Rebel Troopers, zombies and the rest of 2023

Looking at how many miniatures I picked up this year, I blame you Zombicide with expansion secondary market purchase, I have started to look through all the miniatures that I own. After all, these were fun projects that I was interested in at one point or another and can rekindle that spark of inspiration. Star Wars Legion is one such project, I had painted the Imperial side of the starter set awhile ago, it was time to start the Rebels

At first I painted 10 rebel troops. But decided to finish the full set, 28 infantry, 2 AT-RT walkers and Luke Skywalker. For how slow I paint it has taken me to right before Christmas to finish up. The white spray primer I used, I believe it was a rustolium, made my paint hydrophobic, forcing me to use more paint to get it to stick. 

By the end I just wanted it done, so some of the Rebels look better then others. Alas, they are done.

Star Wars Legion Starter Set Rebels side

Two All Terrain Reconnaissance Transport

Luke Skywalker

    And now for the random stuff that I painted that isn't Star Wars related, oh, wait, Ron Perlman was a character in the Clone Wars series? What a good segway! Man, that guy is in everything! Without further adieu, here are some zombies I painted and Ron Perlman, both from Zpocalypse.

Zpocalypse zombies

Zombies and deranged Ron Perlman

Okay, he looks more like Ron in person

    Also one hero from Descent first edition, not sure about the base so I left it black for now. I looked up her name after I painted her all pink.

Red Scorpion

     That's about it besides some adventures I painted up, but I will post them once I get better pictures of them. 

Next on the Hobby Desk

Time to ring in the new year and paint what you got! I recently cleaned my hobby space and found many purchases that I'd love to paint! It's time to colour, and kitbash their world. It's time to dig into my pile of opportunity! Resolution time!

A Project that Clix

     While on my parental leave I had sometime thinking about the Heroclix, of all things, that I have and what their fate should be. My first thought - besides actually PLAYING heroclix, was to re-base select models to use in Heroscape, something that might one day be of interest to Rosalind? Or anyone else just starting to learn their first tabletop wargame. A quick google search took me to a large database of fan made Heroscape cards for playing super heroes in the game.

     This project I was pretty excited about while away from all my miniatures. Pondering up which villains and super hero squad I would like to paint up for the game. The Sinister Six against Spider-man that has called in the X-men for backup? A rampaging Red Hulk needs to be contained before he destroys have of Manhattan? Could try out just about anything.

    After a bit of jumping in and out of rabbit holes, I stumbled upon Angry Piper's blog. He has a bunch of battle reports, repaints of heroclix, forgotten heroes challenges - sculpting miniatures for lesser know characters in comics. Between Angry Piper and  Carrion Crows Buffet they also use a bunch of good looking Pulp Figures, probably will pick some up eventually. After reading a couple scenarios, it prompted me to pick up Super Mission Force 2nd which he uses for the battle reports. This systems seems like a lot of fun and had lots of creative options for fleshing out any super person you could think of, whether that be an existing trademarked character owned by The Mouse, or fan made. 

    The other side effect of looking through my heroclix, is that I have started borrowing comics from the library, Green Lantern and X-men mostly. For the most part, Yellow (use fear to control) and Green (harness willpower) Lanterns are arch enemies as they are basically polar opposites, but there was a great arc which Guy Gardener, your typical 50's beat cop who plays by his own rules, fights the biggest Yellow Lantern Arkillo without power rings, toppling the top dog to make the others in the corps to fall in line. Majority of what I repainted was heroclix, hope to branch out more... just need to prioritize my collection.

Top: Artocitus - leader of the Red Lanterns, Red Hulk, Arkillo - Second in command of the Yellow Lanterns, Kilowag - Instructor for new Green Lantern recruits 

Bottom: Saint Walker and Guy Gardener - One of four earth lanterns

    Later Green Lantern comics introduced the spectrum of colours each lantern using a specific emotion to create their constructs. Red - Rage, Orange - Greed, Green - Will, Blue - Hope, Yellow - Fear, Purple - Love, and Black - Death, which isn't an emotion but is metal AF!

Some of the other clix I was thinking about rebasing/painting. Still figuring out base sizes for models. With so many clix losing their base, their dials will make great damage dials. I should be busy throughout the winter now. Definitely don't need to BUY anything else.

    Throughout Covid the Regina Central library has been offering free 3D printing, I printed off some smaller things a few months ago. While in Fort Saskatchewan, I might've went a bit overboard with my submissions.... and well, they started charging for the service when they were finished. Shows me not to abuse the system! On the plus side, I got some really good dungeon crawling tiles and graves for some spooky ghosts that might hit the desk in October!

Caverns for In-Person D&D someday...

Close up for detail

    Some more detailed items turn into garbage with the filament printer that the library uses. This sarcophagus turned out well, the corpse has seen better days though! Expect to see these tombs on the Sorrowmourn Choir, Spooktober is coming!

    Previously, I had printed out some more traditional dungeon tiles with which I painted in grays. I wanted these caverns to glow a bit magically, hoping to add some vegetation to the walls, and some mushrooms, probably made with green stuff. 

Shadespire LOS blocking terrain featuring a friendly Gallanghann

    The rest is kind of a hodgepodge of what I have painted up, Orson Krennic had been mostly painted and in pieces on my desk for sometime now, his segmented body laughing at my lack of faith in the Dark Side no longer! The dwarves have been finished for a bit and the Blackstone Fortress Heroes I was hoping to finish off the Cultists with them but they still need more work. 

Krennic with his bodyguard dwarves.

    I was a bit lazy and didn't feel like getting out the BSF tiles for a photo shoot, so Gotfret and Servitor X-101 are hanging out on a Heroclix mat.

    The last thing to mention is a project that I hope to finish for October - which would be Shadows of Brimstone! This dungeon crawler is set in the wild west, where dark stone has been discovered in the near by mines outside of Brimstone. It has been found that these stones have a magic to them. Sadly, this power comes with a price, an explosion rips open a rift between worlds. Now unspeakable demons are flooding out of the mines, it's up to the heroes to close the portals to other worlds. Why not loot some of the precious stones at the same time as well?

Six Tentacles finished.

   We also played Root in our garage at the start of the month, why our garage? Because it seems that our cute furry cats are deadly to my eldest brother, Shawn. 

Here you have the typical "still on speaking terms" picture before the game.

    This was a learning game for both Shawn and Nathan. Shawn played the Marquise de cat and Nathan, the Eyrie dynasty. According to the game, they are the least complex. I would disagree in some way, as the other two factions aren't that hard to handle. 

    

    Eyrie have decrees which dictate what you must do on your turn, otherwise your leader disgraced and you lose victory points. Clearings are broken up into different animals, fox, rabbit, mouse or bird (wild card). One card must be added to the decree each turn, or more if you are insane. Bird cards do help, but they also cost you victory points for each used in the decree. As more turns go on, you have more and more potential that you can't build in a fox clearing as you might have already done that three turns in a row and there aren't any to claim or you can't battle in a certain clearing as the enemies were picked off by that blasted Vagabond's crossbow! Eyrie is simple to understand, but you definitely need to plan your next turn. We did help Nathan out as it was his first game, but this is a tough game to do a tutorial game as one faction can really take off if you aren't watching - like every time Rachel is playing the Woodland Alliance. First games you shouldn't be watching the points anyways right? It's about picking off those industrial cats with a well placed crossbow bolt from the Vagabond.

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I am getting close to finishing my painting of the core models in Shadows of Brimstone, contrast paints help speed up the process, but it doesn't help when I find more models at Dragon's Den to buy!? Oh well, will most likely get in a solo play soon.

    

Minivember Challenge

November has come and gone. Somehow simultaneously moving at a snail's pace and also rocketing us quickly to the end of the year. I was able to get 20/30 of the miniatures done for #minivember. The one of the goals for this project was to finish off units for Warhammer 40k that originally were painted up just for Kill Team (ie groups of two instead whole units of 5). The primary goal was to get more of the Adeptus Mechanicus finished to be able to play painted robots for Crusade. I am pretty happy with the results, I'll probably finish off the rest throughout December, I do know that Rachel wants to pick up Warhammer Underworld Direchasm next weekend, so that might jump ahead in the painting queue.

I painted up the Wave Serpent with Blight Lances, not glued on so I can swap them out for something a bit less heavy. Ran out of basing, I'll finish them of once I resupply, then I can take pictures of the whole army.

Kastelon Robots and Cybernetica Datasmith from the Apocalypse box (still have another two Robots, two more Datasmiths and a Dominus from that box to paint up). The Kataphron Destroyers were from a lot, as well as Belisarius Cawl both assembled. The Destroyers were interesting to paint up, can't imagine Cawl with all his mechatendrils being much easier to get on the table. That said, Skitarii are fast becoming one of my favourite armies to paint up, great sculpts, and lots of options for magnetizing.

Kastelon Robot want hug from Datasmith!

One of the odd one out in this painting challenge, the Dewback Rider. I equipped him with a flame thrower (instead of a melee weapon or sniper rifle) as cavalry that can melt your face off is much cooler. Gotta get the Rebellion side started one of these days, I find my biggest hurdle with them is finding a colour scheme.

Used one of the Which elves? Witch Aelves! Right the copyrightable name for them, yes! I used this one as test to figured out what colours I'd like to make the WarCry Warband. Still working on a basing for them though.

 

The remaining 10 miniatures were a bit of a hodge-podge of models, the Daughters of Khaine to finish off the WarCry Warband. Truth be told, I am a bit nervous touching the Khinerai (the fragile looking winged witches), with the only contact point to the base being a slender tail, I figured one rough brush stroke and they would snap off their base. Jain Zar to lead the Howling Banshees, once again some creative block with how to tackle her base. I had a few one armed metal Dark Eldar Wyches, so one of them will be a corpse for the base. She is also pinned to a piece of ruins to add a bit of a dynamic posing to the older model. Out of print metal daemon prince that will be doing double duty as a Daemon Prince and Be'lakor for my Slaves to Darkness Army. Last but not least, Gutrot Spume, figured I could get a few more Leaders done for Age of Sigmar, as I usually start with troops and leave the Leaders for last. 

Next on the Hobby Desk

Will be working on the Daughters of Khaine Warband as it's getting close to done. Who knows what else I might get up to at this point.

Odds and Ends

Back February I painted up a few times that I forgot for one reason or another to post.

For my birthday shindig, I was planning to run my friends through Gaslands, but we got really into our 7 player Scythe game instead. A few of the people at the table played it once before but a good half of the table was new to the game. It ended up taking most of the afternoon and we got close to finishing. (Rachel a turn away from victory, I am sure.) Everyone had a good time playing it, so Gaslands didn't get played.

Here is what I had painted.

Note to self: Make dinosaur themed road way.

In the apocalypse, Gaslands events take place in an old amusement park. Figured the Trex was one of those attractions that had been somewhat preserved from its glory days. Or at least, I'll eventually give it some signs of entropy.

My friend Jared was going to be playing so I started to paint up a car that looked close to Speed racer's as at the time, and still is, obsessed with the Speed Racer movie. We didn't check it out when it was first released, so now Jared wants to make sure everyone knows how good the movie is. Consider this my PSA to check out Speed Racer. The Speed Racer car and a few others are painted but they aren't grungy or weaponized just yet.

I also finished up Darth Vader for Legion.

I reposed the hand to make him a bit more menacing.

And Luke Skywalker....

Wait a minute! I haven't touch any if the Rebels in the Legion core set...

That's right! This Luke lookalike is part of my top secret never exposed project! Well, I minis were secret at least....

I bought them from North Star Military Figures as well. I just thought they looked cool and could fit into a warband... Except maybe for the bunny ears guys, I used the colour shift paint I got from Green Stuff World when they were doing their Adepticant sale. Looks like he only shows up as black, might need to Instigram a shot of him. Check out Jobau2460.

With the seven of them, I am still shy of 120 UC (universal credits). Nomadic Raiders get free weapons from other factions (free looting) and the first mate and Captain are free. I kitbashed an old terminator into a mech unit for this faction, but decided to do this a bit late so it's not painted yet.

Star Breach's rules are more feels more catered to kitbashing models as some models would be require to have a pistol or a blade and you can't add psychic powers. I'll go into a bit more detail into the system when I start doing demo games for myself and come up with some fluff for them as well.

Kickstarter soft cover book and order dice showed up Wednesday last week. 

 I'll need a second army for a two player intro if I am going to show off this game system, but for now I'll divide this group up to play some smaller games to learn the systems.

Coming Soon!

With the new edition of Warhammer 40k coming soon (probably sooner then I can paint), I decided to start painting up my Sisters of Battle box, hoping to use them in a Crusade which only needs 50 Power Level. (The box is closer to 30 or so, but I was thinking of allying in some other Imperial at least for now.) With the preview coming out this weekend, I'll need to get my butt in gear to get it painted up in time.