Magister Cthirian Coldheart

Introducing Magister Cthirian Coldheart and his familiar Mórðvíg! Available for all resurrections, curses, enchantments and glamours, with a specialisation in bringing ones allies back from the grave...

This gent is a lovely *classic* wizard from Reaper Miniatures in the Bones plastic material - I love all the details and shapes used in it’s sculpting. This guy is intended for use in all sorts of different games but as I was painting him I had it in my head that he’s generally a good guy that has developed a slightly unhealthy interest in necromancy. Purple is the colour of Death Magic in Warhammer and Age of Sigmar and I do think of it as a very appropriate colour for wizards! Thus, I tried to incorporate a bunch of shades of purple in his scheme - I hope you agree with me when I say that I think I achieved this! Also, this miniature has been sat undercoated in my collection for aaaages! I picked him out of the backlog last month and cracked on!

 

The Jabberwocky

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son 

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 

This is easily one of my favourite figures that I've completed in some time! Finished a few months back, it's the brilliant Reaper Bones Jabberwocky. I had it undercoated and washed for about a year before I finally found the courage to tackle it!

I broke out the old Citadel Inks to get a glossy finish for the creature - I wanted it to look sickly and ill to match the unnatural look that the creature has in general. I'm especially happy with the result on the eyes. 

I had to add the piece of branch to the base following assembly and undercoating - I love the Bones plastic material, but the leg joint on this particular figure was sadly just a bit too weak and it began to slump forward over time. I'm very happy with the end result!

Comments and suggestions are most welcome!

Merric Tealeaf, Halfling Rogue

I gave my housemate the recent starter set for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons as a Christmas gift - neither of us had played it before and he expressed an interest in running a campaign of it - here's the character I put together for those games:

Meet Merric Tealeaf, Halfling Rogue, Thief, ex-Brigand. Not a bad man, as such, just willing to do some bad things every now and then. His warband-mates tended to express some disgust at the fact that he wasn't usually to be found in the front rank in most fights, but he tended to work best from the shadows and by using his wits rather than brawn. 

Amusingly they left him in charge of the coinage and treasures they discovered...
Sadly, after 3 or 4 sessions the rest of the players seem to have become distracted and my housemate apparently struggles to keep to one setting for an extended period of time...

The figure is a Reaper Bones Hellakin Gorecutter. I changed the short sword he was previously wielding for one that looked a bit more vicious and stealthier (from the Dark Elf Witches plastic kit).

Comments are 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??

Work in Progress - Fantasy Gladiators

I picked up some Reaper Bones Barbarians a while ago after seeing a great conversion on Facebook that I wanted to echo - the original was created by Rusty Painting - check out his blog for more great work!

Here's the first, based on the original conversion - I'd bought some of the brilliant Gladiator helmet sprues from CP Models for a Post-Apocalyptic Gladiator project that I also have planned and they were obviously perfect for this project! They're nice and chunky which suits the Reaper figures brilliantly! I also decided on a weapon swap and the best that I could find was this Tomb Kings khopesh which fit nicely with the posing of the figure. After a bit of drilling and gluing he was done apart from a little gapfilling.

The CP Models head sprues - check out their range!

This was the second Reaper Bones model - one of the chunkiest helmets seemed to suit this base figure nicely, as did a shield from Hasslefree Miniatures that has been in my bits box for years, plus the full arm and spear from a Warhammer plastic Marauder Horseman. 

Finally, and possibly my favourite - I had a spare Heroquest Barbarian with a broken sword - I carefully removed the head with a jewellers saw for a clean cut, replaced it with a perfect Gladiator helmet and replaced the broken sword with a scimtar from the old Warhammer plastic skeletons.

These have all since had gaps filled with putty, sand added to bases where required and they're undercoated - I'll be painting them in the next few months. I plan on eventually using them as a random encounter in some fantasy skirmish games and I'm still on the lookout for others to add to bring them up to a usable warband-size!

Thanks for reading - comments and questions are most welcome!

Reaper Bones Frost Giantess

I recently assembled and undercoated this Reaper Bones Frost Giantess - such awesome details! I got this figure to use with Of Gods and Mortals alongside my fledgling Viking force - I love finding ways to use figures across a couple of genres!