The first wave of my Kickstarter stuff finally arrived, and I'm excited to get back into painting fantasy figs. I spent my last three or four painting sessions clearing off some space on my painting station, and I'm ready to go green!



My first troop! I put these guys together just this afternoon. I left the shield arms off until I get their bodies painted. As I type this, the plastic cement is setting. I hope to get them primed and the first basecoat on tonight, after my son is asleep.


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My boy is asleep, and that means I get a couple hours of painting time. Here are the results:


I know, it doesn't look like I got very far. I primed these minis with a mix of a cheap Dark Charcoal craft paint that I got on sale at a Japanese-equivalent to Home Depot, mixed with Liquitex white Gesso. This gives a neutral base color that anything will stick to. Then I painted all the exposed skin with Vallejo Intermediate Green. Then I applied a wash made with water and Liquitex Permanent Green Deep (high viscosity). This is the same technique that I use on my Space Orks, and I think it turns out well with a minimum of fuss.

I plan to let the lads dry overnight, and then hit their armor tomorrow. I'll try to post photos then.

After drying overnight, the lads were ready for the next stage. I painted all the cloth-looking bitz as leather, using Vallejo medium brown and washing with Army Painter Strong Tone. They are back on the shelf, waiting for the wash to dry. This is probably all I will get done this weekend. Next week: armor!

I managed to get in a couple hours of painting today/tonight. The armor is Vallejo chainmail silver, washed with Army Builder dark tone. The belts are Vallejo dark fleshtone, highlighted up to Citadel bleached bone, then washed with Ogryn Flesh from the old Citadel wash line. The lads are drying now, and I hope to get some time to do highlighting and touch-ups tomorrow.

Here we see the lads with their weapons painted, as well as teeth and accessories as appropriate. You can barely see them in this shot, but the shields are primed solid white, pending me finding inspiration on what to do with them. Also, as weird as it seems to come right out and say it, I think I'll follow Jervis Johnson's advice and not do the eyes. They're tiny, and will be invisible on the tabletop, so I think I'd rather put that time into basing or whatever.

Not pictured: the GW space Ork buggy gunner that I threw together as a test figure for some water-based walnut varnish I found at a ￥100 yen store. I want to speed this army along, and I wonder if dipping (or rather, glopping, as I'll be using a brush) is a viable option. Also not pictured: 5 Mantic Enforcers that I assembled tonight.

The first ten boyz are essentially finished, and the next ten are assembled and primed. I wanted to take a break from all the earth tones, so I broke out a few Enforcers. Along with the cursing, crying, and trying to get the superglue off my fingers, I spent quite a while researching paint schemes. Here is what I came up with:




The colors are,of course, based on an Iron Man design, specifically the Silver Centurion armor of the '80's. I'm going with white rather than a metallic for the legs and arms. I'm not entirely satisfied with the face, but the rest will work, I think.

After Kickstarting the bejeezus out of Deadzone, Dreadball Extreme, Myth, Mecha Front, Bones 1, Mars Attacks and probably a few others that I don't recall at the moment, I find myself with a truly unreasonable backlog of unpainted minis packed in boxes in the upstairs closet. To save my marriage, I have sworn not to buy any more miniatures this year, and to work on clearing out the backlog. DZ, DB, and MA stuff goes in the Restic Odyssey blog linked below, but Kings of War stuff will go here. I'll start with this demi-regiment of Ashigaru from Zenit miniatures:


Here they are as they will look on the tabletop, less basing and sashimono, of course. Everything is done with basecoats and washes, with some token highlighting on their hands and faces.


Here they are in the light box, or rather the Foldio. The lacing on the armor shows up better here.


And this is a decidedly unforgiving close-up. Zenit samurai are pretty much true 28mm, so a lot of the details (like the lacing) is too tiny to justify Golden Daemon/Crystal Brush level detailing considering these guys will be in a tightly-packed block of twenty. Not also that I didn't bother with their eyes. That is one of the best pieces of gaming advice Jervis Johnson ever wrote: don't bother with details you won't see during the game. I will, of course, be painting the eyes on any and all samurai in this army.

These guys look great, Josh. Please keep on updating us with the KoW stuff.

Thanks for the kind words, Azazelx. They look better at arm's length than up close, as appropriate for a mass battle game.

I had a few minutes waiting for some paint to dry, so I photographed some models I had finished but not shown off. First, a unit of Moraxe:


These are all basecoat-and-wash: Army Painter greenskin washed with liquitex deep hue green, leather brown with strong tone, chainmail with dark tone. The Renedra-crispness of the models makes it possible.

Next up, some boar riders:


I used the same techniques as above. Despite being restic, these are really nice models. I have fifteen more unpainted and stashed away in a box upstairs. Finally, a Krugger and Flagger:


With these guys, I did a little highlighting to make them stand out a bit more. Instead of dark tone, I used a wash of Payne's Grey in something called "painting medium." I prefer this effect over straight black, and use it for pretty much everything now.

Now, some more samurai:


These guys are from Kingsford Miniatures out of Canada. They are a little chunkier than the Zenit minis I posted yesterday, which makes them easier to paint. They are arranged for WHFB, but will be easy to redistributed for KoW basing.



These are also from Kingsford. I based the lacing patterns on an image in one of the many Osprey books I have acquired over the years. This more ornate lacing is actually easier to paint than the sparser lacing on the ashigaru: paint a stripe of the desiderd color, then hit it with a wash.


One more set from Kingsford. I painted these well over five years ago, and did each of these Sohei individually, layering/highlighting everything instead using washes. I have one more set of these guys to paint up to complete the unit.


Finally, a unit of mounted samurai. I picked up a Clan War boxed set, along with the infantry, cavalry, and Dragon Clan expansions, brand new many many years ago. At the time, the models were top notch, but now they seem just a little flat and lacking in variety. They are fun and easy to paint, though, which is a plus given how many of the darned things I have. The bases are a weird size-- 27~28mm frontage instead of 25.

I really like the samurai!

 EyeamRai wrote:
I really like the samurai!

Thanks! I have intended to build an army since the early '90's, but haven't gotten around to it until quite recently.

All looking good! Love the Mantic Orcs, myself. Very nice little models.

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 EyeamRai wrote:
I really like the samurai!

Thanks! I have intended to build an army since the early '90's, but haven't gotten around to it until quite recently.

Ive been intending to do the same for some time but you have made considerably more progress than me so far. Love what you have done so far and can't wait to see what else you paint.

 carlos13th wrote:
Ive been intending to do the same for some time but you have made considerably more progress than me so far. Love what you have done so far and can't wait to see what else you paint.

Thanks. You're painting blog is what inspired me to restart this army. I'll try to update as often as I get stuff finished.

Then I am really glad I started that blog despite the lack of real major progress since it began. Glad to see more Samurai on Dakka though.

Quick question. Do you have a size comparison with mounted Kensei and Mounted Perry.

The kingsford stuff looks very nice. Sculpting style and size differences from Perry would make me reluctant to use them in the same unit as Perry miniatures but not the same army. That might seem hyocritcal of me since I plan to use perry and Steel fist in the same unit but SF have the size difference from Perry but the sculpting styles seem to be closer to one another. Kingsford has a very distinct sculpting style.

Your work is making me want to work on my Samurai more too, hopefully we can spur each other on.

Over the weekend, I managed to finish the ashigaru I posted last week:


I think we can all agree that no samurai/ashigaru mini is complete until he has a sashimono attached.



Here we can see the mon of the Nanbu clan, who used to rule the area where I live. I found a hi-res image on GIS, copy/pasted it into MS Word, then printed about 400 onto ink jet transfer paper from Micromark. Easy-peasy, but oh so time-consuming. I have another ten to finish assembling this morning, and hope to have the whole regiment finished in the next week or so.

I hadnt heard of that clan before.

The mon on the Sashimono look great.

 carlos13th wrote:
I hadnt heard of that clan before.

The mon on the Sashimono look great.

Yeah, the Nanbu were on the winning side at Sekigahara, but apparently weren't as close to the Tokugawa as many of the other daimyo. I agree, they do have a nifty mon.

Gonna ally Honda or Ii with them as part of your KOW army?

I quite like the Uesugi two bird mon myself.

I will probably keep everything local, and just leave the nifty-looking heroes unnamed.

The Uesugi mon is cool. There are lots that are too complex for anything but transfers. Thank goodness for Micromark!

Yeah not even the best painters could do either of these mons via freehand.

Just keeping them unnamed could be cool too. Its what i am considering doing.

Have you tired Lions Rampart Josh? I am considering picking up a kindle version in order to adapt it as a ruleset for a midway between the small conflicts of Ronin and the Large conflicts of Ronin. Wondering how it would adapt for Samurai.

It turns out that 45-50 minutes a day isn't a whole lot of time when painting a whole unit. Anyway, here is the full regiment of ashigaru spearmen:



Individually, they lack a little something, but I think they look pretty nifty in a block of 20. The sashimono really bring the unit together. The next step for this army is to finish off the other unit of spearmen and then supplement the teppo ashigaru to get up to two troops of ten. But before that, I have to finish off the miscellaneous minis that have been clogging up my painting area (visible in the background of these photos) since late November.

Nice stuff mate

Yeah, they look great as a unit - I understand exactly where you're coming from as well there. The sashimono really do add a lot to them as well.

Unit looks good. I know the feeling of unfinished minis starring you in the finish from across the painting table, begging to be finished.

How are you finding painting lacing btw?

Lacing isn't too bad, because I take a lot of shortcuts. For light lacing (like the ashigaru), I pick out a very light blue over charcoal grey armor, and then glaze the whole thing with Payne's Grey. For heavier lacing (like the horse archers), I do each "strip" of lacing in a light color and then glaze it with a darker shade. It doesn't hold up well to close inspection, but it works at tabletop distances.

Fair enough. I am still getting used to painting lacing. Just finished a samurai I was doing and I'm pretty happy with him. The lacing doesn't hold up to super close inspection but works well enough.

It turns out that 45-50 minutes a day isn't a whole lot of time when painting a whole unit. Anyway, here is the full regiment of ashigaru spearmen:



Individually, they lack a little something, but I think they look pretty nifty in a block of 20. The sashimono really bring the unit together. The next step for this army is to finish off the other unit of spearmen and then supplement the teppo ashigaru to get up to two troops of ten. But before that, I have to finish off the miscellaneous minis that have been clogging up my painting area (visible in the background of these photos) since late November.

After finishing my Zenit ashigaru spearmen, I decided to worn on another unit, this time by Perry miniatures. Here are the first six.

In skirmish formation:


And in block formation:


Finally, a comparison shot with a Kingsford ashigaru:


As you can see, the Kingsford guy is a little chunkier. I only have 12 of them, though, so not quite enough for a full regiment. The Perry sculpts are nice, of course, but they are showing their age a bit, especially when compared to the Zenit miniatures. One thing I do like about the Perry sculpts is their Lego hands. I know a lot of people prefer the hands molded on to whatever weapons they are supposed to hold, but all of these metal spears are soft and bendy, and open hands will allow me to replace them with brass spears when I get around to buying them.

Mass painting all these troopers has been kind of a drag, so I did this samurai commander at the same time:





This is another Zenit mini. I did a lot of highlighting/layering on this guy, as opposed to the basecoat-and-wash technique for the troops. Note that I actually did his eyes, as well. He was fun to paint, but some of the lacing was super-tiny and hard to pick out. Also, his sword is very thin and very soft, only a little thicker than the lead foil used on wine bottles, and it bends if you look at it funny. When it finally breaks off (and it will), I will have to replace it with one of the dozens of Dixon wakizashi I have lying around.

Commander looks commanding! Good work.

Thanks! It was nice painting an individual model after all those basic, boring troopers.

It all looks great, especially the commander.

Nice commander very takeda shingen

The commander looks great. Shame you'll have to replace the sword shortly, though!

 Azazelx wrote:
The commander looks great. Shame you'll have to replace the sword shortly, though!

At least I have something to replace it with. And the soft-as-lead alloy Zenit uses makes cleaning the minis at least as easy as HIPS. After all the restic I've done in the last 12 months, that's a small price to pay.

Very nice stuff Josh. Especially liking the orcs. I'll be plogging my undead in a few days, and it is nice to see i am not alone in plogging KoW armies.

Next up: another block of 20 ashigaru spearmen:


These are from Perry Miniatures, and they were a real drag to paint. They have close-to-heroic proportions, which was hard to go back to after all the Mantic and Zenit stuff I've done recently. Also, I suspect the molds are getting old, so there was a lot of flash and excess metal to trim off in weird places. By the end, I was so sick of working on them that I decided to just let washes do all the work. Individually, they aren't my best work, but as a unit at arm's length, they'll work fine.

I'm kind of burned out on samurai right now, so I'll be working on some Mantic goblin sharpsticks the esteemed Judgedoug sold to me.

Yah I agree that the moulds on the Perrys are getting worn. Sometimes you get some second hand someone has had for years and the casting is notably better.

Very nice stuff, been quietly watch for some time now. Miniaturemarket.com had a sale starting last night and had the wargamesfactory samurai on foot boxes (25) for $11.00 each. I managed to grab the last 2 of 11 that they showed.

Carlos: I think the spearmen molds have seen the most use. I have some archers and heroes that look a lot cleaner.

Theophany: I looked at the WGF plastics, but I have more models than I can reasonably field as it is, so I'll have to give them a miss.

Might be right about the spear men. The Katana samurai look a bit worn too. Would make sense for Ashigaru spearmen to be more worn than some others as they would historically make up the bulk of most armies.


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You have done a good job on the lacing of those btw. I am just getting to the lacing on the (Only ten) I am currently doing and its taking longer than I would like.

Regardless of however much of a pain in the arse those Ashigaru were to paint (and I know all about that!), they've come up very nicely, particularly as a unit.

Any chance of a whole-army-in-progress shot soonish?

Super looking unit.

Thanks for the kind words. I'll try to put up a photo of the army today or tomorrow.

Look forward to it.

Nice work! Looking forward to the full army shot!!

Finding myself with three full days of PTO remaining at the end of this fiscal year, I gave myself a five-day weekend. In that time, I found the time to finish off some miscellaneous stuff, and then finally take photos of the samurai army to date:






There is still a lot left to finish before I would consider it playable, but all laid out like this, I feel like I'm making some headway.

Oh, I also had time to crank out another unit of Goblin Sharpsticks:




For units of goblins, I'm just using the basecoat-quickshade-dullcoat method. They don't stand up to individual scrutiny, but at arm's length they work just fine.

Goblins look more than fine.

Like the Samurai, it is forming into an impressive looking force.

That army looks utterly fantastic, Josh. If you weren't so far away I'd invite you 'round for a game this weekend! - And the goblins look good as well.

If I went over for a game, we'd probably have to make a weekend of it.

Thanks for the kind words. I have one more unit of arquebus ashigaru to paint, and then I'll finally start building units of samurai.

Looks great mate. Cant wait for my force to be anywhere near that size.

It just sort of happened. I have about an hour every morning (between 5AM and 6AM) that I have been using to finally make some progress on various armies/forces. Doing a little bit every day makes a huge difference.

Yeah I am kinda trying to do the same thing myself.


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Maybe not at quite the same pace though.

One more unit of ashigaru, ready to go:




Compared to the Kingsford ashigaru, these were kind of a grind to assemble and paint. I know lots of hobbyists dislike Lego hands for spears and guns and such, but those are so much easier to assemble than these models were, with the tiny little hands molded onto the guns, Also, once assembled, I could see their chests and necks, but had a hell of time getting the brush in there. Note also that these models don't have sashimono. They didn't come packed with them, and there are no holes/mounts for banners on the models themselves. I have painted up and applied transfers to ten sashimono from Dixon that I got years ago for a Space Marine project, but I haven't decided whether I want to risk damaging the paintjobs by drilling holes in their backs.

I think that my next project will be some Forge Guard. I got four or five sets in the last DZ shipment, and all that unpainted plastic in that big unopened box has been taunting me for months.

As far as I am aware Sashimono were less common on missile troops who had to fire over each others heads and were less likely to be involved in melle combat than their weapon wielding brethren.

My plan is probably to have one person per ranged unit with a sashimono as a unit leader. Thats what I did with the archers I have and I am happy with that.

Looking good! No one wants to see what would happen if I painted at 5am...

 EyeamRai wrote:
Looking good! No one wants to see what would happen if I painted at 5am...

Now that you mention it, I would like to see that. Go ahead and reset your alarm for tomorrow.

Another nice little unit. Your army would be fun to play against.

Yeah, these guys are looking great. You're finishing units at a good rate these days as well.

Thanks for the kind words. Painting whole units has been somewhat liberating. I know I won't be getting a Slayer Sword or whatever trophy the Crystal Brush guys give out, so I can concentrate instead on quick and effective. It's nice to see the army grow week to week.

In my last post, I wrote that I would be taking a break from the samurai, and would start working on my Forge Fathers for Deadzone. I got as far as assembling one Forge Guard model before realizing that I had no idea what color scheme to use. So, I painted these guys instead:







Since samurai will be centerpieces of the army, I put a lot more care into these than the ashigaru. Apart from the faces, I didn't use washes for anything, opting instead to use layering/highlighting. I even painted their eyes, although they turned out a little funny since the sculpting on the faces is a little inconsistent. I have another set of these guys, plus a giant pile of old Clan War samurai to mix in to the unit.

Next up: sohei.

They look nice mate. I like the faces. Havent worked up the courage to do eyes myself yet.

Thanks . The faces are pretty characterful, but the eyes are a little lopsided, which makes them unnecessarily difficult. Well-sculpted eyes are usually pretty easy. Give 'em a try.

Those are lovely. Good work.

I think i will in my next batch of models once I finish the ones I am working on. Unpacked them yesterday and they were pretty close to done but got scratched up in transit so are going to need a little extra work. Might spend tomorrow painting before judo.

The Kensei Indiegogo campaign netted me quite a variety of troops for my samurai army. Having slogged through 60-odd ashigaru, I decided to reward myself with something more interesting. Last week, I showed off some samurai. This week, I finished off a unit of sohei:


With these guys and the samurai before them, I decided to use layering and highlighting rather than the basecoat/power wash technique I've been using on the ashigaru. I'm not sure the difference is all that visible, but they sure took a lot longer than I'd originally planned. I have another set of these models, and probably a dozen Perry sohei that I can use to build a full regiment of 20. After that, I'm not sure what I'll work on next. Maybe some orcs or undead? I dunno. I'll have to decide by tomorrow morning.

The layering looks good, lovely whites on the headgear things!

Good job on the sohei mate.

Great work on the new batch of Samurai and also the Sohei. This army is coming along in leaps and bounds.

Thanks, everyone. I'm pleased with the sohei, and I have something planned to make their unit more interesting. Right now, I'm working on some Tomb Kings skeletons, but not enjoying them at all. I'll have photos and a brief discussion of why later this week.

Having cranked out so many samurai and samurai-related minis, I felt like a change. After a little hemming and hawing, I decided to pull out some skeletons. Here we see a troop of "Tomb Guard."


Note that "Tomb Guard" is in quotation marks. I started building an Undead army way back in 1986 or '87, with the first box of plastic skeletons that GW produced. When they split the army into Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings, I opted for the latter because of my long-standing distaste for vampires (a reaction to the goth spankers I knew in high school). I got my first Tomb Guard models at the GW store in Tokyo, at Japan prices, which is why I only have 16 of them. I wanted to get up to a unit of 24 (6x4, a good-sized WHFB unit at the time), but I could never justify to prices. Then they revised the army book and released the current plastics,which look nothing at all like the ones I already had. I checked Ebay periodically, but couldn't find any for a price I was willing to pay. Then, one day, I found someone offerring OOP Tomb Guard for something like $2 each. I ordered 20.

Canny readers will have already realized my mistake. What arrived was not 20 metal Tomb Guard, but 20 recast resin skeletons with Tomb Guard torsos instead. Having already spent the money, I couldn't bring myself to throw them away (that's the appropriate reaction to receiving recasts, right?), so I stuck them in a box and ignored them. Those are the models I decided to work on this week.

They were a hassle to put together and rank up, and something just seemed off about them. Partway through the painting process, an Undead Army box from Mantic arrived (I bought it off a guy on the Mantic Trading FB group for about as much as it would have cost direct from Mantic, but with a catapult thrown in), and I realized what was so weird about the GW skellies: there is no way those bones could fit inside even a GW human model. Maybe a Space Marine, Chaos Warrior or neanderthal, but nothing regular human-sized. Still, I soldiered on and got through the unit. Here's a comparison shot with a real TG model:


About the same time I finished off the unit, I completed this guy:




The guy with the shield has been finished for probably eight years. The guy on the right is the one and only Finecast model that I own ( I had the 25th anniversary SM, but sold it at cost a couple of months ago). I have always thought that the bright, shiny models in both of the TK army books that I own don't really seem like the reanimated remains of a millenia-dead culture, so I paint everything as dusty, faded, and corroded. I gave the new guy gold-plated rather than bronze armor just to see what it would look like. I'm not entirely certain I like the result.

Up next: Mantic skeletons. I have ten assembled and based, ready for priming. I can tell already that they will be fun to paint.

I like the faded look on the old model better but, a character should stand out more. Both look good, I can see your dilemma.

The unit looks good, nice tones.

The new-old-recast TG look good, I still have to say. The faded scheme works for them, as well. The golden-bronze on the character works, and makes sense in that his gear would probably be nicer then that of the peasantry. The TK skellies' issues are basically legacy-based, in that they're based on models that are based on the original Skeleton Horde/Army models that we started with.

I agree. I like the faded, more realistic look over the bright colours.

Thanks, everyone. I agree that undead generally look better with either faded or rotting gear. I think I have another copy of that model which came in the Tomb King on Chariot set I have lying around somewhere, so I have another one to paint up to match the rest of the army.

This week, I have a troop of Mantic skeletons to share:



Unlike those bootleg GW skellies, these were a joy to assemble and paint. They go together like a dream, their hands and heads (but not their feet) seem like they would actually fit inside a human body, and the helmets are a pretty good match to the Men-At-Arms as well. I painted their clothes to match the dog(rat?) handlers and army standards I painted last year to give them a sense of unity. I have another ten assembled and based, awaiting primer later today.

They've come up really nicely. I've got an assembled unit of them on my painting desk that never got any further. I should get back onto them sometime soon.

They are really nice models. I much prefer them to my GW plastics.

Very nice, indeed.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Canny readers will have already realized my mistake. What arrived was not 20 metal Tomb Guard, but 20 recast resin skeletons with Tomb Guard torsos instead. Having already spent the money, I couldn't bring myself to throw them away (that's the appropriate reaction to receiving recasts, right?), so I stuck them in a box and ignored them. Those are the models I decided to work on this week.

They are actually the charioteer torsos from the TK Chariot. Back when TK first came out I was miffed that infantry had the option for light armor but GW only sculpted armored torsos for the charioteers - so I bought like 15 chariots and then another 30 charioteer bodies from ebay bits sellers so I could make armored skeleton regiments.
TK are my favorite WHFB army and I'll never get rid of them... but now I want to finish them! They're halfway painted, and now I'm inspired by your awesome TK!

Thanks for the kind words, judgedoug. Infantry-sized Tomb Kings are really nice models, although I prefer the proportions of the metals over the plastics. I never got any of the large cav or monstrous creatures that were released with the hardback army book.

I had an amazingly productive week-plus since my last update. First, I finished ten more Mantic skeletons, bringing me up to a full regiment:


I love that guy with the bell.

I added in one of the dog handlers I got from the first KoW KS, leaving me two guys left over to start the next regiment:


Ive decided to color-code the units to go with the army standards I painted last year, which is why these guys are blue. I have to more dog handlers, as well as the dogs (rats?) that come on the sprue, so I will have enough models for three regiments when my DKQ stuff arrives later this year.

I really, really like these skeletons. I used my labor-intensive technique for bone (base coat of very dark brown, layer of ochre, layer of ivory, layer of white), followed by a wash of Ogryn Flesh/Soft Tone. For my money, Ogryn Flesh is the best of all the original Citadel washes, and possibly the best of everything they ever produced. It dirties up anything it touches without overwhelming it like Devlan Mud did/Strong Tone does.

Finally, a quick teaser of what is coming next in this space:


For the rest of this update, head over to my other plog.

Skeletons look great!

I really like how you've done those Mantic Skellytoons. I've got a bunch here on my desk, but I'm constantly put off starting them properly because they look so damned fiddly.

They only look fiddly. I paint them in four stages: bone, cloth, armor and weapons, and belts. Base coat, one highlight (at most), then a wash. 楽勝。

Shrine looks great. I want one.

It's a 1/150 scale (N gauge) shrine by Sankei, like this one. The shrine itself is shorter than a 28mm mini, so I think it will work for what I have in mind. Watch this space.

Watching this space.

This update took longer than I had originally planned, for a variety of reasons. Let's see if the delay was worth the extra time. Up this week, Sohei (Japanese warrior monks), from Perry miniatures:





Remember my complaints about the Perry ashigaru? Those apply here as well. I'm convinced that the molds for this line are wearing out, because all of the guys whose arms are held close to their bodies had big, ugly, spiky chunks of metal in their armpits that I had to carve out. Their naginata looked weird, so I replaced them with some Dixon weapons I had lying around. Also, I didn't bother painting their eyes, as they don't really have eyes. In fact, most of their faces look like Jizo statues, which may be thematically appropriate, but are not a lot of fun to paint. Finally, only two of six poses has the hood. The rest look more like Ikko-ikki fanatics than warriors from Hiei-san. On the plus side, they are finished and I don't have anymore to do.

Here they are ranked up with a few of the Zenit sohei I posted a while back:



"Wait a second there, Josh," I hear you say, "even by Mantic's loose standards, that's not a proper KoW regiment!" And you are right, that's not the whole unit. When the leaders of those temples which used sohei wanted to make a point, they would send out troops carrying a mikoshi (a portable shrine), containing a sacred relic from the temple, as a demonstration of their spiritual (and therefore temporal) power. Knowing this, there was no way I could not include at least one in the army:




The mikoshi itself is an N-gauge shinto shrine (from this set), mounted on a couple of toothpicks, painted up in gaudy gold and red like Japanese Buddhist temples like to use, and carried by the last four of the Perry sohei. If I had to do it over again, I would have picked up a couple more of the hooded guys so the mikoshi wouldn't be so tilted.




As a part of the unit, though, it all seems to blend together. Overall, despite my disappointment with the individual minis in this update, I'm glad to be able to add this unit to the army.

That looks great mate. I don't mind the tilt I would have kind of expected it not to be perfectly straight if four people were carrying it anyway.

Is the shrine glued into their hands?

Perry Minitures can be hit and miss with their casting, but the unit looks good.

@carlos: the sticks are just sort of crammed in the hands of the guys with the hoods, and since they barely fit they hold the shrine in place pretty well. The sticks are just resting on the hands of the other guys.

@robert: Yeah, I'm finding the Perry stuff a little disappointing. They look a lot better in ranks than up close.

Suppose that means you could always swap them if you get more hooded guys in the future. That hooded guy holding the shrine is probably the best of the monk sculpts in my mind.

That. Looks. Awesome.

Thanks. I still have mixed feelings about the individual minis, but I'm glad it came together as well as it did. There is another building in the set that I may try to use for a second regiment, taking advantage of what I learned doing this first one.

I agree with Carlos (and others) - the unit looks good and the tilt works for a shrine being carried into battle. The unit looks good, but I'll agree that it's a shame that the figures were disappointing, since painting stuff like that is never a lot of fun. Still, at least they're done now!

Brilliant - That shrine looks super, a really great idea!

In between the sohei I posted last week and the not-quite-finished army project sitting in my painting space, I decided to finish off some things that have been cluttering up my desk for far too long. First up, the Casket of Souls for my Tomb Kings:





I figure this model will work as a balefire catapult in KoW. As with the rest of my TK, I wanted this item to look very, very old. I eschewed gold-plating as in the studio paint jobs, and went with bare stone, as if any decoration has been scoured off after centuries in the sand. I finished all the painting on this close to three years ago, but I wanted to do something to make it more portable. The Liche Priest is pinned through both feet, so he just lifts out. The Tomb Guard were more difficult. The base is a little thin (even on the plastic card) for long pins, and I'm currently out of tiny magnets. For the time being, they are standing on wads of BluTac until I figure out a better solution.




A friend of mine won this mini in a raffle at the GW store in Jimbocho, and having no use for it he sent it to me. I let my then-three-year-old son open the box it was in, and he immediately claimed it for himself. It then sat, unopened, on my desk for about a year, until he suddenly remembered it. We started painting it, and then his attention span ran out, leaving it for me to finish about a year later. I kept his color choices intact, touching up the bone a little bit and giving the whole thing a Soft Tone wash. I also tried an OSL effect for his eyes:


I'll let you decide how well it turned out.

The Reaper has come up very nicely, and the Casket of Souls looks spectacular!

That casket of souls is truly worthy of a "wow!" - Great work!

Yep great skeleton stuff The glowey eyes on the reaper dude are making me reconsider the red I've been using for my own skeletons.

I really like the casket of souls! I like how the lich stands out from the casket.
I also like the osl on the reaper's eyes!

I have three Kings of War armies that I'm working on concurrently: samurai, undead, and orcs, the last of which started this painting blog. After clearing off some space, I found the time to work on these:



There are essentially only two poses for these Greataxe minis, and after trying to rank up the sohei I posted a couple of weeks ago, I think this is the way to go, at least for fantasy settings. Half of the sohei look like they are fighting each other, while these guys appear to be facing another enemy unit. The mantic integral base helps as well, in that the model stays almost entirely within the footprint of the base.

While working on the orcs, I took a gander at the contents of the sprue, and decided to do some orclings as well. Once I got a pile of them snipped off, I remembered something that I had in my container of isopropyl alcohol, being stripped. I ended up with three bases:



Way back when I first started WHFB (at the tail end of 2nd ed in case you're keeping score), I just picked up whatever I could find, including Ruglud's Armored Orcs, a couple of war machines sets, an elven attack chariot, and a couple of packs of snotlings. All the orc stuff got traded away, but I just couldn't get rid of these guys. Their sizes are inconsistent, and most of them are pretty non-threatening, but with five poses of orclings to pad out the bases, I ended up with a pretty nifty little unit. I have enough snotlings for three more bases worth, once I get more orclings painted up.

Finally, one more mini that my son started and then lost interest in:


This is, of course, a wight standard bearer from GW. I despise pretty much every undead model released at the time this one came out-- wacky giant helmets, hands like boxing gloves, skulls that would fit in an ogre's head-- but technically this was an easy figure to paint. The details were crisp and easy to identify, and being metal gives it a little heft. The banner includes yet another howling griffon logo-- one day I'll finish off the sheet!

I have started working on the trio of orc chariots I got from the KS, and hope to have them finished by the end of the week.

After the Greataxe and snotorclings last week, I got into a greenskin mood. Digging through the pile of orc stuff I've had lying around since the kickstarter, I decided on a troop of chariots:







The chariot itself was pretty easy to assemble, despite suffering from most of the failings of restic. In the end, I just did basecoat-wash for pretty much everything. The final effect works well enough, IMO. In posting these photos, I noticed that I missed the teeth on the drivers, so I'll have to get to those before I seal the models. My one complaint: the chariot's wheel base is pretty much exactly 100mm, and with the scythes attached they can't rank up as a unit. Other than that, I think they'll work just fine as part of the army, if not as display pieces.

The Orcs, Snotlings and Chariots all look great, Josh. I commend you for sticking with it through the assembly of the restic chariots as well. Did you have to heat-treat them?

Actually.... it seems like the scything wheels will stop them from being flush when you put them next to one another. Good thing they can no longer be fielded as individual units and now need to be clumped up in sets of three minimum... /facepalm

Thanks. I prefer the look of Mantic's orcs over that of the current GW version, and they are easy (and therefore fun) to paint. Assembling the chariots wasn't to bad-- only the platform needed to be heat-treated, any other warping fits with the slightly ramshackle feel of the army. The thing with the scythes is pretty irritating, however.

Great job with the chariots. I just started to dust off all my sprues of mantic orcs to get ready for the new edition. I never got any of their chariots, instead I've repurposed my beastmen chariots. Can you offset the chariots by setting the middle one back far enough for the scythes of the outer two to fit between the pigs and the frame of the center chariot? I know it won't look right, but could make it work for the unit.

Recently, I have been cycling through my three Kings of War armies as I decided what to paint so that I don't get bored and just stop painting altogether. Last week was orcs, so this week I cranked out a unit for my undead. Digging through my box of unpainted skellies, I came across these Dream Warriors, by RAFM. I saw these models at my FLGS more than 20 years ago, and decided then and there that I had to have them. I painted up two of them to the best of my ability at the time, realized how time consuming they were, and put them away. They had been languishing in the big box of shame until my son asked to see what unpainted undead model I had lying around. While he was bashing a few skeletons together in "battle," I saw these guys with new (or rather, much much older) eyes, and figured out how I could paint them quickly and possibly effectively-- I'll let you decide if I was right.

Here's the whole unit together:


For basing, I was inspired by the illustrious Azazelx, who has been basing his most recent work on round bases and then blutac-ing them to movement trays for KoW. I prefer square bases for fantasy minis, but these guys just don't fit on 20mm bases. Instead, I mounted them on 25mm bases in ranks of four, which is the correct frontage for a legal KoW unit. Problem solved!



The biggest issue I had all those years ago was making them look ethereal. I did a lot of wet-blending on the two that I finished, and the result looked good enough at the time, but it took forever. Looking at them now, I see tow distinct parts to the models: the ectoplasm and the armor/weapons. I decided that these models are the spirits of long-dead warriors, called back and bound to their ancient suits of armor. All the ghostly parts are Army Painter goblin green, dryburshed up to white at the hightlights. The armor is AP gunmetal, glazed with Payne's Grey, then washed with Gryphone Sepia to make everything look aged but not corroded. I did some OSL on the weapons and their eyes/hemets, with varying results.



The greens look darker in person. I may go back and darken things up a bit.



The face on the guy on the left reminded me a lot of the climax in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I tried to capture that here.



I like how the Sepia wash brought out the details on these spears (or are they pole arms?)



The guy with the tongue and Doc Brown hair delights me to no end.

I have enough models from this set for one more unit this size. They were a lot of fun to paint, which is true for just about any RAFM model. I wish they got more love from the community, because they have a nice range of interesting/unique sculpts that aren't tied to any specific ruleset. Maybe I'll add some random monsters or investigators to the queue...

Dag. Some of those call of cthulu minis may end up getting bought. I guess I never really looked into this company, but a lot of those figures would work well for pulp alley.

I like the dream warrior dudes, definitely got a surreal ghosty thing going on.

 GrimDork wrote:
Dag. Some of those call of cthulu minis may end up getting bought. I guess I never really looked into this company, but a lot of those figures would work well for pulp alley.

I like the dream warrior dudes, definitely got a surreal ghosty thing going on.

Their CoC stuff is top notch. I have 20-30 ghouls that I have used for my various undead armies for years. I even picked up a copy of Pulp Alley just so I could use (and justify painting up) some of the many, many investigators I have acquired over the years.

Those minis look really cool! I like the ghostly green.

The models and the paintjob you've achieved on them both look fantastic and really appropriate for KoW. Will you be using them as Wraiths or Revenants?

I'm looking forward to seeing the second batch of them painted up as well. A nice little addition to your undead force, and there are a couple of them that look like they'd also make very nice Army Standard Bearers as well, to get good use out of the extras.

You've reminded me that I've got some of those old RAFM Ghasts myself in one of my boxes. I should pull them out and see if I've got enough of them to make it worth, basing and painting them for KoW as well. I've got at least 2 packs worth (4 figures) but we need a few more.

I love the metallic on them. I need to work out a way to paint nice muted bronze-type colours.

@Azazelx: I'll be using them as wraiths. I have a set of Citadel's Nightmare Legion that I use as wights/revenants. The next set of dream warriors got pushed back a couple of steps in favor of some other RAFM monsters and something for my samurai, but I hope to have them done by the end of the month.

@slinky: Yeah, metallics can get pretty boring as there is only so much variation out of the pot. Washes and glazes work wonders.

Ah yeah, love the Nightmare Legion. I never had them myself, but I painted them for someone back in the day. Sadly they're hideously expensive to buy these days so I doubt I'll stretch myself that far. Are yours painted up yet? I'd love to see them!

Also... Undead Samurai? I've never heard of those. Now they would really be something else!

After agonizing for so long over the Dream Warriors, I decided to try something a little simpler to clear my palate:






These are, or course, Magwa and Jo'os, a special character from the KoW goblin list. They are supposed to be mounted separately, but given they have a single profile, it seemed pointlessly fiddly. Jo'os (the mawbeast) got a simple paintjob of Army Painter monster brown, with a couple of drybrushed highlights followed by a wash of Devlan Mud, while Magwa is just basecoat-and-glaze. The whole thing took about three days (one hour at a time first thing in the morning) to finish.

Up next: samurai!

I've never seen them before. Cool models and nicely painted!

Nice looking Mawbeast and handler there!

When I posted the photos of the wraith about a week ago, I mentioned in passing that I have a regiment of the very old Citadel Regiment of Renown called The Nightmare Legion that I will use as revenants. Having mentioned them, I haven't been able to get them out of my head, so while waiting for a basecoat to dry on the the samurai that I'm working on, I decided to pull them out and see if they still work. Most of my older painted miniatures are still in the same plastic container they were dumped in the first time I moved house, and everything is pretty dinged up. So, I decided to put the samurai on hold and see about updating these guys to my current standards:


The three on the left in this photo had their shields pop off, leaving the skulls damaged. I did some touch-up work on them, but there wasn't much I could do without scrapping the shields and starting over. These guys will be in a back rank, I think.





The rest of the unit survived their ordeal remarkably unscathed. I touched up their loincloths/pants, and redid the metal on their weapons. My technique for bones hasn't really changed in the last twenty years or so, so I didn't need to do much there.


Since the commanders will be front and center in the unit, I did a little more work on them. Their capes got a new oat of red, their armor and weapons, as well as boots and belts, were repainted and washed to bring them in line with my more current work.


And then there is this guy. The original standard pole broke off years ago, as one would expect with a thin shaft of lead, so I remade it into something a little sturdier. The more educated and refined among you have no doubt identified the image on the standard, but for the hoi polloio, this is my freehand rendition of the cover art from Megadeth's "Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?" The unit benefits, I think, from being a little more metal than the average unit of skeletons.

Speaking of which:


Here they are all together. The mathematically-inclined will have noticed that there are only eighteen in the unit. I have another 5-6 more unpainted that I will add to finish the unit off some time in the future.

As a bonus, I also found these guys:



The guy on the right is a pre Realms of Chaos-era Chaos Wizard that I thought looked more like a necromancer, the guy on the right may be a Liche by Harlequin? Maybe? Some company who tried to compete with Citadel around the time of WHFB4e or so. They were somewhat hit or miss, but I like this guy well enough.

Next update:samurai, I promise!

You've done those ancient minis proud! Love the designs on the shields - Very effective indeed

Love the Peace Sells! Banner!

Such a epic and metal skeleton unit

So, I painted some samurai:







These are all from the long-dead Clan Wars line. I got the starter box brand new, and piked up the infantry and cavalry expansions along with several blisters of personalities, and then promptly lost steam on the project. In the decades since, I have been slowly chipping away at the backlog, but this is the first unit I can call complete.




I also must have picked up some models from Bartertown way back in the day, because I have several that are already based and spray-primed white, something I haven't done since the Great Primer Disaster of 198-. Curse you Ral Partha and your grainy sprays! These guys allowed me to add a splash of color to the unit, as there would have been at least a few suits of armor like these in any group.



These last two were painted up several years ago. Instead of doing color washes on the lacing, I hit them with a black wash, followed up by a brush on, semi-gloss sealer, which then stripped some of the paint off, leaving shiny bare patches here and there. They will go in the center where my mistakes will be invisible.



And a group shot. There are only two poses of infantry, which would have been par for the course back in the day. They are much easier to rank up that those Zenit samurai I painted way back. I'll add another 10 in the other post to bring the unit up to a full 20. But before that: zombies!

Good job on the clan wars stuff. Shame they dont have a few more poses but its too be expected of the old stuff.

The clan-specific samurai had alternate poses, but I don't have very many of them-- just dragon clan, I think. Once I get through the mass of zombies I starter this morning, I might break them out.

Nice samurai!

Love the progress!

Kicking it old-school with the Nightmare Legion there. Great freehand work on the shields and also the banner. I saw that album cover so many times back in the early 90's when I was working in a CD warehouse, so I recognised it almost immediately as Megadeth even though I've never listened to it (didn't remember the title either to be honest). Love it - A Very Metal Unit!

Samurai are also looking very nice. They make a strong looking unit. I remember Clan Wars/L5R. Never played it myself, but I had some monks to paint for a friend at one point. I'd be interesting to see if those figures are still available from somewhere - then you could still add other clans' models to your force.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. The samurai are much brighter in person. I need to replace the battery on my light box...

I painted those wights in my early 20's, when I was getting back into metal. I painted up about 40 RTB01 marines as Metallica album covers (Kill 'em All and Master of Puppets), but sold them all off a long time ago. I'm not sure I have the patience for that kind of free hand any more.

Swards are a bit wide but given the age, plus they're kind of imposing that way Good paintwork as usual!

Yeah, the swords are huge. It keeps them from being as bendy as more realistic weapons, though.

Going back a page I adore those Dream Warriors, what magnificent and characterful sculpts. The painting is great to, I have never really tried wet blending but it looks great on those.

And the "Peace Sells..." standard is great too, a great trip down memory lane from a lot of the standards you saw on fantasy minis in the 80's.

Keep it up.

Thanks for your kind words. In truth, I didn't do any blending in those guys-- it's all drybrushing and glazes.

As I think I've mentioned before, undead were either my first or second army for WHFB (back when four or five Chaos Warriors could cost as many points as a full army of, say, elves). I still have lots and lots of the original Citadel plastic skeletons that I got for a song when they were first released. Zombies at the time, though, were all metal and too expensive even for a high school kid with an after-school job. By the time GW released a set of plastic zombies, they had already split "undead" into VC and TK, and I was focusing on the latter. So I've never gotten around to painting up any zombies until this past week:


Here we see a regiment of Mantic zombies. I got them with the undead army box, and did what I assume everyone does and hybridized them with ghouls. The skin is Army Painter necrotic flesh, the clothes are various drab colors, then guts are AP chaotic red highlighted with whatever the light red highlight paint from GW is called. The whole thing was then dipped in AP Strong Tone, whipped around on the end of a milk frother and left to dry. A quick coat of paint-on matte sealer and some detailing on their bases, and finished. These guys were a lot of fun to paint, and once again I was reminded why I like mantic bases for fantasy miniatures-- since they have to fit on those little circles, they are dead easy to rank up.

"But wait," I hear you say, "who uses regiments of zombies in KoW?" The answer is "not me." Here they are in horde formation:




I make my own movement trays using Tamiya plasticard, steel paper and sheet magnet on the model's bases, so it was easy enough to make this horde base modular. I just left of the plastic strip on one side of each base so they can form up without screwing up the frontage too badly. I used the same technique to make two more troop-sized trays, for a full 60-zombie unit:




I now have the option to field a mega-horde, a horde and a regiment, or three regiments. You have no doubt noticed all the white space. That's because I don't actually have 60 zombies. The army box comes with 30 zombies and 20 ghouls, but that's not a wholly accurate number, because six of those zombies are just spinal columns:


I did up two of them as piles of guts dragging themselves toward the enemy (note that I left the shine intact on the guts), but I didn't want a whole rank of headless, armless zombies. That left me with these guys:


These are just zombie/ghoul legs and spinal columns, with GW skeleton ribcages attached, followed by spare heads and arms. I'll be using Tamiya kneadatite to add in skin and muscle on the backs, necks and chest, leaving the abdominal cavities open for guts to hang out of. Combined with one metal zombie that I found in my bits box, that takes me up to 53, leaving me short seven zombies which I hope to trade for sometime in the near future.

As an aside, I had planned on padding out the unit with the box of GW zombies I've had in the closet for the last ten years or so, but when I finally opened it up, I was shocked by how much bigger and crappier they are compared to these. I suppose I could add neck bolts and chains and call them Frankensteins or flesh golems or whatever, but I'm far more likely to just trade them off to someone locally (meaning somewhere else in Japan).

Great stuff, gotta love hordes of zombies

Yeah zombies!!

Those are some very nice looking zombies

Great Zombies, Josh. That's one kick-arse horde you have up there. I think I also need to hire you to make my movement trays

Who would work on zombies .

I like the piles of zombie bits.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I really enjoyed painting these models.

azazelx: the movement trays are just 1.2 mm plasticard with 3mm triangle edges. I suspect just buying the supplies over there would be cheaper than posting them from Japan...

Really nice work there Josh Those zombs look suitably gribbly.

I spent my morning painting time working with kneadatite. Here are the results:

Wow, nice work. Really look a bit more like zombies now than the bits put together (not that it didn't work as is, this is just better).

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I really enjoyed painting these models.

azazelx: the movement trays are just 1.2 mm plasticard with 3mm triangle edges. I suspect just buying the supplies over there would be cheaper than posting them from Japan...

I made some for my Ogres ages ago and they actually turned out really well. But I've got no room on my paint table and I hate making trays, so it'd be much easier for me if you'd just come over and make them for me. We can even have a game. Deal?

Fleshing up those Skeleton torsos on the Mantic Zombies looks really bloody good. I reckon when they're done, those are going to be your stand-out unique models of the horde.

One of the cool things about my job is that I don't actually have to be here all day during breaks. I use the free time to crank out bigger projects than I can manage during my early morning painting times. I cranked out these zombies in about two hours yesterday:








These guys looked pretty dodgy when I was putting down the base colors, but the dip really worked for them. I don't think it will replace my normal painting techniques, but for big units of undifferentiated grunts, it works wonders, especially if they are all earth tones.

Here's a group shot:

Yep, zombies look good, nice work.

My wife and son are away visiting her mother, while I had to stay behind for some continuing education seminars tomorrow and the day after. I'm using my sudden wealth of alone-time to crank out some larger projects that I just haven't gotten around to. First up, GW's Garden Of Morr kit:


While I have little to no interest in GW's games or minis, their hard plastic scenery remains top notch. I picked this kit up shortly before my son was born six years ago, and it has been languishing in the upstairs closet ever since. It was fairly easy to paint, although it is Festooned With Skulls just like everything else by this company, and I had to keep going back to paint the ones that I missed, but as far as I'm concerned, it's finished and ready for the tabletop. I have roughly one metric ton of grave markers as well, so I may have a full on graveyard to show off this weekend.

Next up, some Japanese scenery:


We see here a torii and small building from plastcraft. I got these for backing Zenit Miniatures' Indiegogo campaign. The expanded styrene material was a little strange to work with. I tried basecoating the little building with some brown spraypaint I had lying around, but the can was so old that I ended up covering the building with little droplets of paint. This had a net positive effect, in that it added a sort of stucco texture to otherwise silky smooth walls, resulting in a more interesting model. One of the shops in Japan that I deal with carries this particular scenery line, so I may get some more of these buildings sometime in the future.

It's not ready to show yet, but I am currently working on RAFM's Necrodrake, which consists of six giant pieces of white metal and is therefore taking a long long time to assemble. I should have something to show tomorrow.

I freakin' LOVE those skeleto-zombies. Great idea, great use of bitz and fantastic execution. They look great painted up.

JEALOUS!

Thanks, boss. I may get around to doing a few more like that to finish off the unit-- I need eight more to get up to a full 60...

After another marathon painting session, I have these guys to show:



I actually painted three of these guys many years ago, but since they didn't match the ones I painted a couple of months back, I stripped them down and re-did them to match the other unit. I had to replace the spear shaft on the screaming guy because the original one had broken off,and it seems likely that I'll have to do it for the other guy holing his spear leveled.




I was planning to use this guy as a leader for a cavalry unit someday, but he fills out this unit quite nicely, I think. Here's the unit all together:


I spent the rest of my painting time yesterday assembling this guy:


That's the RAFM Necrodrake I mentioned yesterday. It's solid pewter and weighs a ton, and every joint had to be pinned. Thankfully the metal was soft enough to drill, but even then it took many hours. This morning, I spraypainted him ivory, and will try to finish him off tonight. I have an all-day continuing education thing to go to, though, so I won't be quite as productive as I was the last two days...

Great stuff!
The skele-zombies have come up great. Scenery looks very nice, and certainly effective. Do they have shops that sell touristy tat over in Japan? Might be a good place for scenery elements, in theory at least.

I love your Garden of Morr. Hopefully I can get mine done when it warms up into spring or summer. The ethereal undead are great as well.

That Necrodrake is going to kick some serious arse once he's done. Not that he doesn't already! That's a very impressive kit.

Lots of sexy stuff! That necrodrake is rather tasty as well!

Yeah, I like the dragon-thing. The dream warrior dudes are cool too, as is the garden of morr. Great stuff!

That Necrodrake is awesome! I can't imagine going through and pinning all his pieces and parts though.

Thanks as always for the kind words. The Necrodrake is a really nice model. So nice, in fact, that I finished it this morning:



The paint scheme is really basic: ivory spray paint, homemade dark brown glaze, ivory drybrush, plus some spot detailing here and there. There were a lot of places that I jut couldn't get to with a brush, so it looks better at arm's length than up close. I ended up basing him on a 75mmx150mm piece of plasticard, with LIquitex resin sand to level everything off. I may go back in and add some static grass later. I also gave him glowy green eyes:

...which may not have worked as well as I'd hoped.

While waiting for washes and such to dry, I started a batch of 10 Fleabag Riders which I hope to have ready to show tonight or tomorrow. It's more than a little lonely with the family away, but I'm getting a lot of hobby work done this week...

Looks good! Not much to do for a skeleton but you did it and it works

I kinda want one of those, would be a nice Beastie for my undead hordes (or unassembled plastic).

That's a pretty awesome looking Necrodrake. And so fast, too! After seeing it, I might try and pull my finger out and finish the D&D Dracoliche that's been half-painted here for the last three or so years.

My wife and son are coming back tonight after almost a week, and not a moment too soon. While they have been gone, I have been eating and drinking like a bachelor, although I have kept the house clean while doing so. Oh, yeah, and I painted a whole lot of stuff:


First up, here's a regiment of fleabag riders:


I like Mawbeasts a lot, both with and without chainsaws in their mouths, so I was really looking forward to getting this unit done. Once I started working on them, I changed my mind just a little. The riders's legs are molded on to the mounts, and have all sorts of ouches and gubbins and such which were a real pain to paint. I ended up giving them a basecoat and dip rather than anything more intricate. I had a real shock when I went to dullcoat them this morning. Humidity is up near 300% or so, and the dullcoat frosted the dip. I ended up hitting them with a glosscoat to deal with it, and I'll have to go back and paint on more a matte lacquer later. Anyway, they are finished.

Next, zombies:


I was eight models short of the sixty needed for a Legion of zombies in KoW, and no one in the country has just eight Mantic zombies just lying around. These all came from my Bones I vampire box. I mounted them on 40x0 pieces of plasticard, and plan to stick them in with the rest of the unit to fill it out:


While digging through the Big Box o' Bones, I found this guy as well:

He's an earth elemental (I think), and he looked enough like Ben Grimm that I just had to paint him up. Pretty simple, dark brown basecoat, drybrushed up to orange. The fossil on his shoulder detracts just a bit from the effect, but not enough to merit carving it out. I also found one of the three owlbears I ordered at the same time. I'll start that one up in a few days.

While digging around in my box of unpainted undead minis, I found this guy:


This is a very very old undead war elephant from Grenadier. I never really liked their human-sized models, but they produced a lot of fantastic monsters. They produced two elephants and one giant rhino in this series. I have the other elephant painted and in the case, but never got the rhino. I had forgotten about this one until last night. He was mostly painted, just requiring some touch ups and finishing to get him to this state. There is supposed to be a light catapult on his back, but I couldn't find all the parts last night.

Finally, some curved river sections:


Pretty close to ten years ago, I came across this tutorial on Terragenesis, and cranked about about eight feet of straight river sections. My one and only WHFB opponent at the time complained everytime I brought the river out because, even with two frod sections, he couldn't get his skeletons across fast enough. I felt bad for him (and didn't want to lose my only opponent at the time), so I started these curved sections. He moved away before I could finish them, and they languished in a box in the closet for years. I found them again when my son and I were looking through my boxes of unpainted stuff, and I decided to finish them. It took me six months or so to actually start, but only about an hour last night to finish them.

So, there it is: my weeklong painting marathon. I'm a little burnt out on this sort of assembly line painting, so I'm going to focus on some samurai personalities for a while.

Nice stuff!

Very productive!

That's a very impressive spurt of productivity. Getting all that done in a single week is just bloody insane!

Productive week for you my good man. Really want you to break out the steel fist stuff though.

Steel Fist?

Me and Josh both backed a Samurai kickstarter by a company called steel fist. It was delivered recently.

http://www.steelfistminiatures.com/products/sekigahara_range

Josh ordered these two amongst others.

http://www.steelfistminiatures.com/products/sekigahara_range/ii_naomasa.html

http://www.steelfistminiatures.com/products/sekigahara_range/sek_11-2.html

azazelx: With the family away, all I really had to do was walk and feed the dogs, leaving me many many hours to catch up on my TV and paint. I'm pretty burnt out on batch painting, though, so those Steel Fist minis came just in time.

carlos13th: I have eight samurai based and gesso'ed. They really are nice minis, and the samurai will make a great unit of hatamoto. I'm going to work on them one or two at a time for a few days while my batteries recharge.

Did you get the guy with the Ogre Helmet? He is going to be my Kojima Yataro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojima_Yataro

There's a dude with what looks like a tengu mask, is that who you mean?

No but that guy is really cool and is probably my favorite of the lot.

[img]http://www.steelfistminiatures.com/images/products/32/600/1.jpg[img]

guy on the left with a ogre helmet.

Cool stuff! Looking forward to seeing the samurai.

 carlos13th wrote:
No but that guy is really cool and is probably my favorite of the lot.



guy on the left with a ogre helmet.

Oh, yeah, I do have that guy. I put the helmet on a different body, though.

Which body? I wanted a guy with a kanabo with the ogre head so it was that body or the tengu body. and I felt the tengu head and body worked to well together to split them up.

carlos13th:I just assembled them randomly. They look OK to me.

Also, I finished the first of eight samurai yesterday:


He's wearing a nio-do with a yarou^kabuto, and is armed with a kanabo. I painted him according to a similar suit of armor found via GIS. He took about three hours from start to finish, and itt was nice working on just one model at a time. I'll put up another model from this set in another couple of days.

He looks great mate. That would have taken me for longer than three hours.

Is GIS google image search?

The samurai looks cool!

Agred - he looks really good. I love the Kanabo.

Here's samurai #2 from my Steel Fist kickstarter rewards:


Just like the last one I posted, his armor was inspired by a suit I found on GIS. A lot of the sengoku-era armor that I'm finding on line is really drab, and makes rather a nice change from the more ornate, colorful suits I've done in the past. This guy too about 3~4 hours, over three morning painting sessions. Here's a shot of the two that I have fnished:


I have a third model in the works, waiting for a wash to dry.

I finished off another Steel Fist samurai:


This one has a tengu mask with his helmet. A cursory Google search gave me several real-life examples of armor like this, but the colors were essentially the same as the other two I did from this set, so I went with black armor and red lacing to add a little color to the unit.

Here's a group shot:

Newest might be my favorite.

Between you and Carlos13th I'm getting a vague desire to make a small KoW samurai detachment. I think one each of the wargamers factory dudes spread out a bit would yield 3 missile troops, 2 spear regiments, 2 elite foot regiments (stick a spare horseman in there to fill it out), two troops of horsemen, and up to two mounted heroes (remember I thin my units out a bit). Probably a good 1000-1500...

Sheesh I may need to stop lurking here till that idea fades..

@ Grimdork: Well, that certainly sounds like a pretty solid core to build around. I'll be sure to pester you periodically until you get it finished.

Let the idea stew for a bit... Too many recent purchases lately

Besides, when bones 3 arrives, I'll have a couple of Oni, tengu, and kitsunes to find homes for

 GrimDork wrote:
Let the idea stew for a bit... Too many recent purchases lately

Besides, when bones 3 arrives, I'll have a couple of Oni, tengu, and kitsunes to find homes for

Well, if they need a home you can always send them here to their native lands. Those are among the very few Bones 3 minis I was interested in...

Those and the corsair were what I was interested in for.bones too. Just not interested enough to back for them alone.

Great job.on the steel fist guys josh.

Do it .grim but wgf has a sake.every now and then so wait for that.

There was a lot of stuff I was interested in for Bones 3, but I would have ended up with so much stuff I don't need that I found it easy to resist.

The steel fist guys are very easy to paint, especially compared to the Clan Wars stuff I did a while back. If only they were a little cheaper...

Steel fist are easier to paint than Perry too the sculpting is much crisper.

Yeah they are sadly s bit pricey

Those steel fist guys look great. Will you be mixing them in as heroes/unit leaders, or will they be assigned to their own unit(s) as elites, etc?

The more ornate sashimono will look weird, I think, mixed in with a regular unit, so In KoW, these guys will be a single unit of hatamoto. I figure I can just call them a troop of foot guard with a heavy duty magic item to make them more elite. In skirmish games, of course, they can be heroes.

You and Carlos13th, he was also subtly suggesting that I didn't need them

Was I being subtle? That wasn't my intention...

Bwahaha ha. Too bad I like oni

Neither of us were at all subtle. I tried selflessly taking his excess Oni of his hands too but he ungratefully declined.

Even looked into Bushido Josh? My local store plays it so me and the misses are getting involved.

 carlos13th wrote:
Neither of us were at all subtle. I tried selflessly taking his excess Oni of his hands too but he ungratefully declined.

Even looked into Bushido Josh? My local store plays it so me and the misses are getting involved.

I already have Ronin and Daisho. Is Bushido different/good enough to pick up as well?

Honestly not sure yet. I am getting into it mainly because its played often in my local store, which at the moment is the most attractive trait in any game.

Part of the combat system seems similar to Ronin in that you have a combat pool which you can attack and defence dice from in order to attack or defend which is blind to your opponent. The game is more character based though so you will buy a model called for example Kotenbo the tengu who will come with a set of skills and stats rather than creating your own characters. I like the models a great deal though and the demo game was fun enough that me and the misses decided to jump in with both feet. Your character also generated Ki each turn allowing you to use certain skills and traits. There are also certain characters that can leech ki from or give Ki to others etc etc. It seems worth getting into if you have someone to play it with.


Example of cards that come with models.

I finished off one more Steel Fist samurai:


This is actually the second one I started working on, but I had trouble figuring out what was going on with his armor. The lower half of the front and all of the back was weird looking, like the lacing was coming apart, and I couldn't wrap my mind around that. Then I realized that it's supposed to be bear fur, and it all made sense. I got a little lazy with the actual lacing, and painted it as if the lacing was much tighter than sengoku armor usually was, and then went back and black-lined it a little bit to assuage my conscience. Here's a group shot:



That's half of the unit complete. Four more and I'll have a complete troop of hatamoto. I wonder what magic item I should give them to represent their super-elite status...?

Looking good. That last guy though... Big ass Nodachi, banner ornament looks vaguely like something inappropriate... I think he's compensating for something!

Heh, lacing. You and Carlos both... If I ever get Samurai they'll be lucky to get a quick drybrush on details like that

Yeah, the banner is quite distinctive, which is what it's supposed to be-- the guy will stand out on the battlefield.

Lacing isn't any more difficult than, say, a purity seal, there's just a lot of it. If I could start again, I might try a simpler technique, but as it is, I want to be consistent across the whole army.

hahaha, you know, I didn't notice until Grim pointed it out. I actually thought it looked like a butternut from my parents' garden at first.

Looks great. Though I think you should get enough of these elite guys to bump them up to a full regiment!

Quick glances never help, at first I thought you lit his head on fire . Then I took the time to look and I got that same vibe Grimdork had. it's a couple hundred years before Japan goes anime penis crazy, I guess this guy is an originator.

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a gourd of some kind. That said, enemy samurai may very well have gotten p*ssed off and came after him, which is the point of a magnificent banner.

I might get another pack of guys to fill out a movement tray, but not for a while. I spent far too much on minis last year, and I'm trying to clear out my backlog a little before I get any more.

Me too, I just wish I could stick to it in practice

Yet another Steel Fist samurai finished:


I've been trying to keep with more subdued colors for this unit, but I gave this guy red armor because it seems to be obligatory-- every Google Search I do comes up with multiple red-lacquered suits. The black lacing helps town it down a bit, as does the white banner. Here's a group shot:


I have three more until this set is finished. Two ranks of four on 25mm square bases will give a footprint just a little deeper than a 2x5 set on 20mm bases, making them a legal troop. I may pick up another pack to make a full regiment once I clear out a little more of my Closet of Shame.

I think I've mentioned how much I like these models, and I hope the guy who makes them can stay afloat. According to his latest KS update, he lost a lot of money on the project, which seems to defeat the purpose of crowdfunding in the first place. I wonder if Kickstarter is becoming more trouble than it's worth for this kind of project...

When this guy was half-way finished, I read this post from Azazelx, and was inspired to dig out some of my Oldhammer Chaos stuff. Way back in WHFB 2ed, you could build an army of 3-4 Chaos Warriors (they were really high point-value models), which was pretty much ideal for a broke high school student like I was at the time. I picked up blister packs pretty regularly for years before Realms of Chaos was released. I have a lot from that era, but in my book the funky pre-RoC models remain my favorites:


This Chaos Thug was apparently named Link, which I guess derives from the chain on his wrist. A lot of the early thugs had a sort of court jester look, which is why I gave him the blue and white pants. I originally gave this guy a black gimp mask, but it was too dark and didn't feel Chaotic enough. I went back over the mask so it would match his pants, which I think is a better look. It doesn't show in these photos (nor will it show on the tabletop), but between his left elbow and body is a big ugly chunk of lead-- a limitation of the casting process back then, I suspect. I just painted it black and decided to ignore it after that.



I'm calling this guy a Chaos Marauder. There used to be six levels of Chaos Warrior: Thug, Marauder, Warrior, Champion, Knight and Lord. The labelling of the bottom two ranks had a lot of crossover, but for my puroses Thugs have exposed faces and/or limbs, Marauders have fully-enclosed helmets, and Warriors are fully armored. I used to paint Chaos Armor using a Ral Partha paint called Steel, which was essentially a metallic black. My last pot of that particular paint dried up long ago, so I had to try something different. I used Vallejo Tinny Tin, followed with a 50/50 mix of Tin and Mithril Silvre, with a final highlight of silver, washed with Dark tone to get this effect. It's not really the same, but I think it looks good and it's reproducible in 2015, so I'll stick with it for now. Here's these two together:

Great job on the steel fist stuff mate. Think the guy with the Kanabo is my favorite.

I like the old chaos dudes.

Thanks. As primitive as some of these older sculpts are, they have enough personality and funk value to make up for it. Once I get through the unpainted ones, I think I'll pull out and touch up some of the finished ones I have lying around.

Awesome work on the old Thugs. I only ever had very few of those, but man I wish I had more. Good stuff on the Samurai as well.

Latest banner-samurai-d00d is cool. I like the red. It also amuses me to imagine those are news papers and that he's got a route to run after the battle

Oldhammer stuff is nice too. Lot of character. I like the bright flail guy and the dark armored dude for opposite reasons, but both are quite effective.

I have a bunch of Chaos dudes, none of them newer than The Lost and The Damned, and I love every one of them. I actually packed them up with the intention of selling them off the last time I tried to rationalize my collection, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Yeah, don't do it (unless you sell them to me, that's acceptable)...

I was a hair's breadth away-- I unloaded about 30 pre-RoC Chaos Dwarfs and was in the middle of listing up the WoC when I decided it would be a mistake. Now that Mantic is getting their Abyssals up to snuff I'm really regretting those Chaos Dwarfs as well.

You can always cancel the Auctions for CDs. Unless this already happened awhile back...

I sold them off about three years ago, along with half a case of Star Wars minis that I really should have kept for my son. The wife was getting antsy about all the unpainted stuff I had in the closet, but she seems to have settled down now that my son is old enough to start playing with minis (if not exactly gaming).

Here is yet another samurai:


This one has a variation on the nio-do, with lacing covering half of the torso like an open robe. I found a suit of armor just like this on GIS, which is where the alternating black-red-white color scheme came from. THe red ended up looking more orange because I added a little too much yellow to the mix when I highlighted it. I have no idea what the back banner is supposed to be, so I just painted it up as presented on the Steel Fist page. Here's a group shot:


Two more to go in this set. I'm ready to start painting something besides samurai for a while.


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Oh, and then there's this guy:



This is, of course, an owlbear from the first Reaper Bones kickstarter. I could have sworn that I got three of these to use as "werewolves" for a KoW undead army, but I could only find this one. That's just as well, I suppose, because three of these guys in this wacky pose would be too much, I think. There are other owlbears out there, and maybe I'll see about picking up another one or two next year. I started this model at the tail end of my summer painting marathon, but sort of lost steam half-way through. The most frustrating part was the eyes:


When I first did the pupils, I got them almost perfectly circular, but they were too small and not pointing in the same direction, making him look a lot like Jack Elam. Making them bigger works better, but they are a little irregular, and any touch ups would cover up more of the yellow. I think I may just leave them as they are for now.

This has been a slow week for painting. I'm getting burned out on samurai, and I can't seem to make any progress on the last two of the hatamoto I've been showing. I finished the painting on three more classic Chaos minis, but I'm having trouble with the shields:


There's not much to this guy. He's fully armored, carrying a spear/halberd thing. I'm keeping these guys Old School, which means using the plastic shields they originally came with. I don't really enjoy freehand, but I wanted to give them classic Citadel shield designs, so I located a PDF of the Arcane Armorials transfers and printed them on transfer paper. This one slid over well enough, but the decal sheet is clear rather than white, resulting in a translucent red. Also, I either didn't seal it well enough after printing, or else I cut too close to the ink, but the colors kind of dissolved.



This guy's weapons all have a bird's-head motif, so I assumed his weird double mohawk is actually a feathered crest. I modeled the colors after Deathbird, an old Marvel supervillain. Once again, the shield transfer sort of fell apart.



Another simple Chaos Thug. He has a horn. He also had a mold line running over his right eye that I didn't notice until I was highlighting his skin. Rather than scraping it off and starting over, I turned it into a scar. His sheild transfer went on well enough, but the white basecoat shows through. I should have done a red basecoat instead.

I wanted to call these guys done this week, but the shields just aren't working. I may have to freehand them after all. Bummer.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
I have a bunch of Chaos dudes, none of them newer than The Lost and The Damned, and I love every one of them. I actually packed them up with the intention of selling them off the last time I tried to rationalize my collection, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Lol! I'd kinda hoped to get them off of you too....

Valete,

JohnS

Eyes on the owlbear look ok to me. Very alert, probably stares at you from the desk Samurai is cool too!

That's a great/crazy looking Owlbear, and the Samurai gang continue to impress.

I think the latest samurai is my favorite!
Owlbear's eyes look good to me.

Last Monday was my son's sixth birthday, so I didn't get much done while we were playing, and around midweek I just sort of lost steam. Over the weekend I forced myself to finish this guy:


He's another Steel Fist samurai. of course. I'm trying to keep these guys unique, and it has been getting harder to find interesting historical armors to base them on. I found this pattern by searching for "unusual armor" (or rather 変わった
鎧) on my phone, and came across this fantastic armor with yellow lacing and gold and purple accents. GIS on my computer doesn't show it though. He got dropped when he was half finished, mangling his original weapon, so I replaced it with a Dixon spear. The black lines on his back banner aren't uniform, but you can only tell up close so I'm calling that good enough for now. Here's everyone I've finished so far:


Only one more (plus movement tray), and I can put this unit behind me.

Would you mind sharing some of the inspiration photos you used?

I'll try to find some of them, but my phone (which uses Safari) and my computer (with Google) give different results.

He looks great - I'd have never picked that the weapon was a replacement, either so a very smooth conversion/repair job.

if you have email on your phone you should be able to copypasta the URL and email it to yourself?


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Huh, Just saw the chaos guys. They look pretty good, and I think the shield transfers would be recoverable if you just paint 'round the edges of them with the right colours. Well, the red ones, anyway. The blue looks like it might be too far gone.

I've done a few cursory image searches, but haven't found any of the images which inspired me. I did, however, find several other inspiring images. I'm going to take a break from samurai for a bit, but when I get back to them I can jump right in with some neat lacing patterns.

I went back and painted over one of the transfers, and it looks a lot better. I applied different transfers to the other two, but only one of them worked. I'll put up photos when the minis are complete, but for now it seems that, since the transfers require some freehand touch ups, it would be quicker to just freehand the shields.

I'm done! I've finally finished the hatamoto!


I was pretty sick of painting samurai by the time I got to this guy, so instead of researching samurai armor accented with bear skin (as this guy is), I just went with alternating green and white for the lacing. The fur is army painter fur brown, highlighted just a bit with fur brown/ivory, then hit with a wash of Strong Tone. This guy was apparently really into bears-- he has fur tabi, a fur-covered scabbard, fur lining on his kusazuri and menpo, and on his kabuto. For his banner, I imitated (as best I could) an ink painting I found online, and put a poem/song about a bear on the other side:
A bear / in order to see(view) the scenery / climbed a mountain.

Here's the completed Troop:




I left enough room on their movement tray for one more rank plus 5mm if I decide to field them as a full regiment instead. These are nice models, and fun to paint, but I'm going to take a break from samurai for a couple of weeks.

Completely unrelated, I finished off those Chaos Thugs:


This first Thug was essentially finished, but the translucency of the transfer on his shield bothered me. I ended up going back over it, and I think it looks much better now. I may or may not add some writing on the scroll.


I couldn't salvage the original transfer on this guy's shield, so I just painted over it and applied a new one. I probably should have replaced the shield entirely, as it ended up kind of lumpy, but it's hard to tell at arm's length. This model doesn't look particularly Slaaneshi, but that's what I had in the right shape and color. Maybe he's wearing a thong under his armor? I dunno, and don't really want to think much more about it...


I tried to do the same with this shield, but it just didn't work. The spike is too thick at the bottom to easily slide a transfer over and I ended up just freehanding the Star of Chaos. You won't be able to see his shield when he's ranked up, though, so we can all pretend this didn't happen.

I had enough fun revisiting this army that I pulled out a few more that I painted years ago, to see about touching up, but my twenty-years-ago skills hurt my eyes to look at, so I have three soaking in alcohol, awaiting stripping and a new paint job. Watch this space!

Very nice stuff. Always nice to get a unit done

That Hatamoto looks fantastic - the banner adds so much to him. The watercolour-like bear is a very nice touch, as is the poem on the back. Not that I can read it, but hey...

I am, indeed glad to have the unit finished. The poem on the banner is pretty famous-- everyone reading this has probably heard or sung a variation of it.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
I am, indeed glad to have the unit finished. The poem on the banner is pretty famous-- everyone reading this has probably heard or sung a variation of it.

The itsy bitsy spider?

Valete,

JohnS

It's about a bear, you goof, not a spider.

What a great unit of samurai! i like the freehand bear.

Thanks. It looks much worse up close.



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About halfway through the unit of hatamoto I posted the other day, I started pulling out random minis to ward of the boredom. I already posted the Chaos guys. Here are a couple more:



According to the tab, this guy is the Moon Duke, part of this set of Heroic FIghters of the Known World. I have almost every mini in this set, in various stages of disrepair. My son likes to look through my many, many Boxes of Shame, and when he saw all my old human fighters, he just had to take them all out and put them in my display case, to use as his Knight Team (as he calls them). The thirty-year old paint jobs offend my eyes, and I plan to get them all up to snuff, one at a time.



And here are three more bases of snotorclings. The snotlings have been ready to base ever since I finished the first set, but I didn't get around to painting more orclings until last week. Now I can field two troops or one regiment of the little pests.



Finally, here are some scouts I painted with my son. He is only six, so brush control remains an unknown to him, but he enjoys slapping paint on minis, and it's easy enough to go back and patch up the messy bits as we go. I have a lot of unpainted space marines, both metal and plastic, so I have no problem sacrificing them to improve his hand-eye coordination and fine motor control, as well as giving us more tie together that doesn't involve me getting punched by the Littlest Kamen Rider.

Finally: I can't believe no one has gotten the bear joke I posted over the weekend.

I was a little sad that no one commented on The Moon Duke until I noticed that my new post got turned into an edit, and thus didn't show up as an update. Oh, well...

This week, I have some Ogres to show off:


Of these three, the bald guy with the topknot is my least favorite. His head looks derpy, and with only two one-handed swords in the pack, he ends up looking like the ugly cousin of Grokagamok (who can be seen [urlhttp://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/613450.page#7217930]here[/url].) I still really like Mantic's ogres, and they are pretty easy, if somewhat repetitive, to paint. That said, I don't really need or want a full army of them, and will most likely use them as Oni allies for the samurai. I tried to tie them in thematically by giving them tiger skin loin clothes, with mixed results.

I like to have a couple of projects going on at once so that I have something to do while washes/glazes are drying. This time, I finished off three more Chaos Thugs:



I got this guy in a blister pack around 1986-87, and at the time I was really into him. "Check out this awesome gladiator," teenaged me thought, "I bet he got started as a pit fighteror something!" Looking at him with my 40-something eyes, he seems a lot more pervy and overtly Slaaneshi. Check out the thong, the piercings, the self-inflicted scarification. Also, his feet don't meet up with his base very well. I tried to hide it with static grass. Did it work?



This guy is based on the same body as the blue-and-white guy in this post. His pose is a little more natural, I think. He looks really stunted in the photo, but he's not much better seen straight on. I'm guesing he's supposed to be a dwarf, like that guy in that Men Without Hats video? I have a least one more Thug who fits this court jester theme-- I'll have to redo him soon.



I have stopped painting eyes on most of my minis, because they are too small to see at arms length, but I made an exception for this guy-- that mutation is the focal point of the model. I stuck with the eye theme with the old school transfer, as well. I managed to get it to settle over the shield boss well enough, but it still needed painting over to get it to look right.

Here's a group shot:


Next up: an ogre hero and some very very old Citadel fighters.

Good looking stuff.

I especially like the ogres. I'm still working on my GW ones.

I think it's cool that you paint with your son even though he's so young.

He has the attention span of a six-year old, so I end up doing most of the work. Mostly he likes to line up however many figures he can reach and have "battles." Once he's a little older I plan to introduce more complicated rules than hi-lo.

I have a few very old Citadel ogres, but nothing from the current range. How do you like them?

Scouts looking good for six. So's the other stuff. Great ogres, I especially like your mantic ogres color scheme.

Thanks. The scouts (and everything he paints) end up being a team effort-- we're still working on brush control.

I'm a big fan of Mantic's ogres, but not that orange-brown they use for their skin. It reminds me of the GW studio Beastmen around 6th/7th edition WHFB.

You've gotten heaps done here since I last looked in - I remember that set of fighters! I may even have one or two, though nothing actually painted, and certainly nothing worthy of display like the Moon K̶n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ Duke of yours. The SnOrcling horde is coming along nicely. The hardest parts of those mobs is painting the little blighters and your Son's Marines are fantastic for one so young.

I like what you've done with the Ogres and I actually thought "Oni" when I saw the flesh tone you'd used, only to have it confirmed further down the page - so I guess you can call the scheme effective as well. The old-school thugs look great as well. How many have you renovated now?

I find the orclings pretty easy to paint, if only because there isn't much too them. Goblin green, wash. Pick out the or cloth, wash. Glue to base. Digging through my boxes of unpainted stuff, I found another unopened pack of snotlings, so someday I'll crank out another six bases of the little guys.

I have five updated thugs so far, with another thirty or so waiting for modernization. I'm working on some fighters and a hero fort the ogres right now. After that, I may work on something bigger.

Having finished off a Horde of ogres last week (6 models is a horde?), I decided they needed a captain. Here he is:



I absolutely love these old Jes Goodwin ogres. Everyone is an individual with so much personality. I supposed that's why I never got around to building an army of them-- they all seemed like they could have been the general. I have probably four more from this line, with a few that went missing when I moved overseas. One of these days I suppose I will have to really sort out all my painted and unpainted lead. They will be my legacy to my son, after all. Here's all the ogres I have currently painted:

including an inadvertent selfie.

Also, a couple more fighters:


This guy is named Wulf, at least according to his slotta tab. He does have a wolf head on his breastplate, but it's all but invisible thanks to the wings on his helmet. The wings had some ugly mold lines/casting errors on the front that made them more difficult to paint than they should have been, but they look good enough at arm's length that I won't lose any sleep over it. His shield is one of the few designs that work for non-Chaotic humans from the Arcane Armorials set I acquired a few weeks ago. This one required a lot of touching up after application, just like all the others I've tried. I'm beginning to think that keeping it old school is more hassle than it's worth.



And this is Vlad. Just like Wulf, he's an old Jes Goodwin sculpt. You can tell because the eyes were so easy to paint. Vlad is kind of a boring miniature-- full plate with horns as his only decoration. I guess the shield is supposed to make him more interesting visually, but once again the transfer is something of a letdown. As much as I hate freehand, that may be the way to go in the future.

I don't normally post WIP photos, but I'm stuck on this guy:


He's a paladin from the same era as Vlad and Wulf. He's almost finished, but I can't seem to think of a good way to do the plume on his helmet. Ideas?

New stuff is looking good, and I'd love to see an "army shot" of the Ogres. For the paladin, you could go with yellow for the plume, or purple again - possibly a lighter purple? If you wanted to go crazy you could do the "layers" of feathers in alternating colours. Black and White, or Dark Purple and White would work with his existing outfit.

That is the army shot of the ogres. They have been on the back burner for a long, long time.

I like the idea of alternating colors for the plume. I'll give that a try and see how it looks.

Nice work!

Yep, nice oldschool stuff. Between you and Azazel I'm getting nostalgic for things I wasn't even in the hobby for

Thanks for making me feel old

Muahahaha! I have to make myself feel better somehow

Besides, I could have been into the hobby earlier, and I only had scifi models to start with.

So, I took azazelx's advice on this guys plume:


It looks good enough, I think, to call this guy finished. I'll have something bigger to show once I finish it's base.

The painting is good and as ever, I'm really impressed with the Mantic and Kings of War models. Half the price of GW models and generally as good.

I now present the Lava Dragon:


This is Citadel's Lava Dragon, sculpted by Nick Bibby and released in 1987, according to The Stuff of Legends. Someone in my high school gaming group picked this up, but it traded hand several times before coming to me. I seem to recall attempting assembly, getting frustrated and then putting in a box. It sat in that box for probably twenty years, and would most likely have stayed there for much longer, had it not been for my son's insatiable curiosity about my Closet of Shame.




At least six months ago, we were sitting on the floor playing a "game" (which means we had lined up as many miniatures as I would allow, and were rolling hi-lo until he won), when he asked if I had any dragons. I pulled out the box labeled "monsters," and we found a bunch of neat stuff, like Glogfag's Ogres, some CoC mythos monsters, and this dragon. He decided then and there that we would assemble and paint the dragon that very night. We assembled it and filled the gaps with kneadatite, and primed it before bedtime. It got a basecoat of Army Painter chaos red, and then his five-year old attention span ran out, and it sat on a shelf until last week.




I pulled it down after finishing those Chaos Thugs I posted a while back, and gave it successive drybrushings of Liquitex Pyrrole Red, mixed with Liquitex Cadmium Yellow. The claws were done using my bone technique-- Delta Ceramcoat dark chocolate highlighted with whatever the very old GW ivory paint I still have. I gave him vertical pupils that are essentially invisible at arm's length. I briefly entertained the idea of building a scenic base, but then I remembered how much I hate basing, and then just did a glue-and-sand base, painted in desert colors. This model is big enough that I'm not sure I have any way to store it. Something in the display case will have to go in a box, I think. Maybe the Dreadfleet ships?

Next up: more monsters.

Very nice take on a certified classic, good work from your Son too for having you rescue it from the cupboard of shame. Would love to see some of Golgfag's Ogres in the future.

As promised, here are some monsters:



This is, of course, a Yithian or one of the Great Race from RAFM's Call of Cthulhu line. I've had this model for close to thirty years, and this is the second time I've painted it. The first time around, I chose colors to match my GW Beastmen so I could use it as a Chaos Spawn. Having discovered Pulp Alley, and thus having a way to use all the RAFM adventurer models I've acquired over the years, I decided to repaint it closer to HPL's original description. I'm not sure about the ring of green around the base. It's supposed to be a slime trail like a slug, but I think it may be too garish. I would welcome any ideas for how to fix it.



This Yithian was produced for RAFM's CoC 7ed line. I don't like it as much as the first one, but it came in the Indiegogo package I got from them a couple of years ago. This one has a lightning gun and some kind of webbing all over it. The official paint scheme makes it blue, which along with the very yellow head makes is look like a lesser-known X-man. Ultimately, I decided that it's part of the Yithian reproductive cycle, and painted the globes on the back like spore cysts or whatever, which makes the red flower things spore launchers. Here are the two models together:




Next up, Patient Zero. I got this for backing an indie zombie game called Biosyndrome on Kickstarter. Somewhere, I have a PDF of the rules and equipment cards, but I've never really gotten around to reading them. This guy was an exclusive reward. It doesn't really look like a zombie to my eyes, but it's weird and tentacle-ey enough to use as a mythos monster, maybe a possessed cultist? Anyway, he turned out much greener than I'd planned.



And finally, we have Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. I delightfully gross model, I tried to make it fleshy, but it turned out a little dark. It doesn't show up in these photos, but he has an enlarged human heart in the groin, and the green is supposed to be lymphatic tissue. Note the unfinished base. In general, basing is my least favorite step in painting, and scenic basing just seems too artificial for gaming use. I'm going to make an exception for this model though, once an item I ordered from Outpost. Watch this space.

Love the dragon.

Nice monsters!

Am watching this space...

I decided to retitle this pblog now that I'm painting more and more stuff that isn't for a Kings of War army. That said, here's something for a Kings of War army!



This is the Reaper storm giant that came with Bones 1. I originally wanted to paint up a giant for my Orcs, but this guy just didn't fit the aesthetic. After cleaning him up and priming, I noticed that the Ogre army list also has giants, so I painted him up to fit with the ogres I have so far. I had planned to give him simple grey skin, but for whatever reason it turned out more blue than I had intended. I gave him verdegris-stained bronze armor and glwing white eyes that don't show up in these photos.


Keeping with the storm giant theme, I gave him a lightning sword. It doesn't look this sloppy in real life.



Here he is with a couple of ogres to give a sense of scale. He seems to scale pretty well without towering over his little cousins like, say, a plastic giant from GW would. I wasn't planning on turning the ogres into a full army, but now I may have to so I can field this guys.

I never have one project going at a time, because I hate just sitting around waiting for paint to dry. I finished off these guys while working on the giant:




These are cultists from RAFM's Call of Cthulhu 7th ed line. I actually got five of them, but they only came with four of these Cthulhu heads-- there is also a set of four devil-masked heads, but their robes have a sort of ocotopus design on the back. Also, I find it best to err on the side of Cthulhu where possible.



All of these guys have collared shirts with neckties under their cultist robes, as well as what appear to be leather dress shoes. In my mind, these guys are like Shriners or the Knights of Columbus-- a sort of men's club that meets after work, dresses up in silly ritual gear, and goes home to their families after doing their silly rituals. I find this idea delightful, and if I ever get around to running Delta Green again, I will use them as the basis of at least one adventure.

Next up, some more Oldhammer stuff, and then I'll try to crank out another regiment of something before the end of the year.

If that sword is your idea of sloppy, I'd love to see what your idea of amazing is. That sword looks fantastic mate don't beat yourself up!

Thanks. The sword looks quite nice at arm's length, if I do say so myself, but zoomed in like this I can see a lot of places that need touching up. I guess the lesson here is "don't take close-up photos."

Sorry I've been away a while, family issues trump dakkadakka. Very nice dragon, love the extra work on the eyes even if you can't see them from far away you can still appreciate your own work. Also loving the giant, I might have to look into that model when at the flgs next time. About how tall is he?

Great job on that Nyarla, always liked the sculpt, just wish it was much larger

- Salvage

A little package from Outpost Wargaming Services arrived today, so I can finally finish off Nyarlathotep. I'll have to bump him back up in the queue.

Theophany: Real life gets in the way, sometimes. No need to apologize. The Mantic ogre's head comes up to the Giant's belly button or thereabout, so he's properly giant-sized, and being Bones he's dirt cheap. You can7t go wrong with this one. I'm not sure about the pin-up storm giantess that came with him, though...

Boss Salvage: Nyarlathotep should be even niftier once I decorate his base.

Love those Cthulu cultists. Very cool.

D

The Cthulhu stuff looks great, and so does the sword. I know what you mean by seeing the flaws in it - to me your sword looks fantastic, but you know which buts you're not happy with and they stand out like they're painted green instead of blue while the rest of us just see an awesome sword. (And no, I can't see anything wrong with it - aside from bloody Reaper making it a bit too bendy! - which is my own frustration with that particular model...)

@evildrcheese: The cultists are much cooler models than I thought they would be. I kind of wish I had gotten more.

@Azazelx: The sword looks pretty good at tabletop distance, if I do say so myself. That said, I can't unsee the sloppy bits, and I suspect I'll go back in and touch it up before too long. The sword is, indeed, quite bendy. I felt like I was going to snap it off correcting it. Thankfully Bones really is as elastic as they say.

I spent the last week cranking this out:


This is, of course, the old Citadel Skull Chucker. I actually have two of the Skull Chucker and Chariot set, and was planning on painting both of the catapults together. However, both were pretty heavily primed, and I got bored srubbing off all the old paint halfway through the second one. I'll try to finish it by the end of the year.



With only three crew, I decided to take my time. The bone is layered/blended up from Army Painter walnut brown to AP skeleton bone. The armor got a black ink wash over AP chainmail, followed by another wash of Ogryn Flesh. These ancient Citadel skeletons may not actually fit inside any human model, but they make up for their grotesque proportions with the sheer volume of character they have. I wish I had more of these old lead skeletons.



The catapult was a bear to reassemble. It's lead, of course, so three very thin parts snapped in storage or during stripping. Superglue wouldn't hold, and steel epoxy took too long to set. After trying five mornings in a row, I ended up epoxying the parts, then using BluTac to hold everything together. If you look straight on, everything is listing to the right, which is the best I could hope for. If I'm feeling charitable, I tell myself that it just looks even more rickety than the original build.

Next up, a couple more Chaos Warriors.

Inspired in part by Azazelx and his refurbished Chaos Warriors, I stripped and repainted these guys concurrently with the Skull Chucker I posted last week:


They are both pre-Realms of Chaos Warriors of Chaos. Both had originally been in my undead army, back when it was hard to find good undead heroes.



This guy originally had red metallic armor (chainmail silver with red ink from the Expert Paint Set), but it looked odd to my 40-some year old eyes, so I redid it to match the other Chaos Warriors I painted a couple months ago. It took me a while to figure out what to do with his shield. Bone seemed the obious choice, but Azazelx had already done that, and I'm enough of a contrarian enough that I wanted to do something different. I decided to paint it as if the bug thing were still alive and trapped in tar or something. Anyway, it's a splash of color on an otherwise drab model.



This guy is Festooned With Skulls, an early example of what would become the norm. I originally did the skulls on his armor as more armor, but the model was to boring that way. Picking out the teeth on his helmet makes him look buck-toothed. I may go back and paint the lower jaw as metal. Maybe. The shield design is an Arcane Armorial that I had to fancy up. Originally, it was just the Slaaneshified Chaos star on a yellow field, but that was just boring. I added the Kirby Dots, which iimproves the design immensely. In my opinion, anyway.

Next up: another giant.

Firstly, how the feth did I miss the Lava Dragon up there? Amazing! Just to see someone own, then take on one of those old classics and then have it turn out so well is awesome indeed.

Great to see a Skull Chukker up there as well. I got my first one done earlier in the year, then picked up two more from eBay, but both of those have stalled out horrible. One still needs stripping while the other is still unassembled ..somewhere. Yours is looking great, and the crew even better. I thoroughly agree on the character of those all skeletons, and also wish they were easier to get hold of these days.

I'm liking your take on the undead chaos warrior and his mate. Funny thing is I also have his mate somewhere, though if I remember correctly, he may have snapped at the ankle. Dammit. Now I have to go and look for him!

I think the teeth on him work, though you could always try adding a second row of teeth on the lower jaw if that'll make him look less buck toothed to you (I think he looks fine!) I also agree that turning the yellow into a glow effect rather than a straight shield colour makes it look far better. I'll be stealing that idea at some stage.

Nice old minis there.

Thanks for the kind words. I have really enjoyed digging through all the ancient lead I've been carrying from house to house over the last 20+ years. While a lot of models from the 80's may be crude compared to models cast with modern technical advances, you can still feel the "anything goes" attitude of the era.

I toyed with re^painting the Buck Tooth Warrior's helmet, then decided that he looks fine and to move on to something else.

After deciding that the Storm Giant didn't fit, I had to find a giant to go with my orcs. Then I remembered that I had this guy:


.This is, of course, one of the C series giants from the late 80's. Going by the photos, this guy would be Knobber Whitherwattle. This is actually the third time I've painted him. THe first would have been when I got him new, the second about ten years ago as part of a beastman army for WHFB. He was a little frustrating to paint because the casting is so soft, not unlike the worst restic models to come out of the first KoW kickstarter. For example:



I painted the fish there on his belt as an empty pouch twice before I noticed the gills and the eye. I ended up having to blackline those parts to make them visible. I had to apply a heavy wash to the stitching on his shirt to make it visible as well. That said, he's a fun, characterful model, and I love his Spock-style riased eyebrow:



Next up: some mantic revenants.

Great work on the giant there. He's come up rather well. I have one or two of his contemporaries, though I think they're all broken. Your guy has done well to survive this many years in such a good condition. I have to wonder though - that if some models like these ones weren't old Citadel would we love them so as we do?

I think you're right-- a lot of the joy I have gotten from re-doing the older models is from nostalgia. I still have quite a few Ral Partha and Grenadier models that look like they'd be fun to revisit, but which don't fit into an "army." I might refocus on individual models for a while in the new year.

Nice collection of old school stuff. That skull chucker and other choas skeleton dudes are great.

EDC

Thanks. I've had a lot of fun revisiting these old minis from my teens and twenties.

Love the old school Giant, great job!

After finishing off two giants, I wanted to crank out some more troops. With four Kings of War armies (or five, if you count ogres), I am spoiled for choice, but I settled on some Mantic revenants:





I like these models a lot. There are enough skeletony parts to make them readily identifiable as undead, but they have heavy-enough armor to look different than skeletons. I did their bones in my standard dark brown-ochre-ivory layering technique. Chainmail is AP gunmetal, the filigreed armor plates or Vallejo old gold. The metal and dark grey cloth got a glaze of Payne's grey, then the metal and bone got a second glaze of AP soft tone. The shield designs are Howling Griffon transfers (downloaded from Bell of Lost Souls), with the colors inverted in MS paint. My original plan was to have these guys in black with white griffons, but for some reason the ink separated on the transfer paper, giving me this burgundy color. Rather than reprint in monotone, I just went with it.

I have another then of these guys primed and waiting for the glue on their bases to dry, as well as a few other minis that will fill out another, not-quite-twenty man regiment. Watch this space.

Oooh those are fancy

I've got some but I've only painted regular skeletons so far.

I really like the metals and how they're very obviously the elite skeleton warriors in your force.

Mantic's plastic undead really are exellent miniatures. If I didn't have so many of the old Citadel plastics I would be tempted to get even more of them. As it is, they will make a nice detachment for the army if I ever actually get to play KoW.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Mantic's plastic undead really are exellent miniatures. If I didn't have so many of the old Citadel plastics I would be tempted to get even more of them. As it is, they will make a nice detachment for the army if I ever actually get to play KoW.

I'm up for a game anytime! Just drop on in!

Valete,

JohnS

You had probably better paint something first.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
You had probably better paint something first.

Sir! You wound me! You cut me to the quick! You...

Are most certainly correct...

Dang.

Valete,

JohnS

Weird and wonderful selection of minis you have been painting josh. The paint job on the storm giant has to be the highlight for me though.

And now for more of the same!


These are the other ten revenants that came in that undead army box I picked up earlier this year. They came from the command sprue, which has a few different options, including the now-purely-decorative standard and musician. I will probably go back and add a banner this week. I painted them using the exact same techniques as the previous batch, so if you're curious you can scroll up. I had a little trouble getting the transfers to lay flat on their shields, but you can't tell at arms length so I'm going to let that go. Here is the full regiment on their movement tray:


Next up: I'm not entirely sure...

Nice work mate. Hows the KOW army looking at this point?

It's getting pretty big. It started out as a WHFB army almost 30 years ago, so it's had time to grow to an unwieldy size.

I had so much fun painting those revenants last week that I decided to do some more:


These are the last four members of the Nightmare Legion that I posted a while back. The box set came with 22 of these guys, but I only ever painted 18 of them (three ranks of six, in WHFB terms). These four have been kicking around in one of my many Boxes of Shame for at least 20 years. I tried to use the same techniques as on the rest of the unit so they don't stand out too much. Here is the unit, all finished:


At the same time as I was working on the revenants, I pulled out a couple of pre-RoC Chaos models to work on while waiting for glazes or whatever to dry:


The guy on the left is a Chaos Knight, the guy on the right is a Chaos Lord. They were sold together in one blister pack, and they were the core of my earliest Chaos armies. I mean that literally:


These two models alone were 776 points, and could go toe-to-toe with any regiment of WHFB troops back in the 2ed/3ed days, and more than likely win. I stripped the models and repainted them:


These six models bring my model count to 367, plus assorted other projects, for the year. More than one a day. I have really enjoyed the challenge, and I think I will try to surpass that number in 2017.

Got some fancy skeleton folk there, nice work!

367!?!?!?! Dude.... That's a lot of figures...

Valete,

JohnS

Damn Josh, living the dream, I'll be lucky if I can cap 200 this year

The secret is not getting enough sleep. One hour a day, before dawn, spawns a lot of painted miniatures.

Ahh. I've done that, problem is they've been getting up earlier than I can justify as it is...

Very cool. I like the eye shield dude.

I try and do an hour a night but it still takes me ages to get anything done :/

EDC

 evildrcheese wrote:
Very cool. I like the eye shield dude.

I try and do an hour a night but it still takes me ages to get anything done :/

EDC

I find it helpful to lower my standards. A lot of what I've done this year has been basecoat->wash, with minimal detail work.

Here are some orcs:



These are, or course, plastic orcs from Mantic, the models which started me on this painting blog. There isn't much to say about these models, as I used the exact same techniques as with all the other orcs I've posted. It gets kind of repetitive, but the cumulative effect works well enough. Another ten and I'll have a second regiment or a horde for Kings of War. Or a lot of orcs to use in other games.

The Mantic Orcs are effective - especially in the unit block, but you know my love really goes to those old-school Chaos Warriors! I'm loving that freehand "eye" shield as well.

The red one or the blue one? The blue tentacle monster turned out pretty well, I think, but the red cat's eye doesn't show up well in that photo.

Those Mantic orcs are cool looking, especially the helmeted ones.

EDC

The blue one - I didn't realise the red shield was also an eye...

Yeah, the red one looked much better in my head. I was originally planning to use an Arcane Armorial on the blue shield, but I couldn't get the putty covering the hole in the shield flat enough. That's been a problem for every one of them, so I may go back to freehand if/when I do more repaints.

So wait, you had 2 guys fighting against regiments? Or were there others with them we just aren't seeing yet?

The fact that your box of shame has been around for 20+ years doesn't give me high hopes of ever actually finishing my own pile.

In the v2 and v3 rules for WHFB, Chaos Lords (the most powerful class of hero for the army) could go toe-to-toe with regiments of troops, and even destroy them if they had the right mutations. That's one of the things they fixed in the v4 rules.

My box of shame is actually my closet of shame. My son has claimed all my unpainted Space Marines for himself, so that helps just a little bit, but I've decided to not buy any more minis in 2016. I still have some coming from Kickstarters that I backed this year, but I won't be spending any new money.

Astonishngly, I got my Dungeon Saga carton B quite early, but I had to leave it under my desk at work for a couple of weeks after it arrived. I brought it home last Tuesday, cracked it open, and was pleasantly surprised at the contents. After all the B&Ming on the DS forum*, I expected a pile of melty slag. I find pretty much everything to be perfectly acceptable, while most of the models are really quite nifty. I decided to work on the heroes alongside the orcs I posted earlier in the week. Here are the first two:




I used the same basic techniques that I use for everything: base coat then ink, with some additional highlights because these are character models. Note the barbarian's Crazy Eyes. It took me three tries to get them as good as they are, mostly because my 3/0 brush is beginning to split. Also, I painted them on their bases, which made drybrushing the cobblestones more difficult than it needed to be. I popped the elf and the wizard off their bases to make it easier.

I haven't really sat down to look at the rules, but I'm pretty sure my son will enjoy having dungeon adventures as soon as everything is ready to use.

*which is not meant to discount anyone's negative reactions, of course. Personal tastes and all that.

Really like those heroes. Good work.

With only about 45 minutes a day for hobby work, I try to have several projects going at once. That way, I don't waste time waiting for washes to dry or whatever. I started this at the same time as the orcs I posted last week:




This is, of course, Mantic's Orc war drum. I picked it up in the pledge manager for KoW2. As usual, I went with my basecoat-wash technique, with a little more highlighting that usual on the drum itself. I like the model, but I'm not sure I need to get another one-- I can probably build at least two more using Mantic orcs along with musician bitz I have lying around from the GW orc sets I got to add variety to my Space Orks back when I still played 40K.

I'm counting this as three models in my running total for 2015.

I finished off the other two heroes from the Dungeon Saga base set:




I did a lot more layering/highlighting on these two. The elf is an elf, so I stuck with earthtones for the most part. I started to paint the wizard with the studio scheme, but quickly changed my mind. I gave him glowy eyes to match his staff, white hair, and left off the ugly blue piping on his tunic. I probably have minis nearly identical to these in my Bones I KS box, so I don't feel too bad about powering through them. I leave for the US in two days, so I will have to put off the enemies until January, putting my final miniature count for 2015 at 383. I wonder if I can beat that total in 2016...?

All of those DS models have come up quite nicely. I like the Orc drummer as well - which reminds me that Mantic never sent me mine!

Really? That's terrible. I have tried to remain a quiet Mantic supporter, as they'be always done right by me, but I may be the only one in this hemisphere who can say that.

Damn that's a fine number for output this year!

Nice orcs and DS figures, great work!