Steve - 28mm Fantasy Wizard with Warband henchmen for Frostgrave

 This year I am aiming to paint up minis for games I am playing or am aiming to play.  Among the minis and games in my To Do pile is Frostgrave.    This here is about half of the minis I want to eventually paint up for options to build and grow my first Frostgrave Warband. 

I have fully embraced the notion that official Frostgrave miniatures are not required.  Thus the Wizard to lead my Warband is a recent 3d print found on Thingiverse and for the rest of  I dug deep into the pile of unpainted minis I assembled many years ago from the old GW Mordheim and Fantasy Battle kits.

Also for this year, I wanted to venture into painting some minis and terrain for  playing games in cold settings, as I never tried painting anything wintery before.  To make these mini bases frosty for Frostgrave, I painted white the classic basing mix of glue and sand.  Based upon a tip I learned when watching the mini painting hobby folks on the yootoobs, I also washed the white sandy  bases in an approximately  1-4 ratio of azure blue paint mixed with water to help imbue the white snow with an impression of  icy cold.   Then to break up the blue hue I also dabbed on a few spots of snow flock  that I picked up as an impulse buy from my local hobby shop. 

Since most of these pointy weapon wielders could find a home in games played within rather mundane world settings, I'll leverage the old grey beardy guy wearing a tall blue pointy hat who is holding a zippity-zappity staff to pull a challenging book from the Fantasy section of the  library.

28mm figures 

 5 pts - Wizard(Foot Figure)        
20 pts - Thugs with Clubs (Foot Figure) [4x5pts]
25 pts -  Man At Arms with Sword and buckler (Foot Figure) [5x5pts]
 5pts -   Templar with Halberd (Foot Figure) 
 5pts -  Infantryman with 2h Sword (Foot Figure)
20 pts - Challenge Library = "Fantasy"
Total 80 points

Steve: Cowboys at Church

  I have here a fist full of western gunslingers (mostly 3D prints from 3dbreed's  'Join or Die wanted collection'  along with a couple model finds from Thingaverse)  as well as a MDF model church from NorthernLightsTerrain which I had converted a bit by cladding it in stir-stick 'lumber' and cardboard 'shingles'. 

What I have painted up here are New Acquisitions because these are among the very newest additions to my pile of unpainted shame  potential....... representing a rare occurrence where my models are fully painted before receiving a layer of dust while awaiting the touch of a brush.  I'm happy to say it was only a mere few weeks between a conversation with ByronM about Western themed minis and games sparked getting these printed-up shortly before start of this year's challenge and posting them painted here now.

I'm not sure with what system these models will first give cause for me to roll some dice in a old west style  shooty-shooty-bang-bang skirmish game.  So in addition to these being among the quickest turnaround between acquired to painted in my collection, they are also the first set of models I completed painting before ever putting them into the field of play.

I learned a bit in this painting effort to push a the edges of my comfort zone, as this was the first time I used a variety of  Army Painter speed paints on models I finished, getting used to how each speed paint provided coverage and color, while also spending some time mixing speed paints for different shades of blues, browns and reds used here.  I don't think I figured out yet  how to best get speed from these speed paints, but they did boost my rate of progress to be a tick quicker than that of a tortoise on a tea break.  Also, this is first time I painted with white on modules and terrain to any significant degree of satisfaction where I decided it was good enough to game with and time to move on to the next  in my pile of unpainted.

I started this painting effort on the first day of this year]s challenge, working them as a batch of somewhat related color schemes.  I'd like to say a combination of xmas holiday and familiy events kept me away from my paints to delay readiness for my first post until now,  but I confess it was more due me getting back into the painting groove, trying out new "speed" paints and more than a few rounds of paint correction due to  color experiments gone awry (and due to accidental pigment applications to unintended targets arising from unfortunate incidents of suboptimal brush control).  So now with my painting digits recalibrated, paint pots relocated, and ocular orbs re-sighted I aim to pick up the pace to stay on my total challenge points target, and prepare more models for future game tables.