Hello, 2017

Hello all. It’s been a good while since the last post!

It’s been my tradition to do an end-of-the-year recap of my hobby activities, as well as some sort of projection/prognostication about what will happen in the coming year. Well, I’m going to keep it short and sweet:

2016 was a mediocre-to-bad hobby year. 1st world problems, right? !

2017 will be better. I’m not forecasting much activity on the historical miniatures front this year. I haven’t heard from my regular opponent in quite some time, so the Lasalle project is on hold for now. Who knows, he may pop back up, and things might take off again.

The one hobbyriffic bright spot from 2016 is that I’ve been playing quite a bit of good old D&D with a couple of groups of friends. For now, I’m going to concentrate my efforts in that area. Tangentially included in said efforts will be some sort of elaborate 36″x36″ terrain board for Song of Blades and Heroes. I plan to start that project very soon!

So, that’s the plan. I hope the new year finds you all well. I’ll close this out with photos of recent work, all in 28mm…

Mr. Rocklobber and Goblin Companions. These are all Red Box Minis. The troll/ogre fellow is a resin casting. Rocklobber is my first large(ish) monster figure, and was a blast to paint. I’m going to try and do more things of that sort in the future. Notice the long braided scalp on the front goblin’s spear? Yikes! I think he’s supposed to be the mastermind of this bunch. Pot of sky blue paint shown for scale.

The entire Goblin warband. The guys with spears in the back were painted a looooong time ago. It’s nice to have finally finished up the collection.

The heroes. Some are new to the blog, some are not.  I’ll break these down into logical groups, and get some closeup shots. The vast majority of these minis are Red Box, sculpted (and sold) by Tre Manor.

The elves. The middle figure is a de Terlizzi masterwork mini, sculpted by Tom Meier. The other two are Red Box. I think these have all made an appearance on my site before, but here they are again!

The wee folk, plus Gus the mule. The humanoids are all Red Box minis. The pack mule is a Warlord figure from their ancient Romans line. They use Pilum in fantasy settings, right?! And no, I’m not insinuating the shorties are jackasses by association. I need more halflings in my collection.

A couple of human casters. Both are Red Box. The fellow on the left is new, and might function as a druid, or some sort of hedge wizard. The fellow on the right has been seen on this page before. He’s seen quite a bit of use, and is looking a little worse for the wear. His robes were inspired by Jimmy Page’s Zoso outfit.

Various humans from Red Box minis. I think these three have all been seen on the blog before. The fellow on the left is Ivan Brown-cup, my 5th level Cleric of Chauntea. Man, that’s nerdy!

A couple more humans from Red Box. The fellow on the left is new to the site.

The heroes. I’ll break these down into logical groups, and get some closeup shots. The vast majority of these minis are Red Box miniatures, sculpted (and sold) by Tre Manor.

A couple more humans from Red Box. The fellow on the left is new to the site.

Various humans from Red Box minis. I think these three have all been seen on the blog before. The fellow on the left is Ivan Brown-cup, my 5th level Cleric of Chauntea. Man, that’s nerdy!

A couple of casters. Both are Red Box. The fellow on the left is new, and might function as a druid, or some sort of hedge wizard. The fellow on the right has been seen on this page before. He’s seen quite a bit of use, and is looking a little worse for the wear.

The wee folk, plus Gus the mule. The humanoids are all Red Box minis. The pack mule is a Warlord figure from their ancient Romans line. They use Pilum in fantasy settings, right?! I need more halflings in my collection.

The elves. The middle figure is a de Terlizzi masterwork mini, sculpted by Tom Meier. The other two are Red Box. I think these have all made an appearance on my site before, but here they are again!

The entire Goblin warband. The guys with spears in the back were painted a looooong time ago. It’s nice to have finally finished up the collection. Sorry for the DOF issues. I was being lazy.

Mr. Rocklobber and Goblin Companions. These are all Red Box Minis. The troll/ogre fellow is a resin casting. Pot of sky blue paint shown for scale.

Viking Process

I’ve been making slow but steady process on my Vikings. I have to finish basing the three I’m  showing  here, and then I have another  three to go. I have three Perry Brother’s Norman Knights that are supposed to be the Vikings opponents (probably going to use Song of Blades and Heroes for small skirmishes), and I haven’t even cleaned and primed them yet. Oh, and I’ve got about 40 Napoleonic soldiers of various types waiting on deck, plus a jeep and a kubelwagen. That’s a lot of stuff, for me. I should have everything finished up by 2024.

28mm metal viking. This fellow must be the leader, because his hair is blowing dramatically in the wind. My first attempt at blonde hair and non-dip based painting methods.

Red and green are the colors of Christmas, a decidedly non-viking holiday. My commander’s pants and cloak may be detracting from the fierceness of his visage.

This guy is some kind of giant. He’s from the same manufacturer as the rest of my vikings, but would be about 7′ tall, at scale.

Giant Gudrick’s hair looks a bit two-dimensional, as does his clothing. I need to work on creating a sense of light and shadow, without going for that certain hyper-contrasty look that so many miniature painters use.

This ruddy brown hair looks better than the flat lifeless brown that my giant viking is sporting.

In my ignorance of ten years ago, I ordered these Vikings without their shields. This realization only dawned on me after considerable pondering on the fact that 4 of the 6 models had oddly clenched fists. I’m a dolt, sometimes. Shields, and even shield transfers, are readily available on the internet, so no big deal.

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…Edit..While looking for 28mm shields, I’ve found where these figures came from (if you’ve read earlier posts, you’ll know that I purchased these vikings 10 years ago, and had no recollection of the name of the manufacturer)!

They’re Wargames Foundry Viking Characters. Mystery solved! Wargames Foundry also has a nice selection of Normans. Hrmmm…