Inq28 - The Sheriff of Slumpshire

A bit of a preview, as this figure is not entirely complete (and blowing it up to 400% on the monitor always reveals so so many flaws...)

but!  I do paint things from time to time, and here is the result:

Sheriff JB

Built over a long period, and spurred to completion by Asslessman's muties, Parts from five different kits, as is the only way for an Inq28 figure.

He has two fellows also painted, and also forthcoming.  If the weather behaves they are getting a dullcote spray this weekend, and hopefully a proper photography session. Bases will have to wait until I make up my mind on what to do.

INQ28 - Homine Piscis

A classic fishman, as needed by all right thinking scifi games.

This one is converted from a Reaper bones figure, with Kroot arms, various Eldar bitz, and a gun made from a number of sources. (including a Marine autopistol from when they had such things)

I am still undecided if I should give him a breathing tank of some sort, and if he needs a technological lamp to go with his organic one.

The Bones material does not photograph very well, being stark white and slightly translucent in extremities, but it is super easy to convert, as a sharp knife will remove any unwanted details (in this case his original arms).  I have only started to paint a Bones figure, so I can not say how easy it is over all, but it seems to take paint like normal, and of course it is super light and flexible.

Any thoughts on colors?

INQ28 - Venator

Prior to the release of the Necromunda game, Games Workshop had a set of rules released through White Dwarf that trod some of the same ground, and indeed featured skirmishes between rival gangs set in the Hives of Necromunda.  However, instead of gangs based on nation sized noble houses, Confrontation had gangs based more on profession, or social status.  One of those gangs was the Venators, or professional bounty hunters, as discussed here on the Leadplague blog.

Inspired by some discussion on how to kitbash a Venator, I created the following:

I still need to sand the putty again, and these are but hasty camera phone pictures, but you get the idea.

I used empire militia legs, a Bretonnian archer torso, an old Necromunda Orlock pistol, and a space marine scroll as the "warrant". The head is made from a 6th Edition empire drummer head, and half of a Sanguineous death mask.

For Inquisitor he is equipped pretty lightly with a Stubgun and a club, but most of the time I am sure that it suffices.

Ebay Score

I do not know about you, but there are some items that I "chase" on Ebay, always submitting the same low bids in the hope that someday an item will go unnoticed by others and I will win without having to spend much money. To help me do this, I have my Ebay feed set up to show certain items, like Bretonnians, Rebel Blockade runners, or Revell Gunships etc.

One of those items is the Warhammer Chaos Battalion, which as I have previously mentioned, is a rather good deal at ~$2.34 a figure.  Naturally, I wanted to pay less than full price to make it even more of a deal.

Just before Christmas I noticed a buy-it-now deal for an assembled Chaos battalion "with tons of extras".  I offered less than the asked price on the grounds that "the figures are already assembled, and the shipping is expensive" and they accepted...

I was not entirely sure what I was getting in the mail, but the day after Christmas a large, and extremely well packed box turned up.

Contents:
One Chaos Battalion partly assembled, (12 Warriors, 5 knights, 10 hounds, 20 marauders)
1 painted Nurgle Chaos Lord on a horse
20 6th Edition Empire Handgunners
10 current Empire Handgunners/crossbowmen with all bitz, un-assembled.
10 assorted Horses, primed
1 Empire mortar
2 Battle Master Cannons painted
Beastmen Bitz
Skaven Bitz
Undead Bitz
Bretonnian bitz
40k Chaos Marines Bitz
plus a bunch of truly random things like an Eldar Guardian body, or Gretchen heads.

Assembled Chaos Battalion

Bag of Empire Handgunner/Crossbowman Regiment

Boxes of random bitz

So yeah, I was am a bit excited.

What about you?  Have you ever had an Ebay score like that?

Christmas 2014

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I certainly did, although with two little kids, family events, and some illness, it was busy. 

I did not get much in the way of "hobby" materials this year, although I did get a Tau stealth team from my sister, and a Uniform book for the Napoleonic wars from my parents, which should be interesting reading, and useful for future projects. The final "hobby" item is a MetalEarth Eiffel Tower, which uses laser cut metal rather like photo etch to build up the Eiffel tower.  Looks like a fun challenge. 

The older kid got a ton of Lego, so we have been busy building all of that stuff too. 

And Happy New Year!  2015 should be very interesting.

Pro Gloria

As you might recall, Pro Gloria was running an Indiegogo campaign to get a plastic Landsknecht regiment box produced.  There was some sort of stall in the campaign, and rumors of a big announcement, and now it appears that Pro Gloria has been sold to Warlord Games.   Apparently Stephen Huber (the former owner of Pro Gloria) will remain connected to the project in some lesser way, which is good, since he seems to have a passion for the project.

This seems to guarantee that the figures will be produced, which is good, but probably at best annoying to those funding the Indiegogo.  This also means that Warlord is up to something like 15 different sculpting styles for their various lines, which is a bit odd.(although probably there is not that much interest in kit-bashing landsknecht bodies with roman legionary heads and soviet infantry arms, although now that I say it that way it does sound interesting)  

As another plus, this should make the existing metal figures cheaper for me to get here in the US...

November Army - 11/14 Progress

I managed to paint at lunch today:

Of course, I cheated and brought the more interesting portions of the army to paint, i.e. the command squad and the attached grenadier squad.

I keep saying "army" but really I am painting a rifle platoon, plus three sentinels, and an attached grenadier squad, seconded from the battalion.  The rifle platoon has a command squad, 4 rifle squads, and a heavy machine gun squad for a total of 51 effectives.

I am also in the process of converting a few company level assets, such as a heavy mortar squad and it occurred to me that maybe I could build and paint a full company.  Mostly because I have more conversion ideas... Yes, I am crazy.

November Army - Painting Progress

This might not look like four hours of work, but it is... painted pants, bedrolls, canteens, and a few other things for the 50+ figures.  I also completed a test figure for the Storm Troopers.

Under the Ott Light, you can see the difference between rattle can flat black and airbrushed Reaper Nightmare Black.  One of them is extremely blue.

November Army - Primed

Well, that did not go as planned.  As I mentioned last night (this morning?) I was going to prime all my figures with the airbrush.  Did not work out.  I have not used the thing for 8 years, and only once before that, so I probably should have scheduled in some time for troubleshooting.  And I ran out of black paint.  And the Reaper "Nightmare Black" paint that I got as a Halloween freebie... is actually very dark blue.

So I stopped at Home Depot after my nephew's soccer game this morning, picked up a rattle can of flat black, and had everything primed in 15 minutes.

I still want to use that darn airbrush, but I will have to take some more time to practice first.

November Army -Basing

Just finished the basing of my little army project... now on to airbrush priming.

You can see the majority of the figures to be painted here

 I may have gone a bit overboard with basing, as I built a destroyed sash window, a wooden floor, fence, and a few other crazy things, using time that would have been better spent painting.

Lots of people use sprue for bricks, but how many use a chopper to make them all the same size?

Pre-sanding