Wizkids Pathfinder Battles Bone Golem Complete (speed paint)

Just a quick post today. As an additional present at Christmas, I got this £4.99 Bone Golem from my local store. The miniature is quite large for the price (like a small Helbrute) and came prepped with undercoat. It's part of the Wizkids Deep Cuts range which is intended for Pathfinder or D&D. For my purposes, it will be headed for an early grave in Necromunda (if anyone can kill the thing!)

All in, it took maybe an hour or so. I basically coated it with Khorne Red with a massive brush and then quickly wet blended in a few other colours including some Rakarth Flesh for the skulls. Once it was all dry, I added some washes and a few basic highlights to the skulls with a little white.

That pretty much covers it. It's a great model for the price. The quality is decent for what it is, and the details are crisp enough. It isn't the best resin and has an almost rubbery feel to the finish which is a little disconcerting, but for £4.99 I'll buy that every day of the week.

Sisters of Battle - Squad Complete (new plastic models)

I finished my first squad of new battle sisters. These come from the army box set, and use a matching scheme with my Everchosen entry from a few months ago.

They're really nice models. I have to admit, that I was beginning to think that we would never see the mythical plastic sisters in this lifetime, but here they are! They were easy enough to build, but I painted them as a batch, and with a scheme this complex, it was a bit ambitious. It was just too many layers of paint coupled with a massive amount of detail that made it a bit of a slog to the finish in the end. I started painting them in December and made it about 3/4 of the way through, then ran out of steam and had to do some different projects for a bit to build up strength for the final push!

I'm happy with they came out, but a bit daunted to tackle the rest of the box. That said, Squaduary is coming up again soon and I have those small units of Repentia and Flagellants to work on, so that might help push through a little more of the force.

The paint scheme itself is started with an airbrushed coat of purple that is highlighted in purple and white before being given a coat of Vallejo Transparent Red. After I've set the basic blend on the armour up, it's all brush work till the end. I enjoy painting the yellow parts, but the robes are a bit of a pain. They just become very monotonous to paint given their size and the number of clean layers required. Overall, they're a nice looking squad, and a great start to the army. I also repainted my older converted Exorcist to match the scheme, so I'll do a post about that soon.

Ready to face the forces of Chaos?

Necromunda - Zombie Hoard, Complete

As part of my prep work for some upcoming Necromunda games, I painted these 18 zombies... in a single day. They're a basic sheme, and I did cut corners to make the whole process bearable. Despite obviously rushing through them, I'm quite happy with how they look, and I used a few basic tricks to get a bit of colour depth without spending too much time on each model.

If you're wondering about the models, the vast majority of these come from Mantic; either the Kings of War Zombie Hoard, or Deadzone's plague faction. There are a few other models thrown in, which I think are from Sedition Wars. I've had all of them for a long time, as I bought a load to use in gaames and then painted a dozen or so and shelved the rest. I figure at some point we were bound to need more, so I thought I'd get a jump on it. The campaign we're planning is a sort of cooperative zombie bash up, so should be great fun, and a variety of models can only help.

If you look closely, you'll see some zombies have guns. Two are from the Plague faction of Deadzone, the other two that look like riot cops are conversions using a mash-up of the Kings of War Zombies, some spare Maelstrom's Edge bits and some Anvil parts.

All in all, it made for a fun weekend project. I guess it's time to bring on the games! I'm planning to run a feature later on the actual games and how they go, so it should be good.

28mm Anime Miniature - Klukva "Sniper Waifu" (Yoko Littner) Complete

I've always wanted to see someone make an anime style figure in 28mm scale. A few manufacturers out there that get close, but none of them really seemed quite right or were really what I was looking for. I often check out what Klukva miniatures are up to (https://klukvaminiatures.com/goods - you can find them on Instagram and Facebook too), and I was delighted to see them branching out into some anime style miniatures. Some long term readers might remember my review for their vampires from a year or two ago (https://tabletopapocalypse.blogspot.com/2018/05/klukva-miniatures-review-little-resin.html). After that initial purchase, I knew I could rely on them for good quality. I'm not really writing a review this time, but I have to say that I think their casting quality is even better this time!

You can see the work I did on her eyes from this angle

Anyway, I picked up this "Sniper Waifu" miniature from them. She was a pre-order along with some other bits, so it was a bit of a wait till everything shipped out, but for a fun purchase and a painting project I don't mind waiting. If you know your anime, you might recognise the design as being based on Yoko Littner from Gurren Lagann. I basically followed through and tried to paint as closely to the original character as possible.

Speaking of painting, she made for quite a fun project. I finished her in a day over the weekend. She is incredibly tiny and fine though - see the picture below! I did wonder if I'd be able to paint her eyes and things how I wanted as although they're big for the scale of the miniature, they're still pretty tiny. In particular, I used some washes to get more defined shading and did a blue/black highlight for the gun which was something new that I haven't tried before (but I probably will again!)

I use that bit of sponge propping the penny up to weather tanks!

That about rounds it out. I've actually been doing quite a bit of hobby lately, so there should be more posts soon. Like a lot of people, I started working on some of the new Sisters of Battle over Christmas as well as other projects, so more soon. I've also got a few more Klukva miniatures in the pipeline...

Dark Eldar Grotesques WIP Conversions

A slightly different project today. As I've been working on my Dark Eldar (which have a Haemonculus Covens theme), I knew I wanted some grotesques. Like many who came before me,it didn't take long for me to realise that the options are limited as GW only makes one model that's both expensive and finecast. 

I had a look through the options for conversions, and Crypt Horrors to me seem to be by far the best kit to use as a base. All the mutant spines and stuff work in your favour, and they're half way there from the beginning. I picked up a set of them on eBay, and then combined them with spares from the Talos kit.

In terms of the conversion, I mostly just had to trim their heads down to fit the masks and replace some of their hands with weapons from the Talos. I added tails too, as they looked good with the poses. Handily, as I'd built legs for my Talos I had a lot of tanks left over, so I had plenty of them to add to the spines I'd cut off to look like it had a lot of chemical feed lines stuck in them. 

The only other part of the conversion was trimming off and shaving down the hairy bits on them, as it just isn't right on grotesques. I still need to finish adding some more bits and then greenstuff the gaps etc, but they're getting there. I'd like to add a bit more armour to them too - just so they'll blend in well with the rest of the army once they're painted, as the gloss red scheme is quite distinctive.

Dreadtober Talos 2nd Week Progress

Painting has commenced on my Talos with legs conversion. There's still a long way to go, but it's starting to actually look like something!

In terms of the work so far, I began by painting the bulk of the gloss red areas, as getting the high shine effect is quite labour and time intensive. It worked well though. After that, I basecoated the flesh areas with Rakarth Flesh, and painted the base too.

Personally, I like the mantra "bases and bases" when it comes to painting. Often getting a basecoat on your mini and painting their base gives an impression of the final model, and also gives a decent tabletop level finish. That's prettyour much where we're at now.

Next steps will be finishing the smaller red gloss details, and then washing and detailing the skin. Somewhere in there I need to start on the metallics too, so there's plenty to be getting on with.

Dreadtober - Dark Eldar Talos with Legs Conversion

I'm quite proud of this conversion. My Talos with legs is complete and ready for paint!

I looked at different options for kitbashing, but in the end I decided to sculpt the legs myself. It was a bold move for me as I'm not that great at sculpting, and normally I'd intentionally avoid a project like this. That said, I really wanted the legs to match the style of the model as well as the rest of the force and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the conversion. With that in mind, I set to sculpting the legs I wanted.

In the end, it wasn't that difficult. I built an armature out of some large paperclips. I bent them to the correct shape for the legs, and then set them into a spare block of wood to work on. After that, I built the basic structure of the legs with some white milliput. I actually just shaped it with my fingers and then smoothed it out to get a basic design. It didn't take that long to get a decent look (maybe half an hour?).

I let the basic leg shape dry and then I used an engraving tool to smooth out and reshape what I had. After that, I etched in the lines for the muscle fibres (designed to sort of match the look of the Wracks). Once that was done, I stuck it all together and then it was just a case of adding spare armour from the Talos kit and using greenstuff to make the straps and add details to the feet etc.

That pretty much sums up the work. I'm quite happy with how it looks, but I think it'll be a challenge to paint! So far I've added an undercoat and a little extra white to the mask and skin areas, but there's still a long way to go.