President's Day... round 3

Finally, I finished this guy off this weekend:







He's actually been mostly done for about a week but I was waiting until I had some more models done to flock and seal him. He's a Reaper Bones model. Only a couple more to go! I was shooting to have 6 Worm models for the Frostgrave scenario "The Worm Hunts," but I'm not sure why. With my luck we'd roll an 18-20 every time.

President's Day continued...

On top of doing my first Donnybrook unit for the English Civil War, got a couple more civilians done for the French & Indian War this weekend.

I imagine these two as an old couple, worried about an imminent Indian attack!

President's Day Painting

Got a lot of painting done this weekend!

In fact, I am already ahead for the month after this 3 day weekend of painting.

First up, I finished the first pack of Perry English Civil War Scots. It was a pack of 6 musketeers loading. It will also be my first unit for Donnybrook.

I am sure I will have nightmares about trying to paint these tartan patterns... grrr....

Fortunately I don't think the Warlord Scots (which will make up my "big" army for Pike & Shotte) have any of these.

Since you are allowed to take a Hero for each army point in Donnybrook, I painted up a character to lead them:





Here they are all together:

Otherworld

One of my buddies asked me about my Otherworld fantasy minis recently... so here is a short review!

I bought a bunch of their models at the end of last year, and I was not disappointed. I focused on character models since I have so many Reaper Bones models from the Kickstarters for monsters.

I don't feel the need to go into too much detail, since their web site is full of great pictures of their models which speak for themselves. They are absolutely awesome.

But here are a few pointers that you might not get from the web site:

1. Many of the models are multipart and require assembly. I would say at least half of them are multipart models. I hate gluing metal models together, so this was a downer, but at least they were not usually more than 2 parts (i.e. a weapon arm in a dynamic pose).

2. The sizing is not completely consistent across the range. For the most part they are standard heroic 28mm scale, but a couple were quite large and there were more than a few really "dainty" ones.

Here is a comparison shot of a few models. The Tavern Bouncer is one of the largest that I saw - look at the Halfling next to him! Now I know halflings are supposed to be small, but that thing is tiny! The Wizard on the left is "average" 28mm (he measures 32mm from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head).



3. I bought a couple of the boxed sets and a bunch of loose blisters. One thing that I didn't see advertised on the web site about the boxed sets is that they come with foam lined trays to transport the models in, AND they include multiple types of bases for each model. In addition to the standard plastic round "slotta" base (a la 40K), they all came with sculpted metal bases that had a flagstone theme for dungeon crawling.
















I thought this was awesome and was completely surprised!

I will definitely be buying more Otherworld models in the future :)

Some more FIW models

I did get excited starting to paint some ECW troops this weekend, but in order to keep myself from getting carried away with them and ignoring my FIW models I painted a couple before I dug into the musketeers!

I figured these guys would be really easy and quick to paint, and I could then say that I painted 2 models for the French & Indian War this month.

Jesuit Priests could be used as civilian models in any game where you need them... but from all the reading I've been doing it seems they could just as well be considered militia leaders! In Acadia in particular it sounds like the "missionaries" were very much involved in goading the natives into raiding neighboring areas. In some cases, a bounty was put on their heads by the English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Norridgewock

Sounds like an interesting scenario...

Anyway - here are my Jesuits:

First Pike & Shotte model done

I sat down and did a test model for my ECW Scots this weekend. It's always exciting painting the first model of any unit or army... before the excitement wears off and the tedium sets in is where the real fun is.

The first step was to come up with some ideas for what colors I wanted to use for "Hodden Gray." I had always thought it was a neutral or bluish gray, but after doing some research it turned out it's actually more or a brownish gray color, with a tinge of purple! Which is funny since it's supposedly made from undyed black and white wool. Oh well.

Here are the paints I chose to experiment with:

Reaper Master Series have been my "go to" paints for the past year or so. I still find myself reaching for a bunch of Vallejos and GW Foundation paints every now and then, but I do like the RMS paints. I'm a slow painter and I don't use a wet palette, and I love the fact that these stay workable on the palette for a bit longer because they already have flow improver / retarder mixed in the formula.

I like the uniform look of Hodden Gray but I'm not sure I want to use these guys as Covenanters, so I may decide that they are part of the Strathbogie Regiment at the last minute! I guess I can make up my mind when I paint the standard. 

In any case, I chose to start with a pack of loading musketeers. Here is the first musketeer:

Here he is after some flock and with different lighting. I think the shadows were too harsh though.

Now to paint the rest of his buddies! I'd like to paint the rest of this pack and also get a Character/Hero model done for these guys this month.

January painting

January was a busy month but we also had a holiday and a snow day, so I managed to get my 10 model goal done, and then a few more for good measure!

I am happy to have finally finished these guys:

There is a lot of lace here! And those mitre caps.... grr....

But, at least they are done. I'm happy to be able to add some Grenadiers to my Muskets & Tomahawks army for the Brits - the French have had some for a while! I actually have another pack of these so I might paint 4 more and take them up to the max unit size of 12, but not any time soon. Fortunately I took notes on how I painted them so hopefully the others will match.

I used a red primer on them, followed by a black wash all over, then highlighted this a couple of times. Mostly Reaper paints.

Also got some fantasy stuff done for Frostgrave. I got excited about doing some Undead after I got my copy of the Thaw of the Liche Lord... although I am upset that I have to paint up troops for a whole new encounter table! I had not even finished the one from the first book. Oh well...

These guys will be Ghosts or Spectres maybe. Gotta check the rules and see which one is tougher, and I'll use the guy on the bigger base to represent that one.












And a Ranger model. I already have a Ranger painted, but this model has been sitting unpainted on my desk for many months! I really like him, but I wish I would have painted the metal version instead of the Bones model so it would have captured more of the detail in the sculpt.









As I mentioned I hadn't finished painting the creatures for the encounter table in the original Frostgrave book. To that end, here is a lioness to be used as a "snow leopard." Eventually I want to do a full set of these creatures in their actual "snow" theme! But for now just going to keep going with the standard basing and paint schemes to match my existing terrain.







With the two models I painted on New Year's Day weekend, that makes 14 total for this month. Woo Hoo! 4 ahead of schedule. It's a good thing, too, because I am going to have a busy February and I had a feeling I would miss my quota. Here's a group shot for January:



I'm happy that even if I am not having an "exclusive" relationship with my French & Indian War stuff, at least I have not dumped them completely! Really would like to finish painting these some day. From the time I started collecting miniatures at 12 years old, I have never completed a painting project!!! I was hoping these guys would be the first. We'll see.

It's only going to get harder now that I've added the Pike & Shotte side project! On top of random fantasy models I've got at least a couple of months worth of Scots to paint. As long as I can keep up painting at least SOME French & Indian War stuff every month I'll consider a success.