A Cluster of Spiders

Greetings! Here’s hoping you aren’t an arachnaphobe! These eight-legged beasties have taken a bit longer than I originally expected! I blazed through the bases of the 8 *normal* spiders (normal if a spider roughly the size of a medium beast of burden can be described as normal...) and had most of the spiders drybrushed...before realising they still had approximately 1200 moldlines to clean (after I’d spent a good chunk of time cleaning them up already!). Those spiders are actually from Sainsburys supermarket, from their Halloween selection. I’ve had them for a couple of years with plans to do this and finally got around to it for Rangers of Shadow Deep.

The other two (the ones with more than eight-legs and a lot of eyeballs) were from eBay - I believe they’re from the Bloodborne video game boardgame that was released - I also have a lovely weird sort of greenman/wodewose that came from the same game in the to-paint queue.

With another line that takes me up to a nice 200 points - still getting trounced, but feeling good about it!

But wait, there’s more...

Blogposts that is, coming today to clear my backlog of completed minis! Huzzah!

Cheap Bugs!

I saw these on a blog last year and loved the idea - I've used toys amongst my wargames stuff in the past and with a bit of work they can look great. These are from a set which was sold in Poundland in the UK. The set contained ants, flies, maggots and spiders, but the flies, the spiders and half of the maggots were of little or no use. The flies and spiders didn't have much potential and the other half of the maggots were made of a jelly-like silicon, so would not retain paint very well. 

I assembled these last year, on the round bases that come on the Wargames Factory Male Survivor kits. As usual, I added pennies to the bottom hollow of the bases, to add a little bit of weight to the figures. 

I added some sand and gravel to the bases, spray-undercoated them grey, painted everything brown (Charred Brown from VGC) and then, put them to one side for a year. I found them whilst trying to locate another figure on Wednesday night and decided that it was time to get them finished. I drybrushed everything with tan and then stone grey, added flock and left it to dry overnight. For the ants I painted them a reddish-brown, washed them with Army Painted Strong Tone and then used a Tamiya Clear Orange (with a touch of brown) glaze to get the ant finish. With the maggots, I used thinned VMC Ivory and then once this was dry I washed them with Army Painter Red Tone.

Very happy with how these have turned out - only took a couple of hours to finish the whole bunch last night. I also have some spiders from Poundland coming up, as well as these irradiated beasts...

#6MMRPC mkII

I'm getting quite excited for the next 6MMRPC! This year, the challenge is going to start 01/06/2015 and run until 30/11/2015. Other than the date change, there are a few new additions to the guidelines - these are shown in bold text:

1. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker. You get three jokers to use on a figure purchase. Could be a blister pack, an ebay bundle, or a single figure...you can't splurge. The only exception to this rule is if you need bitz or A FIGURE (Singular) to complete a unit/warband etc.

1.1 - There is an opportunity to "earn" additional jokers. If you complete an entire project (whole unit/army/warband etc.) with pictures of starting, work-in-progress and completion, you earn yourself an additional Joker.

2. Gifts do not count against your Joker allowance - Holidays, birthdays etc. Also, if you're given gift cards by your hobby illiterate family or friends, you can without penalty use them on anything you want miniatures wise.

3. Paints, terrain (or materials), and other hobby supplies do not apply to the no purchasing rule.

4. At least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week. If you Instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #6MMRPC

5. Zomtober will be part of the 6 month challenge so, Zombie related stuff (or other horror-related stuff!) during October is encouraged. Other theme suggestions are welcomed.

6. Anyone that wants to submit a before and after picture of a miniature that they are proud of completing during the course of the challenge to dmcffd@gmail.com will be entered into the running for a gift certificate to a online wargaming store of their choice. Judging will be by an un-biased person. Amount on the gift certificate will be dictated by winners nationality but should work out to about $30 U.S. - this is a kind addition by Dave from Spiderweb of History.

One last thing I would say is that the Challenge is really more of a guideline - as shown with the participants last year, if any of these rules don't quite work for you and you need to modify them for yourself, go right ahead! The aim of the Challenge is twofold - 1) be a bit thriftier (I know I could do with curbing my payday eBay wargames habit!) and 2) complete some projects! This year, my aim is to complete a bunch of different warbands and armies, rather than odd figures here and there (although that's pretty fun too!) - more about my plans will arrive here soon!

The Challenge has already begun to pick up steam (I'm a little late to the party with this post!) and the Facebook page for members of the challenge has started to liven up a bit - you can join the discussion there!

6MMRPC Facebook Group

Thanks for reading! Get involved!

Wildling Raiders

Another of my projects started a while back, using figures I already have - Game of Thrones battles between Wildling Raiders and Rangers of the Nights Watch. Here are the completed raiders, using some of Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings Morannon Orcs and a few bowmen from the Mordor Orcs, converted here and there where weapons or heads were a bit too Orcish with extras from the Gripping Beast Vikings and Dark Age Warriors

The Wildlings were painted as though they were wearing leather armour or various skins, with very limited metal (it being precious north of the wall). A few have captured axes or spears, the rest have Free Folk-wrought weaponry.

Opposing these raiders will be a band of Rangers from the Nights Watch, which are slightly converted Rangers of Gondor, picked up very cheap from eBay a while back.

Comments most welcome as usual!

Terrain Idea...

I scavenged this skeleton from work recently - it's leftover from the Halloween decorations that were up. Rather than chucking it in the bin, I thought I'd see what I can do with it - my scavenger mind immediately went to terrain opportunities... I've washed it, which actually removed the glittery coating on it, and it's pretty much perfectly scaled to be the skeleton of a long-dead giant. I'll be cutting it up to be repositioned, finding some rocks for him to be slightly propped up by. It'll fit in with my fantasy terrain nicely!

Terrain - More stuff started!

My first wheat field using good old coir matting - I've already beveled and sanded the bases for another 3 of these - a really simple project to go along with a small Dark Age farmstead. Whilst I was on with the MDF bases for this I sorted out a bunch of small bases to make some rock likes from bark.

I bought a second-hand Garden of Morr kit back at the start of October - I decided to start cleaning it up tonight but decided to get rid of the silly amount of skulls on it. I love the GW terrain range, but they will insist on adding cartoony skulls to every empty spot. Inspired by sho3box, I'm going to remove all of the superfluous skulls of daftness. Some will just need removing, others will have paving sculpted in their place and some will be hidden by foliage. I'm looking to use this graveyard with lots of different genres - I'm happy enough with the gothicness, just not the cheese.

 

This will take a while.

 

Giant Landcrabs - Fantasy Fauna

Following on from yesterday's post on the Giant Angler Crabs, here are some normal Giant Landcrabs.

Made in the same way as the Anglers - plastic toys, moldlines removed with a fresh scalpel blade and mounted on lipped 50mm bases, sand was then superglued to the shell, claws and legs to add more texture to aid in painting. 

Another scale shot alongside the Viking Champion!

And one alongside some post-apocalyptic scum!

Feel free to leave a comment! Glad to have these finished, they've been half-painted for a while now!

Giant Angler Crabs - Fantasy Fauna

I visited Whitby earlier in the year - I always love to look in the souvenir shops to find useful items for gaming. On this excursion I discovered these crabs, which were sold 3 for £1 in a shop that sells shells, fossils and crystals, as well as more touristy stuff. I thought these would be big alongside 28mm miniatures, but would work well in my Fantasy Skirmish setting, or even in Rogue Trader-ish 40k games and the post-apocalypse. 

The crabs were made from a vinyl plastic, similar to the Reaper Bones figures. I trimmed off the moldlines with a sharp scalpel blade and mounted them on 50mm lipped bases, as these were primarily for my Fantasy project. With these particular crabs I decided to add a bit of a fantasy twist, inspired by the fearsome angler fish - I used a bit of wire and some greenstuff to create a lure. I also superglued sand to their shell and legs to add a bit more texture for painting. These angler crabs bury themselves in the mud and silt at the bottom of a rivermouth or in a lake and leave their lure visible for their intended prey. In nature, snapping turtles also use a similar method... 

Here's a shot for scale, alongside the Viking Champion from the other day - quite a fearsome challenge for the average fighter! 

Finally, this is what they looked like to begin with - I've also finished the "normal" giant crabs (another three), so check back tomorrow for more!

More meat for the grinder - New 6MMRPC participants!

Wow! We have more folks that are accepting the challenge to complete some painting projects over the next 6 months!
9. Stroezie is part of Planet Ares VI crew and is currently churning out some brilliant 6mm sci-fi scratchbuilds! Lovely stuff!
10. Dave C's blog can be found here: GreyHorde on the WAMP Forum. His collection is mainly fantasy-based, so we can expect to see some lovely fantasy stuff from him over the next six months!
11. The Mad Tin Hatter of the blog Mad Tin Hatter is focused on some lovely Flames of War figures, but the odd space ship pops up now and then...
12. Horsewood Inc. is the humble abode of Horsewood, who will be documenting his adventures in Warhammer 40k and some home-brewed projects...
13. Spiro Dotgeek's blog Pants of War catalogs his exploits in gaming with miniatures from a bunch of Games Workshops sadly defunct (yet utterly brilliant) "Specialist Games" lines. Hopefully we'll get to see some brilliant classic figures!
Welcome aboard everyone! Once again, you can find our Facebook group here and feel free to share the Challenge with your wargaming friends and blog followers - I look forward to seeing some freshly completed figures!

Jungle Flora - Spikers

I built these alien plants a bunch of years ago, after collecting some pine cones in the woods of my home town. For years they'd languished in a tool drawer, until I rediscovered them and decided to tart them up...

To begin, I removed the spikes and their bases - they were originally on plastic 40k bases, but luckily I'd picked up some MDF bases at Vapnartak for this exact sort of thing! I glued the pine cones to the bases, then built up the rest of their bases with cork. I addd my usual sand and gravel, then took the cocktail sticks and whittled them somewhat to make them a little more natural. The spikes were then superglued in and the plants got a grey spray priming. I stuck pretty close to the original paint job I'd given them, which drew its inspiration from the classic 40k cacti (for which I bought some polystyrene ovoids back in March of this year...).

Let me know what you think of them in the comments below!

The 6 Month Mountain Reduction & Painting Challenge - Introduction and (Self-Imposed!) Rules...

I've recently been talking to Dave over at The Spider Web of History (check it out for historicals, zombies, post-apoc and more!) about our shared lack of focus on our current projects - the gamer's curse, flitting from one project to another, all the while purchasing more and more miniatures! I'm pretty sure wargaming turns you into a hoarder...

With this in mind, we decided to set ourselves a challenge, in order to start to deplete our plastic/lead mountains and get some of our already-purchased stuff completed! Here are our rules, beginning 1st September 2014...

1. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker card.  Like in a deck of cards, you get two jokers to use on a figure purchase during the six months of the challenge.  Could be a blister pack, an ebay bundle, or a single figure...you can't splurge. 

2.  Gifts do not count against you. Christmas and or birthdays etc. Also, if you're given gift cards by your hobby illiterate family or friends, you can without penalty use them on anything you want miniatures wise.  I luck out here, as I'll have Christmas and my birthday during this 6 Months.

3.  Paints, terrain (or materials), and other hobby supplies do not apply to the no purchasing rule.

4.  At least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week.  If you Instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #6MMRPC

5.  Zombtober will be part of the 6 month challenge so, Zombie related stuff during October is ENCOURAGED!

So, what do you think? Fancy taking up the challenge with us? I'm sure you have plenty of stuff to be on with at the moment in your own lead and plastic mountain - feel free to contact myself or Dave if you fancy partaking with us!