Ogre Mage

I finally finished up this excellent Ogre Mage from Reaper Miniatures. This is a great fig that oozes character and is dynamically sculpted. I have a soft spot for ogres, and I simply love this fig!

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Metal Men Heroclix re-paints

Part II of my Heroclix re-paints - Mercury and Iron from the Metal Men. I did varying amounts of work on them. I didn't have to do too much to Iron, other than a couple of washes and some highlights, but Mercury was a bit more involved. I repainted the whole fig in red, threw a wash or two on it, and did a couple of highlights. The fig isn't sculpted well enough to warrant this, I discovered, but C'est la vie! I need to get these statted out for Super Mission Force.

I love the Metal Men!

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Heroclix re-paints

Here are some Heroclix re-paints that I just finished - Ultron and the Absorbing Man. The amount of work on them was not too involved. I basically just re-based them both, and put a couple of washes on Ultron. The Absorbing Man was a bit more involved, with several washes and probably a little too much re-work on his trousers, but it came out pretty well, I think. They are good sculpts, and I didn't have to re-prime them. Just goes to show you that you can easily spruce up a lot of average painted figures and improve their overall looks.

Man is the Absorbing Man built!

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LoTR: Radagast the Brown

Next up for all of us Middle-Earth Mavens is everybody's favorite elusive wizard, Radagast the Brown. Despite his re-tooled look in the Hobbit movies, I find this sculpt much closer to my vision of Radagast. It seems to show him as somewhat detached, yet still powerful - in marked contrast to the bumbling depiction of him in the movies. Another great Perry sculpt (not sure which brother, though).

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More pulp action!

I've been in the mood to paint up pulp characters lately, and the latest is another Copplestone creation. This fig is another one from Mark Copplestone's fantastic line of miniatures. A great fig for any pulp skirmish game or rpg.

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Indy!

More pulp action! It's the best not-Indiana Jones that I've seen so far in 28mm, from Old Glory's Blue Moon line. Sculpted once again by Bob Naisnith. I've seen (and have) the not-Indy sculpted by Mark Copplestone and, while I like it, I still think that this one is better. Bob Naismith hit it out of the park with this one!

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Old School Umber Hulk

Not old enough to be from the first edition of D&D, but the skinnier one of later iterations. This model was produced by WoTC in the late '90's, I believe, when they were churning out a lot of high-quality D&D books and miniatures. I decided to go for a fairly monochromatic color scheme on this one. I have the new Umber Hulk (the beefier plastic one), and may paint him up in a different color scheme (maybe more purple-ish - we shall see). Anyway, a really cool model.

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WOTC Jedi knight

Back before the excellent miniatures from FFG's Star Wars Imperial Assault came out, the best figs that you could get (28mm, at least) for Star Wars were the collectable miniatures from Wizards of the Coast. The quality of the sculpts were varied, but for the most part ran from adequate to downright great. In typical fashion, I've gathered one or two...

This is the Jedi Knight. Basically a generic character, but the sculpt is excellent. I decided to re-paint it without any priming. It came out pretty well, and scales up nicely with the Imperial Assault guys.

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LoTR: Gandalf

The next Lord of the Rings installment brings us Gandalf. We needed a wizard for the free peoples to counter that nasty Saruman! I really like this model, as well - I think that it's a classic. You may notice that Gandalf's base is different from the other LoTR figs I've shown so far. It was done in my newer style, which is how I base all of my figures now (with slight adjustments).

One of the reasons that I haven't painted as many LoTR figs as I'd like is that I'm intimidated by them. They are such incredible sculpts, that I hesitate to paint them for fear of screwing them up somehow. Silly, I know. Hopefully, I'll be adding more to the queue soon.

Also, I've got a few new things painted up and based, but I'd like to seal them with matt varnish before I take photos of them, and since I'd like to do it at above-freezing temperatures (re: outside), it looks like I'll have to wait a bit more before I break out the spray can!

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Reaper Cleric

Here's a great fig that I picked up immediately when I first saw it, and it naturally took me forever to finish painting it. I actually have lots of figs half and three-quarters painted, and many that are painted, but with unfinished bases. I usually stop painting when I get to the little fiddly bits on the figure, and put it aside thinking that I'll come back to it in the next day or two, but rarely do. I also hate dealing with bases, so I wait forever to finish them off, usually working on several figures at a time. Hopefully I'm not alone in this. But I digress…

So, here's a fig that I simply call Cuthbert (after the saint from D&D, of course), made by Reaper.

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Copplestone archeologist

One of my favorite sculpters is Mark Copplestone. I love just about everything that he does. His figures are expressive, dynamic, and full of character. This one is an homage to the Brendan Fraser character from the movie The Mummy. I've had it nearly finished for years now, and finally completed the base (a recurring theme going on here...). I just love the fig - totally awesome!

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Necromunda redux

With all the hype around the reissue of GW's Necromunda, I've taken a look at my old Necromunda figs. I have two painted gangs: Cawdor and Delaque. Both were painted around 20 years ago (I know - I'm getting old...). Anyway, the paint jobs are less than stellar on them, and I pulled out the Cawdor leader and decided to repaint it. I think that it turned out pretty well, especially considering the original state of the paint job (which I unfortunately did not take a shot of). It just goes to show you that with practice at anything, you will get better, and you can always at the least touch up your figs from the past to make them look better. The Cawdors were all pretty great figures, in my opinion.

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Frostgrave characters

I've managed to complete a couple of Frostgrave figures: a generic build from the excellent plastic Frostgrave Soldiers box (the first one they put out), and a metal Cult Barbarian. You can create an amazing variety of charcters from the plastic box set, and as a bonus, you can use them with the other plastic boxes to give you even more options. I can't say enough about how much I like the Frostgrave line.

Soldier:

Cult Barbarian:

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LotR: Saruman

Time for another GW Lord of the Rings fig. This time it's everybody's favorite corrupted wizard - Saruman! Not the most dynamic sculpt, but I like it nonetheless. The Perry twins have produced some great figs in their time, and this line is among their best. It's unfortunate that the metals are out of production (and that I'm still missing a few of them!).

Projects for this weekend include finishing up a couple of Frostgrave figs and a few others that I have to just paint the metals on (and a classic Umber Hulk retouch-up). I may also paint up a D&D plastics Dire Wolf fig that I recently picked up, if I have the time.


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15mm Super Apes!!!

I used to dabble in sculpting, and a few years ago, I sculpted up a 15mm ape. I showed it to Scott - he liked it, and asked me if I could sculpt up a couple others. I did, and here is the result. I tried to make each one a little different from the other, and gave them each a similar belt to hopefully tie them all together, and make them look more "comic book like," if you will. One also got power gloves (the Orangutan). I finally got around to basing them (they've been patined for quite awhile now). The figures were actually produced as masters, but never made it into production. If only Julius Schwartz was still around...

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Frostgrave Large Construct!

Northstar's Frostgrave line of miniatures has been producing some of the best (and most reasonably-priced) fantasy miniatures available anywhere. The plastics are simply amazing, and the metals are equally good. You can use them for just about anything you want - role-playing, skirmish (they'd be great for Mordheim) and mass battles. I highly recommend any of their plastic miniature box sets. I've started several plastics, but I finally finished the Large Construct, which is metal. Super easy and fun to paint. It's a great fig!

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LoTR

While I try and get my digital camera figured out for proper pics of some newly painted mini's, I thought that I'd post a couple of pics from one of my favorite lines of miniatures - GW's Lord of the Rings. In my opinion, they are the best looking and sculpted Elves and Dwarves available. I love the vast majority of the entire line (though there are some duds, I admit), and I have most of them (naturally, the majority are unpainted). First up is Legolas -  his base is finished in an old style, which I soon changed in favor of other methods, but I still think it looks alright. Anyway, great sculpt!

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Rattle them Bones!

Thought that I'd post a great Reaper Bones fig - the Bugbear! I'm on the fence about Bones' smaller figures (due to loss of detail and the elasticity of the plastic), but I simply love their larger ones. There's not much loss of detail from the metal figs, and if you drop them, they won't chip or break!

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Rising like a Phoenix (or a zombie…)

Hey all! No, it's not Scott - it's his buddy Jan (posting as "Skip"), carrying on the hi-jacking of this site (with Scott's approval, of course). I always enjoyed reading Scott's posts, and think that it would be nice to at least keep the spirit of this blog alive. I plan on posting at least once per week, and will focus on miniatures. I've recently begun painting mini's again after about a three-year hiatus (more or less). I've got some cool things in the can already, and lots of projects in the pipeline.

I'll start off with some previously painted Superfigs (my two favorites): Ape Ace! and The Battlin' Belgian!

Hope you like them!

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Chaos In Cochise County

My good friend and fellow Goalsystem writer Lee Howard is running a Kickstarter that is well worth a look!

Chaos In Cochise County

Thanks for looking!

--Scott