Odds and Sods V - The Odds Fight Back

   Its been quite hard to find time to do anything recently, let alone gaming or painting, but I've tried to squeeze a bit of time in to have a wind down. I also revived a title from a while back for this post as I think it covers it best.

   First model is a Genestealer Cult Magos - the last model of my current Genestealer project. I painted her in a slightly different green to anything else to try and make it look like she has access to nicer material, she's obviously not a miner herself, however, I did paint her armour in the same colour as I can only imagine it's come out of the same stock pile somewhere.

   I'd like to add to this in the future, but for now I'm calling it done.

   Next up is my current D&D character - Reizagar Stormhelm. She's a dwarf cleric from the D&D starter set. I'm not 100% on the paint job but I'm at a point it's easier to call her done then if I have an idea in the future I can fix her.

   Also not based at the basing material I've done all my fantasy stuff in has gone missing in my mancave move - when it turns up I'll finish basing her.

   Thirdly is a complete curveball - HMS Thunder Child of War of the World's fame in 1:2400 scale* from Tumbling Dice. Did I need this model? No. But how many wargamers want that ship in their collections?

*technically this is a model of HMS Polyphemus

Thanks for reading

Odds and Sods 3

   It has been a while since I did an Odds and Sods post - this time last year almost to the day weirdly* - but my painting desk is so full of bits of projects that this was unavoidable to someone like me. This post has Dinosaurs, a WW2 Soviet tank, Star Wars droid and Frostgrave, so lets begin.

*Must be something about the first week of September

   First up are the Oviraptors that I picked up from North Star. I was in the market for more of their wire spears as mine have gone walkabouts, but they have some of the most dangerous emails in the hobby and I am afraid I was one such casualty. I did my customary research into this dinosaur and basically came back with the knowledge that it is another 'do what you want' as the scientists don't know, so I picked my favourite scheme and went for it. I really do need a ruleset to play with these figures now, as this collection is getting a bit out of hand.

   After nearly a year of break from Bolt Action, I have picked it up again and started organising games and a couple of tournaments. The army I enjoy playing the most are my Soviets and my favourite tank to use is the SU-76 but I have always wanted to try it's up-armoured brother, the SU-76i**, so when I found out that Company B sold one (via Great Escape Games in the UK) it was a must buy.

**Actually based on captured Pz3 and stugs

   Carrying on from last time, I still have a fair few Frostgrave figures on my desk, of which these 3 made it through the painting process; another man at arms, a white gorilla and a medium construct. The man at arms is from Ladies in Sensible shoes***, the white gorilla is North Star and the medium construct is from Black Hat Miniatures and was bought without a plan, but with my Frostgrave resurgence I knew exactly what to use it as.

***Like the unknown templar from last time.

   Last up is a test model I bought from Tritex Games. I was after a better Owlbear model for D&D**** and spotted they had a Star Wars Miniatures category, so I bought a couple of bits as test items for size comparrisons with Imperial Assault.

****My character now has a magic item

that summons an Owlbear on command.

   The one I bought to actually use in games - probably as scenery - was the astromech droid ' Red' which was the one that malfunctioned when Luke bought it instead of R2-D2 in the 4th film. A quick ink wash and basing brought it up to gaming standard but size was the big issue, but as you can see below, while the model is smaller than R2, it isn't massively smaller, so I wouldn't be upset using it in the same game.

   The only other thing to test was the human sized characters, so I picked up a Sith Nobel with plans to use him as NPC in D&D, but he does seem to fit Imperial Assault's scale, so there is a risk I might bulk some units out with figures from this range, especially if some of the worst priced units work out scale wise (thinking Jawa's here).

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D&D Horses

   I started a new job last Tuesday so my hobby time is even more limited than it ever was, or at least until I settle down and work out what my new routine is. As such, this blog will change as well, being as regular as I can manage but also much more concise.

   The first of these posts is a bit of a cheat post, as I have only actually painted 2 of the models in it, but the horses are just too clever not to post about. My D&D gaming group are working our way through the Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign book and we have reached a point where we have been given horses by an NPC as we gather we are going to be doing a lot of distance travelling in the next few sessions. 

   I did some research on how other gamers show their character is riding a horse compared to just being next to it and came across a variety of methods, ranging from having a separate model of their figure on a horse, to horses with cut out backs or simply stickers you put on the horse while you remove the character from the board. None of these felt right for our group, however. The system I liked the look of was one put forward by Stuffer Shack and it was probably the simplest system, just have a horse on a bigger base, if your figure is on the base, it is riding the horse, next to the base and it is next to the horse. The next step was to pick horses with colours as close to the horses we each picked but again, the website gives enough choice that I have done pretty close.

From left to right we have; Bucephalas, River, Osiris, Nibbles and Blessing.

    Next up are my only bits of painting; our group's half-elf sorcerer who had been using an unpainted figure since the start and felt left out, and our wizard's mastiff war dog. The half-elf is a Reaper Miniatures figure and is made of their soft plastic which I really don't like the feel of, while the mastiff is from Otherworld Miniatures.

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Elderwood Spellbook

      I have backed a handful* of Kickstarters in the last year or so and its always exciting to get that email telling that something you order X ago has just been posted, most of which you have quietly forgotten about. But the Spellbooks by Elderwood Academy was not one of those Kickstarters, every few weeks I have been going back through my Kickstarter feed to reread the last update they sent out for any clue as to where mine was and getting excited every time I had a message with Kickstarter in the title in my email inbox.
     Then I got the message. My book had been posted. A long, long week, a customs slip through the door and a trip to the post office later and here it is.

*Ok, a big handful.

      The book and it's interior. Everything was customisable, so this one is: Dark amber leather, cherry wood with mahogany trim, a brass reflecting pool, burgundy felt and a gold sun design. 

       The spellbook with the shrunken goblin head I bought a while back. 

       This was one of those purchases where I looked at the price, the postage and added on the expected customs charges and really wasn't sure I needed a wooden book to store gaming stuff in, and then went back to look at the pictures and realised, that yes, yes I did. I only stumbled across this project when I was chatting to one of the guys I play D&D with and we described something so painfully similar to this that I figured it had to already exist somewhere and I found the promotional build up about a week before it went live and I am glad I did.

Now I just need to get the use out of it to prove it was actually worth it . . .

Thanks for reading

Tidying up

      I'm back from a nice week off in Norfolk with the family, but before you all start to worry, I took my painting desk with me . . . This is the first of, maybe, three posts of what I managed to get finished while I was away.

First up a random cowboy I had sitting on my painting desk for the last few months. Got a lot more western stuff in the pipeline but this guy was annoying me, sitting there half started.

Next up my second unit of biddowers for Lion's Rampant. Again these have been sitting on my desk with the first base layers done since I got my first 6 done months ago.

Lastly, a couple of random figures. The warrior priest is another figure for my Open Combat warband, while the elf mage is for one of the guys I have started playing D&D with as he is not a wargamer or modeller at all and wanted the sort of figures a few of the guys are now turning up with.

As I mentioned at the start this is a quick post of the odds and sods I got finished, the real projects are going to get their own posts. Most importantly is my first week's entry for:

Thanks for reading.

Larch Tanner

      Here follows an admission that will severely damage my geek cred for all that end up reading this, but here we go; I had only ever played 1 game of D&D before this summer and I hated it. 

     If anyone is still reading; I can now say that 9 years later, I have played a second game with a completely different group of guys and I am completely hooked. The first game I had ever played was with a mix of LARPers, wargamers and general nerds and it was one of the most frustrating couple of hours of my life, with bickering, arguing and sulking going on around the table and it completely turned me off of the whole idea, but the second group is almost entirely non-gamers, made up of 3 guys who had never even heard of Warhammer when it came up in conversation, my normal LotR opponent (the only other wargamer of the group) and me, invited because I was a known nerd.

    

     The character I ended up playing was Larch 'The Hound of Wheathold' Tanner; a serf, turned folk hero, turned exiled ranger. The GM decided to create our characters himself to make sure we had diversity in our backgrounds and of all the backgrounds mine has to be my favourite, the guy is just great; chaotic good - my ideal alignment - and with loads of secrets, basically one hell of a backstory. Larch is a classic leather armoured ranger, who is more archer than front line fighter, although he does carry two swords to hold his own if he needs to jump in. But he needed a figure.. .

        The figure itself was an eBay buy and I am sure someone out there will identify it, but I think it might be Ral Partha (?), but as ever, there has been a lot of conversion work done to make the model fit the image I was given by my GM. There is a second sword at his waist from the Fireforge foot serjeants plastic box, a backpack, rope and quiver from the Frostgrave plastic box and a metal bow from gripping beast. 

      I'm really excited about using this guy in the next part of the campaign at the weekend, which is something I really never saw myself saying.

Thanks for reading