A Million Little Projects

[Avatar of the Eldar]

Impressive! Great inspriation for me to return my many unfinished WotR projects this year. A short inventory:

- Finish painting and flocking 18+ trays of painted Mordor Orcs and Uruks plust 4 trays of Morgul Knights
- Finish details (belts, strapping, white tree boss on shields) on 8 trays of WoMT
- Move to wash, one level of highlights and details on 6 trays of Easterling archers and 6 trays of Kataphrakts

Only then can I move to starting:

- Easterling pike and sword formations (6 co's each)
- 2 Mumak and something like 8 co's of Haradrim warriors and 6 co's of Haradrim Raiders.
- Grey Company (4 co's)
- Blackroot Vale archers (4 co's)

Lots of other odds and ends

[lorelorn]

That looks like a great list Avatar, and it would be good to see another War of the Ring project log on here... no pressure


edit: here's a quick update, showing progress on the second batch of spiders and the carrock wardens, for which I'm using Warlord Games' Celt models. The weather here is pretty awful at the moment, far too damp for spray undercoating which has put a few other things on hold for now.

[lorelorn]

I have an interesting old GW figure of a lost dwarf miner, holding a map and with his helmet pushed back. I wanted to add it to my Intersting Figures project so I went looking.

Older gamers may remember if you ordered one of the game sets from GW (Blood Bowl, Warhammer Quest, etc) from GW it would come in a big sturdy cardboard box, white, with the Citadel Miniatures logo on them. Very good for storing miniatures. I have seven of these, five of which are stocked to the gills with miniatures and sprues, and none are as yet a part of any project listed here.

I failed to find that dwarf miner of any of my boxes, but did find some other interesting figures I've collected over the years, even one I painted and then forgot about!

So here's the update to the Interesting Figures project. I've set them up on the base from the Arcane Ruins terrain set, which will make a nice base for them all when they are done, and tie these disparate figures together as a project.



In front we have the first two Avatars of War figures, the dwarf slayer and orc shaman. I picked up both when the shaman was first released. Behind them are the painted figures of the elf sorceress, Murin and a Khorne hero. The Khorne figure was painted up for an Arena of Death contest. As I remember he was killed in the semi finals by a Dwarf. Oh the indignity!

Further back, a winged Reaper Miniatures figure I was planning to use as a Demonic Herald of Tzeentch, a Dwarf Tales armoured guardian, and a skeletal beastman from GW. At the very back is a Ral Partha figure who was gong to be a Demon Prince of Tzeentch, and on either side are black undercoated GW classic dragon figures, which I was planning to use as cave drakes in War of the Ring until the awesome new figure came out in November 2010.

There comes a time when you no longer collect miniatures. Instead miniatures accrete in your house. I have long since passed into that time.

[mdiscala]

+10 for using a word that I didn't know. "Accrete." Although I could figure it out using the context clues. Good Idea for a display base for disparate (eh?) miniatures. I've got a bunch I'm trying to clean off my shelves and that may be a good solution.

[lorelorn]

Perhaps I should replace 'disparate' with 'eclectic'? But yes, the base really helps turn this from 'random figures' into 'painting project' so that's good and I'll probably do this with other figures too.

I have painted up the Knight of Umbar recently for a game I ended up being unable to play due to flooding in these parts.



The Knight is pictured on a drawing my older daughter made while I was painting. We often have joint art activities, she draws or paints pictures while I paint models.

Speaking of other figures, I opened my bits boxes again and found that dwarf this time, along with my all-time favourite figure, Aekold Hellbrass. Here they are:



I will happily make room for these two on that base.

My daughters got involved in looking through the bits boxes, finding them fascinating, which surprised me as old sprues, unpainted and badly painted models are not generally items I would think of as interesting to an eight year old and two year old, but there you go. Their inquisitiveness will doubtless bring yet more projects to light.

[lorelorn]

Five days was five days longer than I expected, but now the 'bits boxes' are all packed up and put away again. The girls had a lot of fun especially with the warhammer siege bits and pieces.

Future projects that are likely to be added to the list include:

Warhammer Quest heroes and villains
Warhammer Chaos Warriors army
Wardancers

and doubtless some other things starting with 'war' as well. I also found the outlines of an empire army I barely remember buying - characters and unit champs. Gives me an excuse to pick up those Perry historical European mercenaries I've been drooling over.

One project added to the list is this - the eight metal character models from the very old Talisman: The Adventure supplement. Here they are:


From left to right, top to bottom they are; Centaur, chaos warrior, orc, ninja, samurai, soldier, witch doctor, and woodsman.

On closer inspection, the Samurai is not a GW figure at all! He was in a box with the other eight, but the copyright is TSR, still with a date of 1985 just like the others. How did he get there? What happened to the real Samurai? Who nicks a figure from a box, replacing it with a similar one from another company? All mysteries.

On yet closer inspection the Witch Doctor figure is not the right one either! His stand simply says Shaman and the back side is blank. Another mystery.

What a wierd box, but these guys should be fun to paint up.

[lorelorn]

I am steadily working through the giant spiders and celts, but I couldn't resist putting this wip up to show everyone. I realised with the carrock guardians that due to the way casualties are removed in War of the Ring, one base doesn't need to have its models be removable at all. Her eis the result of that:



The base itself still needs more work, but I'm happy with how its coming together. Shots of the finished version, as well as the second lot of Giant Spiders should be coming over the next couple of days.

[lorelorn]

Not the celts this time, I've completed the second set of six giant spiders, which I assure you are completely different from the six giant spiders in post 39. Yes indeed.



Here's picture of all the spider family together. Queen, giant spiders, and the broodling swarms at the back.



Four more bases of broodling swarms to go and the spider component of the Misty Mountains army will be done.

[Flæskefjæs]

Great stuff!

[lorelorn]

Thanks!

I've completed the first base of carrock guardians (two more to go), so here it is:





The next two bases will be similarly themed but the figures have to be able to come out of the trays so they won't be quite as scenic as this one.

[Darkritual]

Nice work! and good skin tone!

[lorelorn]

Thanks, I kept it straightforward.

Black undercoat, followed by Tallarn Flesh. Then a mix of roughly 50/50 tallarn flesh and elf flesh, and then increasing the elf flesh in the mix to pick out some of the higher points. Once the model was fully done, the whole lot got a Badab Black wash.

[Harry]

I like the Orc Team even more than the humans and these Celts look great. Nice little diorama. Good stuff all around.

[Abraham Danglebreech]

Plenty of interesting stuff going on here. I'm particularly keen to see your Talisman minis painted. I like the old ones and it'll be great to see the Fantasy Flight plastics done too. We've been playing it quite a lot. Bought The Reaper this week and got a game in with that this friday past. I think if yours turn out good I might do the same. Keep up the great work!

[lorelorn]

I like the Orc Team even more than the humans and these Celts look great. Nice little diorama. Good stuff all around.

Thanks Harry, my challenge now will be getting the other two bases with their removable figures to fit in with this one!

Plenty of interesting stuff going on here. I'm particularly keen to see your Talisman minis painted. I like the old ones and it'll be great to see the Fantasy Flight plastics done too. We've been playing it quite a lot. Bought The Reaper this week and got a game in with that this friday past. I think if yours turn out good I might do the same. Keep up the great work!

I expect I'll get onto the Talisman characters in the second half of this year, which is about how long it will take to break the back of all these War of the Rings projects I've accumulated. Glad you liked the classic guys too, I'm looking forward to tackling those as well. The Reaper is the only expansion I have so you'll see those ones painted up too!

[lorelorn]

Quick update, I've darkened the bases and trays of the older Misty Mountains formations to fit in with the spiders. It was pointed out to me that the old brighter basing was too close in hue to the colour I'd used for the highlights on the wargs' fur. The darkened bases have solved that, but you can see for yourselves here:



That's everything I've done to date, over 1600 points' worth. The Dark Marshal (mounted, behind the spider queen) still has the old, brighter sand colouring for comparison. He's technically part of my Mordor army, but very useful in this list game-wise.

[lorelorn]

Nothing new finished yet, but I have been making steady is slow progress through the celts, here's an update image:



The figure from my fantasy heroes selection is being painted as my first experiment with NMM, gold for the armour, iron for the axe. It's been an interesting experience, certainly. Something I will practice more before carrying it over to the Talisman characters and Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team.

[lorelorn]

Humid evenings and illness have combined to make this a month of few updates. I've completed a grand total of one figure this month from among the projects. Here he is:



This figures represents my first attempt and non-metallic gold and iron. Umm... it gives me a foundation to build on? Yes, that's it.

Here are the four figures painted so far from the fantasy Heroes project:



Interesting mix so far. Next up in this project will be the Avatars of War orc shaman. However my first priority is to complete the celts and then paint 48(!) Gundabad Blackshelds for a War of the Rings tournament in May.

[Purplebeard]

The Samurai could be the right one - Citadel had the TSR licence and made the TSR AD&D figures around 1984-6. They are pretty much interchangeable with Warhammer, in the same scale and with tabs for slottabases. It could be the right figure - you wil lhave to check solegends or ccmwiki - I couldn't tell you straight off because an overriding feature of the TSR stuff (and the C Series) is that there are about a million variant heads/arms of every figure. The 'rules' on licencing the ranges seem not to have been taken seriously. I get the impression that it was a bit of a free-for-all back then.

It is good that you involve your family in your hobby too amd encourage them to be creative.

Where is the mean-looking Angel in your previous post from btw?

[lorelorn]

The angel is a Guardian Angel figure from Reaper Minis, I think it's still available too, here's a link: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStor...l/latest/14080

The giveaway that the TSR figure is not the right one is that the pose doesn't match the art for the Talisman card, ditto the Witch Doctor. Thanks for reminding me about solegends, such a great resource.

I looked up the solegends box set pic (attached) for Talisman the Adventure and sure enough the Samurai and Witch Doctor figure are different to what I have. Then I noticed - the Chaos Warrior is a different figure too! For whatever reason three of the eight figures in that box were removed and substituted before it came to me. Wierd.