Zomtober 2019 Week 2 With Poison Ivy

No, not the Batman villain. I actually got poison ivy last week - and to make matters worse I actually got it around my left eye and it swelled up something fierce! Living on the farm getting poison ivy is nothing new for me, I'm good to get it several times a year and as annoying as it is I can usually power through it without seeking medical attention, but this time, not so much. It took me out of commission for quite a while and obviously made it difficult to get anything done this week for Zomtober, but I did manage to sneak a few completed models in at the last minute.

Anyone who has followed the blog for a while knows that I'm not a big fan of multipart plastic models - especially the WWII ones where trying to glue weapons into hands and arms is enough to make me bang my head against the nearest wall. But the Mantic zombie models for Kings of War are really nice and have some really incredible poses - much more aggressive than any of the undead you'll find in Mantic's The Walking Dead game so that's what I decided to give a go for this week.

The one thing I think I finally figured out is an undead skin tone. I have struggled with this from the very first time I tried to paint undead and have been trying all kinds of different recipes over the years with varying degrees of success, but I think I finally have a winner. The models are primed with the new Games Workshop Grey Seer, then I used Vallejo's Pale Grey Blue to paint all the skin.

I then washed the skin with Army Painters Green Tone Quickshade wash and that made all the difference in my eye (the one that was working at least lol!). I decided to not go all blood and gore on these models as I feel less is more with these types of undead figures.

I did a couple of other figures really quickly using some contrast paints since I only had a few models completed. First was this monk from Effin Cool Minis through their last Kickstarter.

I have 9 more completed but still need to get them based. The red contrast paint made them paint up really easily. I also have some really fun terrain pieces to go with the set that I hope to get completed in the near future.

When I first saw these monk figures it reminded me of what was my piece de resistance of my teenage Dungeons and Dragons years and the adventure 'Master of the Desert Nomads'. The last part of the adventure took place in this monastery high up in the mountains where this group of monks offer help, food, and shelter to the party but when night time comes they change into their true forms - sort of like vampire/undead creatures, making the adventuring party their targets. It made for an absolutely incredible gaming experience and was just the perfect ending to what was already an incredible adventure.

So that's what I was trying to accomplish with these models, and why the undead have red clothing - the monk models would represent the day time and the creepy undead models would represent the night time versions. So ideally I'd like to complete 7 more of the Mantic zombies, which will give me equal numbers for the day and night monks.

Something I would really love to try to do is to run that adventure again. I've subtlety been dropping hints to my son to see if there is any interest from him about playing, and now that I belong to an actual gaming club, who knows, maybe that could be a possibility. But ultimately I'd love to use my much improved terrain building skills and all the models I have to just build the monastery in 28mm. It is something that I've thought about for a long time now, and something that could be pretty impressive visually I think - and could even be used for other types of games, pulp or spy-fi for instance. We shall see :)

And finally just for fun, and since it's October, I painted up the Mummy from Crooked Dice's Pulp Kickstarter. This is a fantastic model and with the contrast paint took no time at all to complete.

Until next time, when hopefully both my eyes will be fully functioning, thanks for looking!
Ivor

You Meet In A Tavern...

That's pretty much how every D&D adventure starts right? I'm continuing to slowly build up a pretty large adventuring collection and this next group are from Northstar Miniatures, and were originally designed for the game Frostgrave. While getting these guys based up I realized a couple of things  - first, it literally is all guys!? I definitely need to get some female adventures into the mix. Second, I'm really heavy on the rogue/thief/assassin type of models - I'm sure that's probably because way back in the day when I played D&D (though I ran games way more than actually played) I had a thief/acrobat character. I'd always imagined him like a combination of Catwoman and Robin from the Batman comics 😃

This figure would probably be the closest to what I could have imagined my character like in miniature form. Back in the day there would never be a figure this cool to put on the tabletop, there would only be a blob of lead in a blister pack from TSR that said "thief".

I guess one can never have too many weapons in hand as an assassin.

Variations on a theme, though his weapons are longer. One of the challenges with the clear bases is if a figure doesn't have both feet flat - this was a perfect example of that. To fix the problem I took a little resin skull and sanded it down until it fit under his foot, and I think it looks the business now 😃

Fighter/Barbarian number one, desperately in search of a tree he can chop down.

More thiefy/trap finder goodness. I do think NorthStar did a fantastic job with the sculpts from this line, lots of great detail in the accessories and accoutrements, and this guy is loaded with them.

This figure is a perfect example of the accoutrements I mentioned - I love that little potion bottle on his hip.

Fighter/Barbarian number two in his hippie pants.

As I mentioned above, some female adventures need purchased - I found some pretty nice sculpts with a company called Dark Sword Miniatures, but at $10.00 and up per figure I think I need to look elsewhere. Any leads would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

The Fellowship Of The Rings

One of the very first true miniatures game I picked up was the Mines of Moria starter set from the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.  This was definitely early days in my rediscovery of tabletop games but it was perfect because it included some paints, along with some terrain pieces. The only thing was everything in that set was plastic and even back then I wasn't a fan of the plastic figures. So I sought out the Fellowship box set which were all metal and this is what you see above.

Sam

Pippen

Merry - though I think this face sculpt looks way more like Sean Astin's Sam in my opinion.

Frodo

Gimli

Aragorn - in probably my favorite pose and sculpt of the entire line, this one is from the Weathertop set.

Legolas

Boromir

Aragorn part duex

Gandalf

I know that they rereleased an new version of the LOTR miniatures game, but I see these figures being used in either a Dungeons and Dragons game or just a homebrew classic dungeon crawl miniatures game like HeroQuest - I have a ton of dungeon tiles from a recent Kickstarter that would be perfect for something like that. We'll see, but the D&D bug has definitely hit me again so it should be interesting to see what happens in the future here.

As always, thanks for looking!
Ivor