Dawn of the Lead

Over two months ago in February I posted on this mini project I had, painting up six miniatures for the Frothers Salute 2015 game – Return to Castle Frotherheim. I’m happy to announce that while I haven’t much reported on them, they did eventually get finished the night before my flight to London. With Salute now behind me, this post is a look at how they turned out. They saw action in the Frothers game, got plenty of nice words and the goblins, bought ages ago in Orcs Nest returned to London, finally painted. I also painted a few old treasure piles from Mithril’s old (1988) Smaug set, but those are all but impossible to photograph without them looking absolutely rubbish.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

It was fun putting in more effort than usual, and I hope the models show it! The bugbear was a bit of a rush job, being the last one finished. All in all I’m still very happy with them. Painting a mini project like this really suits me, as there isn’t an overwhelming amount of miniatures to paint or a ton of scenery to construct. It was also fun painting stuff using different colours compared to my usual palette – the red skin on the hobgoblin type is a good example. By the way, this was the first time I ever painted while watching television. I always figured that it would be impossible, but it turns out that competitive games of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and episodes of American Horror Story provide a good backdrop to painting, especially when blocking in initial base colours. These models bring my painting count this year to a total of eight!

As for the other mini project, that has been pushed further along into the future. Fear not, I’ll talk about it eventually.

Oh, and Salute 2015 really re-lit the hobbyist in me, so expect the blog to be updated a little more often in the future.

One reason I like these mini projects is that they are a great way to not only paint miniatures that have been sitting unpainted for ages, but also because they’re a great chance to try out something new. This time it was sculpting bases. I wanted my old school baddies to have flagstone bases to fit the D&D vibe.

The process was quite straightforward. I simply slapped some ProCreate putty on the base, smoothed it some and cut in some regular-but-irregular grooves for the flagstones. I then added some nicks and notches and used a small stone to press some texture into the putty. On some bases I left a few empty places for flock to represent flagstones covered in dirt or eroded. Surprisingly simple and effective!

Click for a larger version

The end result is fairly pleasing and I think it will look nice once painted. As usually happens with stuff like this, my technique improved the more bases I made, the first being the one on the bugbear (conveniently hidden in the photo) and some of the goblins having the last ones.

I’m currently working on not one but two mini projects. That’s an unintentional pun by the way – even if they’re both miniature projects and quite small in terms of the number of miniatures involved. Both are related to my upcoming (and now somewhat customary) trip to Salute in London. In this post I will show off the beginning of the first one. The fun folks of FU-UK! are putting together a participation game of traditional dungeon romping. This provided me with a great chance to paint some classic fantasy miniatures long buried at the back of my miniatures cupboard.

This group consists of traditional D&D bad guys: four goblins (Heartbreaker, 1995), a hobgoblin or half-orc (of unknown make and year) and a classic bugbear (Citadel/TSR, 1985). They look like they’ll be fun to paint as they’re simple, clean sculpts. The goblins will not be the green of Warhammer of Warcraft but rather something along the lines of red, brown and yellow as per their D&D description. Updates will be posted as I get to work on them. If someone recognizes that unknown miniature, I’d be happy to know details.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

As for the other project…I’ll get back to that later.