You must gather your party before venturing forth: More Frostgrave soldiers!

Greetings all.

Welcome to my final post of 2016 (probably)! I'll post some sort of hobby retrospective at some point over the next week, as it's been an interesting and eventful year for me, both hobby-wise and in real life. First though, the last three models on my "2016: to paint" list are done. They are of course more Frostgrave minions, this time a Marksman and two Rangers:

Still sticking to my old school Chaos theme (of course), these three are made up of two Chaos thugs, and a really old preslotta Chaos fighter.

That more or less rounds out my Frostgrave warband for the meantime, although there will no doubt be further additions as we progress through the various campaigns. I've got plans for a few different projects over the next few months, but more on that next time!

Do not call up that which you cannot put down: Part Two

Greetings all.

Just enough time to squeeze in another post or two before the end of the year right? Well here's one!

I've been powering through the last of my "to paint" list, and I'm actually almost at the end. Three more off that list are these fine fellows, more daemons (demons) for Frostgrave:

A minor demon and another imp, made from an old Tzeentch flamer and a familiar.

I also painted another major demon, more in line with the other major demon I painted recently:

This time it's an old Lord of Change, minus the wings (because Frostgrave). I painted them all in the same scheme as my other demons and my warband, to tie them all together.

Hope you like em!

There goes the painting schedule...

Greetings all.

Well firstly, some fantastic news: the wife and I are expecting our first baby! It's early days yet (what you might call "WIP"), but we're looking at a summer baby. Both mum and baby are healthy, so I'm happy! I'm sure I'll share some pictures of my greatest miniature as it develops... But that's enough of being grown up for today, back to toy soldiers!

I reckon I can squeeze in one or two more posts before the end of the year, and as I sit here watching the new series of Time Commanders (seriously, watch it!), it seems like the right time to crank out a little post.

I've managed to get a fair bit of painting done recently, just trying to round off the year, and clear my current backlog a little. First up, I painted a pair of old school plastic beastmen:

These two are basically "understudies", fulfilling a variety of roles. Mostly fighting in the frozen city, they'll be serving as rangifers, foulhorns, or possibly even gnolls, depending on where they're needed. Despite being a pretty simple sculpt, they were a pleasure to paint, and actually turned out rather nicely.

Another beastie painted up for Frostgrave was this rather lovely Minotaur:

Pretty simple to paint up, nothing too fancy going on. I kind of like his whole expression and demeanour though. He looks like he's been given a simple job to do ("stand here and guard this chest"), and that's now the most important thing in his world.

Next up, and also for Frostgrave, are another bunch of vile daemons (or demons, if you prefer):

These two rotten bastards will serve as an imp and a minor demon. Yet another Chaos familiar added to my collection, along with a harpy/fury.

Lastly, but by no means leastly, a major demon. Well, sort of...

I was planning to use this old Citadel Chaos demon as a major demon for Frostgrave, but even mounted on a big scenic base, he just didn't seem imposing enough. Part of this is due to the pose (he is sitting down after all), but I just wasn't happy when I compared him to my other major demon (classic Keeper of Secrets). I decided to paint him up anyway, because he's a fantastic model, and incredibly sinister looking. He'll probably still find his way onto the battlefield, either as a wandering monster, or possibly something scenario specific. Not sure yet, but he certainly is cool, and that's what matters right?

That's all from me for now, but I've still got a few more bits on the go that I want to get finished before the end of the year. In the meantime, comments are very welcome!

A familiar face

Greetings all.

Two posts in as many days might just be a record. It's a bit of a cheat though, as I don't actually have anything new to show. What I do want to mention (briefly) is another mad little side project that I've decided to embark upon, following the completion of my Elementals. This time I've gone to the other end of the scale... familiars are the new cool thing for me!

I actually have quite a few already painted, with several more in the leadpile, so I'm well on my way with the project already. They're based a little differently from each other because they've been used for anything from 40k to Frostgrave.

I'll pick up this project now and again when I fancy something easy and fun to paint. They're so tiny that they're not exactly taxing, but they really are a joy to put paint on. You can definitely tell that the sculptors were given pretty much free reign when it came to these little guys. Watch this space for more over the coming weeks!

Citadel C34 Elementals: Finished!

Greetings all.

I've reached a kind of mini milestone today, in that I've finished my C34 Elementals at last! I've been putting it off for ages, mostly because I don't like the last one in the set (Life Elemental) and I didn't want to paint her. But paint her I did:

I didn't enjoy this one, and I'm not overly happy with the end product, but she is finished, and the collection is complete!

That's a little project done and dusted before the end of the year, so I'm happy! A few more bits for Frostgrave still to finish, and then it's on to Blood Bowl!

Caught somewhere in time

Greetings all.

Got a little something special for you today. This model isn't part of any of my current projects, but as soon as I saw him up for sale on Facebook, I knew I had to have him! From what I understand, he was due to be part of the Pantheon of Chaos project, but the scale was a little off compared to the rest of the range. Because he is just so damn cool, Diego decided to offer him up for sale anyway. Without further ado, I present to you the Time Traveller:

Quite clearly he is a (pretty faithful) rendition of Eddie from the cover of Somewhere in Time. Being a big fan of Maiden, I knew I had to have him. I stuck pretty closely to the colours on the album cover, and I'm pretty happy with how he turned out!

I always try to find a gaming purpose for my models, but I'm not sure where Eddie will pop up just yet. Between 40k, Rogue Trader, and the upcoming Rogue Stars, I'm pretty spoilt for choice though!

It's worse than that, he's dead Jim

Greetings all.

Another pretty quick post for you today, mainly because there isn't too much to say! I'm working through my current paint list so I can get cracking on a new (very old) Blood Bowl team, now that that's a thing again.

My brother-in-lead Alex recently painted up some casualty markers for the Hunt for the Golem campaign. Although we have plenty now, I had a couple laying around that I had been meaning to do, so I did them:

Both are old Citadel figures (not Marauder, as I first thought) one is a dark elf and one is a chaos thug. Both were converted slightly and given a quick lick of paint.

Hope you like em!

Do not call up that which you cannot put down: Frostgrave demons

Greetings all.

Got a little something special for you tonight, more in line with my usual painting preferences too: Daemons!

As a bit of background, my Frostgrave summoner recently picked up the spell "Summon Demon", allowing him to call up some infernal assistants of various sizes. Now of course I could just use something I already have painted, but that was never really going to happen... as a result, I've painted up a trio of monstrosities to help Scabrous Vile in his quest for gold and glory.

First up, a lowly imp:

This little beauty is an old Chaos familiar, painted up to match the rest of my warband.

Next up, a minor demon:

Another old GW daemon, this time a daemonette.

Lastly, the (un)holy grail of summoning, the major demon:

Another lovely old Slaanesh daemon, this time a Keeper of Secrets.

Upon further reading of the spell description, it turns out that the apprentice can also attempt to cast this spell, giving me access to another diabolical helper. This of course means that I have to paint up another trio of demons for apprentice Drear to call up... saving those for another time though!

Hope you like them, comments welcome as always!

Creepy crawlies

Greetings all.

I have a quick and dirty post, with a quick and dirty picture of a quick and dirty paint job for you today. I needed a couple of "ice spiders" for my Frostgrave bestiary, so I picked up a couple of Reaper Bones spiders super cheap. I'm growing fond of Bones for this sort of thing, purely because it's so cheap. The material is too light and flexible for me to even consider building an army or warband out of it, but for generic random monsters, it's perfect. I had no intention of spending much time on these two, so this is like an hour from start to completely finished:

They certaintly aren't winning any painting awards, but they'll do just fine as random encounters in the frozen city.

Till next time!

We captured it for Chaos: Revisiting my Chaos Cult

Greetings all.

A bit of a departure from my recent stuff this time, I decided to revisit my cultists from a while back. In my 1850 list for 40k I had 5 points to spare, so these lads managed to get themselves a flamer. They'll probably all be dead before they get chance to use it, but it makes them feel important and scary, and that's what really counts.

He's a pretty straightforward conversion of a Valhallan with a flamer. All I did was chop off and drill out the head, replacing it with a ghoul head to make him seem much more of an unsavoury character. I also distressed his greatcoat a little, and filed down any Imperial iconography.

Hope you like him. I'll be going back to Frostgrave for a bit, then probably working on some Nurgle daemons, and the last of my Elementals. Till next time!

Sally forth!

Greetings all.

Bit of an interesting one for you today. I finally got round to painting this handsome chap up, but I've been meaning to for a little while now. Those of you who have seen the excellent Army of Darkness will recognise him as Bad Ash, the leader of the Deadite army. Those of you who haven't seen the excellent Army of Darkness should go away right now and watch it. This particular fine fellow was part of a very small fan-commissioned project that I was very lucky to be involved in a while ago.

I mostly stuck to the actual colours of Bad Ash, but he did end up getting the same pale skin tone and glowing eyes as the rest of my growing undead horde. I'm not sure how I'll end up using him in game, but he'll probably find his way into Frostgrave somehow. I'm actually tempted to build an Age of Sigmar Death army (in which case he would make a great Wight King), but that urge may pass...

Happy Halloween!

Greetings all.

Happy Halloween to the lot of you, hope you're doing something suitably spooky. Given that I've been mostly painting undead recently, a Halloween themed post wasn't much of a stretch. I finished off the last of my ghouls for Frostgrave over the weekend:

Apologies for the dodgy picture. You'll notice I used the ghoul child and ghoul hag from Heresy (also sculpted by Paul Muller). These two are particularly loathsome and disturbing models, so nice job there Paul! Here they are as one big happy family:

Predictably this has set my mind racing and I'm now considering doing a much bigger ghoul tribe... I've got plenty more on the table first though, so we'll see if that project ever comes to life!

Hail to the King!

Greetings all.

A quick post from me tonight. Been pretty busy lately, but I did manage to find time to put some paint on my Ghoul King for Frostgrave:

He's another excellent Paul Muller sculpt, this time done for Heresy Miniatures. This is the "vanilla" version of this model. I chose this version (though I do have the special version too) mostly because he has a necklace of bones, which represents an essential plot point in the Lair of the Ghoul King scenario for Frostgrave. As an added bonus, this version covers his dangly bits with a loin cloth, meaning that I didn't have to paint yet another phallus...

Even more Frostgrave gribblies!

Greetings all.

Prep work for the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign continues at a fairly steady pace. This time I've finished off some loathsome ghouls and a troll. The campaign calls for an undead troll for one of the scenarios, but I wanted something I could use again and again, so I went with a more "generic" troll. He'll make a fine undead troll, but can also be used as a wandering snow troll in other scenarios. Onto the pictures:

The ghouls are the old GW metal versions, sculpted by the excellent Paul Muller. Definitely my favourite iteration, and I've got some of the ghouls he did for Heresy too, so they'll fit in nicely.

The troll is a very old Citadel Fantasy Tribes troll. I rather liked that he had the look of a proper D&D style troll, and like the werewolf I painted last week, he has his dong out...

That's all for this round. On the table at the moment are another 5 ghouls, and a big fella to lead them...

Frostgrave: Fierce creatures (and shiny boxes)

Greetings all.

I've managed to get more or less back into my painting routine and I've been cracking on. I wanted to work on something super easy because I haven't painted in a while, so out came a couple more monsters for the bestiary, and the rest of my unpainted treasure tokens:

Nothing fancy here, simple paint jobs all round really. The bear and werewolf are fairly interesting models though. The bear is Beorn from Citadel's 80s LOTR range, and the werewolf is another night horror. And yes, he has his dong out (and seems very proud of himself).

Hope you like them! More Frostgrave gribblies coming later this week.

Frostgrave: Dark Alchemy!

Greetings all.

First up, apologies for the massive delay in posting! It's been a fair while since I've had the chance to paint, let alone take pictures and write about it. I got married a couple weeks ago, and so the preceeding few weeks were ALL wedding ALL the time! We had a fantastic day though, so it was all worth it in the end:

Now that the wedding is over, and I'm back to reality, I've managed to squeeze in a little geek time! I've done a little painting that I'll take some pics of over the next few days, but firstly a mini battle report!

So my Brother-in-Lead Alex and I have been playing through the (excellent) Dark Alchemy campaign for Frostgrave. It's been a rather nice change of pace for us actually, since it's played cooperatively. So it came to pass that our respective wizards made an uneasy alliance, and advanced into an abandoned alchemical factory to discover the secrets (and horrors) within.

We bashed through the first couple scenarios in one evening, but sadly didn't take any pictures (between lack of time and fading light, it just wasn't possible). I did however manage to take a few snaps of the final scenario, The Spreading Flames.

By this point in the campaign, our brave wizards have dispatched the foul Alchemical Monstrosity that made its home in the ruins of the factory, as well as outrun the shambling hordes of burning skeletons blocking their path. We're now in what remains of the main factory floor, looking to grab what loot we can and get out before the vats of volatile chemicals ignite and bring our adventuring careers to a swift end. Unfortunately, this section of the factory is where the semi-sentient war machines known as Fire Flingers were produced, and they're not about to let us escape so easily.

The scenario calls for some medium sized fire-flinging constructs, so Alex's Tick Tock Men stepped up to the plate. He also made some rather excellent fire markers that you can see in the pictures below.

Our warbands each took a flank and advanced cautiously. Alex's wizard had been badly wounded by a sneaky skeleton in the previous scenario, so he took some time to heal up before advancing further. My plan was to go straight for the nearest treasure and dispatch its clockwork guardian swiftly. This didn't quite go to plan however, and one of my treasure hunters was doused in chemical flames before the monstrosity fell. Fortunately for me, the (now somewhat crispy) treasure hunter survived to make off with the shinies. Alex had managed to secure a couple of treasures on his side, whilst also destroying a Tick Tock man.

We both continued to move through the flaming warehouse with our wizards, using Elemental Bolts and Bone Darts to down the remaining two Tick Tock men, nabbing treasure as we did so.

It was at this point that we decided we should make the game a little more interesting. All the constructs had been destroyed, so it was just a matter of gathering up the treasure and getting out in time, which didn't make for much of a challenge. So we decided another two guardians would enter through the doorway to attack our warbands.

Unfortunately, both of the Tick Tock men advanced on Alex's wizard, preventing him from grabbing some loot, and forcing him to make a fighting withdrawal.

This situation worked to my advantage though, and Scabrous Vile was left to pluck some treasure from the flames and make off with it before the warehouse came down around him.

What a campaign! I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a trip to the frozen city, particularly as the co-op nature of it is a nice change of pace from the usual.

We'll be cracking on with the Thaw of the Lich Lord next, and it's going to be a little odd going back to trying to kill each other!

You must gather your party before venturing forth: Even more additions to the warband!

Greetings all.

Now that our first Frostgrave campaign has drawn to a close, I've found myself in need of even more options for my soldier selection. Partly this is due to having a bit more gold in the kitty and wanting to upgrade, and partly due to having a better idea of what works and what doesn't (more speed + better fight = good, essentially). With that in mind, meet the newest members of the gang, two more thieves and two more treasure hunters:

This thief, Levar, is made from a chaos thug (of course), with a bit of chopping and green stuff work.

The second thief, Wiry Joe, is stretching the old school chaos theme, but only a bit. His legs come from a chaos thug that I chopped up for something else, while the body is from a ghoul, and the head from a plastic Middenheimer sprue.

The first treasure hunter, Harding, is made from a marauder thug, a bunch of green stuff, and another plastic head.

This treasure hunter, Sim, is a bit of an odd one. He's a very early chaos warrior, but I couldn't find a single painted picture of him anywhere of the Internet. Nevertheless, I chopped him up real good. A change in positioning and some new hands/weapons (kindly donated by Moonglum from the Eternal Champion range), and he was good to go.

Hope you like em!

Paper! Snow! A ghost!

Greetings all.

This post represents some of the easiest painting I've ever done, and I only wish I needed more of these!

I decided to clear a bit of the backlog this weekend, starting off with something that would be easy to paint, and therefore done in no time at all. So here are a bunch of spooky ethereals for our Frostgrave games:

We'll be starting on the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign soon, so I needed some banshees and some wraithknights (not the gigantic 40k kind). All of these are old citadel (as per usual). The banshees are from the Vampire Counts and Night Horrors ranges respectively. I've actually grown very fond of the (highly collectable) Night Horrors, so look out for more of them in the coming weeks.

The wraithknights are from the old Warhammer Quest expansion, Catacombs of Terror.

Hope you like em!