Clever Hans - part 9 (Medic and a birthday gift)

 A quick post today to show off four more mini's painted to add to my quota for the year to date.

First off a WW2 German medic sculpted in a Winter theme. A very cool sculpt and was relatively swift to paint up once I figured out who's arm was where and so forth. Completely forgot to add my usual red wash to the exposed flesh areas like the rest of my Winter collection so I may well go back and do that at a later date.

Mini by Warlord Games. 

My Freehanded Red Crosses are pretty poor now I'm looking at them. 

If you've got a bandage over your eye, then there needs to be blood seeping through. It is so.

 Next up are a trio of Oathsworn Miniatures Burrows and Badgers figs. I painted them up for my friend Derek as a everso slightly belated birthday gift for his 43rd birthday this last St Patricks Day. We got together a bit ago and played our first game of this ruleset and as I'd hoped (Read: planned) he liked it so much he announced he'd invest in the rulebook and his own team in the nearish future. So these three can be added to his own planned warband or not - his choice. He at least seemed to like them. :)

First off a Bat Assassin. Or "Batssassin" as he's known. Simple paint job on a characterful sculpt as always.

Grass tuft's superglue dried white! >_< Told Derek to add a drop of brown wash over it and that shold take care of it.

Next up is a Mole warrior wearing some other critter's bones. He has a very low-tech look which I like.

Little blue markings to look like simple woad designs or some such. The Toad has similar markings on it's Bone pieces too.

This is a fearsome Toad warrior wearing (I believe) the skull of a Wildcat. I like to think he/she gets power from the dead spirits who formerly called that skull their "head".

Creepy Toad-ish sideways pupils.

Tried to make the cloak look like a Badgers pelt taken from a fallen enemy. Nasty bugger this Toad.

Note the simple blue woad type markings on the bone areas to key in with the Mole.

And that's it for a while. Taking a week off from the paint station so hoping to have more to show off in a fortnight. 

Hope all are staying well out there,

- Dai

03/21/2022, week# 12 - 24/100 mini's done (Still on target).

Personal Hobby Challenge

It would seem that the number “100” keeps popping up in my online hobby searches and so forth.

Brad on the Cast Dice podcast (A mostly Bolt Action theme’d wargaming podcast that I like to listen to, but they do cover lots of other game topics.) has challenged himself to paint at least 100 minis before year’s end.

Stew at the Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth blog needing to paint up 100 more Dark Ages warriors in order to meet his self-imposed goals.

The 100 infantry minis alone that I’d need to purchase (And most definitely will not – at least not now) were I to start buying for the Defence of Greece WW2 Bolt Action project that I was all-of-a-sudden inspired to list up.

The $100 (And probably more than that) I’ll need to scramble together somehow in order to be able to pledge toward the upcoming (No date announced yet mind) next Burrows and Badgers Kickstarter.

Okay, writing those out, “100” doesn’t seem too prolific in my online “searches and so forth” afterall, but I guess they are enough to get me thinking on it at the very least. So the main thing though was Brad’s small self-imposed challenge to paint at least 100 miniatures in 2022. This wasn’t too far-fetched and heck knows my unpainted mountain is overflowing with untouched miniatures, some almost as old as I am, screaming out to finally get some hobby love and have a half-decent paint job applied to them.

100 isn’t all that tough really in the scheme of things and as the podcast mentioned, there’s 52 weeks in a year, so that’s a very doable average of a little less than 2 mini’s a week. Now I know there are plenty of prolific batch-painters out there that might read this and scoff at such a small number, but for me, this seems like a sweet-spot to achieve within my limited hobby time.

Now we are in March (Already!?), 10 weeks into the year and I’ve already painted 20 since the start of the year (I’m counting finished terrain as single pieces too). That's me totally on track and I think I can make the 100 by year’s end without too much trouble.

I'm going to start keeping a tally of where I'm at on the bottom of each new post from here on that I put up here and also I'll label each post with "Paint 100 2022" to help keep track too. And... if anyone feels a need to hop on, they can call this a "challenge" and join in the fun, etc.

Congrats if you got down this far. Apologies to those annoyed that I didn't post up any actual hobby progress, I promise my next post will be far more thrilling and fulfilling in that respect!

- Dai

03/11/2022, week# 10 - 20/100 mini's done.

Clever Hans - part 8 (Winter Grenadiers squad compete!)

These nine Grenadiers are from a project last visited in 2018 (!!!) and their completion finishes up a 10-man squad for my WW2 Winter Germans for Bolt Action project. My main hobby goal for the first half of this year is to get my German force painted and ready for play before the Summer so that I can have two fully painted armies (My WW2 Soviets are already done) to run demo games for mates. 

The sculpts are all Warlord Games from their metal Winter Grenadiers Squad set. Very well detailed miniatures with most of them featuring separate heads which I liked playing around with to get the best looks possible. The only negative aspect is the sculptor's choice of equipping so many Assault Rifles and Panzerfausts - Regular Rifles were far more common in general and I prefer the look in general, but that's a personal preference I guess.

Painting German troops in WW2 is a different beast compared to my previous Canadians and Soviets in that they have SO MUCH KIT and each piece is a flippin different colour which took ages to pick out! But other than that, they painted up nicely and I really like the finished results. Per my previous Winter posts, these fellows got some red/pink added to their faces and hands to represent the cold they are supposed to be fighting in and I managed to get eyes on all but two who's headgear made that effort impractical. (Not all eyes were done "well", mind. But I just wanted these finished so after a couple attempts left them as-is on some.)

Here are some individual pics highlighting all the mess-ups and crappy eye-jobs. :)

This bloke is a prime example of where I just couldn't get the eyes right. Good thing he's looking down a bit to read the instructions on that Panzerfaust so on the table you can't see his peepers.

All of these mini's bases snow effects are still drying in these pics. For those wanting to know, it's Games Workshop's snow effect product - Vallhallan somethingorother.

Aforementioned bloke who's cap is pulled down too low to be able to attempt eyes. yay.

Liking his helmet hooked onto his belt.

Cold effects on this one's face are a little too "rouge-like", but they'll look fine on the game table. 

Added a little snow to the bottom of his boot - it made sense at the time

This guy has a bit of a googly-eyes syndrome. 

The squad's Light Machinegun team in the classic, "Here, rest the weapon on my shoulder and deafen me" pose.

Actually I'm a big fan of this duo. They just look cool.

Managed to give the bloke in the foreground a fun "This sucks" expression, which I thought was rather appropriate.

Another face I'm rather happy with. He has the "100 yard stare" that you see in many photos from the war.

Must have tried to get this bloke's left eye (Viewer's left, not his) done four times before I just gave up. I also neglected to paint the strap on his helmet (Bugger!) so I'll have to go back and do that later.

The last chap in this squad and he's about to let go of that potato masher, or at least I hope he does. 

So that's my effort at "Batch Painting", something I've long avoided in the past, but getting these 9 figs done was a satisfying endeavour and not as bad a challenge as I'd feared once I'd gotten past the base colours stage. 

Next up I'll be tackling the remainder of this Medic (Pictured below) and a Sniper Team (Not pictured below), then a Hanomag halftrack and the last outstanding squad of VolksGrenadiers to complete the initial list. There will still be a few more options to be painted (Another squad of Winter Grenadiers, Flame Thrower team, MG42 team and a Panzer IV), but they'll be saved for when I feel up to it. 

So as these partially painted fellows limp off painfully into the snowy hell of the East Front, I'll end this post here.

Hope all are staying safe and well out there,

- Dai