Atheros Undead: Wraith Hoplites and Skeleton Warriors

Some test casts have arrived: Undead hoplites. 

I'll be painting these up soon to see how they handle before cleaning the master casts for a production mould (and I'll likely make up some alternatives with head and weapon swaps for variety.

Tentatively aiming to get 4 wraiths and 6 swordsmen in the mould - the shields take up a lot of space. If I'm lucky I'll squeeze in 8 swordsmen.

Tox Trooper Paint Tutorial

Here's a speed paint tutorial for my Tox Troopers. Quick and easy and only 9 steps start to finish.

1. Assembly. 

I always texture the base prior to painting, the barb wire is simply two thin metal wires wrapped around each other for effect. The rest is beach sand affixed with PVA glue.

2. Undercoat. 

Do 2-3 light coats of Black undercoat spray, once dry do a thin wash of Chaos Black (is it still called that?) to cover all the recesses the spray missed.

3. Colour Blocking.

All colours here are from Citadel:

• Stormvermin Fur - for the grey coat and sleeves
• Ushabti Bone - for the helmets face place
• Rhinox Hide - for the gloves, boots and pouches on the models belt
• Steel Legion Drab - for the shoulder pad straps, the boot gaiters and the soil on the base
• Leadbelcher - for all the metal areas on the model
• Mephiston Red/Skull White - for the shoulder pad markings

4. Black Wash.

Nuln Oil - wash the entire mini, only avoiding the boot gaiters and the base.

5. Brown Wash

Agrax Earthshade - wash the base, the boot gaiters, all the metal areas, the faceplate and should pad straps

6. Colour Development

Go back to all the base colours and paint the raised areas/avoid the recesses - the wash has created the shading. This stage is most evident on the coat and face plate. This effect here should be subtle, the next stage will build upon it....

7. Highlights

• Dryad Bark - paint fine edge highlights on the gloves, boot caps and belt pouches
• Baneblade Brown - paint fine edge highlights on the boot gaiters and the shoulder pad straps
• Leadbelcher - fine edge highlight all the metal areas, and then scratches on all the black armour areas (I went overboard here, as usual - subtle is always better)
• Stormvermin Fur 70% mixed with Ushabti Bone 30% - highlight the raised edges on the coat. You can even paint thin vertical streaks at the edges to suggest fraying and damage.

8. Lens Detail

• Paint the entire lens Black
• Paint the bottom 50% of the lens with Mephiston Red
• Within that red area, paint a further 25% of the lens with Evil Sunz Scarlet
• Paint a final tiny streak of Wild Rider Red in the extreme bottom corner of the lens
• In the opposite top left corner of the lens, paint a tiny streak of white 

9. Base

• Drybrush the entire base with Baneblade Brown
• Paint a further drybrush of the entire base with Terminatus Stone
• Daub the metal wire on the base with Skrag Brown
• Paint the edge of the base with Steel Legion Drab
• Dead field grass was applied in patches with PVA glue

Tox Trooper Scouts WIP

New Tox Trooper minis WIP...

Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy

Phew, I've been snowed under with private commissions, and keeping the Tox Troopers in stock to meet demand.

I'm gearing up to start blogging again showcasing new sculpts but a nice distraction has gone live: Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy.

For a few quid a month I'm very happy to support Duncan - I've learned a few tricks from him over the years so subscribing is the least I can do given the current economic climate.

The website was swamped initially, I'm told, but I got registered in less than a minute and have only good things to say about the content.

Go check it out!

https://www.duncanrhodes.com

Hades terrain: the underworld awaits

I must say selling miniatures is a tough gig, with pros and cons. Most recently, it's been a weird one:

Pro- good sales, popular ranges, selling out very regularly
Cons - struggle to keep things in stock, very tiring fulfilling lots of orders, less time to sculpt new stuff

All in all, it probably evens out over time. Anyway, while sculpting for production demands zero tolerance for blemish, terrain making is far far more forgiving...

This is either the gateway or the porch to Hades. Early stages and effectively just an undercoat with some colour blocking, washes and minor drybrushing in places. Maybe about 30% of what I determine the painting requirement to be.

The black is going to be water, one of the many rivers of the underworld. The shorelines of which are teeming with lost souls and makeshift tent towns - poor souls awaiting the arrival of their loved ones from the land of the living.

It's hard to make out at the moment but there's a logic to the stonework leading up from the harbour. I intend to give the borders of the trails a bit of colour, perhaps purple or green corpse glow. The pathway tells a bit of a story on the judgement of the soul with some pivot points where a threshold guardian may stand in audience with the recently departed, deciding their fate and ushering them in  certain direction.

This is the first of many boards I'm making, effectively taking the dungeon crawler tile laying concept and scaling it up!

This will be the largest and perhaps central tile (21"/32"). Once I've finishing this one I'll do several smaller sections like an extended shoreline, corridors/chambers, and maybe some elevated platforms.

I've also got some very cool DIY pillars that will be modular, and can be placed anywhere. Speaking of which - the two facades in the first and last picture will act as either scenario focal points or objectives.

I'm slightly bored with the eternal flat terrain board and scatter terrain... I want to do some vertical terrain on a cliff face, or a catacombs of the dead multi level metropolis. Approaching the terrain as a stage or a film set switches your creative thought process, and you think about dramatic angles, backgrounds and lines of sight that frame your miniatures for a heroic composition.

Christmas books

I tend to avoid miniatures and such on my little amazon christmas list these days. Books are it for the foreseeable future.

It's always a nice surprise too, I'll add 10 or so to the list knowing family will pick from it at random.

The Art of Magic the Gathering series is priceless in my opinion. This year Ravnica came out, and with this I'm up to date with all 7 books published so far. It's not just art though, the text within the books is also substantial in content and quality, a huge amount of world building and storytelling goes into them. It will likely take me a month or two to read through it and enjoy it all.

Osprey Myths and Legends books will be inspiration fodder for future miniature sculpts, and they're all nice tellings and interpretations of the timeless stories. Great little reads with a cup of tea on weekend afternoons.

Frostgrave perilous dark rounds out the Frostgrave collection, I think I'm fully up to date with all the publications now. I've only casually skimmed through it, but it's a neat addition and provides a ton of new gaming opportunities. Solo play, co-op play and also dungeon crawling are discussed - making the entire series (I include Ghost Archipelago and Rangers of Shadow Deep in there) a pretty sizeable, varied and interesting gaming experience... one that really appeals to me.

After a lot of food, booze, and contemplation over the last few days I'm leaving 2019 with a few thoughts:

• Warhammer Age of Sigmar pales in horrible irrelevance when you experience the worlds of Magic the Gathering. Artwork and fluff are infinitely superior. I played MTG once about 22 years ago, that was it, and I own both Age of Sigmar starter sets. I've not really followed the 'plot' that everyone keeps talking about 'advancing', nor have I purchased any gaming books for it even after flicking through them. I'm therefore picking and choosing miniatures and world building on my own with them.

• The Renaissance Troll is producing stuff that seems just right for this era. I'm sure it's not just me but when someone creates stuff you also like playing, you automatically feel a kinship and camaraderie - this person likes the same types of games as me, this person has a similar amount of gaming time, this person is probably the same age as me, etc. I look forward to Oathmark coming out in 2020 because it's more than likely going to deliver for mass battles what Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow deep delivered for small scale skirmish narrative gaming. Combining it all you have the framework for everything from dungeon crawler to mass battles, each with their own campaign system, which I'm sure won't be heard to interlink.
• His blog is also very good, check it out and follow http://therenaissancetroll.blogspot.com

• There's a wealth of world mythology that's not making it's way to the gaming tables. Were still in the western medieval period on the whole. There's a few little sets and factions I want to sculpt in this realm, but I'm way more interested in designing brand new stuff that's never been seen in miniature form before, or isn't terribly popular at the moment. 

 

Going into 2020 then, with all that in mind, I've got a few new project I'll be unleashing on the world. I just need to figure out in what order to do them...

LOKE Dungeon Battlemat books

I backed this kickstarter in the summer and the books recently arrived.

Very nice product I'd highly recommend it.

I'll be putting it to good use, there's plenty in it that will work for Greek Mythology dungeon crawling. And also Frostgrave, especially the library and cavern tiles.