Tabletop Miniatures Talk, Anyone?

I got the OK to support my local game store (of which my friend is the manager) by buying some stuff to keep me busy during the semi-quarantine, so I got some more miniatures of course!



Also got one of the Mansions of Madness expansions for Mrs B, and a random board game loot crate for Baby B.

Finished assembling the Van Saar, but photo sucks. Tried to cobble a two-tier display out of cardstock, but the back minis are blurry. Oh well, you get the idea.

Finally finished 2 more minis. My painting has been on hold for a while, but I've figured out that the best time for me to paint is in the mornings since the light is best at my painting desk then. So that basically means I can only paint on weekends, but at least I have a set time now and don't keep pushing off painting until later and then realize that it's already after dinner time.






I'm not super enthused about the skeleton but I just wanted to get it over with. I'm pretty satisfied with the warrior in golden armour, though.

Oh, I'm fine with the colour I mixed for the bones, that's actually the only thing I like about it. It's just white with a smidge of yellow to get the off-white bleached look. It's the outfit I'm not too hot on. I didn't really have a good image in mind for it so it just looks like a blob of darkness accented by a brown belt.

Finally finished Bebop (both human and warthog versions) for my commissioner! (Assuming he okays them, anyway.)

Skulltaker is assembled now, and all but the blood on his hand has at least one coat of color on it.

I am really, REALLY pleased with how easy GW's Contrast paints make blending. I mean, holy shit, check out his sword and the fire on his other hand. Each of those took me literally two minutes.
For the sword, I just put black near the hilt, red at the tip, and brushed them together. For the fire, it was just yellow, orange, red and black.

Over the past week or two, I've assembled a few Space Marines miniatures which will be part of a Space Wolves army. I've been reading some of the novels about them and really enjoy the lore. And the minis are largely standard Space Marines, but with extra bits to make them more wolf-like, such as hairier/bearded heads, wolf pelts and tails, and rune trinkets.

We have (on the left) Aggressors, Intercessors, an Iron Priest, and (right) a Redemptor Dreadnought.

Got several hours worth of random progress on TMNT minis yesterday. Finally nearing the end of working on this commission after over two years (!). I've been fortunate that my client is very patient with me.

Group shot of the ones on my table that I'm currently working on. A few of the previously finished minis are there because I'm adding coats of varnish to protect them.

IMAGE DUMP - So here are the rest of the Gloomhaven miniatures I painted for my second commission. I finished all of these last summer, but never got around to taking photos of them until now.

I'm particularly happy with the slime texture on the Plagueherald's base (even better than my previous attempt), the wood grain on the Soothsinger, and the base and tabard on the Sawbones. (You can't really see it, but I managed to copy the tree pattern on his tabard on the original artwork in tiny white dots.)

Very neat!

Over the weekend I started assembling some more Necromunda miniatures. I am very, VERY slowly working on building several of these gangs with the intention of eventually being able to play some skirmish games at home.

Each of the main six gangs now have at LEAST three boxes of plastic minis/parts available - the main gang box, a "champions and newbies" box, and an additional weapons box.

I started building the Orlocks, who are a gang somewhat inspired by bikers/construction workers. THIS time, instead of just assembling them based on the instructions included with the miniatures, I cross-referenced the gang's rulebook as well as a gang utility site called Yaktribe to make sure I was building minis that fit the rules and could fit within the 1000 credits cost of building a starting gang for future campaign games.

Of course while doing this I still started by building the first mini because he looked cool - an Arms Master with full servoharness and two-handed hammer:



After building him, however, I realized that this particular equipment combination ends up costing 300 credits, which is a good 100 over what a typical champion costs, and triple the average for a regular ganger. So I built an alternate version of him without the servo-harness.

Second, I built my Road Captain, the leader of the gang. Captains have access to special "combi-weapons", which combine two types of other guns together. Unfortunately, at least for Necromunda's Orlock minis, there are no combi-weapons premade, so I had to kitbash my own using a full-size boltgun and grenade launcher. I think I did a good job, but this weapon is hilariously large, and the guy can barely see over the top of it. Good thing rules-wise this doesn't matter!

-

I gave him a fighting knife for a melee backup, "just in case he drops this ridiculously huge weapon off of a catwalk by accident".

Third, I built a Wrecker, a younger gang member who proves their worth by using an unstable jump pack to charge into battle! I gave him a Servo Claw because it looked neat.

For once I actually "finished" a paint job for myself! (Finished in quotes because I CAN and probably will keep working on small details, but am happy enough with this job to play with the minis while I do so and if I don't get around to additional work I'm okay with it.) My Orlock gang:



The Arms Master - with and without servo harness:



And my kitbashed champ with mining laser:



GW's Contrast paints (and Army Painter's Speed Paints) do a LOT of work to make minis table-ready fast. I used mostly those with additional details painted on top of them. Most of the work I still want to do is adding metallic details in a variety of colors. Besides that though, these are done!

(The Arms Master - without servo harness - got his first kill last night, a "coup de grace" from charging another fighter who was already on the ground injured.)

Played my Orlocks vs. Goliaths on the Toll Bridge scenario last night. (Minus the rotating mid-section of the bridge, because we built the table before reading that part and didn't want to redo it.)

Completely assuming I'd end up losing by running my entire gang up onto the bridge against the beefy boys, but I ended up winning! My Arms Master with Arc Hammer pulled a "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" and pulverized his Forge Tyrant, while everyone else fired past him, even knocking two of the Goliaths off the bridge and setting another on fire to run around until he ran off into the toxic river too!

Several of my gangers got shot and knocked down and NEARLY fell off the bridge, but they all managed to recover except one, who spent the entire match seriously injured and crawling up the ramp to the rear! One guy eventually did get killed, but only after I'd managed to kill most of HIS gang.

Playing the Necromunda campaign is a lot of fun, and gives me the chance to build new minis every week or so as I add more people to the gang.

At the start of the campaign, and after I tried out my Captain in a few skirmish games, I realized that combi-weapons and mauls both SUCK, so I replaced my leader with a THIRD and final version armed with a power pick and plasma pistol, both of which are pretty good weapons. This is Handsome Dan:



I also added a slave ogryn, Lunk, as a "brute" option. He's slow but tough, and if he gets into melee combat with you, good luck not getting beaten or headbutted to a pulp!