Heap of Abandonment

     After Monster May(hem) I still had a few more giant spiders on the hobby desk, I added 2 more large spiders and 3 more of the smaller ones to my swarm. With that, I ran out of 50mm bases for the large spiders and called it a day.

Experimenting with colours

The whole swarm

    

    Spiders painted up for Rangers of Shadowdeep, which requires 6 plus. Extra spiders! I am sure some arachnophobic reader out there is cringing at the thought. And the box has 24, so only 13 more to go my multi-limbed opposed readers!

    Occasionally, a project will speak to you, painting and colour scheme comes naturally. Every model should speak to you in someway or at least did when you picked up the new shiny. You enter a zen like meditation while painting these figures, hours go by without notice. But, as Ian Malcolm says, life finds a way. In this case, it's to get in my way of my precious hobby! We moved in November so these Blackstone Fortress models just pushed off the desk into The Heap. We don't usually talk about The Heap on the blog, those miniatures that are just inches away from being whole painted models. Now is the time we do, if I don't have a theme for the month, I will chip away at these island of misfit toys. Maybe while listening to The Misfits (are they good? I don't actually listen to them.)

    

    Anyways! Cultists from Blackstone Fortress are done. I picked up the Escalation expansion for Blacktone Fortress at the beginning of the covid shut down to support the local hobby store. Two explorers are already done. The rest are on the painting block in various stages of progression.

    I have a second cultist flamer that I picked up in an ebay lot a few months ago, very well sculpted, good thing I have two!

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    From July to August is the Community Challenge, Season of Scenery, that Dave hosts every year. Seeing as I have used the same tree and 3D printed house for the backgrounds of my pictures a few times on the blog, it might be time to get more terrain painted up! 

Human Barbarian and Tortle Monk

    I am back for two entries for the Paint An Adventuring Party Challenge. Moving forward, I might just be painting up characters without the backstory. I find that I am quite slow at writing them up and posting them. Not only did I fall off the proverbial challenge wagon, but then fell off a cliff, hitting every jagged edge on the way down. Cut me some slack, I got a mini human to look after.

    May's entry is a human Barbarian from Reaper Miniatures, Galdor the Barbarian. He is a metal miniature, that I probably picked up when Dragon's Den was clearing out their Reaper models to make room for Wizkids. Working on using different colours for skin tones like Leadballoony Warcry Spire Tyrants. Don't think I got very close to his, but it was refreshing to try green and yellows for skin. 

Ack! Where did these spiders come from!

    June's entry is a Tortle Monk from Wizkids. A tortle was a homebrew race for 5th edition, but looks like the stat line can be bought on D&D Beyond now. I enjoyed painting the yellow robes, not a whole lot to paint but I might have to give it a try as a primary colours. The Wizkids minis come in twos, that might be a good colour for the second Tortle in the set.

     I find myself more fond of painting Reaper Miniatures for the amount of character they have in their models, I am attributing this to the style they are going for, more factory friendly and less life in their sculpts. Wizkids are good for a quick paint job, already being pre-primed. On paint runs to Comic Readers, I would usually pick up one or two of these when they were a bit cheaper around $5. Now that they are closer to $7-8, I mostly just grab a monsters as I don't find the humanoid models as detailed. That said, I do have a few kicking around that will appear during this challenge.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I complete some more giant spiders, and Blackstone Fortress cultists. The latter of which have been sitting on my "abandoned heap". It was the last thing I was working on before moving to my current house, lost in the shuffle and buried under other more fun projects.