Dirty Orcs and Others

Pursuant to the comments on the post: Improvised Shields I "dirtied" up the orcs's shields with a light overall wash of old GW flesh wash, followed with dabbing here and there with a somewhat darker brown wash mixed with a small amount of a bit of gray paint, on both shields and lower parts of their garments. I think it turned out suitably grubby. I did all of them, but here are a few representatives.

I also finished painting a Reaper rat ogre and a Reaper giant horned viper (it came with 2 heads, the other was more like a real snake, but I liked the idea of the horns to make it stand out from other snakes). I tried to base the horned viper's colors and pattern on the colors and pattern of a real life horned viper species.

Improvised Shields

I made some shields for some of the orcs in this post: a-mess-of-orcs. Since I didn't have any spare shields that fit them the way I wanted I ended up making some shields out of plastic card and a bit of sculpting putty (the latter mostly to sculpt straps like the one you can see on the orc with raised shield on the left of the picture). I wanted the shields to look suitably scrappy, rough, but big and sturdy. Looking at the photo, I may want to "dirty" them up a bit. I think they look a little too clean and shiny.

(click to embiggen)

These guys are orcs of the Black Eye. I also have orcs of the Red Eye, the Bone Head orcs (skull and sometimes bones as their emblem), and the Broken Bone goblins, among others.

2014 rolls over into 2015

I managed to end the old year with a board game play through, of Descent 2: Journeys in the Dark, First Blood scenario, played solo with 2 characters. It was a quick game/scenario - actually the playing time was less than the setup time, because I had to look up lots of things and find all the bits and pieces and sort everything out. Hopefully I can get more games in and get quicker at setup.

And then I started the new year with another play through of a board game. In this case, Relic Expedition, which isn't designed as a solo game at all, but I tried it out using a solo variant I found on Board Game Geek. It wasn't bad, but not entirely satisfying either.

I hope to play more games this year, and paint more miniatures, and maybe even get started in an actual solo rpg.

Happy New Year and Happy Gaming to all!

Full Steam Ahead, Mr. Starkey!

No, it's not a yellow submarine, just a little steampunkship.

I had started this some time ago and finally finished it this long weekend. The main body is made from a plastic Mott's applesauce container, cut in half. The nose and tail pieces are made bits of plasticard cut and filed/sanded to shape. The periscope is made from some plastic tubing from an old ballpoint pen. I sculpted the elbow bend with sculpting putty since I couldn't find any useful bits for that part. A bit of paint, and all that's left is varnish to finish it off.

Solo Gaming by the Book

Not having much time or energy for gaming lately one thing I have managed is playing through the introductory pdfs for The Lost City of the Dwarves. These are "choose your own adventure"/solo dungeon types of books/games. You can read more about them at Lost City of the Dwarves
The introductory pdfs are free, and a good full adventure in their own right. You create a character and play through the 3 pdfs, level up your character (if they survive), gain items that you can use as you go, etc. I love dwarves, and these pdfs/books give a nice background and history, lots of flavor, as well as humor and tense or more dramatic moments as well. Some very good artwork, too. I would definitely recommend trying out the free pdfs, which you can get from DriveThruRPG. I loved it enough that I went ahead and purchased the printed version of the main adventure. That's the first part of a new adventure in the Lost City.

A Mess of Orcs

(not sure what the word for a large group of orcs is; like murder of crows, pride of lions, etc. Horde of orcs? Mess seems kind of appropriate).

These are more old Foundry orcs. I made a few conversions, swapping in the hand holding the horn and another hand holding a sword on the orc with the horn in the lower left, a hand with a big cleaver chopper weapon on the orc in the front, a couple of spiky metal shoulder pads on a couple of other orcs, and removal of extra weapons from a few. I may add shields to some or many of these "lads" if I come up with shields I think would be suitable. 25 orcs in one big mass! I think that's the most figures I've painted in one batch in a long time, if ever. There was enough variety and I switched colors around so it wasn't tedious.

(you know the drill - click to embiggen)

Orcs and More

A few figures fresh off the painting table. Some old GW so-called "black orcs" - I think these are really tough orcs, sort of like uruk hai. Unfortunately, for some reason I only ever got around to buying the command group, so they have no more orcs or their ilk to command. I guess they'll have to settle for bossing around lesser orcs.

A few regular orc archers, an old purchase from Foundry.

And some sort of plague-ridden mangy dog-like creature from Reaper's Bones line (I think it could be a Pathfinder goblin dog, which are not canines but more like large carnivorous rat creatures), and a dungeon mimic from Otherworld Miniatures.