Search the Community

I planned a quiet weekend and have been pleased to have the chance and energy to slap some paint on some miniatures. Last month I painted almost two dozen 1/72 fantasy figures for my portable wargaming set up, and I wanted to do a few more. However, I set the warg riders aside at one point and ended up finishing a couple of large monsters. The cyclops on the far right is from a recent Dark Alliance set. As can be seen by Sir Forescale, he’d be a tolerable ogre even in 28s, but the old Airfix Robin Hood figure gives the scale comparison in 1/72. I’m hoping to get to some sort of Homeric Bronze Age project one of these days, as the Dark Alliance Cyclopes are also accompanied by sets of Egyptian mummies, Anubis warriors, minotaurs, centaurs, and Amazons, so there’s some scope. Caesar Miniatures has produced an extensive Bronze Age selection in 1/72, although much of it is sadly out of production at the moment. The big thing is a …. Something … from the Caesar Miniatures Adventurers set, also sadly out of production at the moment. Most people I’ve seen online or in magazines have styled it a “troll”, but my elder son, drawing on a childhood memory of an Eric Carle-illustrated book of poems about mythical creatures, dubbed it a “bunyip”, so that’s what we usually call it. I believe this is the last one we have to be painted; we’ve got four between us. Like the cyclops, it’s big enough to intimidate Sir Forescale and it truly monstrous compared to the Airfix Merry Man. My younger son is relocating back to this part of the world next weekend, and is currently staying with his brother briefly while he looks at apartments. They have been playing some De Bellis Antiquitatis with the elder’s Bronze Age collection (e.g. this recent game) while visiting, so I decided to see if I could make some progress on adding another DBA army to the Bronze Age pool. (As an aside, DBA and its fantasy counterpart Hordes of the Things have been more-or-less the family default tabletop wargames for a couple of decades, although the current DBA binge only started a few years ago.) I sorted out an army of ancient Nubians some time ago, from my stash of Caesar boxes. It isn’t some of my best work; they have some poorly defined leopard spots on their kilts, and I am not entirely certain what the belt wraps and shoulder throws are supposed to be, which also have some shallow incised detail. I’m thinking that it’s probably intended as embroidered cloth, so I’ll have to see if I can’t do better with the next batch. Here’s an Egyptian painting of Nubians delivering donuts and a sleeping cat in tribute: (Which reminds me that I should vary the skin tones more in the next batch…)

Last fall I finished a stand of 1/72 scale civic militia, and started a second stand. In the usual way, that got set aside, and I just pulled them back out for work this week. I was making such good progress on them yesterday that I decided to push on and finish them up, so they ended up glued to the base just before I went to bed. I finished off the basing this morning, and gave them a quick coat of spray varnish. I was fairly happy with how they turned out. (The link to the first stand has a size comparison picture for the curious.) Here they are with the earlier stand:

I needed to travel for work, with an odd schedule where I was required to be in place for a preliminary event on Friday, with the real action (such as it is) starting today. So, I knew I was going to be halfway across the country with not much to do over the weekend. I packed up my travel paint kit and a bunch of 1/72 plastic. Some were already in progress, but mostly things had just been primed. I am aiming to run Rangers of Shadowdeep soon, and I intend to play it with my travel miniatures kit of 1/72 scale plastics. I’ll be using Caesar Miniatures orcs as the game’s “gnolls” and needed about of dozen, of which I had four done. I also needed a “burrow worm” (now a repurposed Bones 5 Core thing…), and a flesh golem (a paint scheme suggestion on a Bones 1 ghast). Since I’m on travel, i didn’t bring basing materials with me, so these guys are not completely finished, but I have gone as far as brushing on a varnish coat. That’s usually my last step prior to basing with these plastics. On Saturday, I got this done: The knight is a random addition; I am hesitant to paint horses (or, as my son notes, more likely I am hesitant to paint all the horse tack neatly), so I wanted to get over the cavalry block. He’s one of three for a mutli-figure stand, so it could be a while until he gets based. I should have actually worked on another knight on Sunday, but what I actually did was to finish the orcs and the flesh golem, and then add a few random humans on foot: If I had some bases and some scenery, I could now run a tiny little skirmish game. I’ll post the actual completion pictures here later this week.

Last week I finished up a stand of medieval city militia using a 4-color limited Zorn palette. This turned out to be oddly calming, so I went ahead this week and prepared a second stand of 8 figures (mostly duplicate poses) from the same box of Strelets 1/72 scale plastics. I would ordinarily use 2 stands for something like a Dragon Rampant unit, so it’s nice to have them in matching pairs where possible. I started in on them Friday morning, and had them varnished by supper time on Saturday (when we headed out to a ballroom dance event). I finished up the basing and put a final spray coat on them this afternoon. When I clipped these 8 from their sprues, I collected a few of the more interesting poses for use on individual bases for contingency fantasy games. I finished one of the three this afternoon, still using a Zorn palette. As you can see, these are pretty small compared to the usual Reaper sizes. I was please with how the face came out, given the size. I don’t usually zoom in to the level where the individual brush strokes are showing, but there you are. Given the size, that’s more than you’ll actually see during a game, so it’s really just for my own amusement.

I had the day off yesterday, and had 5 of 8 figures finished for a stand of mixed polearm and crossbow civic militia, drawn from the Ultima Ratio Italian Militiamen 1260-1392 box of figures I had picked up in June, so I decided to finish the last three. Let’s start with the results. Here’s the front view, with a Sir Ogre Forescale menacing the unti’s flank. RIght side three quarter view showing the shields on the front rank in particular. Back view. Now a little about the background of the project. As mentioned, I bought the box of figures during a trip to the brick and mortar Michigan Toy Soldier store while visiting my parents in June. Relatively shortly thereafter (as these projects of mine go), I decided to cut eight figures from the sprues and get started. My usual goal in mounting multiple figures on a base is to avoid overhang if at all possible. So I was unusually organized this time. I not only arranged them on a base of the proposed size, but also took a picture of the arrangement so that I would remember later. That was 19 August, according to photo data. I had finished one a couple of weeks ago, as posted in an earlier show-off thread, posted on 26 August. By Tuesday, I had finished four more, and and posted a  request for technical advice. Yesterday morning, I sat down with a fresh sheet of wet palette paper and finished the last three, mostly one at a time, but carrying colors across figures where appropriate (e.g., all shields got a yellow layer in one pass). I slapped a coat of thinned Liquitex gloss acrylic medium and varnish over them, and waited for them to dry. The flag is from my Portable Fantasy Campaign map; you can find the city of Candelon in the lower left corner. When they were dry enough to handle, I pulled out the arrangement picture, glued them in place, and disguided the integral bases with a layer of white glue and sand. I had a little extra room, so I planted a couple of tufts. At that point, it was time to go to the wargames club meeting, so I left everything to dry. When I got home, I carefully brushed on a thinned layer of white glue and added flock. This morning I did a final spray varnish coat (of Krylon Low Odor Matte Varnish), waited for that to dry, and took some pictures, as seen above. There’ a “Painting Faster” thread running elsewhere at the moment. I didn’t time the last three figures, but the first five were running about 40 minutes each (averaged, since I was working on more than one at a time). For appearances, I don’t really need to do detailed faces, and details on shoes and belts get lost in the overall effect. When deployed, this stand will probably be one of 20-30 stands on a small game table, so even more details will generally become invisible. So I could theoretically paint them faster by eliding details, knowing the gameplay end state. However, I’m generally painting for my own satisfaction and amusement, and therefore I paint them as much as I think is fun. In a game, I won’t see the work, for the most part, but I am comfortable with letting a civilian walking past a game pick up a stand and squint at it, and that’s the level that works for me. Other levels, of course, are possible. My son likes to do better; here’s a 1/72 Mycenaen chariot of the late Bronze Age he finished Wednesday or Thursday: I try not to get in painting competitions with him.

Ok, gang, I’ll be honest. I shouldn’t post this now without all the well written explanation of what I’m about here, but it isn’t coming and I would like to get this posted... Earlier this year, in the before times, I did another of these stands. These are for a Hordes of the Things elvish army (primarily) and are expected to be “beast” stands — rapidly moving, at home in rough terrain. This was a speed paint; all three figures took an hour. With the 1/72s, I like to paint a little more than is necessary, for my own amusement. Here’s a closer crop of the sorceress: The leaf pattern freehand is a bit dodgy. Amazingly, the necklace is actually cast into the figure. But it’s all a bit irrelevant when the whole group is arrayed on the stand: A bit over contrasty; had to use a flash to take the pictures. A layer of sand and glue to hide the bases, a couple of tufts, some flock, and a spray varnish and they are as ready as they are going to get:

Last month I held my nose to the grindstone, as it were, and painted a bunch of wargaming units, a dozen figures at a time. This month, I wanted to relax just a little, so I pulled a group of Caesar Adventurers (currently OOP) out of the queue, and amused myself by finishing off a couple of them. I’ve picture them here with Sir Forscale to show how not-big they are, which is why they make look just a little rough when blown up to more-than-life-size on the screen. It’s interesting to me, though, what you can do with a 1/72, if you aren’t in too much of a hurry. These were done with my work kit at lunches, so 45-60 minutes each. My elder son, who has been doing some amazing work on 1/72 historical Bronze Age figures lately, asked whether some sort of single figure game was in the plans. As of now, I am thinking about using the 1/72s to play through some Rangers of Shadowdeep.