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Can't have too many minis / armies. Just ask anyone on Dakka!

Bloody hell mate, you're on fire!

Mmmmm, Orcs.

Thanks fellas!

What gives dude? Almost a week and no models!?!?

 40kFSU wrote:
What gives dude? Almost a week and no models!?!?

At the rate he’s been cranking them out, he might be buried under a pile of finished minis. That or they’ve acquired critical mass, and Para can’t escape the event horizon.

Arrgh, yeah, it's been slow for a week or so. I have a Wolf Lord mostly done for the SM Painting Challenge, and a smattering of LotR stuff done, but nothing that merits getting out the camera ect. Still, I shall soldier on and try and produce something to update with!

Don't know what it is that is slowing me down/putting it off, just some kind of block. I look at stuff and doubt the quality, or just can't sit down and paint. I've also been spending a bit of time playtesting Mantic's Kings of War rules for LotR, so that has taken up a chunk of hobby time.

However, I have a decent size supply drop that should be coming in the next week or so (Deadzone: Contagion and a box of the new Harlies), that should kick me back into gear. Expect an update Soon (tm)!

Yeah I go through those patches every once and a while. But when I start painting again it is usually fairly quick the amount of stuff I do.

Back in action! Finally managed to scrape together enough stuff as to be update-worthy!

First off, a few WIPs of my entry in the March Painting Challenge, a Wolf Lord converted from an AoBR Captain:





Still a fair bit to do, but he's coming along quite nicely. I also rather like the superglue icicles on the base.

Next up, the Dain Ironfoot, World's Angriest Dwarf 2! This mini was sculpted and sold by a user over on the One Ring forum, but frankly, it's just as good if not better than any of the GW Hobbit character sculpts. Without a doubt, this guy fits better than the proxy Dain I was using before (on the right of the scale shot below). All told, it's a pretty awesome mini to have!






And now for something completely different. I mentioned a few days back that I was working on a setting and rules for a small-scale skirmish game, a Mordheim-type affair but with a slightly more mythical and Eastern-themed setting (largely dictated by the minis I have to hand, old pre-WH Citadels and others). While I haven't made much progress on the rules, I do at least have some minis painted for the first faction, the Alfei-Naqa (Sea Elves, in a made-up language!). Spoiler contains brief fluff for them, pics are below for those not interested in that. They are themed somewhere between traditional Tolkien-esque elves, Marvel's Atlaneans and Fey/Fairie stlye creatures. Quite sinister, very dangerous, and more than a little blue:

First off, the Fighters of the Warband. A Captain with a mace, 3 sword-and-board and 1 spear. Mostly old-school Citadel elves, with a few WFB weapons here and there:







And a couple that are not 100% done, but close enough, a Mage and an Archer:



FLuff:


The other factions planned for the game, based on the minis I have available, are The New Turagish (Eastern-themed humans), the Northmen (norse-themed humans, very shaman-based), the White Orcs (nomadic, desert-dwelling Orcs), Undead, and 2 more 'out there' factions, a Little Folk race (will be using 20mm Samurai for them) and a Rogue Magic faction, the remnants of magical constructs that have stuck around since the wizards of Turag blew up the city (there will be all sorts here, from ghosts and stuff to animated weapons, lasting spells, whatever crazy stuff I can come up with).

Rules-wise, I'm not sure where to go; the simple, D8-Success-based Deadzone/Mars Attacks route or the more complex but detailed Infinity/D20-style. At the moment I'm leaning towards D8, but any input is welcome.

Thanks for reading, I'll be back with more soon!

I feel like your version of a slow week is a productive one for the rest of us

Haha, maybe! But considering all of that last post was done in just a couple of days of actual painting in the last 2 weeks, it does 'feel' like I've been non-productive. Still, should be picking up the pace a bit now.

Really like the wolf Lord especialy the freehand on the Cape.

That cape *is* excellent. I also like the sea elves.

Nice work on the seas elves - it's certainly a unique palette, but it works well, as you'd expect less Iron and more Bronze for that sort of setting. Space Wolf looks great - worthy of an update all on his own, really - and I do like the dwarves. Is that the Hobbit boxes set version of Thorin? And which model is his armoured dwarf offsider?

Cheers guys!

@Az: I'm glad you picked up on the metals, as a general rule there is going to be hardly any steel/iron weapons or armour, the odd bit here and there but mostly it'll be bronze. I also went with an almost pearlescent look to the Elf weapons/shields, but I'm not sure it works!

As for the Dwarves, from left to right it's a plastic 'Grimhammer' dwarf from the Hobbit range, Dain, plastic Thorin and and old WFB Dwarf.


Anyway, new stuff! The start of the second Warband for the game, the New Turagish. These are the guys that lived in the aforementioned Cursed City before it went to hell, and so are now very anti-magic. Somewhat unintentionally, they seem to have ended up with a lot of 2-handed weapons, so I guess that's their thing as a faction; light armour, high Damage potential.

PICS (again, these are all old minis, some citadel and some unknown)

Swordsman: Might swap out his sword for a new one, the seam on the blade is a lot more noticable than I thought.


Another couple of 2-handers:



Axe-wielder:


A rare sword-and-boarder:


and some groupshot:



Still to come on this faction are another axeman, a sword-and-board guy and a giant (every faction is getting 1 'big guy'. Elves get a Lion Rider, these guys get a Giant, the Undead get a large Black Knight type chappie, the Orcs will get some kind of Ogre, not sure on the rest yet).

Also, I've decided to take the D8 route mechanically, and for combat, it's going to go roughly like this:

Thanks for looking, more to come soon!

They look pretty good!

Damage mechanic seems interesting too, would have to see it in the wild for sure, but in a vacuum it seems interesting.

Thanks!

The damage system has worked well enough so far in the handful of tests I've done; tonight I should have the core mechanics sorted and posted in their own thread, so you'll be able to see how they interact with everything else if you are interested. To lend some context, though, it works based on Wargear and armour pretty well by shifting the degree of damage around.

For example, Longsword (+1) vs Light Armour (-1) is just a straight roll, with the most likely result being Good Damage, leaving most things injured but still just about standing as your average sword strike would. On the other hand, that same sword against Heavy Armour and Shield can't ever one-hit-kill without rolling a Natural 8 and getting another attempt (Critical HIt), and has a 50% chance of just bouncing off. But then you bring in a Battleaxe and you're back to Good being the most probable. But then Battleaxe against Light Armour means even a 1 gets you minor damage, as it should.

Sorry, that's a bit rambling! Still, I'll look at putting up some test mini-batreps at some point, at which point it'll hopefully get clearer.

Back to writing...

Yep sounds pretty cool. The main thing with the damage is it can be as fast and brutal or slow as you want.. it comes down to the pacing you want for your game.

Look at MA and deadzone. MA gets very close to 40k-style removing fistfuls of models from the table because most shots are going to kill. Deadzone, however, is all about comboing advantages until you can roll enough dice to oneshot, otherwise it has a *lot* more back and forth ineffectual fire.

Another way to manage pacing is a time limit. Pulp Alley games are always pretty tense because you just don't have all that many rounds to claim the objectives before game over.

I think the missions are going to be the limiting factor in this one; the way I'll set it up, some missions will need you to kill and kill quickly (taking a position, hit-and-run attacks ect), some could in theory be won without rolling a single dice (land/loot grabs, lnfiltration ect) but obviously you'll probably need to kill at least one or two models to beat a competent enemy.

The speed of damage itself is a good point, this I think finds a nice compromise where some weapons and a bit of luck will take your head off in one(hitting a lightly-armoured Archer with a Warhammer should pit him down hard), but at the same time, to take out dedicated 'tanks' you will need to consolidate resources or whittle them down. Fights ending in a single Charge is an outlier that can happen with the right circumstances, but in most cases there will be a couple of rounds of back-and-forth to settle things.

Well, this is more like it. Cool stuff all the way around, you actually managed to make the AoBR captian look good. I like all the non GW miniatures too. One day I may break out of GW jail and expand my horizons with something new.

Love the wolf lord. The axe makes the model for me.

Thanks guys!

@FSU: You don't like the AOBR Captain normally? Personally, I love it. This is my 3rd conversion of that guy, and I still never get bored of panting them! I should have bought a couple more when they were cheap/not OOP!

@Squall: The axe is the part that needs the most work, actually, I just haven't decided on the effect yet. It's meant to be The Black Death relic, so needs to be black, but I don't know whether I want to go for a metallic black, a not-NMM high-contrast scheme, or even try and emulate a Black Ice look. Any thoughts?

Time for some more Fantasy randoms. First up, the last 2 members (for now) of the Human Warband, a Giant and another Axeman:

The giant was originally a 60mm Roman mini, and is a fairly hefty lump of metal to say the least, but he fits nicely enough.




He's a big fella!


Now onto the next Warband, the Undead. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary here, just your typical mix of Skellies and ghosts. I did have a look for something to make Zombies with, but came up empty-handed.







There are a couple more of these to come, they just need basing.

Now 3 Spiwits.
"what, sir?"
"Spiwit! Bwavado! A touch of Dewwing-do!"
/obscure Monty Python reference.

Ahem, Spirits
These are repurposed LotR Army Of The Dead. I actually went surprisingly 'mainstream' with these, just a simple, classic, sheet-over-the-head white. I think that is a little more sinister than the glowy colours or OSL-stuff I was tempted to try. If I do more, I may try out adding just a touch of colour like the ones from the Harry Potter films have (Oh dear, taking Harry Potter as inspiration, what's become of me? )




And a group shot of the whole bunch so far. At the back is a Wight I forgot to photpgraph (the blue guy), and I'll be adding an actual necromancer to their ranks once I decide on the model to use.




And now it gets really crazy. The fourth faction here is called Rampant Magic, and stems from the idea that when the City of Turag was abandoned in the midst of a magical cataclysm, all this magic that was thrown around remains behind, seeping into the stones and air of the place. As such, when some blundering adventurer walks in and tries to look/conquer the place, the city itself fights back. This faction is pretty much all Constructs of one kind or another, and very simple model-wise.

Enter Sandman! You've all heard the one about covering a model in glue and rolling it in the bits box, but here is something very similar done on purpose! To create these golem-like sand-people, I litereally did just cover the mini in PVA, roll it in sand and paint it like a base. 1/10 for effort, but I think they look pretty cool and unique.




And some Animated Statues. These guys need verdigris adding, but other than that are super-simple, just WFB High Elves dinged up and painted Bronze:


For those keeping track of the colours for each faction, these guys are pretty easy to guess. 50 Shades of Brown!

Far from a complete band, they need more statues, a Sorcerer or two and some Free Spells (literally just chaotic balls of magic whizzing round and getting in the way while shooting fireballs!).

And for anyone interested, the draft rules are now up in the misc minis forum, please free to take a look! I'd appreciate any feedback, no matter how simple, if you have a moment!

Thanks for reading what appears to be a quite rambling post! More soon!

Some very interesting factions you have going on here.

And you've really kept them coherent, between the color choices of a lot of bronze and darks... but it goes further. Are all of these guys from the same manufacturer? They just really blend in together even cross warband.

I like the spirits. Simple, but easy to tell what they are supposed to be.

My only issue with the sand people is that its hard to tell whats going on with them. I guess I feel like more definition would help. Though sand people wouldn't have a lot of hard features, so maybe I'm just being daft.

Thanks!

Honestly, I've no idea where most of these come from, they were all in a box of minis that my dad had in the 80s. Some are almost certainly early Citadel, there are a few designs that crop up in later WFB stuff (one of the Eastern guys has a pretty unmissable Chaos 8-point star on his shoulderpad), but most of them are just randomly selected. I have tried to group them somewhat coherently and build the factions around similar minis, and as noted each Warband is tied together with a faction spot-colour.

It could be that they are all of the same era; perhaps in those days there was less distinction between manufacturers. They're all older than me, at any rate


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Re: The sand-people, the lack of definition is kind of the point! They are supposed to be a shifting, almost-human-shaped mass rather than an actual man made of stone (there will be some more defined ones, much like the Terracotta Army), and the idea is they can alter/warp their form however they want. The magic or spirits that hold them together only approximate a shape because they are familliar with it, not because it serves any real purpose.

Living statues and sand-people. Freaky. I like it.

More stuff. Still going much slower than I have been so far this year, but I did hit 250 minis for the year a few days back, so I can't really complain.

First we have a little more for the magic/construct faction, a Sorcerer and 3 Claymen (which are a bit more like what Squall was expecting with the sand-people, I imagine)





And a Necromancer for the Undead, quite a characterful little mini, I think.



The start of the Orcs, and not a drop of green paint in sight! The first two minis here have aged rather well, the others... less so.





And lastly, we're going right back to Page 1! Took a bit of time the other day to update my original Infinity Knights to my newer PanO scheme, they're still not amazing, but better than they were and certainly more cohesive with the rest than before.

Teutonic Knight:




Magister Knight:




Knight of the Holy Sepulchre:




And all the Knights (these 3 and the Father Knight from Icestorm)


That's all for now. Next up will be some LotR, possibly more more 40k (the IF are getting irate ) and perhaps some more Infinity cleanup (4 Orders Sergeants need doing). In other news, my order for a box of Harlequins and Deadzone: Contagion has finally shipped, so expect some of that soon-ish.

Thanks for reading, any feedback welcome.

250 minis for the year? This year? Like, the past 77 days?
That's some insane progress.

Yeah, Para be crazy...

Nice work all around!

The panO stuff looks good, I think the hospitaler and santiago knights are my favorite, but your color schemes make me like the types you've done a bit better.

Crazy is probably the word. Suitable alternatives include 'easily distracted', 'scatterbrained' and 'has more spare time and piles of plastic than is good for him'

I do like the Santiago Knights (and, in fact, all of them really), these are just the ones that came in the starters (Father, Magister and Teutonic) and one I just had to have because the mini is beautiful (Holy). Now, even with the Sectorial list I can only ever have 2 types of Knight in a list, so these guys will all be proxied as my Knight of choice as and when I actually get a game of Infinity (probably the least likely of all the games I own, as it's too complicated to rope in non-gamer family/friends and at first can seem expensive per model when trying to introduce actual gamers)

Dare I say it, Infinity needs Unbound, so I can run an All-The-Knights list!