Northumbrian Tin Soldier - Gnomes and Toads

 Northumbrian Tin Soldier create the loveliest characterful miniatures in the UK right now. They're characterful without being twee, whimsical in their approach but remain highly "gameable", at least to my eyes.

My ultimate ambition for this lot is a force for Frostgrave.

Copplestone - Barbarians - Minotaur - old school Heroquest

More Copplestone sculpts that had to be purchased and a minotaur that's been gathering dust for quite some time - who doesn't have fond memories of all those Heroquest miniatures? More so than the game in all honesy.

 

Mark Copplestone - Chaos Warriors

Mark Copplestone has made some of my favourite sculpts over the years. His poses almost always throw great silhouettes, have a great blend of gravitas and dynamism and are always a pleasure to paint. 

 

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. 

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.

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.

Reaper Metal Miniatures - Wizards

 

Back when I thought I'd be taking a generic wizard band into Frostgrave, I repainted these wizards up. Won't be using them now but always nice to have more wizards and these are great sculpts.

Foggy Peak Goblingtons – Goblin Fantasy Tribe

 I found these miniature to be an absolutely irresistible purchase. 

https://www.northumbriantinsoldier.com/product/goblins/

I think Northumbrian Tin Soldier make some of the best miniatures around in the UK. They're at the very least some of the most characterful. As they tend to the 32mm scale however, not everything looks convincing next to 28mm. However, these gobbos are pretty slight and look superb.

I've only painted these 12 figures thus far, enough to take into my projected games of Frostgrave. I think I'll have a lot of building to do for that game however.