From StuartL - Thieves Guild

Have you ever had miniatures that you started painting, but could never seem to get a good feel for? That is how all of the minis in this post started out. I had some colours on each of them, but none of them felt right and had been sat in various WIP piles for ages. Resolving to get them done, I sat down early on Tuesday morning and began by repainting all of them in a base coat of dark brown. (GW Rhinox Hide I think it's called). After that I began blocking in details with a limited palette of mainly greys and browns. A wash and some highlights followed, along with cleaning up a few errors. While none of the miniatures follow a particular uniform, the same colours are used on at least 2 models in the group, creating a somewhat coherent appearance. The only exception is the orange OSL I attempted on the halfling with the lantern. 

The figures are all from Reaper's Bones range and of varying quality. At least one mini is missing his nose and his face lacks any real details, whereas the halfling and the thug in the red hood have very clean, crisp details.

All of the minis were painted in several sittings across one day with the exception of the moss on their bases which took a while to dry and had to be finished yesterday morning. They are pretty rough around the edges, but they look like rough types anyway, so it's all good. Plus I got them all out of the WIP stage and into the 'done' category, so I'm pleased with that.

I'm not sure what I will be using these for, Dungeons and Dragons perhaps as most of my Reaper minis end up in my RPG box anyway. Recently I've been pondering about attempting some kind of dark fantasy game in the vein of Mordheim, Rangers of Shadow Deep or Dark Age of Sigmar*. For the time being, they'll be off my workbench and that's what is really important at this stage. It's not like you need a plan to use the minis you buy after all.

For the purposes of tracking my own progress, these 8 figures should be worth 40 points on the challenge scale, bringing my imaginary total up to 332.5.

*Also known as AoS28 for some reason. Dark Age of Sigmar is a fan based take on GW's Age of Sigmar setting, stripping out all of the bright, child-friendly, high fantasy and replacing it with chilling horror, gritty violence and quite a lot of artistic interpretation. From what I have seen, it is largely inspired by the likes of John Blanche's older artwork. If you're interested, you can find more at https://28-mag.com/

AdamC- Militant Peasants

These are some figures I picked up second hand from my gaming and bloging friend AJ.  The plan is to use them as characters and support troops in a game inspired by Seven Samurai but set in Western Europe. I’ll probably use some simplified version of Saga (no Battle board) or Dragon Rampant as I plan to run this game as kid friendly.  I have an acquaintance here in town who runs a mini gaming convention for the Cub Scouts, and I ran a game one time and really want to do it again

 There are some hero types including two fellows who clearly used to work Erol Flynn’s Robin Hood. The two crossbowmen are probably two old army buddies since they seem to be executing the same “drill.”

There are also some great characters including the watchman with his horn, the Friar who clearly has issues with the sin of gluttony, and the baker.  Now I just need Annie over at Bad Squiddo to do a less well-dressed version of her shield maidens to go with them. 

From Barks: Line orcs

This coming weekend would have been Eucalyptus Bowl in Sydney, but due to COVID it was called off. I feel a bit of a Cassandra as I predicted that in mid-March. Lucky for me as my team is far from painted! These resin figures are from RN Estudio. I have over a dozen to go, and they're a real slog- white, red, and yellow are labour-intensive colours.

The Skull-o-meter™ is surprisingly active here, reading 18 skullz.