ByronM - Frogdog, Mole Preacher, and Stone Building

 

Today I have a group of three submissions that are all vastly different.  Let's start out with my favourite and the oddest, most NSFW one, which of course means a Kingdom Death model.  This is one I have waited a while to get to and paint, the mighty Frogdog and her multitude of dogpoles. This is a huge model, being on a 100mm round base and towering a little over that in height.

This is one of the newer KD models and as is normal in KD, she is anything but normal.  This is a cross between what looks like a simian face and a frog/toad body.  To help add to the strangeness of the model, she has human breasts hanging underneath and 6 human faces on her back, each with a vagina for a mouth and is giving birth to more "dogpoles".  Only in the strange and inhuman world of Kingdom Death could this creature be a thing! 

In game, the monster likes hopping around the swamp from lily-pad to lily pad that it treats as trampolines, sending people flying through the air.  She also charges up her double sphincter before releasing the most noxious of farts (she even has a fart AI deck with various toxic odours ready to release) that cause you to pass out and potentially drown in the swamp.  All in all it sounds like a cool and different fight, which is what KD is all about (although definitely not for everyone!).

Next up I have a small addition for my Burrows & Badgers collection, a small mole preacher.  I call him Friar Tuck, since he reminds me of the outfit in the Disney Robin Hood animated movie, just not big enough or fat enough, but its all they have that is close in the line.  As with all my B&B stuff it is a pretty simple cartoony paint job, but looks good with all the other miniatures.

Lastly, I have a 3D printed stone house from the Greendale line that can be found on myminifactory (there is also an equivalent line called Grimdale that is the destroyed versions of each building).  I printed this on my Anycubic Kobra S1 that I got a few months back, and it did a great job for a filament printer.  

However it did really remind me why I HATE filament prints. The lines and textures are a pain in the ass to work with, and I would really rather have printed in in resin.  The only reason I didn't is that I have about 10 buildings to paint up in this line, and another 10 for the ruined versions, and filament costs about $5 a building to print while resin would be $30-$50 per building.  To be fair, once on the table and at arms reach you can not really see the lines, so while I hate dealing with them, its not really noticeable when you are playing a game with them. 

The building is 5.5" long, 3.5" wide, and 5" tall, making it fairly substantial.  I painted it a stone grey colour to start with, then went in with 5 different shades of tan and brown and started painting random stones different colours.  From there it was washed to mute the colours a bit and then onto the roof and all the details.  Honestly, it too WAY too long to paint and was not worth it in the challenge due to the huge time sink it was as I had to be careful to always wet-brush and not dry-brush for the print lines to show up.  It probably took me twice as long as the frogdog to paint!  I am still thinking of adding some flock and moss to the roof, but decided to leave it for now until all are painted and I decide if I am going to do snow or moss.

And providing a group shot with a standard space marine for scale.

 

Overall these models should give me a grand total of  45 points.  The Frogdog is equivalent to the King I posted earlier in the challenge and should count as a 40mm monster for 25 points.  The mole preacher is a 25mm model for 5 points. Lastly the building is equivalent to many others that I have awarded 15 points to, so am claiming the same for myself here. As always though, points don't really matter to me, I am happy to just be getting stuff done, so adjust as you see fit.

 

Steve: Gaslands, KoW, Terrain (121 points)

Ever since Byron got me hooked on the table top visuals that 3D printing can bestow upon a Kings of War  table scape where upon the minis were shrunk to 10mm scale so more minis fit within the units bases, thereby making the battlefield appear more epic....I have continued to add more units to my Army and craft more terrain for the KPW 10mm battle field.

A unit of 10mm Trolls will now bolster my KoW army building options, and and a dollar store Halloween Skeleton-snake decoration converted into an "ancient bones within the hill" terrain piece will now provide an obstacle for unit movement and block line of sight  for some upcoming KoW battles

To further complement my "scrubland"  terrain for 10mm KoW battles, I also crafted and painted up a couple hills and some smaller clusters of trees.

If you were pondering over ideas about how to create some variety of scatter terrain with some low-profile base that were both cheap and not a collection of square corners.. I can suggest trying an idea I found when viewing war game hobby yootoob videos - use old CDs as bases for some of your custom terrain pieces.

Hills, Trees and old bones are rather Nature-ish. . so these pieces I think will enable me to check out a "Nature" book from the AHPC challenge library.

Shifting creative gears and jumping across genres......

Music is Art, Art is Music...the creative forces cannot be stopped, nor can they be 'shushed' into quiet submission by beleaguered AHPC  librarians. .. Thereby the risen dead Bone Heads band rocked out in the AHPC Library and grabbed me an "Art" book from the shelf  .  

The Bone Heads are 4 minis created by Ral Partha waaaay back in 1985 as part of their imports line..  These guys are from the same blister pack of  2 skeletons on guitar, 1 Skeleton drummer, and 1 skeleton dood strapped into the drum kit to hold all the drums together.

The Gaslands car is a converted toy matchbox car - a $2 child's toy reimagined via the power of DYI mini-craft--  with some parts from NorthstarFigures 'Implements of Carnage' bitz sprues and a healthy application of trash bashing with plastic I saved from the recycling bin and reworked with files, knives and glue...

Also painted up for this week is a smattering of scatter terrain - piles of oil barrels and car tires that can used to pretty-up a Gaslands table, and can also to suggest where car lanes exist before collisions and weapons fire alters the flow of game traffic.... and I suppose these barrels an tires could also lend well to other games where there was still shooty-shooty-bang-bang, but less vehicular explosions ..

Considering all the  Terrain I painted for this post simply as a pile of terrain stuff to store between days when the dice are not rolling,  and imagining  if converted it all into a liquid, this assortment of terrain could fill a 6x6x6 inch cube cup..  Hmm ..  not a brew I'd drink nor a cup shape I'd recommend as best design to avoid chin drenching spills...  so I will leave these terrain items intact and ready for game, and give into my feeling there are 20 points of terrain here.

121 Total Points

15 pts = x1    Gaslands Car, Vehicle 20mm
10 pts = x10  Trolls(KoW), Foot Figure, 10mm (10x1pt)
16 pts = x4   Undead Skeleton Metal Band, Foot Figure 20mm (4x4pts)
20 Pts = x1 cube, 6x6x6 inch of Terrain cube
Challenge Library 
20 pts = S3 "Art" (Undead Metal)
20 pts = S3 "Nature" (scrubland terrain)
20 pts= S4 "DII"  (MatchBox toy car converted to Gaslands battle car)

Steve - 10mm characters and terrain for Kings of War

 This week I competed the last  of the minis I needed to have a fully painted 2000pt Despoiler force for Kings of War, with a few extra minis to have some options to change between games.  A magus conclave for ranged attacks, and a couple mounted commanders and a spell slinger I can attach to regiments.

I play a lightly bent version of KoW with 10 mm minis rather than 28 mm minis on base, and I use Depoilers as proxies for units from the rule book's Varangur army list. Same rules and points as the real KoW rules, but a different look on the game table.

For the Magus conclave, which serve as an artillery unit, I roughly applied a base layer of spackle in an effort to create the impression that the five mages were collectively summoning up a swirling mass of chaotic energy from which each turn one among them could channel a magically lobbed ranged attack.  (So I am hoping this pieces does not look like five guys in bath robs standing on a badly mowed lawn.)

I also completed the first of the 10mm terrain I am working on to enable me to host a KoW game upon a wargame table kitted out to look more like a combat among the ruins within the lost wooded scrub lands, rather than a battle upon the endless blasted barren plains (which is the kindest theme I can think of to describe the shameful horror of a naked game table top).

Both terrain pieces feature some spare bits and bobs ByronM gifted me, and both pieces  make use of old CDs for the base bottoms.  I reimagined a slightly miss-printed castle corner tower into a lone tower a top a jutting mound, and I fashioned some extras from a bag of tiny trees into a wooded hill.  

The tower is 6 inches high and a CD is 5 inches wide, so I am thinking the two terrain pieces combined neatly fill a 6x6 inch cube. 


10mm figures - proxies for Kings of War
Despoiler Lord On Steed (Mounted) 2x2pts = 4pts
Despoiler Mage (Foot Figure)    = 1 pt
Magus Conclave  (Foot Figure) 5x1pt = 5 pts 
Tower and wooded hill (Terrain) 6x6inch = 20pts
Total 30 points

From ByronM: 15mm Striking Scorpions and Wizard's Tower

 

For today's post I have a few items, but first up are some more 15mm Warhammer 40k items.  These are some of the left over models from last years Eldar project.  These are 11 3d printed resin Striking Scorpions and a Wave Serpent for transport.

 

While normally only 10 models are in a squad I painted up both versions of the squad exarch (leader) so that I have options in game.  One version has twin swords and shuriken pistols and the other has a huge two handed chain sword.  I also have the Wave Serpent ready to transport them into battle at a moments notice. 

 

 

I tried to go with the original green and yellow paint scheme but I tried several times to get the swords and guns to look good in yellow and I eventually had to give up and go with black and silver for them.  I did leave some markings and the hair in yellow, although it just would not pop bright yellow no matter what I did, so not thrilled with them, but too frustrated to do any more.

Next up is a 3d printed tower that I printed at 10mm scale to use as terrain for my 10mm Kings of War project.  I tried to give it some character by painting the stones in various shades, and think it worked out well.  It should look good on a hill top in a game soon. As for size it is about 4" tall and has a base about 2" square.

Steve - Old and New, Fallen Tower Terrain and 10mm Skeletons

 This Fallen Tower resin Terrain model piece sat in storage for over 20 years with only a hasty dry brush over a black base coat.   Now after a repaint, washes, dry brushing and some green, at long last this old model looks like what I had envisioned back when I bought this from Campaign Outfitters way back when I used to have hair on my head. 

Recently, this past weekend Byron gave me a couple ranks of 10mm Skeletons to try painting, to see if I would be interested in starting a 10mm fantasy army for games like a rejigged 10mm Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB).  

Dealers always give the first dose for free.....  

Looks like I am going to embark on a new 10mm addiction.  However, rather than more Skeletons in future I am feeling the small call of Chaos...

Gaslands car, "Roll'n Hazard" and Terrain

 Another Gaslands car, converted and painted during our challenge window.   I kept the original flames paint job from the toy car and converted it using parts from the North Star Minis Gaslands conversion kit, parts from my old Gorka-Morka kit and some trash bashing..

I wanted a different load out option, so the "Roll'n Hazard" has pairs of both forward and back facing machine guns.    I painted a Hazard roll sign on the driver door, because sometimes punching an idea on the nose is fun.

In the edges of the picture are 4 pieces of old dollar store $1 army man toy terrain for sand bag bunkers,  which had a crappy 20 + year old grey dry brush paint job before I gave them a proper repaint for out challenge and some practice for stone painting...

Stone Hut Terrain (Steve)

 Another old piece of Terrain from my old pile of unpainted shame.

I recall buying this hand made ceramic 'craft' Stone Hut from Campaign Outfitters around 1992.  Waaaaay back then there was precious few Terrain pieces up for sale in the hobby store.  It saw a few battles with crappy coat of grey dry brushing, and spent many a year packed-up and incomplete.  I always wanted to give it a better job more befitting the efforts of the one who crafted it.

So our paint challenge and my need to practice painting 'stone' gave me the push to put a proper paint job on this piece.

The bottom of the ceramic hut is signed by the maker.  I assume they had a method to crank out over a hundred of these little huts, but the signed bottom I assume is a testament to the hand-crafting effort.

"Mitic-Mario Studios  (c) 88-92 #109"

40k Terrain, Ruined Imperial Buildings (Steve)

 

I forget exactly where and when I bought these 6 pieces of  40k terrain, but  until this shadow paint challenge these were assembled, base-coated and sitting in my pile of unpainted shame for over 25 years.   Since I am going to soon paint up some recently purchased Mierce Miniatures Atalantes Mesokolossos and Kolossos, I thought I should first practice up my 'stone' painting techniques.  

I started with a couple layers of sponge stippling grey, dry brushing lighter shades of greys, and some brown/beige in the deeper parts.  I found the GW black templar contrast paints worked well for painting in the shooting pock mark damage, and for the lines between floor tiles and some of the stones I actually used some 25+ year old Citadel Color brown ink wash.  Turns out that in my old boxes of 40k stuff I recently unpacked after decades in storage, I still have a couple pots of Citadel Color inks and paints that are still viable.

So this 40k terrain is out of the pile of shame and ready for play, and painted with colors bottled and sold over a quarter century apart.

Gaslands - Racing Gates (Steve)

 I completed the set of 4 Gaslands Race Gates I got from Byron ( and his 3d Printer dood "A").  

When I took a liking to the Race Gates Byron uses on his Gaslands gaming table, I felt I should also have a set to equip myself for hosting some Gaslands games in future.   After assembling the printed parts into gates, I could not resist punching up the original gate design with a few extra bits n' bobs glued here and there to give my set of race gates their own look.

So my old 40k bitz box was raided again in pursuit of Gaslands conversions, and a some few odd bitz from my old Gorka Morka set were pilfered. (It seems my old Gorka Morka set is doomed to be repurposed for Gaslands.) Parts of sprues and scrp plastic were cut into extra gate metals, and 'spiky bitz' were snapped off the left overs from 3d printed of Gaslands weapons.   The main gate's skull on a spike  is remains from an old Warhammer Fantasy Battle conversion I abandoned over 25 years ago.  One of the gas cans I glued next to one of the gate columns, was from an old tank model my uncle had built and broken in his youth over 35 years ago, (some of those busted tanks parts found their way into my early days bitz box)........ so I am left to wonder to what extent the stuff in  my bitz box are just let over model parts verses modeling relics.    

Racing Gates are a significant terrain piece for Gaslands game scenarios such as "Death Race" and "The Race".  So whatever Gaslands cars you are currently rolling with,  a set of Racing Gates can be of use on most every Gaslands game table you battle upon.