from KyleC - Viking Warband for the Armory (205 pts)

So it's been a hectic holiday season here with much going on as always. But since the new year kicked off I have been a bit busy. 

I was able to get a bunch of Vikings printed up here over the holidays though, and now painted up. This will give me a chance to play some Viking SAGA once lockdowns here in the UK finish. 

The first batch was a collection of Sheildmen and Sheildmaidens for the Jarl. Tried to keep the colors muted with the odd greens and blues for the tunics, and tied them altogether with reds on the shields. 

These three valkyries were interesting to paint up and wanted them to have a bit of mystical looks to them with the blues.

The riders need reinforcements still as they seem a bit small to take a proper charge but luckily I have the files to print more later :)

And the last batch is a collection of berzerkers and 2 handed welding maniacs! Should be good fun to see them get into combat then!

This also brings me to Squirrel #5 so far... 

So the collection works nicely to get me through the armory chamber netting me 20 pts there. 5*29 figures making 145 pts. And 4 riders for 40 pts. A nice 205 pts post holidays and we move onto Gallery of Ancestors where I will dive into my War of the Roses York forces. Quick shot being of them below..

Let's see how this all goes! 😂 

From KeithS - Another Mish-mash (90 points)

This was a pretty low production week for me, despite having four days off last weekend.  Alas, I spent a lot of that time gaming, socializing, and otherwise not painting.  And, what time I did have available I used to significantly reorganize and reorder all my figures.  It had to be done.  The stuff I did paint was generally easy stuff, probably pretty low point value, though it did help clean up things  a bit for me.  All are scaled for 25mm.


First up is Woodsy Owl, also known as an Owlbear from Grenadier.  He looks pretty excited to be here, especially with those jazz hands of his.

From the back.  He looks like he is dancing, which might be a theme for me this week (it does not help that, a few minutes before getting online to post this my wife had the "classic soul" channel going on Pandora).

Next up are five Cockatrices.  They all were painted per the description written by Gary Gygax in the old Monster Manual.  For those following along, these go with the Sightless Sisters project I first painted in December, and there will be more for that project fairly soon.  On the far right is a simple winged serpent thing from Reaper.  I originally thought it was a cockatrice but, realizing my error, just painted it anyway.

Up close and personal.  These angry chickens are quite colorful.

I had a number of large, lumpy figures I decided to quickly finish to make room for other stuff in my queue - low hanging fruit, really.  They are from Grenadier (I think), a water elemental and two air elementals.  The water guy reminds me a lot of Samuel L. Jackson, and if I ever use it, I will have plenty of colorful dialog to use!

From the back.  Really quite simple with some grey washes on the air guys.

Next up were these three random guys, another Owlbear, a werewolf, and an Otyugh.  Again, all simple figures and not very challenging, but three less figures taking up space in the unpainted limbo of my work area.  The two on the right were part of a recent, sizable acquisition from my roommate from college, who found them at his parents and sent them to me.

From the back.  Once again, they seem to be dancing, or maybe just a cool fist-bump between Owlbear and Wolfman.

Just finished earlier today is an eagle and a dog.  I had to use the dog unpainted (gasp!) the other day in a game when there was a sudden and unexpected interest in trained war dogs for my AD&D game.  Well, painted now for next time, though two of the party's dogs bought the farm last weekend.

Last up is this small pony cart from Asgard/Viking Forge.  It was pretty simple, especially compared to the wagon I did last week.  In fact, that was why I did it - seemed like it might be useful.

From another angle and loaded - the cargo is removable.

That's all for this week.  In my reorganization I found a lot of misplaced figures, including more Minotaurs from the same line I painted last week, and yet more adventurers <sigh>.  However, I am going to continue to knock out monsters for a bit and then turn to 28mm Scots for Saga, as I just received some shield decals form the UK today.

What an interesting variety. D&D always strikes a deep cord on my nostalgia harp. Looks like you will have strange and fun adventures awaiting you in the next few weeks. Weird monsters will show up one after another. These 16 figures (80) and the cart (10) will earn you 90 points. Well done!  

From KeithS: The Last of the Adventurers...for now (152 points)



At long last, I've pretty much run out of 25mm adventurer figures (well, at least ones that are prepped and don't suck).  This week I managed to finish off thirty of the buggers, in two batches of 15.  They are a total mix - Ral Partha, GW, Asgard, some Grenadier, Reaper, Minifigs, and who knows what else.  But, hey, that's how I roll. 

The first half of the first batch.  Nothing too exciting, though the guy on the far right - I had one of those growing up that my dad painted, so it's pretty nostalgic for me.



Group two of batch one.  Again, a mix.  A few of these I've had for decades, while others are recent acquisitions from various cons and larger batches on eBay.

 I liked how this shield turned out, and the figure is pretty nice, too (Asgard, maybe?)

This chap was a bit odd looking.  But it is his shield that caught my eye.  It has a horses head and I originally was just going to do boring old Rohirrim white on green, but then I noticed it looks a lot more like a chess piece.  Thus, I got a little inspiration and did a checkered pattern (with the horse inverted on it)

My first week was the Silent Sisters.  I needed a captain for those lovely ladies and settled on this one.  She looks a lot fancier and better armed, appropriate for their captain; of course, she is sans eyeballs.  There'll be some more related to that sub-project as the challenge goes on.

Some of the troops from the back.  The woman on the far right is the same as the Silent Sisters (Asgard/Viking Forge).  I did this one as a normal adventuress, though.

Batch two I just finished up under the wire.  Once again, a really mixed lot that's all over the map.

These two feisty ladies are from the same line as the Captain above, I think, but I did them as straightforward warriors (i.e. with their eyes intact).

From the back.  They are really simple but I like how they turned out.

These two rather rudimentary figures I decided to use for practice in painting striped pants.  I like how they turned out and will be doing that more often.

Some more from this batch.  I've painted the Ral Partha guy on the left before  But I really liked the Middle Eastern type female in the center a lot.  I need to figure out who makes that one and find some more of a similar style.  I don't know what her weapon was supposed to be (it was missing) so she got a simple spear.

A bard and a Saxon.

And that's it for this week.  I do have more adventurers, but they are either not prepped or are really crummy figures that are almost not worth painting (though I sort of am employing the "no figure left behind" principal in my work - the challenge is wonderful for motivation).  I decided to hold off on my 28mm Scots as I'm considering shield decals (blasphemy?  maybe, but then again maybe I will just hand paint them).  I also have scads of demons screaming to be painted, plus some other monsters, 300 figures from Ral Partha's last Kickstarter in boxes, and who knows what else.

As an aside, I finally started using some of my adventurers in actual play.  Here's my AD&D game of Keep on the Borderlands last weekend, complete with figures for the party (and a bunch of dead Hobgoblins, which I painted a few weeks back).



Ah, it wouldn't be Friday without a big Keith mixed bag of DnD-style fantasy minis. My favourite this week is definitely  the very jolly Middle East-style lady warrior, with her dainty spear. And the red Ral Partha wizard, with the cute dragon familiar on his shoulder. I'm a bit concerned at how skinny those other ladies are: once you factor in the plate, and necessary undergarments and padding, do they even have a waist in there? Nice work on stripy pants - perfect if you've any pirates to do in the future - but those sculpts are pretty rough: boy am I glad the hobby has moved on to this new 'Golden Age'.

This might be the last of you adventurers, but if you're still pondering the Scots, it sounds like we'll have more fantasy minis from you next week? Looking forward to it 

And that's a big AD&D group you have there, bet you have fun keeping all them in line. 

Phil 

From KeithS: Dwarves, Wererats, and Assorted Hangers-on (315 points)

Having missed finishing anything for last week, that means I have a huge point dump for this week!  So, without further adieu, we turn first to the Dwarves.


Over the past year, I've focused pretty heavily on acquiring and painting adventurers in 25mm for use in playing AD&D (the old school kind, not that fancy new fangled kind).  Anyway, I've ended up with a fair number and decided to start off with finishing off some Dwarves, 22 to be precise.  These are from all sorts of manufacturers - Games Workshop, Ral Partha, VikingForge/Asgard, Grenadier, and who knows what else.  They're an eclectic lot, to be sure.  The scales range from 25mm to something closer to 28mm.

I believe these are Grenadier - plastic ones, probably late 80s, early 90s for their miniatures wargames.  They're a bit soft on features but nice enough.

These fancy dandies are GW.  A bit wide in the girth and really decked out in quite a lot of finery.

These are Asgard/Viking Forge, and I really like the sculpts.  They're metal, very detailed, have oodles of personality, and so on.  I love them!

This is a bit closer on some of the other ones -- not sure on the makers, as I said.  I based them all for dungeons (on steel washers with built-up wood filler carved to look like flagstones).  The downside of that is I cover up all the manufacturer's marks and my memory is too sucky to keep track of which was from which company.  Whatever...they work in a game just fine!

These two chaps were mixed in with them.  Tghey are too short to be normal humans so I was thinking they are a dwarf wizard and a dwarf shaman.  Maybe, maybe not.  But I like them!

Shield Wall!  I did several shields by hand just for drill.  I particularly like how the kite shield guy (5th from left) turned out.

 Turning now to the dark side, my next batch was 31 Wererats.  Why?  because my current D&D campaign is plagued by the dirty buggers!  I figured I should have gobs to play with.  The first groups are Caesar's Ratmen in 1/72 scale, close enough to 25mm for my purposes.  I painted two dozen or so of them, roughly half with brown fur and half with grey.  This will allow me to have multiple tribes of them, if I like, or just mix them up for variety.  The Caesar ones are ok - they are cheap though they have annoying mold lines that are harder to eliminate from the soft plastic.  I did them all dark with dingy colors and rusty weapons, as befits Rat people!

Some of the brown fur dudes.

And grey fur guys.  I liked the triangular shields - not practical, maybe, but something a bit different.

I also had a bunch of metal wererats which were of really good quality and larger than the others, pushing 28mm, I think (again, I forget who made them -- I need to get better at that!).  I did them all with grey fur except a pair I did with white, just to mix it up a bit.  Painting in white is not very forgiving!  I much prefer the darker, and easier, colors.

Up close -- a few had shields of wood.  Rather than just leave wood tones, I painted them with dull colors to make them a bit more interesting, but still trashy like I picture wererats.  Oh, and these guys had BIG blades!

Some of the non-wood shields, and a guy with a really big crossbow.

As I was prepping the figs, I noticed one "wererat" was really big, 33mm or so -- upon closer inspection I determined it was a heavily-armored wereboar.  Not sure where he came from, but I painted him up anyway.

 Wereboar flip side.

I'm in the Facebook group "Old School Miniatures" which is doing a mini painting challenge of its own -- they provided a pair of Ral Partha wizards for painting.  I decided to do mine in classic Gandalfian style, though with one based for dungeons and one based for outside.  I actually have one already painted just like the guy on the right but based for dungeons.

And the back.  The dude on the left is washed with blue ink, the one on the right with black.

Last up today (so far), I finished off a half-dozen Wights I've collected over the past year or two.  They're all quite a happy lot, despite having uniform bad hair days.  I decided to paint their clothing with a cold, weird blue as I've seen that done a lot for things like Forstgrave and Barrow Wights.  It turned out ok, though not quite as surreal as I'd hoped.

They're an ugly lot!

From the back.

That's it for now.  I count 62 figures for a cool 310 points (I wanted to break 400 total, but the day is still youngish here in Virginia so maybe...).  I'm not likely to drop a point bomb like this again, though you never know.  Next up for me:  a set of old Heritage Orcs based on Bakshi's Lord of the Rings from 1978, a bunch of Heritage Hobgoblins from the late 70s, and whatever else jumps out at me from my ginormous pile of prepped stuff!

My Minion shift starts with a points bomb, and looks like it will end with a points bomb too! Seems like that was a week off very well spent, but you'll have to get in lots of adventuring to get all of these on the tabletop.  The collection of classic dwarf sculpts work well alongside each other, and fitting to refer to those the more modern GW ones as dandies! Agree entirely that the best of the bunch are the Asgard/Viking Forge though, they look like some doughty hearthguard in all that heavy armour. Really nice shield desisngs too, thanks for the close-up. I particularly like the blue serpent on black - does that design occur a few times for a reason?  

Very fitting paintwork on the were-rats too, they're really nice sculpts for Caesar plastics. I worried I might have to tweak the points total when you described them as 1:76, but those sculpts look pretty much like skinny 25-28mms to me. Anyway, let's hope Curt agrees, or at least spares the whip if I am in error.  

315 towards your points total, with a few Bonus points on top for the funky shield designs.

Phil