3 photographed before the contest actually starts I would be feeling pretty good about my chances of having a new team each round.

The special themed rounds this year are fairly straight forward.  The first round theme is to depict a command element of some sort....I already have this one taken care of.  Round 5's theme is "Historic Civil War"....this is the one round that I will need to buy figures to paint...and I have some real jems in mind...in fact I've been looking for an excuse to buy/paint these guys since I saw the greens for them on LAF.  Round 10's theme is Sci Fi....this will see me dipping into my extremely small collection of RT era minis...we will have to see what pops out?!

So...thats today's update....thanks for stopping by...see you all soon!

Cheers,

Blue

Batch Painting Update and MORE!

Greeting all.  Time for a bit of an update.  The long slog thru my group of 36 minis continues...I'm happy to report that I put the finishing touches on 10 of them last night.  The rest are a few good long painting sessions away from being complete.  And while I can't show you the whole lot of finished archers here are a selection of 3 that I used for my latest entry in the Brush Slave League over on CDO.  These will give you a good idea what the rest of the unit looks like.

I think they came out quite nice...am I saving time by painting so many at a time? ....the jury is still out on that.  I will certainly work on smaller groups in the future...maybe 10-15 models at a time.

I will probably have to pause on the the rest of the big batch I have been working on and shift gears to working on a small unit of Bret spearman (10-16 strong) that I have committed to completing before the end of March for the Unit painting Challenge over on Bugman's Brewery...I run the contest so it will be embarrassing if I don't have a unit to submit!  Luckily I'll be able to follow the progress of that unit a bit more closely with blog posts so I will (hopefully) be posting a bit more frequently going forward.

On another front I recently received some new Puff and Slash goodness from Lead Adventure Miniatures (LAM).  The latest Brugelburg release from LAM included a few Arquibusiers that I had to add to my collection.  Sadly there are only four sculpts at this point...not nearly enough to make an independent unit...so I ordered them on the hopes that I could mix them in with my current unit of handgunners which is made up of the Empire figures that were released at the tail end of the 3rd edition.  These are also excellent figures but they could use a bit more diversity of sculpts...particularly in firing poses.  Luckily the LAM release includes 3 unique firing poses.  Much to my joy when I mixed them in they look right at home.  The LAM boys are a tad stockier and more elaboratly decorated but I think they will blend in nicely when the unit is painted up.

Here is the before unit picture

Obviously I need to convert that damaged Halberd into a standard...

And here it is with the LAM gunners mixed in

And here are a few side by side photos of the individual figures (alternating between citadel and LAM)

Really fantastic figures all around...the Brugelburg forces just keep getting better and better.

Other than that my hobby time has been mostly adsorbed with buying/selling and trading little hunks of lead!  Its been a busy month or so with lots of small packages coming and going to all parts of the world.  I'm getting really close to reaching my initial collecting goals...just trying to plug the last few gaps in some units and am now focusing on the details likes identifying and procuring shields and bases for all my units.  Also since we are having a brief warm spell here in the NE US I've been getting a lot of figures primed and ready to paint.

So...that's whats happening in my slice of the Hobby world....more soon!

LPL Round 6: Happy Easter

Howdy all, With Round six of the LPL kicking off on Easter Sunday I felt obligated to do something interesting...and I was looking for an excuse to paint some more of the great Ratnik dwarfs that I have recently received from LAM. Luckily for me one of the sets of dwarfs that I ordered included the two guys that are designed to carry the dragon egg. A quick switch of cargo and we have a great centerpiece for the team. After that it all just fell into place....a religious fanatic preaching in front....a dwarf with a wheelbarrow that could be filled with some chocolate and one playing an over sized horn to announce the arrival of the egg ...and the team was ready. Here they are:

I've continued to experiment with a new fleshtone...and with these guys I feel like I've finally started to settle into the new color...I went a little too pale on the priest and actually had to back out and re paint some parts of his head to mellow the color a little bit. (I would love any feed back you care to share about the skin color). Colorwize on the rest of the figures. I opted for slightly more muted tones for these guys...which seems to be a trend with me right now...I still love to paint an obnoxious puff and slash dwarf....but there is an appeal to mo natural colors as well. Im not convinced that I like their white cuffs and hood edges...but at this point I don't see myself changing them...;) Alright off to bed....this fieldwork is kicking my ass... Cheers, Blue

Lead Painters League Round 4: Ratnik Halberds

Well Week four of the LPL is now in the bag and we have moved onto Round 5...so I'm able to share with you some pictures of my team for round 4.  For this Round I chose to work on a group of the recently released landsknecht halberd men from Lead Adventure Miniatures (http://www.lead-adventure.com/).  These wonderful figures are part of the growing Bruegelburg Line sculpted by the very talented Ratnik.  The figures are amazingly detailed and full of character.  This is both a good thing....and a challenge for a painter working on a deadline like I was.  While the detail makes the figures look amazing...they did take a while to paint!  This made the run up to submission time a very close run thing.  But...it all worked out in the end.

Here is my Entry Picture:

I also found the time to take some "studio" shots after the contest began.  Here is the group studio shot.

...And here are some shots of the individual troopers

This guy was sold as a standard bearer...I opted to give him a weapon and use him as an overzealous trooper...I have another Standard bearer to use for the unit.

I'm not sure about this guys bald head...I may need to add some stubble in the future...

There are more armored figures like this one coming in the next batch...whenever that might be :)

And this guy is my favorite of this batch...I just love his face...so he gets a couple of extra pictures...I also love that he has a gourd canteen (behind his sword hand)...I love details like that!

That's all for now...thanks for looking!

Cheers,

Blue

Happy Holidays All!

I wanted to take a moment and wish all of my cyber freinds and comapnions a happy and safe holiday season....enjoy yourself and your family during this special time of year.  I look forward to sharing more fun figures with you in the future and drooling over all of your posts as well!  Thanks for sharing this continuing journey with me.

Here is a piece I did to help me get into the season...Contaminated Santa from Lead Adventure Miniatures.

Cheers to all! see you in the New Year!

Blue