HAWKS

Chris Palmer

     This week I also finished up the Mushroom King and Mushroom Men from the Bones II Expansion Set I.  I decided to paint them all at one time, since they all were getting the exact same paint scheme.
      I prepped the figures in the usual way; soaking them in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish- soap added, then giving them a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying them.  I then glued the figures to black-primed fender washers with Aleene’s Tacky glue; 1.5" for the King, 1.25" for the middle-sized mushroom, and 1" for the smallest.   When the glue was dry, I glued the figures to a tongue depressor with a couple drops each of the Elmer’s glue.

     I began by painting the entire bodies of the figures with plain White. Next, I painted the caps with GW “Blood Red”. I then painted the small shelf fungus growing down their sides with Apple Barrel “Apple Parchment”.

       I then went back to the White, and painted the small dots on their caps.  On the King, I painted his staff with Americana “Mississippi Mud”.  I also painted the stems of the mushrooms growing on his head, and the ones growing on his staff, with Americana “Buttermilk”.  I painted the caps of the mushrooms growing on the King’s head with Apple Barrel “Yellow”.  The more granular growth growing on his cap I painted with Apple Barrel “Burnt Sienna”.  I then painted some of the mushroom caps on his staff with Accent “Mustard Seed”, and others with Americana “Tangerine”.  I painted the small cluster mushrooms on the staff with Americana “Reindeer Moss Green”.

     After the paint had time to dry, I gave all the figures a head to toe wash with GW “Agrax Earthshade” wash using a wet brush.

    When the wash was dry, I went back and  carefully drybrushed the bodies of the mushrooms, avoiding as best I could the red caps, and the shelf fungus on their backs. I then took a regular brush and did further highlights where needed, and highlighted the white dots on the caps.  I followed this with highlighting the caps themselves with the base “Blood Red”.   I then used all the base colors I had used on the smaller mushroom caps to highlight them on the King’s head and staff.  Next, I mixed a little of the “Yellow” and “Burnt Sienna” and used this mix to lightly drybrush the granular growth on the King’s cap.  At this point I also realized that one of the things on the King’s cap was a snail shell (I think!), so I painted it with Americana “Zinc” and then drybrushed it with Duncan “Slate Grey”.
    Continuing,  I did highlights on the staff itself with the base “Mississippi Mud”, and the shelf mushrooms on their backs with the base “Apple Parchment”.  I finished off with adding tiny dots, using Apple Barrel “Apple Scotch Blue”, to the mushrooms I had painted with the “Mustard Seed” on the Kings staff ; and then lastly, giving  each mushroom a set of beady Black eyes. I painted the figures’ white integral bases with Ceramcoat “Walnut”
      I let the figures sit all day, and that evening I gave them a coat of Ceramcoat “Matte Varnish”.  The next morning  I flocked the bases, and that afternoon I gave the figures a coat of Testor’s “Dullcote” spray varnish.

     I’m very pleased with how these little fellows turned out.  They certainly are something completely different! 🙂

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Buck

While I paint 28mm figures for gaming, my dad has always been more interested in 54mm (and larger) figures as display pieces.  He sent me these two pictures of recently complete projects.

I think the metal track for the fortress gun came out particularly well.

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Buck

Iron Wind Metals has announced a Kickstarter campaign (http://ift.tt/1P5QFNK) to re-release the classic Ral Partha fantasy figures form the 1970′s and 1980′s.  While these figures do not have quite the sculpting of modern figures, I really like them.  They are much better proportioned than many more recent figures, and they don’t have those crazily oversized weapons like Games Workshop figures.  (It seemed for a while that later Ral Partha sculpts in the 1990′s tried to match the GW style instead of retaining their own, classic style.  How many of use formed our impression of what a goblin, else, or dwarf looked like from these Ral Partha figures?)  The Kickstarter has already achieved its goals, so this project is going to happen, and Iron Wind is a going concern, so I see little risk.  And unlike the Bones figures, most of these are suitable both or dungeon crawls and unit-based battles; the Bones figures are suitable as heroes and for dungeon crawls but not for battles.

I still have some of these old Ral Partha figures painted and ready to game in a box with all my other minis.  I used to think I had a lot of fantasy figures.  A couple of years ago during a move, I opened up my box of fantasy figures and realized how few I have.  There were my three or four packs of Ral Partha dwarfs, some of the goblins pictured above, and a few others.  I used to run our miniatures games on two card tables covered by a wool Army blanket.  If I run a minis game today, it usually involves at least six players on a 6×10 table.  But those early games, when we and the hobby were new, were great fun.

So why haven’t I jumped in yet?

For me fantasy miniatures gaming has always been a side effort.  I played fantasy games when I was in high school and college, because they were a natural extension of fantasy role playing games like Original D&D and Tunnels and Trolls.  I even wrote a set of fantasy rules many moons ago.

I can’t figure out if I want these figures from a sense of an old man’s nostalgia for bygone days of innocence before the hobby grew up and became overrun with sock puppets and incessant complainers and haters.  Or will I really paint all of them up and participate in — or run — big fantasy battles?  Also, the price is kind of high for a Kickstarter campaign.  Three dollars a piece for these Ral Partha re-casts seems high to me.  Since the project has received all its required funding, I may just wait until they are available on the market and pick them up a unit at a time to see if I will actually paint and use them.

In any event, I applaud Iron Wind Metals for initiating this project and making these figures available again.  This is a nice development for the hobby.

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Chris Palmer

     This week I decided to finish up the NOVA Corp set that I had started two weeks ago; and set out to complete all four remaining figures at one time. The NOVA set now joins the list of completed sets over on the right, and I celebrate the milestone of now having completed 150 figures. The next goal will be when I hit the 100-remaining-figure mark.
     With the previous NOVA Corp figure I had worked on, I had tested my idea  to paint them in a sort of chameleon armor,  making it look the same as I paint my usual rocky desert-like bases.  In other words, painting the figure and base as one. I planned to do the same thing with these four figures
      I prepped the figures in the usual way; soaking them in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish- soap added, then giving them a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying them.  I then glued the figures to black-primed 1" fender washers with Aleene’s Tacky glue,  When they were dry, I gave the washers and figures’ bases a brush on coat of Elmer’s white glue, and dunked them into a course sand mix.   When the sand mix had dried, I glued the figures to a tongue depressor with a couple drops of the Elmer’s glue each.

      I began by painting the each figure, and the sand base, completely with Americana “Charcoal Grey”.

       I then gave the figures and bases a drybrushing with GW Khemri Brown.

     When the “Khemri Brown” was dry, I followed up with a drybrushing the figures and bases with Ceramcoat “Raw Sienna”.

       I now painted the head of the officer with Americana “Mocha”. I painted his hair with DecoArt “Cinnamon Brown”, and his headset with Ceramcoat “Walnut”.  When these had dried, I gave the head a wash with GW “Agrax Earthshade” wash using a wet brush.  When the wash had dried, I went back and added eyes, with Black sockets, White whites, and  Black pupils.  I then did highlights on his head with the base “Mocha”.
      I then moved on to paint their goggles with Accent “Real Umber”, and added some small reflective light highlights to the goggles with White paint.  I then painted some of the assorted straps, breathing tubes, and ammo magazine with Folk Art “Butter Pecan”.  Lastly I painted the guns’ muzzles black, and a small insignia on their right shoulders with Folk Art “Tomato Red”.

   I’m pleased with how this group came out. (I added the Female soldier I did two weeks ago back in to the photo above.)  Not sure what I’m going to do with them though… Do I really need to start a whole 28mm Sci-Fi project just to find a home for the handful of Sci-Fi soldiers that came with the Kickstarter?? 🙂

Figures 147 – 150: Complete

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Buck

40mm ACW Figures

 40mm American Civil War:

As part of the Armies for Kids project for Historicon (see previous posts and posts on Chris Palmer’s blog), many painted Confederates were donated along with many unpainted Union figures.  The HAWKs had one recent painting day to get the figures painted up.  A second one is scheduled for next weekend.  In the meantime, I got 11 Zouave figures from Dave and painted them this weekend.

40mm ACW Figures

40mm ACW Figures

World War II Figures:

Berlin or Bust Medium Machine-gun Team in Action

Berlin or Bust has the only 28mm machine-gun team I have found that has both a walking and set-up configuration.  A set up machine-gun team is common, but the walking team is pretty rare.

Walking Berlin or Bust Medium Machine-gun Team

I wanted the walking team for the upcoming convention game featuring the G.A.M.E.R.™ rules based on the recent Last Battle book.

Space Marine:

Games Workshop Dark Angel to Stand in Front of my Hobby Store for the Zombie Shopping Mall Game

Greg game me this Space Marine figure to paint up.  It will be set in front of the wargaming store that I built for our upcoming zombie game set in a shopping mall.

Robin Hood:

Robin Hood (?) Figure

This figure has been sitting on my painting desk for quite some time.  I don’t know where it came from.  It looks sort of like Robin Hood, so that’s how I painted him.

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Eric runs his Napoleonic system, The Continental System, at HAWKs night.

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Noah’s Skirmish Sangin game at HAWKs night.

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Chris Palmer

     This week I also completed the Bones II figure Logrim, Dwarf Captain, from the Core Set.    I had been wanting to add some more “good guy” figures to my winter themed collection, since I had a number of suitable baddies and monsters finished already; and this little guy looked like he’d be a good candidate.  There was something about the grille on his helmet that to me gave him the look of a little coal stove, and I could just picture his hot breath puffing out of the slits in his face plate.
       So, I prepped the figure in the usual way; soaking it in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish- soap added, then giving it a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying.  I then glued the figure to a 1" black-primed fender washer with Aleene’s Tacky glue, and glued the washer to a tongue depressor with a couple drops of Elmer’s White Glue.

      I began by painting the figure entirely black.

      I then gave the entire figure a drybrushing with Ceramcoat “Metallic Pewter”. I then went over this with a lighter drybrushing of Folk Art “Silver Sterling”.

     Next, I went back and painted his beard black, followed with painting the grip on his sword with Americana “Asphaltum”.   I then painted his skirts with Folk Art “Metallic Blue Sapphire”.  Also, I used Ceramcoat “Bronze” to paint decorative parts of his helmet, armor and sword hilt.

      Now, I lightly drybrushing his beard with Duncan “Slate Blue” to give it some highlights.  I then painted the tie on his beard with Anita’s “Burnt Sienna”, and then gave it some highlights with Folk Art “Barnyard Red”.   Next, I added highlights to his skirts with Folk Art Pearl “Aqua Moire”, and highlights with Ceramcoat “14K Gold” to the areas I had previously painted “Bronze”. Lastly, I went back and added specific highlights to his armor and sword with the “Silver Sterling”.
    I painted his base white, and when everything had overnight to dry, I gave the figure a coat of Ceramcoat “Matte Varnish”.  The next morning I flocked the base with Woodland Scenics “Snow” flock, and added a little bit of dried grasses made from a bit of unraveled twine.  Late that afternoon I sprayed the figure with Testor’s Dullcote.

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Buck

I received these dice in the mail from Inkwell Ideas (http://inkwellideas.com) yesterday.  They look like they will be a nice way to generate one-off adventures off the cuff for fantasy role playing games.  I can even imagine using them for historical adventures or pulp games.

There are three sets of five dice — or 15 dice.  That makes 6^15 combinations or 470,184,984,576 if you use all 15 at the same time.  All of the sides are geomorphic, which means no matter what you roll they will fit together.

This company has some other interesting products.  It is worth a look at their Web page.  I will likely order a few more things from their site.

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Chris Palmer      Over this past weekend I finished up a couple bases of giant poison dart frog swarms to accompany my 10mm Lizardman army for use with “Bear Yourselves Valiantly” mass combat fantasy rules.   The figures were from a pack I picked up in a flea market a while back and were made by Chariot (now sold by Magister Millitum) and intended for 15mm. I think they work fine for 10mm too.
   

Two bases and a command stand.

A close up.

Shown with some 10mm Pendraken Lizardmen for scale.

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