Welcome back to the Madness

For the third year in a row I'm doing my Muninn's May Mini Madness challenge.

This is a 31 day exercise where I attempt to complete a mini a day. I take some of my started, but unfinished miniatures (and occasionally ones that are just primed) and finish them off in a month-long painting exercise.

The first year was pretty easy. I had tons of models to choose from, minis set aside, prepped & ready, as well as a lot of free time outside of work. Last year I had newborn twins taking up my attention, although I was on family leave from work, so I still had some time to spare.

2012

2013

This year I have two active & inquisitive twins, a puppy, my full time job, and relatively little prepared for the month ahead. I called last year Nightmare mode.

Welcome to Hell Mode.

~Muninn

Muninn 40k!

I started this blog in July of 2012. I wanted a place to post my commissions, ideas, techniques, and all sorts of mini goodness. I genuinely enjoy sharing my work, and really like hearing the feedback.

I've been a bit busy lately, working on a large Night Wolf commission (pics coming) so I kinda missed the fact that I've recently reached over 40,000 hits on my blog. That normally isn't a significant number but hell, I play 40k, so it's significant to me.

The last 21 months have been pretty exciting. The kids are growing like weeds, so I've had to find new ways to keep my paints and swallowable minis away from them. In addition, my family recently got a puppy. Here's Pepper.

"I pooped somewhere in the house, but I'm not gonna tell you where"

The last month and a half has been dedicated to the Night Wolves. Here's one of the recently finished pieces: a Chooser of the Slain. The client furnished the mini, and wanted it to look like a neophyte. I wasn't quite able to capture a youthful appearance, but I still think it's neat.

I had some fun with Lahmian Medium to create the OSL from the candle. I'll have to try it again soon.

In future news, I may attempt my May Mini Challenge for a third year. I haven't decided yet, but I'm leaning "yes." It's a great way to finish a lot of the incomplete minis I've started, but never finished. I certainly have enough minis, but I'm not sure if I have enough time.

We shall see.

~Muninn

Wood Elves leaks: Treemen, Treemen everywhere.

I got a hold of this Week's White Dwarf weekly, and am pleased to see all the awesome Treemen they've produced. I don't play Wood Elves, but I've always had a real soft spot for the pointy-eared xenophobes. 

The one thing I've never cared for about their lineup was the Treemen. They always looked like big lumbering trees (as silly as that is to write). I wanted something more svelte, more dynamic, and boy did GW deliver.

 

 I really like how the treemen have a kind of sub-skin, and the bark-like exterior. I can see having a lot of fun painting that, considering all the different types of tree there are. My first idea would be to paint it like an Australian Bloodwood tree. The underskin could be a nice rich red, and the bark could be a earthy brown. It'd made a sharp & interesting contrast.

Here are a few more shots from the magazine too.

~Muninn

Leaked shots of Ogryn, Horus, and the Hydra

Just saw this post on my local gamer's facebook, & thought I should put them here for your enjoyment.

Funny thing though, Naftka is reporting a rumor that the next White Dwarf won't be featuring all these minis. Rather, his source says that there will be a Daemon dataslate (likely a fix for the Tzeentch Flamer chariot) and some infor about Apocalypse, and continuing to ride the Imperial Knight train.

Here are the shots (I'm most interested in the third shot down. The Ogryn w/the re-breather.)

 ~Muninn

New Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard) Codex cover & leaks

We've had our first looks at the new Imperial Guard, and their shiny new name the "Astra Militarum."

Why Astra Militarum? I'm guessing it's because it'd be really tough to copyright the name "Imperial Guard."

Without further ado, here's the Codex cover (these shots snagged from facebook)

It looks nice, and is very much in keeping with the 6th Edition theme of iconic character front & center. I think the new name is a bit silly, but part of that stems from my feeling that the term Imperial Guard is so entrenched in the setting. Also their "high gothic" name is Departmento Munitorum, unless this book retcons that. Guess we won't know til we see inside.

For me, the most exciting leaked shot is the new Tempestus Scions. I believe these are the new Storm Trooper unit, which makes me wonder what'll happen to Kasrkins.

 They're clearly meant to look like an elite unit. I just hope the fluff matches the crunch, since Stormtroopers tend to be an ablative unit. They have chic angular armor that's akin to what you'd see on a Fantasy Empire general, so there might be some conversion potential there too. I like the look of the sergeant, but I'm not sold on the helmet. I think with a few spikes & greenstuff he'd be an excellent cultist leader too.

The Taurox has been getting a fair bit of scorn. I like it though. I don't think it's as boxy as everyone thinks it is. The tread wheels are a little silly to me, but at the same time I can't wait to see the first Orky conversion

The only other image I've seen so far is the release page. The only real revelations are that the Tempestus Scions appear to be $35 for 5 minis (I'm not a fan of the fact that they added the command sprue into the box) and that the Militarum Tempestus will be a codex supplement.h ow will they play? what'll be their schtick? we won't know until the codex comes out.

~Muninn

Building an $8 Ethereal

I'm a big fan of kitbashing. It's fun to take two (or more) disparate models and merging them into something all it's own.

My most recent conversion is a Tau Ethereal that cost me all of $8.09 (not including the bits I already owned). It's not quite finished, but it's really close. It's taller than your average Fire Warrior by half a head, but I'm good with that (IIRC, Ethereals are closer to Water Caste in stature, so a little taller anyways). Up to this point all I've done it carved away plastic to make it fit into place. The greenstuff will come further down the road.

The majority of the body is the Celestial wizard from the Empire's Celestial Hurricanum model. I modified the staff a bit by adding a topper from the Empire Wizard box (I also removed some of the fancy gilding & details to make it appear more sci-fi).

I cut away the wizard chest and replaced it with a standard Fire Warrior chest bit. To make it fit properly I had to cut away part of it's back, and trim off the belt. The head is one of the three new bits from the Pathfinder box set.

I'm still on the fence about which head to use. I like the "yelling" head, but the one I have placed on it currently looks more contemplative.

There are a few more small things to do before it's finished.
1. Carve the feet into hooves
2. Greenstuff the cloth to fit seamlessly with the chest armor
3. Greenstuff the belt buckle to be the symbol for the Tau Empire
4. Paint (after I'm done with my current commission)

Hope you like this, and that it gives you a few ideas for your own conversions.

~Muninn

My tour of Reaper Miniatures, Part 3: Minis galore

Part 1: Entering the Reaper's lair
Part 2: Casting & Paint

About 30 minutes into our visit of Reaper's warehouse in Denton, Tx. the tour was starting to wind down. We'd seen the molding process, casting, packaging, and paintmaking, but my favorite part was yet to come.

On our way out the warehouse our tour guide Matt shared an interesting anecdote. When Reaper was first attempting to make their way onto game-store shelves they were having difficulty because the industry standard (Ral Partha, Grenadier, etc) was 25mm minis. All the stores wanted them to be a similar scale. Reaper however make 28mm+ which made it tough to get their foot in the door.

Finally, after dealing with this issue long enough, the CEO, Ed Pugh, started saying they were 25mm "heroic scale" instead of giving their actual size. This satisfied the buyers, and got them onto the shelves. So the term "heroic scale" that I hear so often was *completely made up* by Ed as a way to sell his over large minis.

Finally, the second to last two stop was sculpting. We left the open warehouse and started walk down a few hallways in the vicinity of the storefront. After turning a few corners we entered a room with a small case of greens on the wall. They weren't minis I recognized, but seemed... old? several of them had a style similar to what you'd see in the late 80's early 90's. I didn't take any pictures of the case, but now wish that I had.

The next room was better anyways. It looked like a good old fashioned gaming workroom, complete with shelves of minis, and a sculptor hunched over his work at a table, fashioning his latest mini. That sculptor was Kevin Williams, and one of the minis he was working on was the (recently revealed) Kickstarter II Frog Demon.

Kevin was kind enough to give me a few pointers on modeling with green stuff. Namely he works on several sculpts simultaneously and uses excess greenstuff to build up the structure of the sculpt, only paying close attention to detail once you get to the final exterior layers.

He also suggested creating a hard putty base to keep from having to touch the soft greenstuff.

You can also see from the comparison of the concept art to the actual sculpt that they made a few changes. The CEO, Ed, wanted the demon to be looking down. This makes a good bit of sense to me since most adventurers are going to be smaller than the frog.

One of my favorite bits about being there is seeing the minis in a scale that I could grasp. "Sir Forscale" is nice & all, but I almost always think about minis based on how big they are in my hands.

Here you can see Matt holding Mashaaf, Great Old One. It's no Cthulu, but it's bigger than I expected.

The final stop was the gallery. Just a big room full of their finest painted minis. I could have spent forever looking at each individual mini, but at that point my wife & I were getting tired of holding the babies, and our family dinner was fast approaching, so I only spent a few short minutes.

There were so many great minis there. I was most excited to see Derek Schubert's Trista, the White Wolf. The photo doesn't really do it justice. There were a few neat surprises as well, like the Kraken.

and one of the Demon Lords, printed. Definitely not a Balor.

All it all, I had a really great tour thanks to Matt and the rest of the Reaper crew. Everyone was gracious and happy to answer any questions. If I could do it again I'd have plugged both kids were into strollers since our arms were getting pretty worn out from lugging the pair around by the end.
 My wife in particular, since I kept passing her a kid in order to take pictures.

Thanks again to the staff there, and I'd recommend a tour to any nerd that finds themselves in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas.

~Muninn