The Long War: The Fleshless

Continuing the fight against my unpainted miniatures, I offer you the first half of my undead which comprises all the undead without flesh. Basically, skellies, ghosts, wraiths, wights, and so, so many Liches.

Many different companies from a span of about 30 years! Can you guess them all?

So had to strip some of these bad boys as my newly discovered paint scheme requires a white prime vs my usual black priming. 2 days in a Pine Sol (my house smells so spring fresh!) and water solution did the trick and doesn't harm the minis, rinse and dry then prime.

Here's an early attempt that I didn't like. decided the only thing not ethereal-looking would be the weapons.

 

 

 

Ended up with a hand painted base coat with 100% coverage, then 2 highlight coats, the first a little wet, the second a little dry. 3 layers of color tend to make a figure have enough depth to look good (the way I paint, anyway).

Here's a completed shot with the flash on, just for the effect.

Still undecided how I'll paint the next group (I have some ideas, but...) which includes zombies, ghouls, wights (the d&d type with flesh on them vs the Warhammer type which were included above as they're basically tough as nails skellies) and vampires.

The Long War, Second Battle: Vermin!

Continuing my massive figure painting campaign, I finished the furry critters: 3 Minotaurs, 4 Beastmen, 12 Skaven, 12 Giant Rats, 12 Giant Spiders, 23 Giant Bats, 1 Dire Wolf, 10 Warhammer Quest Archways, Tsathaggua, 4 Erol Otus based Bugbears, 1 Yeti, 1 Werebear, and 1 Wererat. There's a few more old Grendiers off to the side I need to add a touch of detail to, but the lion's share are done, including the remaining minis to finish off the Warhammer Quest game.

As usual, I begin with a bunch of black-primed figures on plates.

Base-coat brown.

In progress. Finished figs on top of article, of course.

Next up, the Undead!

The Long War.

There's a few of you out there that know I'm a figure owning maniac. I seem to have a bit of a love affair with a lot of the old stuff, like early Grenadier and Ral Parthas, but I also have a lot of the Warhammer figs, too, despite being much more of a roleplayer than a wargamer. After all the terrain I've been doing, it'd be a shame not to have a bunch of stuff painted up for it, right?

Even though I do have a significant amount of figures painted, the great majority are not. So begins the great Painting Campaign of 2018. My idea is to just grab all the figures of a certain type that will have similar color themes and do them all at the same damn time.

First up: the GreenSkins. Every orc, troll, gobbo, etc I could find got gathered up and base coated black.

Note, some figures were done or started previously so I brought them along to for color reference and/or completion.

Then the painting begins:

As I have sooooo many minis, I'm not shooting for 'eavy metal quality, just decent looking on the table results:

As you can see from the first pic, I'm done with the greenies. Sure there's some banners and shields looking awful blank and perhaps some questionable color choices, but they're finished damn it!

So, what's next? What I call my Vermin. Pretty much all the hairy stuff: Minotaurs, beast men, skaven, lycanthropes, and giant rats, spiders, and bats. Completing these will mean my Warhammer Quest boxed set is fully painted, too!

Then: Undead, scaly stuff (lizard men mostly, think all my snakes and snakemen are already done), and chaos warriors/chaos dwarves, which will complete a butt-ton of figures.

Afterwards I may attempt to work on sci-fi stuff, especially ones that would work in a fantasy rpg. Imagine yourself deep in a megadungeon when suddenly: Genestealers! Lictor! Tyranids!

Or... deep beneath the pyramids you hear a fine hum of machinery and a Necron Spider-Wraith Terminator thingy floats towards you! Roll for initiative!

Imperium News Alert: Citizens of Town Vanish!

Imperium News Alert: Scouts returning to Crown's Hold from a visit to the Imperium's newest Anglypur reclamation project, Greymare have reported that all residents, laborers, and East Anglypur Company officials have all disappeared without a trace.

The scout, a certain Orem Tallow, was unable to investigate thoroughly due to time constraints, but he states he is quite convinced "something is not right."

Greymare, called "Gravemire" by some, is the newest trade settlement being developed by the East Anglypur company, built over the ruins of an ancient Mageregime city thought destroyed before Anglypur's civil war.

At a crossroads with nearby accessto the southern Jungles of D'Korra, northern Anglypur, Crown's Hold (and access to our glorious Imperium), and river leading to the East Coast, the potential trade profits are expected to be substantial. Here at Imperium News, we've also heard rumors that brave EAC contractors are predicting the undeveloped ruins of the Necropolis to produce significant financial archeological gains.

Buildings finished!



Here are the last of the buildings for the edge of town where my dungeon crawl will be based. I fear they may not be populated by friendly villagers when the players first arrive...

 

A warehouse... of Doom!

A tavern... of Doom!

A fortified residence... of Doom!

 

 

Residences... of Doom!

 

 

Continuing this project I am making the terrain area where these buildings will reside, then it'll be all set for many nights of adventure!

 

Once again, all buildings are from www.gamesprintshop.com

Future plans for Grim Hack.

Noticed I have been getting a lot of hits from people checking out my Grim Hack posts
worldwide, so I'd better get off my ass and finish it up. Major plans are to:

 

• Change some of the characteristics back to their original derivation (eg. CS back to WS) just for ease of use/conversion purposes, as Grim Hack is more a rules addendum/option to add on to the original 1st edition, not a stand alone game.
• Some minor clarifications. Off the top of my head the rules for skill acquisition and magic particularly.
• An complete document, maybe even with some of my artwork packed into it. No idea how to turn something into a PDF, but I just may learn.
• Work on some rules to include 2nd edition since I've had some contact with people asking for ideas for Magic System conversion.

No promises on time-line as I just received 5(!) more buildings for my campaign that I need to paint up so I can finish off my village.

An interesting place to explore?

Been having some issues with my scanner, so have to bear with my camera phone.

Starting to get some positive responses from my gaming group on maybe getting something started in meatspace. Hoping I can give my new terrain some use!

More buildings!

This is a fortified dwelling that will serve as a military outpost.

And here we have our local temple and black smith. Yuan-ti shown for scale. All these buildings open up for interior gaming use, but I haven't painted them yet, nor have I painted furniture, etc. I'll tackle that once we start gaming again.

I'm getting the buildings from games-printshop.com which are licensed printers for printable scenery.

Freshly painted Town terrain.

Picked these up from a company that prints other company's 3D printer plans. Planning on getting just a few more, so it's definitely cheaper than buying a 3D printer, plus I work too much to really build them from scratch (maybe in the future for special things like a massive castle or something).

Now, I just need to get the guys on schedule to either re-start the Crown's Hold Campaign -or- start up a new one...

Not suspicious at all.

Some freshly painted figures for the (potential) coming meat-space campaign.

Here's the ones that are 'finished'

And here's the mess of figures I'm working on. As some of you know, for the most part I prefer the really old 'chunky' Grenadier figures, along with Ral Partha, Heritage, and RAFM. I also backed a couple of the Reaper Bones Kickstarters, so there's a few in there, too.

1st Completed MegaDungeon level

Just a few pics of the first 3' x 7' level of my Mega Dungeon made of 1' square modular dungeon sections. (Ignore the figures surrounding the dungeon, I had them spread on the table divided up into painting schemes in preparation for painting).

Dungeon modular terrain

 

 

I'm going to start this one with a pic of the foam cutter I used to cut all the 1"x 0.5"x 0.5" bricks I used to build these sections. Quite handy, I say. Picked it up at Hobby Lobby. The blue material you see on it is just poster hanging goo I used to hold my guide in place as I pushed the foam through the cutter.



 

 

I began these tiles with cardboard pieces cut into squares, two pieces each glued together perpendicularly so as to help with warping (still got some anyway). I then used my old standby: light-weight spackle to coat one side of the board, then used a straight edge to press out 0.5" 'tiles.' Precision isn't necessary, I want these for gaming. If they get banged up, fine, at least they're seeing use! My first layer of bricks, I used Gorilla Glue, as I wasn't sure how the foam would stick to the spackling compound.

 

Here's a shot of the first one I did, but hadn't quite got the knack of mass-cutting the bricks. You can see below my masonry skill gets much better. 3 layers of bricks seem right for this section.

 

A base-coat of black spray paint...

After a medium gray heavy drybrush on the floor tiles, a brown drybrush and the 'dirty' sections, and a dark green wash of the brickwork. Next is a light drybrush of green on the bricks and a very light green wash to the tiles.

The completed 2' x 3' dungeon section!
It looks a little greener in this pic than it actually is. That, or I need to start painting with a brighter lights.

That completes my 1st level of my megadungeon, which I will take a picture of it all together. In the future I may add another 3 tiles to this, but really, due to vision distances in the dark and the modularity of the pieces, they're probably not needed. My next level of the megadungeon will involve different methods of construction and color schemes.

Underground Sea modular terrain

Every mega-dungeon needs an underground sea area, right? Found some fairly inexpensive foamcore with a nice green base color. For this type of terrain brown or blue would have worked as well. Just slapped some spackling compound on the edge portion for a shore line. I love spackle because you can really pile it up if need be and it comes in great big tubs if you need it.

Painted some 50/50 white glue and water randomly onto the shore areas to give it a more interesting texture.

Next came some random black spray paint.

Finally, after 3 coats of clear gloss finish (warning, it's oil based, just about guaranteed to wreck whichever brush you use on it), I have completed the shore line of my underground sea. If my players figure out some way to get/find a boat/raft down there and want to sail, I can easily whip up more a couple more for that endless seas appeal!