Monday, June 30, 2014

Labyrinth Lord & Fantasy Miniatures

Pig-faced Orc Commander and two of his minions.

I promised you guys some pictures of my Labyrinth Lord figures by Otherworld Miniatures, so here they are.  These figures are fantastic, the sculptures are great and they are solid minis.  I just finished painting the Level One box set not to long ago and will be purchasing the Level Two set sometime in the near future. 

I highly reccomend these guys, they have several box sets that come with their own carry cases, level one and two monsters and also heros, demi-heros and henchmen.  Well worth the money if you like old school minis!

The rest of this post will be picture heavy, have fun!

 
Pig-faced Orc archer and flail dude.

Trio of Hobgoblins.

A swarm of ugly ass Goblins.

I love the Kobolds, bad mofo's!

Creepy Centipedes.

Fire Beetles, I elected to leave off the feelers, they were a bit fragile.

The Rat Pack.

The rest of the pack.

The Stirges are freaking awesome!

Close up of the Stirges.

These are not the Skeletons that come with the set, but I like them :)

Again, not an Otherworld miniature but still a bad-ass Bugbear!

Booty shaker view.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Painting Marines - Part II

Private McNulty starting to look like a real Marine.

For the next step I painted the face in Vallejo Basic Skintone and then painted all of the knee pads, bags, hydration bladder, ammo pouches and plate carrier in Vallejo English Uniform.

Plate carrier/Hydration pack.

 Here's a look at the rest of the Marines, half are done with Vallejo Basic Skintone and the other half with Citadel Mournfang Brown for a little variety.  Next up will be guns, night vision connectors, microphones and goggle lenses.

Almost ready for war.  Almost.

Painting Marines - Part I

Meet Private McNulty (Yes, I 'm a fan of The Wire)
I spent a lot of time searching around the webs for some step by step instructions for painting Marines.  I found a really nice post on Little Nickys Gameroom and figured I would follow along and post my results here.

I am painting 20mm Marines from Elhiem Miniatures, they are really nice and have lots of detail for such small figures.  I based them on pennies and glued down some GaleForce Nine Fine Basing Grit.  This was followed by a coat of matte black spraypaint.  The base was then painted with Privateer Press Hammerfall Khaki (see above picture).

First coat of the uniform.
For the base of the uniform I used Vallejo Iraqi Sand, I found this to be a bit thin with too much of the base peaking through so after he dried I went back and gave him a second coat for better coverage.  Next up will be the gear and equipment, stay tuned!

Private McNulty gets a second coat of Iraqi Sand.


Keeping busy

  

Heya folks,

Just wanted to drop a quick post, things have been busy here and its been a while since I have been on the blog.  I've been neck deep in the World Cup the last few weeks, I'm currently watching the Netherlands/Mexico game.  That's not to say all of my gaming has fallen by the wayside, I have made a little time to work on some miniatures. I finished up painting my Labyrinth Lord Level One box set and am currently working on some 20mm Marines for Skirmish Sangin.  Above is a picture of my painting setup, its a cheap folding table from Target planted squarely in front of my TV (and the World Cup).  Below you can see some close ups of the miniatures I am working on.

I'll try and post a few photos later this week of the completed Labyrinth Lord miniatures, I'm pretty happy with how they came out.  Take care and GO USA!

Marines and Delta Forces primed and ready for paint!

Marines get their first pass with the base uniform color.


Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Abd Al-Rahman Ibn Nassr (Pendragon Character)


I had so much fun the other day creating a new character for Pendragon RPG I decided to give it another go. Here is Abd Al-Rahman Ibn Nassr, Aristocrat and Knight-Wanderer from the land of Araby. I wanted to make a continental character, one that was outside of the standard Lorges Knight. The process was quite easy, options for creating continental characters in the Book of Knights and Ladies are a little more restricted. Most of the charts dealing with the characters father and his class go out the window so the process is a little quicker.  

Some of the changes from the standard British Knight are that he is of the Saracen religion which holds different personality traits in high regard. He is several years older than my previous character, making him a little more experienced. He does not have a manor or hold land as he has recently arrived in Lorges and is son number four, which is why he is out wandering the world and not at home tending to his fathers lands. Nassr is wielding a scimitar and a compound bow, which is considered "unknightly" by the local British knights. He wears light chain-mail and has a round shield and is skilled in the use of Medicine which covers both First Aid (a knightly skill) and Chirurgery (a non-knightly skill).  His mount is a Barbary Charger, swifter than the standard Chargers ridden by the local knights.

Overall I really like this character, he was fun to make and offers a chance to play and outsider that is considered exotic and strange.  Fun stuff!



Saturday, April 26, 2014

Cadoc Pridd (Twilight: 2000 Character)


I finally finished up my Twilight: 2000 character I started a few days back. This is Cadoc Pridd, a Welsh-American that attended the U.S. Naval Academy and then served two tours as a Marine Corps Force Recon Officer before the war broke out. The character creation process in T2K is a bit overwhelming, maybe it was because this was the first character I have ever created or maybe it was the layout of the book but I found that locating the information I needed was not easy. That said I'm a big fan of the life-path system, I really enjoyed taking my character through the different stages of his life leading up to the beginning of the game, it really helps to flesh out ideas for the characters back-story.

There were a number of questions that came up during the creation process that I was unable to find answers to, not the end of the world though. There is an awful lot of stuff to track for this game and it took me a while to look up all the information in the manual which I must say is LOADED with charts, more than I like to see in a rulebook. Some of the information needed is buried in paragraph after paragraph of writing, making it hard to track down. I find that my taste in RPG's over the last few years has begun to lean more to the simple side. There was a time when I would have loved a rules heavy game that focused on recreating reality, these days I like games that are simple and fun, I would much prefer to focus on the story and not have to worry about the rules.

I've never actually played T2K but would be willing to give it a try, I love the premise of the game and the world they have created seems like fun, I'm just not sure if I could handle the extensive rules.



Friday, April 25, 2014

Cynfan y Arth (Pendragon Character)


Say hello to Cynfan y Arth, he's a character I recently rolled up for Pendragon RPG. I've been pulling some of my old games down off the shelf and rolling up new toons for the heck of it. Cynfan is a Cymric Knight who was recently knighted and took over his father's manor, Burcome. He is known as "y Arth" (the Bear) due to his barrel chest and huge beard.  

The character sheet I used is from a newly available PDF called the Book of Records, available from http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/ for around four dollars. You can type right into it and then save your file, it's very handy. It also auto calculates the Glory you gain as well, good stuff all around! 

The shield was created in a little program called Coat of Arms Design Studio, its available here; http://inkwellideas.com/coat_of_arms/  I believe it cost around 20 bucks, its a tad bit expensive and a bit finicky but overall it's a very nice tool for creating shield designs. You can add creatures or items, ordinaries (pale, scarpe, bend, quarter sinister, etc) or divisions (per chevron, bendy sinister, etc).  Each of these many options can be adjusted for color and location. To finish it up you can add a scroll (like the one at the bottom of the shield above) or mantling/helms at the top.  

Here's the back of the character sheet:


Overall I really like the look and function of this character sheet.  Its got a nice design and the ability to type right into the .pdf with only Acrobat Reader is really great.  Now I just need to find a game to join!