Dark and Dirty Dracula’s America Terrain

I loved the miniatures, art and setting of Dracula's America when it was first announced (back in August 2017) and hopped on the pre-order campaign, securing almost all of the starting warbands ("Posses" in in-game parlance) and the wonderful creatures! I've got a nice little chunk of it painted up and I had plans for a Louisiana-themed setting - swampy New Orleans gothic horror? Yes please! 

I started off by purchasing the Ghost Town Derelict Church from Sarissa Precision - a lovely American-themed church that had seen better days. I imagined this working either as part of an abandoned town or even surrounded by swampy terrain...

I also added to this a Perry Miniatures/Renedra Ramshackle Barn around the same time, with plans to scratchbuild some other similar farm buildings to complete the set - I got both of these buildings built, cut them MDF bases and added gravel and sand, undercoated them, basecoated them...then moved house several times. As you know, fellow hobbyist, life, uh, gets in the way...

After a few years I finally came back to this fledgling terrain collection early this year and around that time I discovered the Perry Miniatures/Renedra Ramshackle House which compliments the barn perfectly! One quick eBay purchase and a couple of days of building and painting and you have the set you see before you! I intend to write a separate blog post for each of the buildings as I'm really happy with how they've turned out!

How does that leave my HOBBY BINGO! board looking? After some discussion with Lewis we agreed that given that I mainly play skirmish games I could count the odd big monster I paint or a collection of terrain as a the Lord of War or Behemoth square - I think these fit that description nicely!

Mythos - Deep Ones

I finished up these fishy fellows this evening - a perfect painting task for Mischief Night! These are a Tiik Champion and three Tiik Warriors from the Reaper Bones range.

I chose a colour scheme for them that matched some art I'd seen online - I almost feel that it could have been the basis for the sculpt, or vice versa. The general theme was slimy, fishy, scaly - I created a wash for them using the Nurgle's Rot Citadel Technical paint and Strong Tone Wash so it would retain the slimy finish. I found an image of a salmon eye and tried to follow that on their inhuman eyes. Finally, I mixed up some Strong Tone wash, Nurgle's Rot and gloss varnish to make a muddy/marshy glaze for some of their bases and feet.

This is the piece of art that inspired their scheme - I love that what I assume is Innsmouth is in the background...

 

Comments most welcome - hoping to get some final zombies completed to round out Zomtober tomorrow!

 

Zomtober - Making up for lost time.

More completed figures for Zomtober 2015 - huzzah! I actually worked on a bunch of different things today, including basecoating some additional survivors, sorting out some boars for Frostgrave and extra movement bases for Lion Rampant and the like, but these were all that I completed. They took to the washes quite well - I'll be using them as some sort of Special Infected or as Lovecraftian creatures - I think they'd fit the bill for both of those!

Comments/questions are most welcome!

Work in Progress - Reaper Bones Cthulhu

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming

― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

I recently built the Reaper Bones Cthulhu that I got as a birthday gift from my housemate last year - once I'd assembled it and spray-undercoated it, I couldn't help but take the glamour shot above! My housemate has recently gotten into figure painting and has a piratical RPG planned for later in the year, so I grabbed one of the ships I'd assembled for him to use in the picture. 

Here's the beast once assembled - it's a massive figure! Note the Studio Miniatures plastic zombie for scale and the scenic piece from the base the figure comes with. I prefer to use proper bases with my Bones figures and purchased a 120mm lipped base for the figure when I received it as a gift, so the integral base was spare - I chopped out the chunk of masonry Cthulhu was originally standing on and then mounted that on a lasercut MDF base to act as an objective marker - more on that in another post.

Assembly was overall easy with the figure - most gaps were covered by standard assembly but I did use a boatload of Liquid Green Stuff to help with the joins. I  also added some wood filler around the feet of Cthulhu and then sand to blend in the figure to the resin base.

I then raided my spraypaint collection - I ended up using Halfords grey primer and matt black, a Tamiya wehrmacht green and Army Painter Necrotic Flesh - I've ended up with a nice amount of shadowing to help when I come to properly paint the figure.

Comments, questions, praise for Lord Cthulhu??

2015 Plans

So, my plans for 2015...

Dark Ages

• Complete another 2pts for my Vikings, plus a couple of the character/leaders I have
• Build a small Dark Ages village and paint the villagers/animals I have - I love the look of the Song of Shadows and Dust rules and I'd love to re-purpose them for disputes between rivals in a Dark Ages town
• Build a 4pt Saxon force - I got a box of the plastic Saxons for Christmas, plus I have a bunch of plastic Dark Age Warriors left over

Judge Dredd

• Build 2 rival Citi-Def gangs - these are inspired by the wonderful Citi-Def over on The Leadpile - I requested a couple of the sets he's used from Copplestone Castings for Christmas. 
• Assemble the Angel Gang - I got the new version of these from Warlord Games/Mongoose. I also want to have a scout through my misc. figure boxes to see if I have any other wasteland scum to join these, and will also be sprucing up some of the post-apoc figures I have to run a campaign in the Cursed Earth
• Assemble the East-Meg Judges - another Christmas present

Lovecraftian Mythos - this is a pretty new project...

• Lovecraftian creatures - these will be done in the same basing style that I use for the majority of my collection, meaning the creatures can be used in multiple genres. Creatures planned are Deep Ones (from Reaper Bones figures), a Shoggoth, Dimensional Shamblers and this creature from Pure Evil Miniatures
• Cult leaders, cultists and madmen - a mix of miniatures here, with the cultists coming from the Artizan Designs Thrilling Tales range
• Agents and misc. helpers - figures from Artizan, Copplestone (the Gangsters range) and Statuesque Miniatures

Darkest Dungeon - a planned fantasy skirmish/RPG based on the Kickstarted PC game - using all manner of figures from my Fantasy Skirmish stuff, with added characters from the games Player Characters:

• I already have a bunch of figures built and basecoated for this - it's just a case of getting them finished!

Phew. This barely scratches the surface on my plans! But these are some of my focuses for the next year...

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Hello folks - just wanted to write a quick post to a happy holiday season to any of my readers! It's been an okay year - I'm looking forward to what 2015 will bring! I'm personally a staunch atheist, but Christmas is a lovely time to get together with my family, exchange gifts and eat lots of good food! Here's a few items of my holiday haul...

Dreadball Mars Attacks Martian team!

Lovely laser-cut MDF measuring sticks for SAGA 

East-Meg Judges set and a box of Saxon Thegns

This disgustingly lovely kit! Lots of interesting parts here - my plan is to build 5 different characters from these!

A small horde of Reaper Bones - the fish warriors will become Deep Ones and the misc. other stuff is for various RPG characters, plus a Giant for Of Gods and Mortals

I do have some other stuff that are currently hurtling through the warp to me, which is nice! Stuff for a Lovecraftian project plus some of the lovely Tengu Miniatures zombies (now sold by CP Models).

Did you get any holiday goodies?