Zomtober (and October!) Round-up

As usual, here's the round-up of my figures completed for Zomtober 2015...and less than usual, a round-up of my figures completed in the full month! I may try and keep this as a monthly post at the start of every new month, showing the figures I've completed the previous month.

My Zomtober 2015 selection! I may be slightly cheating here - there are 6 figures in there that don't specifically fit the description of zombie or survivor, but they're creepy and gore-slathered and I painted them in the month of October, so...

From the figures shown here we have:

• 3 ex-Tengu Miniatures female zeds - one is a "special infected" of some kind, probably a Smoker
• 6 Studio Miniatures plastic zeds
• 2 CP Models Night Horrors - these are two of the same miniature, but I've slightly reposed one of them to add a bit of variety - they're to be used as Lovecraftian creatures
• 2 Fenris Games Undead - again, two of the same miniature (actually the plastic version from the Cthulhu Wars boardgame and bought very cheaply from eBay) - one has been converted to be an Adherer (conversion idea borrowed from the brilliant Minis by Finch)
• 4 Deep Ones - another Lovecraftian creature (and my favourite by far!) - Reaper Bones miniatures with slight conversions to give variety

13 miniatures completed that are definitely Zomtober related...plus 4 with a tenuous link (as in, they may appear in games with my modern zeds...)

I am satisfied with that! I have had a bunch of holidays in from work this month though, especially in the later part of the month, which is when I got some stuff done! I failed on the "one mini per week" aim, but hopefully made up for it!

But wait, there's more!

Here are the miniatures I completed in total for the month - I rediscovered these ants and maggots, started last year as low level dungeon critters and got them done in a night. I also needed more treasure counters for use in a Frostgrave game on Halloween evening, so got some of the tokens I'd built a few months back painted up.

Oh and I completed a load of unit bases for use in Lion/Dragon Rampant!

I'm now starting to work through this lot - the last of my assembled zombie-apocalypse stuff, plus Lovecraftian creatures! A few of the figures shown here are for post-apocalypse (more Fallout-y) rather than zomb-apoc.

Comments are most welcome - roll on Zomtober 2016! Great work by everyone!

Game of Thrones - Wildling Reinforcements

As mentioned in the post from a few days ago, I've decided to add to my wildlings (and Nightswatcg/Men of the North) to bring them up to the warband size required for games of Lion Rampant or SAGA. I am also using these as the source of my warband members for Frostgrave, using them alongside a Warg-themed Witch (I have the official Witch and apprentice who fit the fur-clad wildling theme perfectly and they may see double-duty in this Lion Rampant force).

Above you can see the start of the additions to the warband - these are generally based on a big bag of plastic mordor orcs I bought from a friend, plus some metals I bought from another internet friend. The bag of orcs was lacking in bowmen, so I ended up hacking up some Lord of the Rings plastic elf bowmen I had sat around doing nothing for their bow arms. I did shorten these to fit with the wildlings a bit more. I also included a bunch of weapon swaps from spare parts from the Gripping Beast plastic kits.

In addition to the bits from Gripping Beast, I also used some heads available from CP Models, as shown on my favourite conversion from the bunch above, this dude and his horn. The metal figures shown above include some of the brilliant Mordor Uruk Hai, who will be used as sub-commanders in the force (and as Templars in the Witch warband for Frostgrave) with Dane axes replacing their missing weapons and another two metal orc characters with slight conversions to turn them into Wargs for the force.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thanks for reading!

Game of Thrones - Wildling Chieftain

This is the current chief of my Wildling warband - the figure is from the Lucid Eye range that can be seen on Facebook: Lucid Eye. A great selection of figures - I hope I find an excuse to buy more!

The figure immediately struck me as perfect for a Wildling leader - the face reminded me of the Thenns from the Game of Thrones TV series. He was previously wielding a stone-tipped spear, which I decided to upgrade for a savage-looking axe. The head of the axe is from the Viking sprue from Gripping Beast and was taken from a Dane axe.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome - thanks for reading and have a lovely day!

Game of Thrones - Men of the North

Finally for the Men of the North, a group shot! The veteran Nightswatch Rangers, the Lord oh House Umber, the head of his house guard and the houndmaster I showed a couple of weeks back as I painted him around the same time - I had it in mind that he would be the master of hounds for a Northern Lord, helping his Lord hunt down the last of the Wildlings left after their raid. I'm very happy with how these have turned out! 

I have lots to add to these: the Warriors of House Umber (plastic Rohan from Lord of the Rings, on foot and mounted), more brothers of the Nightswatch (plastic Rangers of Gondor - these will represent the standard brothers of the watch, whereas the metals are veterans) and then some warriors of another Northern house (plastic Warriors of Minas Tirith - their armour looks sufficiently different to that of the Rohan forces - maybes the forces of White Harbor? I have been playing the Game of Thrones game by Telltale Games recently, so perhaps House Forester?). 

As usual, comments and suggestions are most welcome - many thanks for reading and have a brilliant day!

Game of Thrones - Nights Watch

Once again continuing the Game of Thrones project, here are my veteran Rangers of the Nightswatch. They're built from the metal Lord of the Rings Rangers of Gondor, which generally go for quite high prices second hand now, but I found these as an auction on eBay - I got the 6 miniatures for around £1 a figure and they went straight in the paint stripper.

I started these off in my normal method which goes like this; spray undercoat grey primer, then mix up a mid brown and basecoat everything including bases. Follow this up with scorched brown on the base, then when all of that is completely dry, drybrush tan all over, then drybrush stone grey all over. From here you've got a starting point where everything is picked out and ready to go - use thinned paints and washes to block the various parts in. Although the Nightswatch are known for wearing black, I didn't use a true black on anything but the bass edging - I used a lot of shades of brown-black and grey-black to paint their uniforms.

This guy is the one in charge - I was thinking of a grizzled veteran like Quorin Halfhand. The base figure was actually Faramir from Lord of the Rings. I remove his head and sword with a jewellers saw and replaced them with parts from the plastic kits from Gripping Beast - an axe from their Vikings and a head from the Dark Age Warriors kit. A little bit of modelling putty added fur to his collar to hide the join.

Finally, I got these figures of Boromir spare from various Lord of the Rings job lots I'd received - I thought I'd turn him into a member of the Nightswatch, as well as turning him into a severely injured objective marker. The arrows were missing from the figure and his sword was twisted at the end, so I decided to add replacement arrows from a paper clip and some foil, plus remove part of the sword to make it look like a broken blade.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thanks for reading!

 

Game of Thrones - Northern Lord and Household Guard

These gentlemen are part of my Game of Thrones project - I've already shown the start of my wildlings on the blog, whilst these belong to my "Men of the North" faction - these will accompany some house warriors and men of the Nightswatch against the growing wildling threat.

I love this sculpt of Denethor from the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings line - there's a palpable sense of power and character emanating from his stance and scowl! I thought he'd fit the project perfectly as a Lord of one of the Northern houses that are close to the wall - I decided on the colours of House Umber, which also seemed to fit his stature.

I picked up this Gamling figure at a very low price on eBay amongst some other figures from a seller - I thought that his equipment and wargear would mark him out as a wealthier Lord or potentially the head of a household guard. I painted his cloak in quite a neutral colour, so I could potentially use him in a number of different uses.

These are the first figures that I'm showing on the blog from my expanded Game of Thrones project - as my projects usually do, this one has grown from being a skirmish warband of wildlings vs a skirmish warband of Nightswatch into two Lion Rampant-sized forces. I've got a number of connected posts that will be appearing soon, so come back in the near future for more!

 

Comments and suggestions are most welcome - thanks for reading!