It gets to that point where there is an eclectic mix of miniature photos in the media library that don’t quite link together or really warrant an entire post on their own (for whatever reason the questionable logic that is my reasoning deems the case).
So forgive the randomness in advance.
First up – I’m pretty sure this Kali-inspired monster goddess is from old-school Games Workshop. I’ve had her long enough waiting for a paint job. I was going to paint her in tandem with the Reaper Bones inspired Kali I did a while back but didn’t. A slight move in style towards, but by no means complete, NMM painting style. I wanted a strong red tone to stand out so thought I’d try an understated black armour to contrast. A bit heavy on the armour highlights.
Chronicles of the Wayfarer is a forthcoming range of rather nice 15mm fantasy themed miniatures. Fellow gamer and painter John M put me on to the range and encouraged me to join the ‘launch’ painting competition. So the images you see here are those that I recently entered into the competition.
First off though, the miniatures. They differ from most 15mm offering in that they are produced in resin. At this scale resin has it’s draw-backs – it’s light and fragile. It does however still share the benefits of larger models in that the level of detail and to an extent pose options, are far greater. And detailed these minis are.
Nevermind. I’m a bit slow too. Like the time it has taken me to try out for myself the wonders of transparent basing. Many of us spend hours creating lovely textured and decorated bases to accompany our little painted gems. Personally I’ve always been a ‘less is less’ type of guy when it comes to basing. Keep it simple, neutral colours and focus on the mini. If possible blend in with the ‘expected’ playing surface (in my case the same palette for all bases and terrain bases).
These new(ish) fangled acrylic bases do away with the need for all of the above. You’ll have seen it done to great effect many times already but it’s taken me this long to give it a go myself.
Now, there is NO way I am going to rebase my entire collection. Tim Mc was right to point out that the benefits are far better had by sci fi settings than say historical or fantasy (where the variables of terrain type are larger, potentially). As good a starting place as any.
With that in mind – and coinciding with a foray in to Rogue Stars (28 and 15mm) – and coinciding with having a few old and stripped down minis ready to paint – and coinciding with a Heroclix repaint experiment – and coinciding with discovering a few 15mm’s didn’t have magnetically attractive washer bases – I thought I’d give it a bash.
(Negative note: Clearly acrylic bases have no magnetic or magnetically attracting properties – so a reliance on either for transport or movement trays becomes defunct – obviously).
First up, the 15s. I painted these guys a while back but when I was looking them out to take to a battle it transpired the washers I’d used were not ferrous. So I was going to have to replace them. I thought I’d try the transparent bases instead.
Forgive the indulgence but I’ve taken new shots (for Before and After) as the original post they were pretty ropey. FYI they are “15mm PNHE Cyborg Agents — Prohibited Non-Human Eradication” as the Khurasan site does not make finding specific models easy at all.
Some of you may recall from an earlier post an early ‘test’ at creating a backdrop for one of my fantasy city terrain boards. Link to post.
Here is a pic.
Started playing around with making a scenic backdrop. Getting there…
The effort composed simply of Photoshopping some matching Dave Graffam art with some perspective artwork found online in order to achieve a sense of continuation from the ‘playable’ board. As you can see from the photo this works quite well and deserved further exploration.
However, it did have one draw back – backdrop or not aside, when placing terrain against a ‘dead table end’ like this does create a lot of dead space around that set terrain (i.e. you have a full depth building jutting against a wall where only the frontage is going to be useful in game terms).
Model Railway enthusiasts conquered this issues aeons ago for the same reasons with ‘low relief’ terrain/models. In effect, cut the terrain in half.
So with that in mind, combining the previous efforts with Photoshop and slicing a number of pre-built Graffam models in half, I made a panel that both compliments the terrain on the board and still plays an active, yet less intrusive, part in the game space. Pretty pleased with the result.
I was struck again more recently with a similar wave of all things ‘Northern’ that struck me when I painted for and penned this earlier post. I can’t fully explain where the notion comes from exactly but on this occasion is was prompted by joining in a new SAGA campaign at the local club.
I didn’t ‘need’ any more troops per sae but is was an excuse to paint up some LotR minis I’d bought off eBay (dirt cheap), a random Wargames Foundry Viking (£1 at Claymore 2016) and a re-paint of one of my oldest miniatures from Citadel.
First up, mounted Theoden from Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings range.
The results on that occasion were less “Wow” and more “Nae Bad” (Scot dialect for okay). Subsequently Vinyl printing at Pixartprinting came around again so I thought I’d have another run at it.
Aside from a couple of standard “roll ’em out and use ’em” mats (images below) I thought I’d try something a bit more ‘flexible’ as well this time. Gaming tiles.
Not a new idea by any means – I’ve made many homespun ones before as will many of you. They work well but the print quality is always going to be restricted by the quality of your printer. Likewise durability by the stock you can print on to. I used to have a great colour laser which was great for this type of printing but it died a few years ago. The inkjet that replaced it, while a good machine, wasn’t so suitable for this purpose. Add to that, some stock that I used wasn’t totally ‘official’ and colour fade to a pinkish hue not long after printing (and all the work involved with trimming and mounting on to foamcore). Imagine how annoying the same result had on carefully built card building models! Grrr.
On the left, a double tile using the vinyl printing, on the right, one I made earlier using my own printer. In this case it is clear that this is one of the printed stock that suffered from the discolouration I mention above.
So, a few of the images below will at first appearance look odd. Big vinyl sheets with randomly dotted terrain on it (see the coastal set). These were laid out in Photoshop before going off to print to minimise the amount of cutting required and to get as much bang for your buck (i.e. you don’t send off thirty 12″x12″ bits of art to print but one big sheet).
For example. here’s a screenshot of the artwork that went off to print for the City tiles. One big file. One big sheet.
With the coastal one I was looking to get from the big sheet a 3’x3′ plain ‘water’ mat (hence the appearance of pirate and viking ships!). The actual coastal areas and land areas were to be sliced into individual tiles to be used either in conjunction with the ‘water’ or in their own right.
Worked out well.
The City banner, whilst it ‘looks’ like a laid out ready-to-use mat, was always intended for slicing. Which you can see in the later pics. The reason for that was – if the slicing proved problematic then I’d at least be left with a City mat that could be used. The cutting and subsequent mounting was not a problem though.
Continue reading Mini Update: A Mini Medley of Randomness 
