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I love the hag. Not unnoticed, just watching and nodding

 FoxHybrid wrote:
I’ve never played any of the Witcher games, which is part of the reason why I didn’t comment on your latest post, but I will say, I love your basing. The base of the water hag is just so cool, I love the texture on the edges of it.

That's understandable, not everyone is into video games, but if you are the Witcher trilogy is great (especially the 3rd).
It's great to see you becoming a bit of a regular btw.
Glad you like her base. The edges were actually the part I spent the least time on. I saw someone else on the facebook group go to town on the base with that liquid water effect stuff, but it's not something I would use often so I've never bought any before.
One of the cool things about the game is that the bases are all really detailed, but the hag is basically just flat so it took some improvising to make it work.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
I love the hag. Not unnoticed, just watching and nodding

Thanks inmygravenimage, I thought you might like her.
Not that there always has to be comments, but it helps to have some company that really know the hobby.
Everyone I know likes my work, but I'm the only one that does any painting.
My good friend who was the person that originally introduced me to Warhammer back in middle school tragically died of cancer way too young.

Anyway I finished that one more surprise I mentioned before.
It's the first witcher playable character, Ciri.
She is pretty much the only character from the videogames that is in the board game, other than Philippa Eilhart in the mages expansion.
This is because the board game takes place about a century before the videogames.
Despite this Ciri shows up because I guess technically she might have time travel powers or something, not quite sure.
Mostly she is there because during the kickstarter campaign there was a massive amount of whining by some people that there isn't enough female representation.
They didn't care in the slightest that the established witcher lore states that no girl has ever survived the Trial of the Grasses which is the chemical mutation process to which the witchers owe their enhanced reflexes and abilities.
They also didn't care that the company added an entire expansion to appease them, the mages which are half girls, because it was a paid addon so apparently that doesn't count.
Nevertheless I'm happy to have Ciri in the game.
The other witchers are basically non-cannon so I'm not sure what kind of paint scheme I will use for them yet.

I have a lot more witcher models that I want to work on, but like I said, my roommates demand that only they get to decide when it is cool enough to paint.
We have 3 air conditioners in a tiny apartment now yet they still like to act like a couple lights is a reason to start world war 3.
Not to complain excessively, but it's insufferable having the same argument over and over when conversely they get to do whatever they want.
It's not even like we live in an especially hot climate, it's Canada. eyeroll

Oy. Roommates. I know what you mean... I mean mine are 15,13 and 7 but still
Ciri looking good. Yes, people are never satisfied, it's insufferable.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Oy. Roommates. I know what you mean... I mean mine are 15,13 and 7 but still
Ciri looking good. Yes, people are never satisfied, it's insufferable.

Thanks a bunch, and you're too right. I don't usually respond without something else to show, but case in point I guess I won't be posting my stuff to the Witcher facebook group anymore.

I'm not saying my painting is the best in the world or anything, but given that most people who play board games don't have much experience painting I can say that my work is better than about 90% of what I see posted from others there (mostly contrast and speed paints).
However, that didn't stop several people from making probably the most mean-spirited comments I've seen for that sort of thing on my Ciri post.
It really is a pathetic excuse for a so-called community, but I guess that just makes me more appreciative that Dakka seems to be one of the last vestiges of good folks left on the internet.

That's really sad. Yeah board game groups are very strange and the IP crowd tend towards the... Tetchy, at best. I for one am greatly enjoying your work. Dakka is lovely place, there's a reason I've here nearly 15 years

 inmygravenimage wrote:
That's really sad. Yeah board game groups are very strange and the IP crowd tend towards the... Tetchy, at best. I for one am greatly enjoying your work. Dakka is lovely place, there's a reason I've here nearly 15 years

I very much appreciate your reassurance. I have been on Dakka for 9 years almost to the day so I'm not that far behind you. Hopefully this sanctuary remains in perpetuity.

Today I managed to complete the ghostly Noonwraith.
They look even creepier at full size in the video game. According to the bestiary they are the spirits of young women who died violent deaths right before their weddings.
There is also a Nightwraith to get to at some point.

Next in line is one of the larger models, the Griffin. With the exception of the Nekker, I have been painting the monsters in the order in which they appear in the video game.
The Griffin is the boss fight for the opening area so once it is done I was planning on trying to get the game to the table.

Ooh dark and spooky. A real Hellboy vibe to that paintjob.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Ooh dark and spooky. A real Hellboy vibe to that paintjob.

Thanks for that favorable comparison. I wasn't hugely into the original Hellboy movies, but I do happen to own the reboot in 4k despite it being critically panned. That's partly because I enjoy almost any movie with Milla Jovovich. Someday I'll get back to painting that giant Leeloo figure.
Anyway, it helps a lot to be painting more stuff from a video game IP, similar to the Horizon game, since there is so much reference material.

With that in mind I have another slightly bigger update for you today.
The first of this pair, the aforementioned Griffon, I actually finished a few days ago, but just hadn't gotten around to posting yet.
It's always tricky painting something with a lot of black, but I'm trying to stay as true to the source as possible. I think he turned out mostly okay.

I figured 6 monsters was enough to finally try out the base version of the game which plays pretty well so far. For a solo match you only have to fight 1 each of lv 1, 2, and 3 monsters, but it turns out even the griffon is only categorized as a lv 2.

So I'm happy to also be able to now show off my first lv 3 completed, Mr. Troll here.
I've always found trolls amusing whether it be from warhammer fantasy, to Lord of the Rings, but especially in the witcher universe. They're smart enough monsters that they can speak a broken version of the common language, but other than that they're delightfully dim.
I also really like how his belly flesh and face turned out. This one is painted in the style of an Ice Troll rather than rocky variety so I think he came out with a suitably icy sheen, but my matte varnish will most likely dull it down a bit.

I'm not sure what the next monster project will be, maybe something from the single player Wild Hunt expansion, but first I was going to try outa a second game session with the Monster Trail expansion. It has no extra minis, but it is supposed to make all of the monsters more unique in the way they fight.

Really like the shading on the troll's face and the feathers.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Really like the shading on the troll's face and the feathers.

A much belated thanks for your consistent praise friend.

I'm ashamed at my lack of progress over the last few months. A lot of it was to try and avoid the summer heat as I previously mentioned, but the truth is I have just had a lot of other things keeping me busy.
For one thing, I have read 2 whole books in the meantime. I used to only have 3 of the 8 witcher novels, but I finally bought the complete set so I started fresh back at the beginning. I also bought some really nice hardcover copies of the complete Dune series, and the full works of HP Lovecraft.

Anyway, I can happily say I managed to get something done today, not surprisingly keeping with the Witcher theme, it's a Rotfiend. They're pretty fun in the games because once they are near death they start choking before erupting in a very damaging shower of gore so you have to stay on your toes.

He looks a bit darker than I wanted from the back side, but other than that he went pretty well.

Most of my paints are on death's door from disuse unfortunately. If citadel didn't have so many good colors I would have switched to a different brand long ago because I believe they're badly designed on purpose just to get you to spend even more on them. You have to CONSTANTLY water them down and babysit them just to get them to work at all.
They even want you to buy their lahmian medium over and over that costs just as much as the paints even though it's more or less just water anyway.

I can't say I'll return to my old pace anytime soon, but I'll try to pick it up again to some degree.
I am unable to undercoat anything new until the air conditioner comes out hopefully in the next month or so.

I did get my copy of Vampire the Masquerade Chapters though.
Even though it has an absolutely ridiculously large errata to wade through for pretty much every single scenario, it is actually really fun to play. I love its writing style and setting. I actually have already completed about 1/3 of the campaign playing 2 characters solo. I could have kept going, but I didn't want to blow past it too fast without painting any of it first.

It came with a set of prepainted minis for the players themselves, but they are pretty disappointing. It looks like they spent about 5 minutes at most on each model, but it's better than grey... I guess?

No need to apologise. And, lovely, filthy creature.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
No need to apologise. And, lovely, filthy creature.

Thanks, but I wasn't so much apologizing as expressing disappointment in myself for falling behind. I've most likely reached a point, since several of the board games I have coming have more than 100 minis a piece, that I won't have enough free time in my entire remaining life to paint everything so taking months off seems like a waste.

I think I'm starting to accept that some of them will just have to be played with mostly plain grey, and just focusing on stuff that I have the most love for. There is no point in board games sitting on the shelf unused, but I still feel the times I do play with everything painted really adds a sense of satisfaction and extra immersion.

With that in mind, I made a bit more progress on the Witcher with a little creature called an Arachas.
It seems to be a plant-like creature with a sort of bulbous venomous sack on its back. He turned out fairly well imo. I kind of wanted more of a fuchsia or pinkish than the purplish it ended up as, but I figured purple and green have always made for good complementary colors.

Oddly enough the board game developers are launching a spinoff campaign already called The Witcher Path of Destiny. I like that it will have a narrative focus, but it sounds like they aren't going far enough with it. They describe it as a Tableau building game with some deck management which sounds kind of basic with somewhat limited replay value.
It's hard for me to say no to anything with the official Witcher license, but I'm trying to hold to my promise to myself to stop pledging for anymore kickstarters even though I have yet to pay off my last one, Monster Hunter World.

The next board game I have arriving is called Nova Aetas Renaissance hopefully sometime in the next couple months. It's fairly unique in that it takes place in Italy, with some beastmen somehow mysteriously being involved.
It's going to be an even more nerve-wracking delivery process than usual because my apartment's only elevator is scheduled for extensive maintenance around that exact same time frame.
If the despicable package pirates that pollute my building steal a giant irreplaceable shipment from me I am going to be pissed.

Nice floral brain gribbly.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Nice floral brain gribbly.

Thanks again chum. Hopefully you like this next one as much as I do since he is pretty much my favorite enemy to fight in the video game.

A fiend, in this case, is a huge 3 eyed moose monster. Every once in a while they will try and temporarily blind you by staring you down.
I may try lightening up the brown on his antlers, but he came together pretty well for a day and half worth of work.

In other news I am doing terrible at keeping my promise to stop pledging for kickstarters all over again.
This time it's a game that I passed on their last campaign, Final Girl. It's a strictly solo game that mimics famous horror and slasher movies. Each scenario is a different film, called a feature.
I went ahead and purchased a couple features from the first season at retail that are due to arrive in just a few days to try it out since the only films from that season I have any affection for are the Freddy and Jason analogues.
Instead of getting the season 1 miniature pack with a bunch of minis I have no intentions of buying the other boxes for I'm also waiting for actual Freddy and Jason minis I found on ebay.
With any luck their scale won't be too out of place with the rest of the game.

The company is also trying to get the Christmas feature produced right away so it arrives in time for the holidays. It pits you against Krampus.

If there is anyone here that has an interest in horror movies and is not opposed to solo gaming I highly recommend you check it out so we can unlock more stretch goals. There is still about 4 days left to get in on it.

I'm back again with a bit more progress. I think this one came out particularly well.

It's the only actual Witcher I've finished besides Ciri, but since they are generic members of each different school they don't have names.This is the Griffon school.
He looks a lot like Geralt except his hair isn't white. I like how the symbol in his hand represents him casting a spell.
I was literally just going to give up on doing pupils moving forward, and somehow I managed to get his pretty close to perfect on the first try! Normally I ude a fine tip artist's pen, but I was touching up the outer edge of his eye, and accidently twitched my brush, except favorably in this case.
I doubt I can count on that happening again, but I'll take what I can get.

I still have a lot of my Witcher game unpainted, but I was thinking of giving it another playthrough with the new additions.
There are still the Legendary Hunts, Mages, and an entire solo mode that I have yet to work on at all.
I'm about 1/3 done the core game now though.

He looks great. I'm a bit sad I didn't back Witcher but there's always a sacrifice to be made, I guess.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
He looks great. I'm a bit sad I didn't back Witcher but there's always a sacrifice to be made, I guess.

Happy to hear you like him too. I don't know what the availability of the Old World is like now. I wish they went the traditional co-op narrative campaign instead of competitive, but so far the gameplay is not bad, and to me it was worth it for the miniatures alone. Like you say though, everyone has to make sacrifices.

The board game dev is currently in the middle crowdfunding another Witcher game called Path of Destiny. It is more narrative focused, but not nearly in the way I was hoping for. Instead of a real campaign you build "tableaus" for a handful of tales which do have multiple endings, but so far I'm resisting and sticking with a $1 pledge just in case.

Speaking of campaigns, I have decided to completely ignore the Monster Hunter Iceborne board game, which would be progress except it's only because I just learned that Steamforged is also making the sequel to the Horizon Zero Dawn board game, Forbidden West. More importantly, it sounds like they are doing what I wished they had done the first time around and they are making it into a narrative co-op campaign style game, with some degree of backwards compatibility!

Anyway enough about my attempts to stop punishing my wallet, I do have some actual progress to show.
I present the first of the Legendary Hunts, the Cyclops.
I always hate painting things that are mostly skin, but at least the purple tone is a bit different (if you don't count all my various Slaaneshi Daemons through the years).

Here comes my favorite of the Legendary Hunts, the Ice Giant.
It is found in one of the most exciting quests in the whole videogame where you have to sail to the giant's far away island to look for any survivors of a previous expedition.
The fight itself has some memorable moments as well.

I should really try to get some models for the solo mode done since I have to start it at all, but I'm torn between continuing with Witcher, or maybe starting Final Girl, or even some of my Vampire the Masquerade so I can get further in it without having to use the subpar pre-painted characters.

Lovely colours there once again old son

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Lovely colours there once again old son

Much obliged old chum, glad to hear he does not disappoint since like I said he is one of the monsters I am most partial to so I wanted to do him justice.

Tonight I have a change of pace in store. I will still continue with my remaining Witcher stuff, but for now here is the first mini done from that slasher themed solo game I mentioned called Final Girl.
His name is Hans, he is pretty much a stand in for Jason Voorhees, but distinct for legal purposes.

I had gotten a real Freddy and Jason off ebay, but they didn't match up at all with the scale of the rest of the game so I just gave in and got the season 1 FG mini set after all.
I also have the "not Freddy" Dr. Fright, a Poltergeist, and several of the girls you play as to get to, as well as a special Christmas themed scenario where you fight Krampus that should arrive sometime in the coming months.

Man, everyone loves final girl. If I find a core set in going to be all over it


Automatically Appended Next Post:
He looks great btw

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Man, everyone loves final girl. If I find a core set in going to be all over it

Automatically Appended Next Post:
He looks great btw

Thanks a lot, I have yet to actually play my first game of Final Girl so I can't say I even like it yet, but I do love the theme. Most people I see post about it say that you'll lose a lot more sessions of it than you will win, but hopefully there is some fun to be had either way.
I'd say the easiest way to get into it is to hop on the late pledge for season/series 3, but that won't arrive for who knows how many years. You can also just pick up a couple boxes at retail to try sooner.

I don't expect to keep painting at this pace, but here is my first final girl, Laurie, so now I can finally get to testing out the game for myself without feeling the shame of grey minis. There are still more girls/killers of course, even a few little vehicle minis, but all the other victims are just meeples so this is enough for a trial run.
On something this small scale I'm not even going to attempt dotting the pupils.

She looks great, the deep shading really works. Two thoughts - you could use a pigma micron pen for the eyes? Also, how about a white line on the grass, so it feels like a football field or similar (like folk do with blood bowl bases - just paint through a slotta)?

 inmygravenimage wrote:
She looks great, the deep shading really works. Two thoughts - you could use a pigma micron pen for the eyes? Also, how about a white line on the grass, so it feels like a football field or similar (like folk do with blood bowl bases - just paint through a slotta)?

Thanks muchly, and I normally do use a super fine artist's pen for dotting eyes, but it's still a source of pain and frustration on normal sized figures. It doesn't help that I suffer from terribly shaky hands so it's somewhat surprising I manage to get the decent results I do as it is. These ones are even smaller than average, and frankly I have too big of a backlog to get hung up on doing it for every single model.

With that in mind, next up is my first bit of progress and my Vampire the Masquerade game.
Here is Gabriel from the Caitiff clan. I have no prior knowledge of the VtM background, but in game terms he is great because he is the only character that you can choose his starting stats and skills for. All the others are preestablished.
I only play with 2 characters so far so once I eventually finish the other one I will just move on to the enemies and NPC's.

I quite like how he turned out though.
In other news I did way too much black Friday shopping, even though most of it wasn't a particularly a good deal, so I should really get back to doing some work on my 40k army for at least a little while.

Well I have been painting almost everyday this week.
I bought a few more 40k units recently so as usual I wanted to justify my purchases by turning my attention for the time being back to some Chaos stuff. I have built 4 other units (Flesh Hounds, new Possessed, Pink Horrors, and Deathshroud Terminators), but what I ended up working on is this Burning Chariot.

I think it turned out pretty well overall. The boss horror was trickier than expected, but I think I picked a good color scheme for the screamers. I kind of regret giving him the book arm though since it almost totally obscures his face, but oh well.
Also every time I put my gravel/sand on one of the really large bases it separates at some of the edges the next day so I tried to fix it after taking these photos. It's very frustrating.

As always, there are too many options for me to be sure what project will be my next focus, but stay tuned for more.

So I took this current burst of 40k energy to start finally working on my Deathshroud Bodyguard. Hard to believe it's been almost 5 years since I painted up my version of Morty, which is still one of favorites. I'm particularly proud of how this one turned out as well, especially the cloak.

This guy was a test to see if I could match how I did Mortarion's armor because the way I had previously been doing all my green armor was very time consuming and doesn't look as good to me as it once did.
I'd say it was a success, but I don't intend to go back and start repainting all my old stuff. Maybe I will redo my Foul Blightspawn a bit at some point since I could see there being a distinction between all the newer Death Guard sculpts and the slightly more Chaos Undivided lineup.

I also spent a few hours last night building the Poxwalkers I've had laying around forever. I always thought their sculpts were pretty hit and miss so I was considering getting some Deadwalker Zombies as a stand in, but with some head swaps and a few other bits I think I adequately spruced them up.
These are just the converted ones pictured since the others are all stock, along with a few of whatever the things that originally came with the Gellerpox Infected are called.

The purple is particularly exquisite. Great conversions too. Papa bless!

 inmygravenimage wrote:
The purple is particularly exquisite. Great conversions too. Papa bless!

Seasons greetings inmygravenimage! I'm glad you enjoy my continued work in the field of cloaks and plague-flavored purple.

With that in mind, I've been chipping away at my Deathshroud Bodyguard so I can finally show off the completed trio.
I spent way too long trying to get their cloaks right, but they turned out pretty well in the end.

I'm excited to try and decide what my last project of 2023 will be since I have been assembling something almost every day the past week or 2 so there are more 40k options than ever.
I was even lured in by a bit of Age of Sigmar since there was just 1 box of the Pulgoth's Shudderhood, and the old school metal Nurgle Lord that the Harbinger of Decay is one of the only models I didn't sell from my early days so he's wonderfully nostalgic for me.
I included a few shots of the Blightkings I just finished assembling yesterday with the more heavily converted ones singled out. The one with the flail has like 3 parts for each arm mix and matched from the rest of the unit so I didn't have to leave any of the coolest ones out. Basically everything except his body is swapped somehow.

Also here are some of the Traitor Guard I have been spending time on. I got a box of Jackals because I've always thought they were cool so here are the first couple attempts at making them more Mad Max-ish, and what is eventually going to be the commander of the detachment, what used to be a Tempestus Prime.
He doesn't have his head yet, just because the only one I could find was already undercoated so I didn't want it to have too many layers of paint.
To go along with them I also built the 2 Leman Russ I've had forever and a squad of the Krieg kill team, and that's not even mentioning that my other Chaos Knight is finally at the ready for painting stage, along with a Beast of Nurgle and a few Bloodcrushers.
It's a bit intimidating to start to see how much grey and black is ahead of me, but it's nice that the scale of the army as a whole is finally taking shape.

Lastly for now, since it's better to show than tell I thought now would be a good time for some group shots (there is no way it can all fit it just one), but keep in mind that at least half of it is still unpainted.

Merry Christmas and happy new year in advance to everyone who may be checking this out, and keep an eye out for more of my painting in the new year.

Well that's a lovely sight to warm my festive heart! Papa bless and keep you in this time of seasonal cheer!

The terminators look fantastic, great job on the cloaks.