Still around

 I know it's been awhile--OK, a year since my last post. I have fallen out of the blogging habit, with no real motivation to post more regularly.

Don't worry, though! I am still gaming and still painting miniatures. As proof, here is some sort of giant model I picked up at a flea market last year. I think it's from a Vikings boardgame.

This figure was very easy to paint, thanks to the sculpting and to the Army Painter speed paints I was using.

I was planning on using him in Oathmark, D&D, or Frostgrave, but instead my wife took him to put on her desk at work. I'm flattered she likes my work that much!

Who knows, maybe I will start blogging more soon. Meanwhile, happy gaming.

Alien statue

This piece of scatter terrain was simple to make: a dollar-store action figure (Final Faction) glued atop a pill bottlecap. 

Painting was also straightforward: black primer and a couple of shades of purple heavily drybrushed, including some color-shifting purple to give it an otherworldly glow that's even more apparent in person.

It's a tall piece of scenery for D&D, Stargrave, Frostgrave, Song of Blades and Heroes, or pretty much any 28mm sci-fi or fantasy game.

Another bookcase

Some more scatter terrain as part of my quest to apply pigment to castings, this time a bookcase from the Reaper Bones line. I don't feel as guilty not doing a traditional human/humanoid figure, because I feel like I put nearly the same amount of work into this piece of furniture (what with painting all the individual books and all). 

Plenty of detailing on this casting, although I'm not a fan of the company name and copyright symbol on the back of the thing (which now that I think about, I could have sanded down). Paint, wash, and drybrush really brings out the wood grain.

Because the bottom of this piece isn't flat, even after some sanding, I glued a small section of actual wood to the model to keep it steady and upright. As you can see, it goes well with 28mm figures.

Another addition for my skirmish games (D&D, Frostgrave, Melee/Wizard, Song of Blades & Heroes, etc.). And as you can see, it's part of a matching set--although I painted this slightly different than the first one I did.

I'm very pleased with how this model came out, and I like it better than my initial version. But I want to ask people veiwing this blog, does it look like there is that much of a difference? Please let me know.

Some furniture

I've been behind on my self-imposed schedule of At Least One Miniature A Week (thanks to a difficult spaceship build and videogames), but these two packages from the Reaper Bones line, the bed and the set of table & benches, should nearly catch me up. Very easy to paint, thanks to washes and drybrushing, and I've got two more (or four, if you count the parts of the kitchen set separately) items ready for the game table.

If you run skirmish games or roleplaying games, you can always use more set dressing, and these pieces will come in handy across a variety of rules. As you can see, they're approximately 28mm scale and will work in my games of D&D, Frostgrave, Melee/Wizard, Song of Blades & Heroes, and so on. Meanwhile, I will start sorting through my pile of bare casting for the next mini to paint.

Still working on stuff

Not as productive lately; maybe because it feels like spring break, or maybe because I've been playing Skyrim a lot. Either way, my output has slowed down, but not stopped. Firsti, I have some Reaper Bones furniture that will make nice scatter terrain for skirmish games.

Next, I'm making progress on the spaceship--it's primed now, and I've attached the superstructure, sensor mast, and bow guns. If only I had glued those parts on before I spraypainted the mini. I ended up painting them separately, then scraping paint off the model to glue this stuff on. Still, it's something.

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Water weird and well

This week was more quickie paint jobs, this time a couple of water weirds from the good ol' Reaper Bones line of minis. And since I like the idea of "before & after" versions of the same thing, I chopped off the critter from one model, giving me a nice well or cistern for your dungeon crawling pleasure. 

The chopping off part worked well, since the exacto blade made a circle of unnatural stillness in the otherwise bubbling water, ready to lure in the unsuspecting adventurer.

I've always been a fan of the translucent miniatures, and I do like how this came out. Now I have some dungeon decor/scatter terrain for use as a scenario objective, or just a nasty surprise.

As a bonus third figure, I took the creature that I had lopped off from the well and glued it to an acrylic base. Now I have a water elemental-type being that can appear anywher on the game board (but probably in or close to a water feature).

All in all, some fairly productive work for me today, and I hope everyeone else is getting a chance to accomplish something hobby-related. Thanks for stopping by the Dreadnought.

A la Cart

I know--I'm late with this week's figure. But At Least One Miniature Every Eight Days isn't quite as catchy as the current name for my little project, so I'm sticking with ALOMAW. Anyway, here is a ... cart. It's from the Reaper Bones Wiz Kids Deep Cuts line (fixed! thanks, Stu Rat!), and there's not much else to it.

This casting has a lot of detail, but you need an ink wash to bring it out. That's pretty much all I did, after painting the cart in a couple shades of brown. When the wash was done, I drybrushed a little to give it more of a weathered look (and I may need to add some more).

So this will work out nicely for scenery or objectives in skirmish games like Frostgrave, Melee, or Song of Blades and Heroes. It will also come in handy as part of a baggage train for Oldhammer scenarios. Happy painting, y'all!

Duo of centipedes

 

Following up on last week's critters, here are two more creepy-crawlies, a pair of Reaper Bones giant centipedes. Again, easy to paint up and suitable for use with any dungeon-crawl or skirmish game.

Ticks (6)

I wasn't in the mood to paint, and thought about skipping my weekly miniature work, and then I saw these giant ticks from the Reaper Bones line. Fairly easy to paint, and now I have some critters that you might see in your games of D&D or Frostgrave.

These were fairly easy to do, but it took me a long time because sometimes it's hard for me to concentrate on painting. But hey--that more figures I can now say are done!

Some scatter terrain

Technically, these aren't figures, but I did paint them, so I'm counting them for my ongoing project to get paint on miniatures. I will be using these items as objectives/markers/eye candy in skirmish games like Frostgrave.

The first submission is this alien artifact, suitable for science fiction games as well as fantasy scenarios. I used color-shifting paint to try to give it an extradimensional look; I think the object comes across better in person than in photos. It does look good next to this 28mm mini.

I then painted a couple of soft plastic Buddha statutes that vaguely remember buying at some toy store. I mounted them on small washers for stability and then painted one kind of silvery and the other sort of golden.

There was a surprising amount of detail on these little things, and they will look great in all sorts of genres. They can serve as objectives, treasures, or just set decoration.

I guess they're life-size for 28mm scale, so it might be problematic for a single figure to cart one off; you'd probably need at least two people working together. Or maybe there's a hidden compartment with the treasure .... 

Maybe not as productive, but I do enjoy converting spare household bits and random toys into gaming accessories. Do other gamers do this often?

Bear with me ...

Get it? Because it's a bear!

This miniature is the latest in my quest to finish one or more figures each week. I actually completed it yesterday, and forgot to post until today.

This fella is from Reaper's Bones line of minis. He will come in handy for all sorts of skirmish games, especially Melee and Frostgrave.

I like the angry expression on his face--like he got woken up unnecessarily. Some days I can relate to that. Anyway, what's everyone else working on? Have you all painted up some animal minis recently?

Dungeon decor

I picked up Artifacts Set 2 for Mage Knight Dungeons on the secondary market, and I really like the look of these prepainted pieces. I plan on using them for terrain and/or objectives for Melee/Wizard, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, and similar games. 

You can never have too much scatter terrain in your skirmish games, and this set even came with some rules for special game effects that I will try to port over to my own scenarios.

As you can see from my Warhammer Saurus hero (used as a Heritor for Ghost Archipelago), these castings are the right scale and style for dungeon crawls. I hope to see them in action soon.

Back to the Frozen City

This month we returned to Frostgrave, bringing our wizards and their warbands back to the Frozen City. Desiring to shake things up, we each took a wizard from one of the schools of the Pentangle from the Maze of Malcor supplement in order to play the campaign. I played an Astromancer. The first scenario had our teams searching the display cases of The Relic Room.

We started off with level 12 wizards, but were all slightly disadvantaged by the unfamiliar spells of this supplement. However, wizards of the Pentangle still can cast some spells from the main book, and both I and my opponent took advantage of the Wall spell as we tried to keep each other from searching the display cabinets.

Making the game even more interesting, you weren't guaranteed a treasure when you smashed open one of the cases--instead, there was a chance for a bog man, a bloodwave (proxied by Reaper slimes, above and below), or a shrieking wolf.

Still, I managed to get two or three treasures and avoided any permanent casualties. It's always fun playing Frostgrave, and I'm enjoying this campaign.

So here's a thing I painted

This is some sort of beholder-adjacent critter (spectator) from WizKids' line of Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures.

I had fun painting this guy and his two companions (gazers) from the blister pack. They came already primed, and on plastic stands. I added an acrylic base to make the big guy more stable.

I'm a sucker for these out-of-the-ordinary creatures. You can't really tell from these photos, but I used color-shifting paints on the eyes.

I don't know if I will use this figure for D&D, but it will come in handy as a demon or other monster for our Frostgrave games, which we're still playing.

I have a hard time getting motivated to paint minis, even to a tabletop standard, so I am proud to get this out of my unpainted pile and into my gaming pile. I need to work on another one for next week.

Wrapping up Frostgrave

As September wraps up, let me share the wrapup of our Frostgrave campaign. We started the scenarios in the Forbidden Pacts supplement (lots of demons and barbarians), and my original warband, the tavern folk, lost its wizard when she failed a survival roll. So the next game I replaced the townspeople with my lizardman warband, led by the elementalist Topo Chiko (above).

In the final scenario in the Forbidden Pacts book, you encounter a barbarian lord on a rhino as kind of a final boss. We didn't have a rhino, so we used one of my barbarians on a Reaper Bones bulette-equivalent.

There was lots of back-and-forth with my opponent's warband, struggling to snag treasures as various barbarians joined the fray. The barbarian lord was tough, but several Elemental Bolt spells helped take him out.

After that, we set aside Frostgrave for a few weeks, but we shall return. It's a fun game, and the closest to an ongoing role-playing game campaign I've had in a while.