Folorn Hope - 28mm Miniatures - Scavengers, Wreckers and Savages - Sculpted by Mark Copplestone

These miniatures were so much more enjoyable to paint than that last lot. Copplestone has such character to his stuff and I'm grateful that it's a: still so readily available and b: cheap! 

There's a large emphasis of post-apocalyptic/frontier aesthetics to Five Parsecs, at least in it's published form, that make characters like this ideally suited. I kept the paintjobs into two fairly defined groups, but part of the appeal will be to throw everythin together as it suits me.

 

Battle for Zycanthus - First batch baked

I thought I would paint up the more generic "grunt" type units of the boxset.

This will leave the more interesting droid and alien units to paint up at some later date. I did this entirely contrary to my original intentions, which were to plug those big robots into some ruleset or other. That is still some vague intention down the road...

For anyone that was on the fence over this game I have to say I don't think you missed much. Construction was a pain, and the overall look is "chonky" in the extreme. Maybe I can use these chaps as some sort of "space engineers", technicians of some sort or another - that's the look they capture for me.

I far prefer these characters - they're a little more lithe and throw some more interesting silhouettes than the other 'team'. Fine for some hi-tech random-son-of-a-bitch baddies in Five Parsecs. 

Maelstrom's Edge: Battle for Zycanthus: miniatures assembled.

 This is another of those ebay "rescues" that I've become prone to.

It was the full game and had been languishing for some time on the site at a very low price. Given that it contains a fair amount of miniatures

and that I like and need generic sci-fi chaps for games like "Five Parsec from Home" it had to be worth a punt for 40-odd miniatures.

The game itself had been a project of some of the "dakka-dakka" site members - but I knew nothing of it before spotting it for auction. I think if it picked up a following anywhere that it might be in the US, there's precious little on UK sites. I did ask and was told by a forum goer that it felt like "a game that had been designed by someone that had only ever played 40k." Can't say that that is very enticing.

It is safe to say that the miniature assembly is arduous. Even biceps and forearms need gluing on certain models, and even those with a monopose as the end result. Some very odd choices made over all of the models that turned a couple of days gluing into the best part of a week's work.

Very little cleanup for once though. That's good.

I quite like the end results. The "alien dude" faction especially have some good poses. The other faction have solid mechs/drones and pretty fighters, looking to me something like high end site security teams. Frankly, painting them will be less of a chore than putting them together. There's something very 'off' about the proportions of  some units, but for less than EM4 money I'm not whining.

There are just one of each type of mini pictured, the actual full teams contain multiple figures of the grunt type characters. I'd recommend it if you could find it cheaply, perhaps? Especially if pre-built. There is a great variety there, for the kind of purposes I have lined up for it.

Star Saga - painting miniatures and scenery. Mantic games stuff

As I've been playing through "Five Parsecs from Home" second edition, a pdf I've had for ages, I realised that I wanted some generic sci-fi grunters and that my un-played Star Saga box might be perfect for some scenarios

Mantic Games were selling it off a while back and and I bought two copies ostensibly for the scenery. I sold the other one off when I looked at the unpainted pile....

Mantic are all over the place with their quality. These 'board game plastic' figures, that softer PVC, are actually nicer sculpts that much of their ranges for Deadzone or what-have-you. And even with the slightly lower detail they painted up quite nicely. I'm pretty sure that they have changed sculptors quite often and mostly I think it's for the worse, even while their casting improves. In fairness though, their games are mostly superb. I love Deadzone for instance, it's everything I thought Kill Team would be but better. Very slick game. These Star Saga figures are a playable faction too!  

As I'd painted these, I actually got around to playing Star Saga and it's pretty great - solo plays well and a slick reinterpretation of that "Heroquest"-style crawler. Lots of clever variety in the missions and characters. Much, much better than any of the similar games I've bought over the years. ie, Descent(ok, but really a "race" game.) or "Shadows over Brimstone" (Frankly, it's dogshit.).

It's a shame then that Star Saga didn't catch on and ended up on clearance, good for me, mind. 

 

The Red Book of the Elf King - miniatures - Treeman scratch build finished

 

Here's the painted up treeman. I think he likely needs more highlighting but the energy is low from work....

Finished these "The Red Book of the Elf King" sculpts too. They're absolute stunnas, really nice to paint even if those spears are way too delicate....

The basing is pretty shonky here, I'll need to sort that eventually....

I bought this "Lucid-eye" game a while ago and have never gotten around to playing it. It should be at least "good", as it is a Steve Priestly designed game. I'll get there. The elf lore is very old school, very old-magicky and weird which is an approach I really liked. 

These were my last Elves to paint for now and the last of my pressing backlog....

delirium treemens - Scratch-building a monster

 

Perhaps not the acute alcohol poisoning that my title suggests, but painting so many miniatures in one month is pretty tiring. So why not scratch-build monster on top of that?

Anyway I've never scratch-built a large figure, so I thought I'd do just that with a large character - a Tree monster.

A humble enough start - a foamboard torso mannequin to 'hang' the sculpted parts from.

Greenstuff more form to it...

After leaving it to dry at each stage, as handling it turns previous work to mush, start applying detail to each limb. I was working with a very specific form in mind so didn't need sketches to work to.

Work in the first suggestions of a face

Start building hands and filching parts from my GW stuff...

Bark is prettyy forgiving to simulate in greenstuff so the rather skronky detail to texture doesn't detract too badly imo. Prime the bugger.

Orc for scale ( he was to hand.)

I have actually painted it, but as of the time of writing i have no photos.

Classic Elves, GW and Grenadier

 

More powering through my pile of shame.

I've been bargain-ating some Elves from ebay for a while to replace an old much-missed army.

I really lucked out on a spectacular collection that had the worst photos I'd ever seen on ebay - thanks to whoever that was. I feel like the Elves themselves organised it. Normally this old stuff goes for eye-watering money on ebay.

There are mounted units too, but I didn't photograph them.

There is a mix of old Copplestone Grenadier sculpts, Warhammer units from three or four editions of Warhammer and also some units sold by Black Tree Design, literally the worst company with the best miniatures that exist. I didn't get those in time for when I built and primed that lot though.

That's probably a week or so's worth. You lose track really, don't you?

A couple of Wardancers and Copplestone hero character.

Only slightly modded Copplestone minis using GW bits and pieces.

I'd forgotten how much work cavalry and chariots actually are, but these old Warhammer casts are just beautiful.

Some Dryad units. 

I have no specific game in mind for this army, but as almost everyone has elf armies in their rulesets it'll be easy to field them. One hopes.

The only thing I'm missing is treeman - that, I've decided to scratch build.

Concord - Beyond the Gates of Antares

 The last of this round of BtGoA stuff... One of the few Warlord paint schemes that I like, so I kept them generic.

Oof, that face needs working on, but at least I can get them to the table now...

Nighty, Nighty Boromitey

 Last of these units...

Moulded with milliput some bases for the magnetised weaponry thatr came wwith the big point units, the Hauler and the Brood Mother. It's good to be able to swap weaponry and good to save money elsewhere too.

A ludicrously over-sized fractal cannon! 

Boromite close quarter fighters.

yer bog-standard Boromite grunt doing what his mum tells him to.

Big ticket units.

Beyond the Gates of Antares, Boromite force.

 This army has been hanging around for the best part of a year while I distracted myself with various other projects.

Lord alone knows when I'll get around to using them for BtGoA. Much as I like that game there isn't much of a scene for it at the moment. Still, I love the sculpts and rate the entire range pretty highly. These models were a joy to paint

There's so much here that will be useful for all the "miniature agnostic" games that I now have my eye on. I know that there's a scifi Frostgrave variant on the horizon, for instance.

Engineer Squad

A fabulous Matriarch unit, with gun drones. Chonky.

This faction have really imaginative cavalry units.

Gaming table finally looking playable

 Using existing kits and the DIY builds I've thrown myself at in recent months it turns out that I finally have enough terrain for a varied table. I definitely need more scatter terrain however.

There's some obvious scaling issues between various bits of scenery here, but the "Garden of Morr" stuff looks ok if you restrict it to a graveyard type corner.

A Northumbrian Tin Soldier "Goblington" takes the first treasure in this game - and keeps it from what I recall.

I call this terrain building phase of hobbying over for now. I have some Antares stuff that's been waiting forever, and an elf army....

Still not enough

 So I still don't have enough terrain to populate a large table for a game of Frostgrave. Having built a few pieces now I feel a little more confident about sculpting something more complex out of foam.

Carved from foam blocks and glued onto foamboard. Pinned by cocktail sticks and drowned in PVA.

Lots of these ruined sections made in the same way. Improve the look and playability of them with detail and wood sections, ramparts, stairs and ladders.

Once everything is as good as I need it to be, slap the primer out and get the first coats of paint on.

Copius drybrushing and a shredded drybrush for foliage....

Now, with my existing Garden of Morr scenery from GW I should be getting to the point of enough scenery for a big table...