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Lovely work on that Nexus.

M.

Thanks, he was pretty fun to paint.

Two new ones. Wraiths, from Frostgrave. I believe these guys are normally NPC creatures, though I think players can summon them, too. Most likely, I'll wind up using them as Infantrymen for my Menoth warband instead since Menoth doesn't actually seem to have anything that fits that particular profile.

Wouldn't Flameguard fit as Infantrymen?

Men-at-arms, I think would be the better fit for the Flameguard.

More good looking stuff to look at!, me likey!

Today, the 10th of April is my 32nd birthday. To celebrate, I took the day off. No way am I going in on my birthday. Instead, I spent a good chunk of the day painting. I'd pulled some old, unfinished minis out of my storage to give to Highlord Tamburlaine on Saturday and, in the process I also pulled out several projects I'd started and never finished. I used my free time today to finish those old projects off. I wound up doing a total of five figures, though two of them are on a single base.

First up, we have the Captain of the Lucky 7th from Incursion, "Slugger" Murphy.



He was the closest of this bunch to actually be done. I wound up having to almost completely repaint him though because he'd suffered so much paint wear in storage. He's finally done now, though. It's a bit hard to tell, but he's chomping on a cigar, so I painted it to be lit. I'm thinking I may use him as an Ogryn in Shadow War.

Everything else I worked on today was from Menoth. I finally got around to finishing the other Flameguard Cleanser figure, though his bayonet seems to have gone missing over the years.



Funny enough, the other Flameguard he came with is one of my highest rated images.

Next we have the loader from the Deliverer Sunburst's crew.



Finally, we have the set that probably took the most work today, the Covenant of Menoth!



I got this years ago, back when I thought I would actually play Warmachine. This set was extremely daunting for me and I could just never bring myself to actually work on it. Over the years, I've somehow lost their original base, so I made a nice scenic one for them using a Proxie Models base and some cork. It's a cool set, but outside of Warmahordes, I really don't have a use for it.

Here's a couple of additional shots showing the details I put on the book's pages.

Continuing with expanding my Menoth Frostgrave army, I present the "small construct."



I thought the Deathripper Bonejack would work decently as the summonable "small" construct. I made sure to give my wizard the Animate Construct ability specifically so I could use Warjacks in the game. I'll most likely use the Dervish as the Medium Construct and the Crusader as the Large Construct.

Tomorrow night, I should finally have my Deliverer Sunburst finished. There's just some highlights left to do on the gunner and painting the base.

What your saying is Frostgrave on Saturday then?

Frostgrave on Saturday it is.

Except not against a spooky witch this time. Plus I'll have my group ready *prior* to playing!

That dude has a seriously big book!

Nice job on all the Menoth stuff.

Thanks. I'm actually nearly done with my Menoth stuff. I think I have maybe four more actual Menoth models left unpainted. Speaking of, here's that finished Sunburst. I'd been meaning to post it on Friday, but I was barely home all day and I wanted to take the pics in the daylight.

Here's the whole set, with the Sunburst itself and its crew.



Just the Sunburst by itself.



I worked on a few more 15mm items here and there as well. Here's a female Prydian Knight. I was going for something of a Lamenters scheme for her.



I also started working on some ZAS mercs from Critical Mass. Here's the Commander and a pair of drones from their command set.



A closer shot of the commander



and a closer shot of one of the drones, showing that I attempted to camouflage them.



I'm going to attempt to camouflage the rest of my ZAS mercs as well. Hopefully they turn out okay.

I haven't done much painting, just got a couple more Ion Age minis finished. Here's a Nox Trooper and a Malig Trooper, both from Ion Age.



Both figures belong to the Shia Khan Empire faction. The Khanate is basically an amalgamation of several of the "bad guy" factions from 40k. It is at its most basic, an evil mirror of the Prydians, so it's basically the Ion Age equivalent of Chaos. But, it also contains elements of the Eldar (the Legionnaires), the Necron (Psychoborgs), and Orks/goblins (the maligs). The Nox are equivalent to the Prydian Desteria, so in 40k terms, they're Chaos Terminators. The Maligs are the cheap cannon fodder foot soldiers that the Khanate uses, so they would pretty much be equivalent to the Chaos Cultists in 40k. The Khanate is actually supposed to be an amalgamation of multiple alien species, like the Covenant, so that's why there's clearly different races among their troops. The Nox are actually the same species as the Legionnaires and the Pioneers, which appears to be space elves. Psychoborgs, which are evil robots and several other species are supposed to be showing up sometime within the year, though you can actually purchase old Psychoborg models from Alternative Armies.

Tonight, I didn't get any real painting done because I actually made time to play a game. I know I've talked about Red Ops 5 before, but until now, I haven't been able to play it. The main reason being that you need about ten zombies per player figure, and you're supposed to have a team of four guys. So, I didn't have 40 zombies ready to play. I only just recently passed that number in 28mm, so I figured I'd give it a try. Hoo boy, was it tough.

So, I tried to simplify the game a bit for my first try. Instead of trying to rescue as many civillians as possible, I thought it would be easier on me to cut it down to just three. Shouldn't be too hard right? I decided to use one of the game boards from Mercs Recon as the setting. A team of four mercs, the Boss(smg), Bergil(smg), Freak(smg}, and Alien(shotgun) had to get into an office building, search the offices for three surviving employees, and get them out either through the two stairwells or the two elevators.

It started off okay. The team came in through the elevators into an empty hallway. Four offices were in front of them, and two on either end of the hall, with the hallway making a right angled turn at either side. The team moved to the left side of the hallway unopposed and I figured they wouldn't get anywhere without actually checking the offices. So, they checked the closest office towards the left-hand corner. Boom! First bit of bad luck, two zombies were inside. The Boss beat back the first while Alien shotgunned the second, splattering it across the walls. Quickly pulling back, the slammed the door on the remaining zombie, effectively locking it inside. The team lucked out and no zombies were alerted by the shotgun blast from Alien. They moved into the next hallway, only to discover a crowd of ten zombies waiting.

Things kicked into high gear pretty damn fast. I didn't want the team getting swarmed by the undead, so they opened up on them. Firing on enemies in this game is a gamble. If you're unlucky, the gunshots will spawn new zombies all over the game board. On top of that, other zombies will move in the direction of the gunshots. So, thankfully, the team got good rolls and took out at least half of the zombies in the hall, but more were alerted by the sounds of the firefight. The team was huddled in a tight group in the end of the hallway near a pair of corner offices and more zombies started crawling out of the woodwork ahead of them. Bergil, taking a chance, opened one of the corner offices and to his surprise, actually found one of the surviving employees. Things were going okay, so far.

My team only managed to make it in about 8" onto the board before they were effectively stopped due to zombies spawning in. The office that the civvie was in was directly to the team's left, but the office immediately behind them was full of zombies. More and more were showing up in there because of all of the gunfire and it was only a matter of time before they busted down the door. At this point, my team's luck ran out. A botched activation roll resulted in the zombies activating before me and the horde came bursting out of the office behind my guys. The zombies in the hall were still coming, too. So, my team was stuck between two hordes of walking corpses and Bergil had the misfortune of being right in front of the door when the zombies burst through. My team tried to fend them off, but due to another botched activation roll, they rear horde swarmed Begil, knocked him down and immediately began eating him. The civvie panicked and bolted. He made it past the horde and into the elevators, earning me a win there. Unfortunately, the horde in the office came pouring out and my team had to back up. With all of the noise, more zombies were smashing their way out of the adjacent offices and a third swarm came in fron the opposite end of the hallway.

So, my team never left the hall they started in. They were now boxed in with swarms coming at them from both sides of the hall and coming through the offices that lined the hallway. There wasn't anything I could do, so I had the team retreat. Freak and Alien made their escape in the elevators while the Boss made a heroic last stand to buy them time. Somehow, the Boss managed to hold the zombies off during the zombie turn. He gunned down several that charged him and then managed to run out of ammo. The zombies kept coming, but thanks to the fact that the Boss was the star, he was able to tweak some of the rolls in his favor, allowing him to heroically beat back the zombies with his empty gun until it was his turn to activate. In heroic fashion, he was able to escape through the elevators, miraculously taking no damage.

So, overall, the game quickly turned into a disaster for me. My team got swarmed almost immediately and losing Bergil was basically the nail in the coffin. I think next time I play it, I'm going to have to take notes so I can give a more fluffy batrep.

Many cool things, I especially like the infantry from the last page with the dude with the axe bayonet!

EDC

Why no Red Ops pics?

Where's your team that got wasted heroically at least?

I'm wondering if Mercs Recon's office tiles would work well for this- or did you just use the Battlesystems terrain you have?

Sorry, no in-game pics.

Here's the team that I used though.



The guy second from the left is Bergil. He's the one that got eaten.

It was one of the Mercs tile sets that I used. Battlesystem would certainly be good for a larger game. The thing is, the game seems to be made more for close, indoor, claustrophobic settings. The scenario that they give in the rulebook is for clearing out an apartment complex. Certainly outdoors settings will work, but it seems best suited to indoors stuff.

I finished my Savage Core Amazons tonight. I posted the first figure I finished from the set a page or two ago, but here's the other two.



And yes, I actually painted an eye on the blonde one. The blowgun one's eyes aren't really visible or easy to get to, so I didn't bother with her. I like these figures though. I imagine when I get to my Shadow Sea Axibalan, they'll fit in quite nicely.

I also painted a random Space Marine Scout.



I'll admit, I've been playing Doom (Brutal Doom, actually) and that's what inspired me to paint this guy. For some reason, I always get Doomguy vibes from the Scouts. I can just picture this guy running through a Space Hulk screaming "Who's a man and a half? I'm a man and a half!" While blasting Genestealers in the face.

Lastly, another tiny figure. This is the ZAS Medic, from the ZAS Command Pack.



Another Critical Mass figure. On this guy, I tried doing things a little different from how I did the Commander. Before, I painted the camo on first, then hit the figure with a gloss Nuln Oil wash. This time, I hit him with a regular Nuln Oil wash, highlighted, then added the camo. It takes a few more steps, but I think the results are a bit better. The camo is certainly more visible this time.

A little while back, BobtheInquisitor had given me an old metal CCC Leader from Mercs. Tonight, I finished him up.

Good stuff lately. Does that one guy actually have a power-bat or did those cords do something else?

That would be pretty amazing if it were a Power Bat. But, no. Just a regular nailbat. The cable is actually just a braided rope that's keeping the bat clipped to his armor. You can't see it at all in the pic, but there's actually a carabiner on the end of the rope clipped to a ring on the bottom of the bat. The figure has tons of little details like that all over him.

I wanted a quick break from fantasy and on Friday, I got inspired to work on some Mantic plastics. So, I went into my closet and hunted down the single sprue of Asterian Marionettes I bought from the Warpath Kickstarter. I figured they'd be a quick batch to paint up. I was right, too. Once they were ready for paint, they painted up real quick, and look good, too.



I haven't really seen many people paint these guys yet. They're actually really nice plastics. Very sharp details. You may be able to see that I left most of the mold lines, but I didn't really care. They're not that obtrusive. I think I may go back and redo the few Cyphers I've painted to more or less match these guys, as I'm rather fond of this color scheme. I do have their support drone all assembled, but I'm currently in the process of painting it. I also bashed the bits from the Comms and Camo support drones together to build a full second drone. I should have them done in the next few days.

Very nice. I'm trying to decide which project to tackle next, and you may have inspired me to get back to the Asterians.

Those Asterians look great! The glowy "vulnerable spots" on their backs make me want to play Contra.

I was a bit disappointed by the Cyphers, mostly due to the material. These guys blow the Cyphers away though. I almost wish I'd bought more. Nice to hear that you guys like them. As for the not-Soul Stones on their backs, they really do look like they would be the weak point a player would need to attack to destroy them in a video game. They have a number of little circular indentations on them that suit them very nicely for a glowy Tron-like aesthetic. The glowy lights are totally impractical, but they look cool.

Asterian Support Drones are now finished. How about that, I actually completed a project!



There's three types of support drones available to the Marionettes: Gun, Camo, and Comms. There's parts to build all three on the Marionette sprue, but only one stand and one bottom piece that mounts onto the stand. No other parts are shared between them. So, I built the Gun Drone straight, which is on the left, and kitbashed the other two together to make a full second drone. I believe that's the Camo type that I've used for the main body and the Comms type that's forming the propulsion unit. They're cool little minis and they were actually kind of a nice change from the usual humanoid figures I've been painting.

Oh, and for those who are into kitbashing, that Camo Drone is almost the exact same size as an Imperial Knight's head. It'd make a pretty kick-ass Knight head.

Those are a)nifty and b)completely different, aesthetically, from the gun platforms. I like the drab colors you are using for these models, and am amazed at how clean your lines are.

Thanks. I'm just as surprised as you are at how clean those lines turned out. My linework isn't usually that clean or sharp.

I think that's actually the command drone..? Thought the camo drone was the one that looked like half of an Ikea coat organizer.

Hobby ADHD continues. As I try to focus on painting some gnolls, I find myself drifting to other projects. CAV minis... 15mm.... Anvil Industry stuff. Today was no different, though I at least did nearly finish one gnoll.

Here's another ZAS figure I finished today. This is another figure from the command squad. This guy is their comms specialist.



And probably of more interest to people around here, I couldn't keep myself waiting any longer and started working on one of my Anvil Industry Trench Fighters. He just needs basing now. Otherwise, he's totally finished.



I may work on others as the week goes on. The eventual plan for these guys is going to be to use them in Shadow War Armageddon as an IG Kill Team. I'm sure they'll get butchered, but at least they'll look cool while they die heroically.

Speaking of dying heroically, I got in another game of Frostgrave over the weekend. My Menoth warband faced off with BobtheInquisitor's team. I got seriously trounced this time around. Only three of my guys made it out alive. Thankfully, on the survival table, my wizard and the apprentice both survived, though the apprentice came out with a smashed jaw. Now I have to rebuild my warband. So, don't be surprised if you see some more Menoth themed guys showing up in here again.

Hey, success! I actually finished two gnolls today!



The smaller gnoll is a Frostgrave plastic. The bigger one is from Wizkids' new D&D/Pathfinder line of unpainted plastic minis. I like how big their gnolls are, but the casting quality isn't the best. A lot of his details are sadly kind of soft. Areas like his belt, which I think are made of teeth and his shirt are the problem spots. I seriously can't tell what's going on with his belt. The shirt, I can't tell what areas are supposed to be shirt, and what's supposed to be skin. I kind of guessed when I painted those spots. His axe is also warped to all hell. Still, he'll probably make a good barbarian in Frostgrave.

Nice work on the Gnolls. The trench fighter looks wicked too.

EDC

Got another gnoll done tonight.



I'm just trying to get these guys done, so I'm not spending a ton of time on them, cleaning their paintjobs up or doing highlights. Just paint, wash, base, done. I tried to go for more of a Striped Hyena look on this particular guy, just to be a bit different.

Now, I am putting more work into the Trench Fighters. Got another of them finished today, too.



I really like this guy. He's got a damn pickaxe! Although, the previous guy had an entrenching too, a mace, and a spoon for melee weapons.