What's in the Box Part (I forget)/State of the Cave

Yesterday after I dropped the boys of at nursery school I headed down to the post office as I had an email/tracking number informing me I could expect a package from New Jersey and Mr Hawkins. I was unlucky as I was not able to grab it before it was put on the truck for delivery. I had some other business to take care of at the post office as I have decided to commission someone to paint my Super Dungeon Explore core set and Dragon Clutch booster. This was a little odd for me as I have painted every mini in my collection but I really wanted them to look right and knew I wasn't going to be able to work on them anytime soon.

There were two items in the box from Rob. One of which is going to remain a surprise for a little while. I will be taking WiP photos while I work on it so I will do a step by step post but for now it will remain hush hush. I have already spent somewhere between one and two hours working on this project. This has been a combination of airbrush and standard painting so far. I have a bunch more to do but I want to get this project done ASAP so all other projects are sliding down the ladder.

The second item is an IKRPG mini which is a near duplicate of one he did for PP and No Quarter magazine. This gentleman here is going to be a gifted, gunmage, rifleman (or maybe scout). If you have the NQ you can see that the only difference is the addition of a Hammerfall highshield backpack.

I am relatively close to attaching the bison and war wagon to the 120mm base. I will wait to do this until Friday as I received a second email on Monday saying I can expect a package on Friday from Battlefoam with some half trays of various sizes (I think 5 in total). I want to have the wagon tray in hand before I glue mini to base so that I can be sure it will fit well in the Battlefoam.

I know I haven't been overly active painting of late but the last day and a half and the new mystery project have me pretty fired up again so hopefully there will be a rush of posts over the next two weeks. I haven't played a game in nearly 2 months and I am dying to get out and play. The hope is Friday but we will see what happens.

A little Bit New a Little Bit Old

I have been off my trolls for a little bit not but have gotten the urge to get back to work on my main faction. I am not sure what the real driving force was behind me getting back to trolls but I suspect it was one of two things. The first possible culprit being the IKRPG. I have been working on two or three trollkin characters and just ordered parts to make one of them....well to send to Rob to make for me ;-) The second contributing factor was a recent purchase I made through www.discountgamesinc.com which should be arriving in the next two days.

In my last post I put up a photo of the assembled gatorman witch doctor I also threw out a couple Jarl lists.....well I have been tinkering with those lists and believe I have come up with the next 50pt list I plan to play. I haven't played in a month and I really want to get on the table. Based on upcoming schedule I will not be playing for the forseable future so I hope to have some quiality painting done before then.

I am getting a little bit ahead of my self and should back track a little. Lets get to the new before the old. I finished up Sammy this am when I got home from work. The last few things I need to take care of were his teeth/nails, earrings, eyeballs, and base. I am pretty happy with how this little guy turned out. I like the way the grey skin came out and I think he will be a fun little character to play if I ever get in an IKRPG group.

Here is a brief run down of Sammy's character sheet. He is a skilled (additional attack) cutthroat/thief. I selected virtuoso (hand weapons) as his skilled ability to allow him to be more accurate and deadly in melee. I took an advancement point in SPD, AGI, and PER. When it came to selecting weapons I gave him a dagger (+1 ATK rolls), an Assassin's blade, thrown knives, and a couple smoke grenades (to trigger prowl if needed). I think with the combinations of +1 ATK from the dagger, Signs and Portents from virtuoso, and anatomical precision he should be a pretty nasty little fellow in combat. You may have noticed that all three stats I bumped also go into calculating DEF so with the racial +1 DEF for Gobbers Sammy will be sitting at DEF 17 which I think should be pretty solid. I can get more into him later but just wanted to give you my initial thoughts.

Lets move on to the old shall we. The old, for the purposes of this post, is trolls and more specifically the war wagon. I got a pretty good start on the wagon back in June, when I received the assembled wagon from Rob, but haven't touched it since. The mini is really nice and deserves to be finished and see some table time....I also think it has the potential to be pretty damn fun. Here is a picture showing the current status of the wagon and the minimal amount of work I have done on it this am. I hope to have the wagon ready to play the next time I get a to the FLGS.

 Where I stopped last

 Skin and fur basecoated on mounts

Blues for some of the crew

There you have it. A little new (IKRPG) and a little old (war wagon). I should have a couple updates this week with a Friday or Saturday post showing some serious progress on the war wagon.

Gobber Thief "Sammy" Nearly Done

When I got home from work this am the house was quiet so after sitting down and watching last nights Ultimate Fighter I headed down to the cave. I did some work on Sammy and also some other assembly work and an "experiment".

First off is the assembly. One of the projects is on the DL so I will not be putting photos up until it is all finished and whatnot. The other project is I finally got around to putting together one of my gatorman witch doctors. I have been itching to play one of these gentleman since I saw them in Domination. I have planning on playing them in my Jarl lists. I like to run Jarl heavy with either a quickened quickened gatorman posse or Nyss hunters. I think traditional logic says Nyss are the way to go but I have had better luck with the gator. I find a lot of people get surprised how far they can charge living models.

It bothers me how PP decided to split the jaw but they didn't ask me did they? There seems to be a trend of this as it was also done with Sturm and Drang (does two minis equal a trend?) and I am not a big fan of it. I will have to break out a little green stuff to fix up the jaw gap but I guess that is OK cause I need a little green stuff on the mystery mini. The next time I get out to play I hope to get this bad boy on the table with the Devil himself. I am looking at something along these lines at 35pts:

Jarl Skuld, Devil Of Thornwood (*6pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Dire Troll Bomber (10pts)
* Rok (11pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
Gatormen Posse (Leader and 4 Grunts) (9pts)
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt) (1pts)
Gatorman Witch Doctor (3pts)
OR

Jarl Skuld, Devil Of Thornwood (*6pts)
* Slag Troll (6pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Dire Troll Bomber (10pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
Gatormen Posse (Leader and 4 Grunts) (9pts)
Sons of Bragg (6pts)
Gatorman Witch Doctor (3pts)
At the 50 pt level I am thinking something like this:

Jarl Skuld, Devil Of Thornwood (*6pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Dire Troll Bomber (10pts)
* Rok (11pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
Gatormen Posse (Leader and 4 Grunts) (9pts)
Sons of Bragg (6pts)
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt) (1pts)
Gatorman Witch Doctor (3pts)
Wrong Eye & Snapjaw (9pts)

OR

Jarl Skuld, Devil Of Thornwood (*6pts)* Troll Impaler (5pts)* Dire Troll Bomber (10pts)* Ršk (11pts)* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (Cylena and 9 Grunts) (10pts)Sons of Bragg (6pts)Gatorman Witch Doctor (3pts)Rorsh & Brine (9pts)
My experiment centered around a croak hunter I primed some time ago. I went with the Vallejo surface primer via the airbrush and used grey (although it is really light). I like the way brighter colors show up on white but find it a little unforgiving if you miss any coverage. This months PtT over at http://losthemisphere.com/blog/ is a minion or merc mini so it seemed fitting I tinker with this guy. To try and overcome some of the issues I have with "white" primer I gave him a layer of Badab Black so that there was dark in all of the recesses. I hope this will help but only one way to find out eh?

Okay last but not least is the work I did on lil Sammy here our ruthless IKRPG thief. I highlighted his cloak, little highlight on his pants, and started his teeth and nails prior to the boys getting up and calling downstairs for me to come play Candyland. I have to do one more layer on the teeth/nails and do his eyes and he is gonna be ready for a base and matte varnish.

This post is a little on the long side so when I get Sammy finished I will go into his stat sheet a little then. I will also introduce you to Capt Noghannan who is going to be my first converted IKRPG mini. Okay time for a nap so I can get up and watch the Yankees/Tigers game 1 before work.

Gobber Cutthroat/Thief Wips

Yesterday I woke up from my nap early and for no apparent reason. After flopping around trying to get back to sleep I gave up and got out of bed. When I went downstairs I realized the wife and boys had gone to the store so I had some "free time". I wanted to take advantage of this so I watched a couple of UFC fights I had on the DVR and hadn't seen yet (I don't watch them if the boys are up) and then headed down to the cave to work on my gobber who I am calling "Sammy" for the time being.

I was planning on highlighting the cloak but instead took a different route. Here is "Sammy in his current state:

The first thing I did was highlight the wraps around his feet and highlight his belt. Next I did two more highlights on his skin. It was at this time the family got home and I was getting summoned from the cave. The last thing I did before heading back upstairs was brush on a layer of gloss varnish to protect was painted up to this point. I do not like gloss varnish except in a few rare spots (gems) but gloss does offer a nice layer of protections.

I was able to sneak back down to the cave prior to heading to work. I didn't have enough time to get any real painting done but I did hit him with a layer of satin varnish to cut down the gleam and give me a better surface to paint on when I can get back to work on him.

Getting Back on Track

Hey all. Well the cave has been pretty quite still. This isn't for lack of wanting just lack of availability. I haven't had a lot of time for hobby work between sick kick, work, and life in general. I did get a little work done on eBaldur and and a character for the IKRPG. First up here is Baldur in his current state. I did a little more work on his grey sections and some of the light leathers. I also base coated the beard to match my pBaldur (who I think still needs to be finished  too). Since my circle is suppose to be a "speed painted" faction for me I think I am going to highlight the skin, the green cloth section, do the gems, base him and call it a day.

 

I have more done on him but I seem to have forgotten to take a picture...shocker with my track record
Second up it my first character for the IKRPG. While he will be my first painted character he will. most likely, not be the main or first character I play (if I ever play). I have some troll character I am working on and I will be getting a human gun mage rifleman conversion from Rob to match the one in the last issue of NQ. If you do not get NQ here is a link to Rob's blog. This little guy is an old IKRPG mini that I had sitting around for some time. I am planning to play him as a skilled gobber (obviously) cutthroat/thief. I am thinking virtuoso daggers will be his archetype skill. I took a slightly different approach to this guy from my past gobber minis. In  the past I did my gobbers with greenish skins and I fully intended to the same with this little fellow but while he was on the table I saw my grey skin tone paint and said lets try that. I was happy with the basecoat and said lets roll with it. I feel like the grey is kinda fitting for a stealth no good dirty thief.

The primed mini. I made another attempt at preshading. Not too great but better than previous attempts.

 Skin and cloak basecoated. It was at this time I decided to stay with the grey skin.

 Metals, pants, foot wraps/belt, and sheath painted.

Washed the leather sections, cloak, skin and metals (not all the same wash)

 First highlight on skin

 

I still need to do one or two more layers on the skin, highlight the cloak (most likely two layers), highlight the leather sections, do detail work like eyes/teeth/nails, and then pick a base style for all my IKRPG minis. I will most likely stay with my traditional base theme but we will see. I am pretty sure I have his stat line worked out but once I have the mini full painted I will iron out the final details on this little bugger. Anyone have a good gobber name? I am at a loss.

 

While I primed the gobber above I also primed up this gentleman. This is the black bastard from the original IKRGP line line "Gul" above. I think he is going to be some kind of duelist/not sure. Thinking he was a member of the Order of the Amethyst Rose who left the country prior to the invasion due to some issue with his government then fell into a bottle and mercenary work. He no longer has any love for country or the underground just cash.