Ninja Attack!

 I'm pleased to report that I seem to have refound my painting groove and have a project going that I feel good about, I'm motivated, I'm enjoying the process. 

Back in 2024, I bought a handful of Feudal Japanese miniatures with an idea towards making that my big project for 2025, which ended up not happening beyond a few test figures. Having grabbed a few vintage figures for AEG's "Clan Wars" miniature game, I felt my interest in samurai gaming rekindle. As an added bonus, my home convention (Running GAGG in SUNY Geneseo) has announced the theme for the 2027 show as "Pirates Vs. Ninjas" and now I feel like I have a defined goal to work towards - put on a game with some ninjas in it! And it just so happens I already owned a couple of ninjas that were primed and ready to paint!

These are the "Shinobi Sisters" from Bad Squiddo Games. I've got a few more of their Feudal Japan figures waiting in the wings, and am looking forward to buying more because they're great characterful sculpts.

Rather than just going with black clothing with maybe a gray dry brush, I went with some darker colors that would actually blend into the shadows better - a very dark, drab brown (Reaper "Woodstain Brown," washed with Agrax Earthshade, then drybrushed with Reaper "Powderburn Brown") and a dark blue (Reaper "Coal Black," which is actually an extremely dark teal, drybrushed with "Midnight Blue"). One of them I'd glued to a Renedra Cobblestone-patterned base; you'll see more of these as I continue through the collection of primed figures I've got for this project. I'm using them a lot for figures who are on tabs instead of puddle bases. I'm continuing the winter basing theme I started with the ghost samurai last week. 

What's next? Well, I've got some Northstar figures, designed to accompany the Osprey game "Ronin," half-painted that I'm hoping to finish by early next week. And I've started work on an Ogre Mage (inspired by the Japanese "Oni" demon) from Reaper Miniatures that I've wanted to paint for...a very long time. I think I must have seen it on their site when I first discovered Reaper 20 years ago and at the time I always passed on it in favor of getting multiple human-sized figures instead. Over the years I always had something else taking priority, but I finally bought him in 2024. Now I'm not just painting him, but giving him the absolute best damn paint job I can. Here's a WIP shot:

The fur vest he's got on is going to be painted as a tiger skin.

I was a little bad, though, and bought more figures today at Harlequin Hobby. I knew they had some Warlord Games samurai stuff on the little historical shelf they've got (which is mostly Bolt Action and a little bit of Victrix Dark Age plastics) and I decided to take a look. Along with boxes of plastic samurai and ashigaru (which, if I was a plastic figure kind of guy, I'd probably order Fireforge's sets instead), they had three boxes of metal figures, all branded for Warlord's "Warlords of Erewhon" fantasy game that I think has largely flopped. Two of the boxes were plain olive drab with the Warlord Games logo, with only a sticker describing what was inside. The third box was "Bandits & Brigands," with a characterful assortment of ten figures. This last one came home with me today.

Having opened it, it looks like the figures fit well size-wise alongside the figures I've already got. There's some bent swords that I'm hoping I can straighten without breaking, and some of the figures have separate arms to glue on. I'm looking forward to mixing them with the Grey For Now Games "Rogues & Ruffians" I have primed and awaiting my attention. 

Miniatures Acquired: 135

Miniatures Painted: 90

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Breaking the Rut

 So I've been in a painting rut for most of the month. Either I've struggled to find enough enthusiasm to even pick up, much less paint a given thing on my workbench (the Mesoamerican buildings, the handful of Maya awaiting paint), or it's a frustrating painting experience (I've got a Wargames AEgyptus chariot mostly assembled and painted, but something went funny with the primer and even the most careful handling is causing paint to flake off, necessitating seemingly endless touch ups). I needed something fast and easy to break me out of feeling like I'm just not accomplishing anything during the time I'm sitting at my painting bench.

Casting about, I found this "Skeletal Samurai" from Reaper Miniatures that I'd mostly primed last fall; I'd sprayed one side of it white, I think a sudden change in the weather stopped me from priming the other side. Either way, I took advantage of the nice weather to finish priming, and then set to work.

Rather than paint him as a corporeal animated skeleton, I opted to paint him as a ghost to make things simpler on myself. A nice coat of GW "Nilakh Oxide" was allowed to settle into the various crevices, creating a very nice "Force Ghost" look - painting ghosts is actually the entire reason I bought a pot of this paint in the first place! 

Once that was dry, I painted the base with my usual brown, and flocked with my regular "dirt" flock from Woodland Scenics. Rather than go with my usual grass patches, I applied a few dry-looking tufts, splodged (technical term) some more PVA on and dipped it in some Army Painter snow flock. 

While I was at it, I touched up the primer on some samurai I've had sitting in a box since 2024, as well as primed a few additional ones, including a set of "Rogues and Ruffians" from Grey For Now Games that my wife bought me last time I got the bug to do some samurai wargaming. I've been seeing some really nice samurai figures on social media lately and been starting to feel that flutter of excitement for a new project again. Thankfully, I have all the unpainted figures from the last time I got the flutter for this particular project, so I can dabble without spending more money. 

Naturally, I ordered the rulebook for "Test of Honor" today anyways. 

Miniatures Acquired: 125

Miniatures Painted: 88

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Gangs of Rome - Twice!

 I took Friday off work, and drove up to Niagara Falls to meet up with my friend Chris - he was on vacation all this week and hoping someone would be available for a game or two, and I was more than happy to take a day off work. He was gracious enough to reserve a room at the local library and set up to teach me Footsore Games' Gangs of Rome. 

For those unfamiliar, Gangs of Rome is a game of... well, exactly what it says on the tin! Players take on the role of gang-leaders in Ancient Rome, sending henchmen out to engage in various crimes and rumble with rivals to ensure their own gang's status and influence. It is, as Chris explained, a game that truly shines in scenario play, and games go quickly enough that you could probably run a decent campaign of linked games over the course of a single day. We played two games in slightly under three hours. 

The first game was the basic "here's how to play" scenario; Chris and I each took control of a small gang and tried to claim as many (out of three) objective tokens before the game ended; every game of Gangs of Rome is a strict five turns, encouraging you to get a move on and engage instead of faffing about! 

The game swung pretty wildly, and ended with me in control of one objective token and Chris taking two; I'd had two, but in the last turn he managed to off my gang-member who was carrying the second one and jumped on the token! One of the entertaining points was I had a character trying to climb the side of a building to get the token on the roof; she kept failing her activation rolls, meaning she sat at the foot of the wall getting more and more stressed about it! 

The second game was a scenario involving a smuggling run - my gang started the gang moving contraband through the city, and Chris' gang had to seize the goods from me. Again, I held on to my objective tokens pretty well until turn 4, and suddenly Chris was taking them from me right and left. Ultimately he managed to seize all three objectives and wipe out my entire gang. 

Best part of the second game was making good use of the game's rules for crowds. Rome is, of course, a crowded city, and the scenarios call for multiple crowds (five civilian figures in a group sabot base) to be on the table. They move around and react to the gangs fighting, which is very cool. At one point, two of Chris' figures attacked one of mine to seize a token (see above); I got the opportunity to activate a crowd and got it to attack Chris' gangsters, killing one and giving my guy an opportunity to run away, buying him a little bit of time. 

I had a great time, and we're discussing our next meet-up - somewhere closer to me, and maybe playing A Fistful of Kung Fu. We were thinking maybe hitting up Casual Dragon (less than ten minutes from my house) and seeing if we can reserve a table. I paid them a visit today, but the guy manning the front counter was a new employee and seemed a little overwhelmed so I didn't ask about table reservations. I did clear out some vintage "Clan War" samurai figures that Reaper made 24 years ago that they had marked down. I maybe feel a little guilty about that, given how little I've accomplished in terms of painting this month, but not so guilty that I didn't buy them, you know?

Miniatures Acquired: 121

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Faffing About

 I've been puttering away at plenty of things, and not completing hardly any of them. I did finish the jungle terrain with the Olmec head:

I'm pretty well pleased with how it turned out. 

In other news...

My friend Chris sent me an early birthday present. I'd enthused on BlueSky about the old I-Kore "Celtos" line of Celtic fantasy miniatures, having discovered it's still in production through Brigade Models. I'd been eyeing these models since the early 2000s, but never had a good justification for buying them (and especially back then, when I was in my late teens and didn't have meaningful money coming in). Chris pulled a whopping collection of Celtos Sidhe figures (basically elves) out of his own pile of shame, including archers, swordsmen, mages and dragon riders. 

I may or may not rebase them, but either way I'm overwhelmed by the generosity! 

Besides that...

I found out a local friend of mine has a Wargods of Olympus army from Crocodile Games, which inspired me to dig out the Wargods of AEgyptus army I painted most of back in 2020; the two games are cross-compatible so it's entirely possible I might actually get a game of Wargods in without having to drive to Historicon or Adepticon for it. 

Having been dissatisfied with the contrast paints I used on the Basti Archers (leading them, and the army, to be left unfinished back then), I stripped the paint off them to start fresh, and I cleaned up one of the chariots I'd bought and built some sub-assemblies for painting. 

Once painted, the horses will have their tabs trimmed off and the entire assembly glued just to the 50x100 chariot base. I've misplaced one of the chariot runners in the past six years, which is annoying but not insurmountable. 

I'll do these with contrast paints to match the rest of the army, though the Basti will be getting a blue and white color scheme instead of the turquoise and red look I tried in 2020, and probably some more variety in their fur colors. Also, all of the bases in the army are getting redone to replace the awful "baking soda and superglue painted as sand" thing I tried to do back then. 

So let's update that tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 116

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Mesoamerican Terrain

 I have quite a stack of Mesoamerican terrain, both resin and MDF, to chip away at getting painted if I want to put on a Maya game at Wargames Among the Warplanes in September; as is, I think I'm going strictly as a player to the June show to save my energy for September. 

I've finished the first two pieces, a pair of resin buildings from Acheson Creations:

These were kept pretty basic - primed a dark brown, the stones are drybrushed with successive layers of Raw Sienna, a medium gray and a paler gray. I used cheap craft paint for all of it, and mostly stuck to the color scheme Mark Morin used when he was painting this model. His blog tracking his own Aztec project has been a huge inspiration for me with my own Mesoamerican project. 

Unlike my modern buildings, I glued the roofs down rather than worrying about drilling the resin and adding magnets to try and hold them in place. 

Up next I've got another four buildings, these with thatched roofs. They've been primed (dark brown for the stone, a yellowy tan for the thatch), and I should be able to complete them this week.

I'm also beginning work on another set of jungle terrain pieces, including a couple with incorporated Olmec heads:

Unfortunately I ran into some trouble with those yesterday - I used torn pieces of cork sheets to add some elevation to a few MDF bases, only to discover the PVA glue didn't bind the cork to the MDF, so the cork is now just sliding right off. Superglue it is then! 

Miniatures Acquired: 97

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 4

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Elric of Melnibone

 I had to put the Warhammer Orcs aside; I got hit with a bad case of painter's block and just couldn't keep going on them. Instead, I pulled out some Sword & Sorcery (and Sword & Planet, it's interstellar cousin) figures from Bronze Age Miniatures and got them cleaned up, glued to bases and primed; I've been eyeing Bronze Age's figures for a very long time - since the days when about half their catalogue was "blank" figures intended for you to sculpt your own hair and clothing on to, but it took me quite a while to pull the trigger.

Last night, I pulled one of them and set to work. Bronze Age lists this figure as "Grey Elf Wolf Lord with Rune Sword" but he's pretty immediately identifiable as Elric of Melnibone, a creation of British author Michael Moorcock. First appearing in print in 1961, Elric was conceived as something of an anti-Conan; instead of being a big beefy barbarian who eventually makes himself king, Elric is a sickly albino sorcerer-king, ruler of a cruel race, too conscientious and empathetic to be loved by his subjects, and kept alive by the vampiric powers of his demonic sword Stormbringer. He's doomed to bring about the end of the world, a fate he struggles to free himself from. 

Elric's story continues on in music and roleplaying games, and has served as inspiration for later characters across a variety of media. My introduction to him actually came in the form of the Blue Oyster Cult song "Black Blade," which Moorcock had collaborated on with the band to develop the lyrics. 

Outside of his eyes and the gems on his sword, I tried to sticker to cooler and neutral tones as much as possible for the color palette; I do intend to go back and add some snow to his base to "chill" the composition further, I just didn't have the time to do so tonight.

I've also had some fun stuff arrive today - Forge of Ice is taking over production and sale of Barbaric Splendour's "Ophidian Menace" figures as Kevin from Barbaric Splendour has had to step back from the business for health reasons, and Alex was kind enough to send me a set of figures since I'm doing some freelance writing for him.

As well as a spectacular piece of resin-cast terrain:

This gateway is part of a set of crumbling stone walls and towers he's been working with Ian at Fenris Games to develop, which will hopefully be going on sale later this year. Part of why he sent this to me is because I'm one of the people who made this piece possible; the battling monitor lizards design on the doors was based on a drawing done to illustrate an RPG scenario I wrote for Alex, set in his Bronze Age Lost World setting of Azor. 

Gina also ordered me some more Bronze Age Miniatures figures, and I placed an order with Gringo 40s, so it's time to update the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 97

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Taking Out the Trash - And Painting More Orcs

 A little bit of scatter terrain that's been sitting primed on my bench for too long got finished the other day - some 3D printed wheeled garbage and recycling cans, printed for me by my friend Dave from STLs from Tiny Furniture. He printed two of each design, closed and slightly overflowing, so I paired them on some 40mm round bases.

These are actually painted to match the ones sitting outside my house right now, with the brown lid on the recycling bin. Not sure how standardized those are to other areas. The recycling symbol is just free-handed with some white paint. These will make some nice scatter on modern tables.

And having received more orcs for the Oldhammer Orc Project, I figured it was a sign I should paint some! I had primed a batch of 15 6th edition metal Savage Orcs about six months ago to accompany a shaman I painted a couple years back now. And since I received some more of those same Savage Orcs, I decided to start in on the primed ones. These have had their skin done, and tomorrow or this weekend I'll start in on the assorted skins and hides they're draped in. 

These were sculpted circa 2000 by Brian Nelson, and while Kev Adams is very much "the Goblinmaster," the more Brian Nelson orcs I paint, the more I appreciate his take on greenskins. They're bigger and more muscular than Kev Adams' orcs, but that musculature and the textures of the faces paint up a dream with the washes and drybrushing I favor. I'm looking forward to having some fun with the various furs and reptile skins they're wearing, and then going in and applying tattoos with a fine-tipped micron pen. 

Miniatures Acquired: 71

Miniatures Painted: 86

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4