Latest From the Workbench

 Wow! It's been three months since my last post. Not that I haven't been busy with the hobby and all. I have been quite busy, painting that is. I took a break from gaming after the Recruits convention to focus on some painting, and of course basing the massive pile of stuff I have done over the last several months, it was rather substantial as you will see today, and over the next few weeks. Basing is, and has been, a bugaboo for me. I love the end result, just dislike the journey. Thus, I had a massive amount of figures piling up as I procrastinated in my basing. Finally, having run out of space to store the as yet unbased figures, I got down to business.

First up is the awesome Freya figure from Bad Squiddo Games. Annie has a great range of shield maidens and some other misc figures for the period. I had gotten Freya long ago, and when thinking about what I was going to do with her, I wanted something to add to her base. She is a goddess after all. I decided on the cats, also from Bad Squiddo. In researching the cats, I discovered that there were these actual, enormous cats called Norwegian Forest Cats! Who'da thought they were real? One of the things I enjoy about this hobby, is discovering things that I had never heard of before. That was certainly one of them. Then I took a trip to Middle Earth!

The Army of the Dead, led by the King of the Dead. I never thought I would venture into any GW game, however, this one is rather stable, without incessant changes to the rules. I picked up the Pelennor Fields starter kit, and after a little research I decided to start my journey with these guys. After watching a couple tutorials on youtube I got them going, and had them done in no time at all. In case anyone is wondering, here is the method I ended up using.

White Primer

After that I picked out some colors on some of the figures such as steel, brass, and the red color on the king.

Heavy coat of contrast warp lightening

Light drybrush of white

Lightly watered down warp lightening

The lighter color guys were my first batch, and I wanted more of the darker green rather than a minty great so I did not thin the final wash as much. I was really happy with the outcome. I have added a few cavalry to the army but they have not been painted as yet. Need to do some seam filling before I can get those done.

What would the army of the dead be without the three hunters?

Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas from the GW Three Hunters Pack. Sculpted to look like they did while chasing the Uruks across Rohan. They are plastic and require some assembly, which is pretty simple. They are very nice figures, and quite detailed. I'll be looking forward to getting all of these on the table in January. There is a very active MESBG group here in KC. 

Then I was on to 20mm WWII

A mix of Wehrmacht, Volksturm, late war panzer grenadiers, and tank crews. All the figures come from FAA. The late war PGs were of particular interest. All armed with the STGs, some with IR sights, some of the single shot flamethrowers, as well as the rocket launchers. Some pretty cool stuff really. Nothing really coherent here, just a bunch of packs I had picked up in a larger lot.

Then there were some Japanese and Marines to fill out the almost completed armies. The intention, is to use these with CoC. Again, all figures from FAA.

Last, but not least, my Italians. Setting these guys up for early WW2 Balkans, primarily. I can see them getting drafted for the eastern front as well. Once again, these are FAA miniatures. I really like their ranges. They are fairly well detailed and easy to paint without too much effort.

And now I'll wrap this post up with some ancients.

15mm Ptolemaics from Forged in Battles War & Empire line. These are really nice figures, and paint up rather well. To be quite honest, these had been painted for quite some time now, and I had put them off due to the shield transfers. I thought they would be a pain, and I was correct. I had for some reason, decided to base a rank first, then do the shields, base the front rank and repeat. I don't know what I was thinking, but, that was a horrible way of doing things. In hindsight, I should have done the transfers before basing, it would have been easier.  It still would have been a pain though. I bought the transfers from Little Big Men Studios.  I don't know how things are sized, but overall these shield designs were not good. The fit was bad, the shields are not sculpted well on the phalangites so the transfers would not lay down correctly, just a bad experience overall. Micro-Sol helped to get them to form to the shield better, but I wasn't too happy with them. The phalangites need to have hands drilled for the pike. These were the only figures in the army that needed that.  The army is based for Impetus.

That is all for this time. I'll probably have a short year end post up this weekend, we can then see if I met my goals for the year and see what the goals will be for the coming year.