Getting Prehistoric

Final batch of minis for 2019. These are Reaper Bones raptors and pygmy mammoth (still quite large though).

I took my inspiration for the raptors from big cats like leopard and cheetahs. And that made me want to make one of them melanistic, like a black leopard.

I painted the mammoth a pretty standard reddish brown.

Orcs In Shorts

Orcs In Shorts is what the kickstarter called them.

"A range of 28mm scale white metal Orc miniatures inspired by WWII Desert Rats."
From the kickstarter by Miniaturemen

The miniatures were a bit rough, but that's okay for orcs. Most of them had separate heads and arms, or in a few cases, separate weapons with hands. The heads had a concave back and sort of fit onto a nodule representing the neck. The arms had just flat joins. I used superglue to glue the pieces together and sprinkled baking soda on the joins while the glue was still wet. In my experience that creates good solid joins.

I painted these in 2 batches of about 13 minis each. I did some basic color schemes, with khaki for most of them and gray for the "commandos", followed by a wash of GW's Reikland Flesh, and then a few touches for the teeth and eyes. Simple and dirty, suitable for orks.

There is the main officer (captain?) and 2 other leaders (sergeants?).

A number of ork boyz armed with various guns, some with axes, too.

Some heavier weapons

And a squad of commando types with knives.

Group shot of the whole lot.

Cats and Camps

This time, just some simple bits to add to scenes.

Some long-haired cats from Bad Squiddo

And the hunter's camp from Mantic Games

Goblins in Space

Space goblins, from the "Space Raiders - The Space Goblins!" kickstarter by Diego Jose Serrate Pinilla.

The whole gang

Eleven goblins in total

Orcs in Space!

Space orcs, from the "Space Raiders - The Space Goblins!" kickstarter by Diego Jose Serrate Pinilla

I got a couple of the heavy armor guys, the leader with the blue hair and the orc in the power armor. And a set of the Orc Commandos, the leader in the animal pelt, and the other four orcs. I painted them up in a mix of colors, so as not to be too uniform. They came out rather dark and grimy, which I think is suitable for such figures.

Elves coming out of the woodwork

I finished a batch of Reaper elves. These are all over the place in sculpting style. Big heads, little heads, taller, shorter, different body proportions. In the end I like some better than others and will probably not keep all of them. Also, I think using flesh wash over everything may have been a mistake, but I am not thrilled about going back over everything. It was a lot of figures to paint at one time as it was.

Seven More Dwarves

My latest.
The free Reaper "Black" ogre from a couple of months ago.

Seven more dwarves from Lead Adventures. They have a good assortment of female dwarves as well as male ones. They fit in well with GW and Foundry dwarves.

Group shot (including some large candlesticks also from lead adventures - good for set dressing)

(sorry for the yellow cast to these pics. I don't know how to set my camera to balance the light when I don't use the flash indoors.)

Spacefarers

Finished a few more minis. I think these are all Reaper metal minis, mostly from fantasy lines, but I glued a hand with a laser pistol from the Heresy minis to the hand of the pirate elf to make her a space pirate elf. Any or all of them could be used as civilians in Core Space, and some (especially the pirate) could be used as crew or even a captain.

From left to right, space pirate elf (she's not really that much taller than the others, it's just that she's standing closer to the camera), fancy elf (ambassador, merchant, or other higher class civilian), alien pet, pirate lady or merchant? (human painted blue in time-honored sci-fi tradition), magic-user (psiker or merchant or other civilian type).

Terrain is from Battle Systems Galactic terrain set. 


The pistol hand is one of the things I glued with super glue and then sprinkled with baking soda. Seems to be holding very well. I don't think it's ever going to come loose. 

Security!

More metal minis from Heresy Miniatures. I love these! Lots of character. Could work as station security or customs or similar types.

Some of them have names in my mind - Cliff on the left holding a cup of coffee, Pam next to him, then The Major (former military or just a wannabe?), Bert and Ernie (or is it Ernie and Bert?), Brewster on the far right)

Some of the same from different angles and a couple of others, plus a heroine/villain or other character type.

Pam and Cliff again, then Moriarty, The Major again, and unnamed woman (Woman with No Name?.

I will probably work up some way of using these in Core Space (sci-fi skirmish game from Battle Systems) eventually.

Rescue from Bugs

(no bunnies involved)

I played a game of Operation Last Train. A set of free rules by Joseph McCullough.

The Starstuff Rifles sent in a team of crack riflemen (rifledwarves?) to rescue civilians from the bug infestation on Mimus 6. The team included 3 dwarf veterans armed with laser rifles, one armed with a machine gun, and a communications specialist armed with a pistol.

They arrived at the southern edge of the small settlement. To the northwest was one smaller farmhouse, another larger main house to the north, and a 2nd smaller house to the northeast. The landscape had scattered trees, equipment, rocks, etc, with some power conduits running through part of the center and along one side. The team already spotted several bugs.

Moving forward the team opened fire and killed 2 of the nasty critters. First the team worked to clear out the central area where the most bugs were concentrated and of immediate danger.

They discovered 2 civilians in the house to their left, as bugs started moving up. Still, they continued killing bugs as they advanced.

The team approached the main house, and killed more bugs, but the machine gun jammed. Luckily the gunner kept his head and quickly cleared the jam (played Quick Load/Clearance card). Once they reached the main house there was a fierce firefight. The team killed 4 bugs, at the cost of the machine gunning jamming again. They also found 10 more civilians sheltered there.

At this point the communications specialist made the call to bring in the dropship to evacuate the team and civilians.

As the bugs were moving in and getting close enough to attack most of the civilians were loaded onto the dropship. One of the riflemen found himself in desperate hand to hand combat against one of the vile creatures and at first it looked like he had gone under. But it turned out he was Not Quite Dead (another card), and managed to fight back and kill the bug.

Meanwhile, the communications specialist rescued 3 more civilians from the other small house, as the rest of the team fought off the bugs. Then, once all of the civilians were on board the dropship the team boarded as well and they all departed the area.

Final tally:
5 riflemen survived with no injuries
15 civilians rescued
23 bugs killed

Spaceship Troopers

These are metal minis from Heresy Miniatures. In most cases the arms were separate pieces, usually holding the weapon in one or both hands. In some cases the other arm was another piece. And for most the heads were also separate. The ones with separate heads came with 3 different head options - fully enclosed as I chose here, partial visor over just the eyes, or face fully exposed. Assembly was a bit tricky until I recalled reading about using baking soda with super glue. So I put glue on the parts, held them in place, and sprinkled a bit of baking soda on them. Seemed to make the glue cure quickly and the bond seems strong. I did have to scrape away a few spots where the glue was a bit thick and left some lumpy spots on the minis.

They could easily be painted in all sorts of color schemes, but I decided to go with a light gray, with touches of blue.

Seen here on some terrain from Battle Systems' Core Space game. The miniatures were not made for that game, but Core Space does have provisions for creating your own content in the Deluxe Guide. So I could adapt them for that or use them as proxies or in other sci-fi games such as Operation Last Train.

(the above shot shows the colors more true to life)


Closeups, in action.

All My Dwarves

I pulled out all of my painted dwarf miniatures (as far as I know) and set them out for a group shot. Some of these are at least 2 or 3 decades old. I do have more unpainted ones to add some day.

Dwarves and ...

Some assorted dwarves from Lead Adventures Miniatures, explorers, miners, etc., and a "friend" (dragon from Super Dungeon Explore, which I have had for a number of years).

Space Stuff or These could be the droids you're looking for

Here are my latest - some droids, space dwarves and a couple of pieces of some sort of tech (good for objective markers), all from Lead Adventures Miniatures.

GW 40K Terrain Pieces

These are thermic plasma conduits (2 packs) and regulators (1 pack) from GW. I think they were originally sold for use with Kill Team? But I intend them for use in various generic sci-fi skirmish games.

I started off with a base coat of black gesso, then a heavy drybrush of "rough iron" paint (an Army Painter paint color) for the main overall color which gave it a nice heavy duty industrial look, then various bronzes/coppers, blues, reds and gray, to do a bit of detailing. I was trying to keep things fairly simple, as game pieces rather than focal points for dioramas or the like.

So I set up assorted figures from my collection of sci-fi minis - just randomly, no actual game in progress (so far).