“A rock & roll of the die” (week 32)

Well here’s something you don’t see on this blog every week, a Games Workshop post! As I said I was going to do last week I dragged out the old coins of fate, and for a change we got a double head result, this meant that this week’s lucky recipients of the paint filled brush came from “Lancelot’s” list. The D30 then came up with seventeen and this equated too…

Box 17– (3x 28mm Games Workshop Orcs or should that be “Orks”)

Now technically these are not my figures as the box of Orks actually belongs to my youngest, as he and “the other one” wanted to play 40K a while back, so in order to do this boxes of Orks were bought to fight Myles’s “Space Marines”. The younger son however has no interest in painting whatsoever so guess who was lumbered with that job! Anyhow enough were painted to let battle commence, but as his birthday was imminent the sister in-law asked what he would like as a gift? “Some Orks” came the reply, now many years ago the brother in-law had a job where he had a lot of spare time and easy access to “GW’s” Chester store (you can see where this is going). To cut a long story short, the gift box contained several unopened blister packs of what we’ll call “classic” metal “Greenskins” and it’s from these that I have pulled the “Goffik Rok Band” that adorns this week’s posting.

Now looking down at the vast array of paint pots that are “strune” across my painting table I think going through all the colours on each individual figure is going to take far too long, therefore I think a general overview is the better option. So after the figures were glued into their “slotta” bases (spit,spit!) and was Tetrion spread over them to hide the slot they were out for a spraying with matt black. This was then touched up with a brush to make sure they were fully covered. Following this a heavy dry-brushing of chainmail was applied and then two lighter coats of rust and more chainmail were dry-brushed over this, all the flesh was undercoated in deep bronze green and then highlighted with goblin green. Some of the metallic areas were picked out with metallic red/blue or gold, and the denim jeans two of them are wearing were royal blue dry-brushed with light blue. All the leather areas were either left black highlighted with dark grey or chocolate brown with leather highlights. The singer’s pants were coffee/cream with plum “slashes” across them, and the lizard atop his guitar was painted German field blue then highlighted with aquamarine, and some spots of shamrock finished him off. I added the legend “Very Metal” to the back of the one chap’s leather biker jacket as a reference to “Vivian” the “Punk rocker” played by Adrian Edmonson in “The Young Ones” comedy series of my youth, as he used to have the same scrawled across the rear of his studded cut off denim jacket.

A coat of “Quickshade” followed the painting and then the bases were painted with scenic brown and highlighted with scenic green. No flock was applied as for some reason (best known to himself) the youngest didn’t want his Orks flocked. So it was just out for a final coat of matt varnish and they could go into the box with the rest of his (bigger than I remembered, did I really paint all them!) collection of Orks, Exactly what use a “Rock band” is in a game of 40K I don’t know (I never played Orks those many, many years ago when I did play 40K), but they were quite fun to paint.

Oh well, zombies and survivors next as my next post will fall (just) into October, sorry Zomtober!

So “bring out your dead!!”.

“A roll of the die” (week 31)

Well much as I like spending time in the company of leather clad, zombie fighting “Uber vixens”, sadly this doesn’t do a lot to reduce the lead mountain that is sagging the rafters in my loft! So after last week’s self-indulgence I thought I’d better get the old nose back to the grindstone and do a “Roll of the die” posting this week, and as so often seems to be the case… a head and a tail popped into view after my tossing of the coins of fate. This meant of course, yet another pick from “Merlin” my “Very British Civil War” list, and the number that came up on the roll of the D20?

Box 2– (5x 28mm Civilian Riflemen)

I only have one more group of these to do after this lot, and only six more boxes to be crossed out on “Merlins” list altoether, so the end is really beginning to loom into sight now. But anyway, that won’t get paint onto this lot so it was back to it, and after they were glued to card spacers and then to tuppences, they had their bases blended in with filler before they were sprayed matt black, and away I went with the painting proper.

As usual I began with their weapons which were dry-brushed with chainmail, then I painted an undercoat over their trousers/jacket of either, chocolate brown and khaki, dark grey and light grey or deep bronze green. These were then highlighted with either khaki, light blue or a mix of khaki and deep bronze green. Next I painted in the shirts in coffee and cream and a couple of them had stripes added, one in pink burgundy and the other in light blue to add a little colour. Flesh next this was undercoated in European flesh and then after the eyes were added this was highlighted in a mix of continental flesh and pale flesh. The stocks of their rifles, the shoulder bags and their boots were then painted chocolate brown, the rifles highlighted with butternut and the bags and boots in leather brown. They all have neckerchiefs so these came next, royal blue with porcelain blue highlights, deep bronze green with stone green or dark red with pink burgundy taking care of these. I added the caps next these were either painted dark grey or chocolate brown then dry-brushed with light grey or butternut, then the checks were added in light blue or coffee. That just left the hair on the figures to be added, now as I have done quite a few of these chaps before I decided to limit their hair colour to either “brown” this was done in chocolate brown highlighted with chestnut brown or “Blonde” this was my two shades of sand (colour party and miniature paints), and they were ready to be quickshaded and based in my usual manner.

Probably not the most exciting post I’ve ever posted, but as I say we are now getting through these VBCW figures. Now as “Zomtober” is beginning to creep up on us again, I’ll probably just do another “Roll of the die” post next week before I immerse myself in the rising tide of the undead, for the weeks to follow.

So till next week, cheers Roger.

“Elsa, is that you?”

Inspiration for this week’s posting has to go to Mr. Bryan Scott, or “Vampifan” as he is better known around these parts. A little while ago he ran a series of rather excellent battle reports for the game “Zombicide”, and one of the survivor characters made quite the impression on me, a sexy leather clad vixen by the name of “Elsa”. Now this flame haired ex-cat burglar is only available as part of the “Toxic city mall” expansion to the game, so it looked like I was going to be out of luck with getting my own Elsa, until that is inspiration struck and I remembered there was a cat-suit wearing lady amongst the figures I bought from “Copplestone Castings” back at Salute this year. Further investigation turned up the lady in question amongst pack FW10 “Babes with guns”. Now though not quite as well developed as “Guillotine Games” version she would suit my purposes admirably, my one slight issue was with her ankles, in as much as she long trousers that were over her boots, whereas Elsa has knee length boots over the top of her trousers. This was easily fixed by simply carving away the bottoms of her trouser legs and then adding some new boots tops in greenstuff. I also pushed her left arm in towards her body, simply because I thought it looked better that way. Anyway she was then glued onto a two pence piece and after her base was built up in “Tetrion” all purpose filler it was out for a coat of matt black.

Painting her was relatively simple too, as her costume is predominantly black anyway it was just a case of touching up any bits the undercoat hadn’t reached, before I added the metal finish on her gun, the zipper on her cat suit and the buckle on her belt in chainmail. Next I painted in her flesh this was first undercoated in European flesh then after adding her eyes and teeth I highlighted these areas with a mix of European flesh and pale flesh, lastly on this area I added her lips in dark red (I was going to use bright red, but I was worried it might look a bit too much like the blood I add around my zombies mouths). Hair was next on the agenda, so as she is a dangerous redhead, I dug out my chestnut paint, but to make it even more red than usual, I mixed in some bright red and a little orange before using this to undercoat the hair, a highlight of just orange was then dry-brushed over this. This just left the highlights on her costume to add, so black was mixed with some dark grey and the resultant darker grey was used for these, I then realized that the original Elsa had a “beauty spot” on her left cheek, so out came the black again and this was added, then she was finally ready to be “quickshaded”.

Basing was then carried out as per-usual, and a quick “blow-over” with some satin varnish finished her off, (whoa there!!! I hear you cry, SATIN VARNISH! Not matt?), well no actually I decided that I really liked the shiny PVC look that Bryans Elsa had so rather than my usual matt varnish I decided to use the “Rust-oleum” stuff I bought a while back (and complained endlessly about), as this has more of a “glossy” finish to it. I’m rather pleased with my finished Elsa, she might not be quite as “voluptuous” as the original figure but she’ll do for me. Check out Bryan’s original “batrep” posting to see the real Elsa in action, over on his excellent blog…

https://vampifansworldoftheundead.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/zombicide-scenario-m01-big-rubble-part-3.html

Till next week, Cheers Roger.

“You may stand against one of me! But how about four?”

Thought I’d return to my “superhero’s” this week so delved into my box of “Heroklickers” for some suitable “Meta’fodder”, first out were these Scrull Commando’s, and Warrior. My initial thought being that I could use these as “henchmen”, but then as often happens I then had a different idea. I would put the armed warrior back and use the other four figures as one character, my take on the Marvel villain “Maddox”….”Multiple Man”.

“Max Similly” was born a mutant in Missouri, constantly teased and beaten by the local bully and his lieutenants and shunned by the local god fearing townsfolk, he grew up a bitter loner. Then around his thirteenth birthday he discovered the power to split his body up to four times, making four perfect copies of himself, all sharing the same conciseness. Some say he sold his soul to the devil in return for his wish that “there were other people around who looked like me!” Others say he always had his powers but they didn’t manifest themselves till he hit puberty. Either way that’s when the trouble started. The three boys who had made his early life such a misery were found beaten and drowned in the local “fishin hole”, Max having the convenient alibi of being in police custody for breaking windows at the time of the murders. A local vagrant getting the blame as some of the boys possessions were found at the bridge he often slept under. He went to the chair still proclaiming his innocence! Many other strange crimes happened in the years after this with the finger of guilt often pointed Max’s way but nothing could ever be proven as he always had a perfect alibi, until aged twenty Max moved to the big city to pursue his life of crime as the “The mysterious Multiple Man!”

In game play my idea is that the character would have four “stat lines” each slightly lower on all counts than the one above, and each time he generates another copy of himself they would all drop to the line below, thus though there would be more “Multiple men” they would all be slightly weaker than before. I hope this will make it advantageous to use his power, yet make it a double edged sword. I might have to tweak is stats over time to get the balance right.

Anyway on to painting them, after a spray coat of matt black, the main body of his costume was painted orange. Now I know I’ve gone on about this before but I still don’t seem to have learned, orange is a terrible colour to try and paint over black! Three coats later and I finally had a decent coverage coat, and then after mixing some of my orange with a bit of coffee, I added the highlights over the muscles of Original “Max’s” costume. This same colour was them painted over the entirety of the other three figures, and then these were highlighted with a lighter shade (more coffee added). My thinking behind this is that the original would be brighter and more vivid colour wise, and the three facsimiles’ would be paler and more “washed out” looking, “pale imitations” as it were. This idea was continued on with rest of the costumes, the original having black “accessories” highlighted with dark grey, and the other three having a dark grey base highlighted with light grey. Even the flesh was completed with the original having a European flesh tone undercoat and highlights of the same mixed with pale flesh, this in turn formed the base for the other three, with just pale flesh used for the highlights on these. My customary coat of “Quickshade” strong tone came next, before the bases were painted in my usual fashion.

All in all a pretty simple weeks painting, but I’m hoping an interesting character to use in our games.

Till next week, Cheers Roger.