Kings of War - 15mm League of Rhordia - More Halflings

I've been working on reinforcements to my League of Rhordia army, this time I've got some more halflings done.

Searching through one of my many boxes of unpainted minis I found several bags of Essex Miniatures halflings.  There were enough for another troop of the scouts, another regiment of archers, and a couple of regiments of halflings with various weapons.  I put the archers on one side and concentrated on the scouts and a regiment of the others.

The Scouts are pretty much the same as the previous troop, though I chose a different mini for the leader, simply gluing some copper wire on his back for a bow.

I didn't have enough spear armed minis for a regiment of spearlings, but I had a start.  Looking at the spears I thought they were a bit short, even for a halfling.  When you're that small you want as long a spear as possible to keep the foe away.  I'd already replaced the pikes on the Dogs of War here, so I used the same process to re equip not just the models with spears, but also to convert some of the others into spearlings.  To make them look more like a unified fighting force I added shields made simply from card circles cut using a hole punch and the card from the back of a notebook.  When I checked the stats for halfling spearlings I found they had Defence of 3, suggesting the minimum of armour, so I suppose I could have managed without shields, but I like the look.
I also gave them a standard (clip art) and replaced the Warhammer Empire standard on the archers with a similar standard.

  

I'm pleased with the end result, next time I do halflings I have a plan for some more cavalry, but I'd also like to build up a regiment (or two) of halfling Braves.  Essex do some nice halflings with farm weapons and mining tools, and I think they'd look good in an irregular unit of militia.

The War Crow Hatches!

My good friend and some-time co blog writer, Merlin, now  has his own blog.

You can find him here.

D&D Minis - Francis' Friends (part 4)

When I showed you the undercoated minis for Hana the human rogue and Citronella the dwarf cleric the idea was that Citronella's player would paint them.  However, work and life got in the way, so i've finished them off.

Citronella's player sent me a character sketch which gave me the colours to work with, and Hana's player showed me a picture at the FLGS that gave me some ideas.

The wave design showing her allegiance to the Ocean god.

I tried to keep to a fairly limited pallet of muted colours so she can sneak around.

Hana carries, and regularly uses, a Healing Potion.

In the current adventure the heroes have been exploring an old 'Dragon Shrine'.  It has been overrun with kobolds (you can see my kobolds here and here) and their pets.

The bulk of kobold encounteres include giant Rats, but the tribe had an Ambush Drake, perhaps they think its a bit like a dragon?

The Ambush Drake was a WotC D&D prepaint, and wasn't put together very well.  It had a bad lean, due partly to the two halves not being fitted correctly.

Wonky Ambush Drake  

A quick paintjob and a rebase improves it considerably; I was able to give a more upright posture when I based it.

As the party are close to finishing the current adventure, I'd better get some minis ready for the next one.

Some Non Surprising Kickstarter News, and Some Surprising Non Kickstarter News

Last week Reaper Miniatures announced the Bones V Kickstarter, to launch in September.  Hardly a surprise, given the success of the previous four campaigns.  There may have been some issues with the production and distribution, but pretty much everyone must have their stuff by now, so probably time for a new one.

It's also not surprising that Mantic Games announced Kings of War 3 to arrive in October.  What may be more surprising is that this will not be funded by Kickstarter.

Oh, and talking of new editions, Frostgrave is getting a second edition next year.

D&D Minis - Francis and Friends (part 3), now with added Foes!

I've finished off the Francis model I started here.  All that was left was varnishing to protect the paintjob and replacing the integral base with a clear acrylic disc.  I've talked about my rebasing here.  For softish plastic like the old D&D Prepaints I'm happy to paint them on the old base and simply cut it off once everything is finished.  The black plastic even gives a bit of a shade effect for the soles of the boots.  With other minis, especially metal ones, I prefer to remove any base before painting, drill and add wire pegs and then paint, basing using the pegs to help the mini attach to the base after varnishing.

The completed Francis

Francis now has some finished friends to accompany him.  Firstly here is Torrin, the half-orc barbarian and ex-gladiatrix.  She is one of the new Wizkids unpainted D&D character minis, in this case Female Half-orc Barbarian.  She was a fairly straightforward paintjob.  Torrin's player requested mostly brown clothing, which I interpreted as lots of different shades of brown, from a reddish chestnut to a very pale tan.  I gave her a red cropped top to add some brightness.  I'm not quite there yet with the skin tones; this is only the second orc/half orc mini I've painted with a grey skin tone and I think it needs a bit more highlighting.  The hair could do with a lighter final highlight as well, perhaps, as the mini tends to look a bit dull, especially at a distance.  It's a nice mini, though a little slender after looking through lots of Reaper bones.  The winged boots are a nice touch and I'm sure her player would welcome a suitable magic item.  I took the liberty of painting what I'm sure are supposed to be greaves as flesh as she looked a little over-dressed for the description I was given.

Nalia the Dragonkin Sorcerer provides the arcane magic for the party.  She is a metal mini from Oathsworn miniatures in their Sensible Shoes range.   Another nice mini to paint, though removing the integral base reminded me of how nice plastic minis can be to work on.  Her player requested muted colours with a nod to a chromatic dragon's colour somewhere.  We toyed with both the eyes and the 'hair tendrils', but in the end the flame seemed easiest to do and most noticable.

Just so the heroes don't have it all their own way, here are some monsters I've recently completed.

In Teramarr, Dragonkin (that world's name for Dragonborn) grow throughout their lives.  Older Dragonkin tend to be larger, and there are even tales about some Dragonkin having wings long ago.

Skeletal 'Dragonman' from Reaper Bones.  The base is the same size as Nalia's above so he was clearly quite a bit older when he died.

This is a repainted Mage Knight mini.  The base is 30mm rather than the 25mm bases above, so it's a pretty impressive mini.  I used the same light undercoat and green wash technique that I tried on the Kings of War wraiths here.

More Undead nastiness.  The Minotaur skeleton is another Reaper Bones mini

Finally a Kobold Inventor.  I talked about possibly converting one from Reaper's last lot of Bones kobolds (they've changed the design for the latest releases in Bones 4 - again) when I got some of the little critters painted here.  However, while going through a box of the old D&D Prepaints I found a couple of Kobold Trapmasters.  He has a very limited two colour paintjob, and he has a crossbow on his back, but I thought with a bit of work he might make a fun inventor.  I removed the bulk of the crossbow and covered the rough bits with a greenstuff backpack.  There was some greenstuff left (isn't there always?) so I gave him a sphere on his belt.  This was originally going to be a clay flask, but the colours looked too much like the skin, so it became metal.  I'll convert and paint up the other one sometime, but it's unlikely I'll need many.

It may not be obvious from the above pictures, but I have two main approaches when painting these minis.  Character minis and important NPCs or boss monsters usually get a full shaded and blended paintjob.  I'm still working on my blending techniques, and I admit I have quite a way to go, but it's fun to do, if time consuming.  Monsters get a much quicker technique based on how I do my 15mm (and 28mm) armies:  Basecoat, extreme highlight then a wash.  The wash (I tend to use a mix of three parts Army Painter Strong tone to one part AP Soft tone) adds depth and shadow and makes the contrast between the basecoat and the highlights less obvious.  It's also a lot quicker, a good thing given how many minis I have to paint.  I should also add that a sensible choice of undercoat, where relevant, can save time too.  The kobold was given a light brown undercoat which also served as the basecoat for it's leather armour.

Bones Incoming

I'm waiting for my Reaper Bones 4 kickstarter delivery.  Hopefully I'l have lots of goodies to show next week.

UPDATE
My Bones did indeed arrive.  They are great, really well detailed and I'll have a lot of fun with them.
I'm checking them off to make sure that everything is present and correct, then I'll show off some of my favourites.

D&D Character Minis - Francis (part 2) and Friends

I've (just about) finished Francis.  He's good enough to be used tomorrow night anyway.
Here is how I converted the mini, now here he is in all his painted glory.

As a first for me, I used the suggested 'triads' for Vallejo Game Color paints.  These aren't sold in sets or anything, but the leaflet available with the range gives suggested paint codes to make your own (you can find an online copy of it here).

I didn't quite follow the method, instead I started with the shadow tone and gave it a wash before resetting then working up to pure highlights.  This is a technique I still need to do a lot of practice on, and random character minis should be ideal for this.  If only I had loads of unpainted minis to practice on...

Francis needs varnishing and basing on a clear acrylic disc, then he will be finished.  I'm really pleased with how he came out, the figure is pretty good considering he is just a common mook originally.  Even without the modifications he would look pretty good just with a better paint job than the original.

Here are a couple of Francis' friends.  Well, they aren't really friends yet, but once they've had to work together to escape the pirates they should be colleagues at least.

First, Citronella, the dwarven cleric.  She started out as Freya Fangbreaker and is a Reaper bones mini.  She has had her axe replaced with the head of a mantic dwarf shieldbreaker, with a bit of cocktail stick as the shaft.

She also has a pouch from the ever useful Frostgrave Soldiers sprue.

I removed the molded on arrow (of Law?) from the shield.  Citronella is a cleric of the Ocean god, so a nice hand painted wave would look good here.

Next, Hana, the human rogue, a WotC pre-painted mini, actually an elven sorceress.  The original had a wavy dagger, but the character has a short sword, so one was taken from a set of Fireforge historical minis.  I was going to add some pouches or rope, but the mini has a cluttered belt of items already.  I did trim the ears slightly to reduce the elven look.

These last two minis will be painted by one of the players.  With her permission I'll show you what they look like when she's done.