Stonehaven Miniatures Kickstarter

I don't really involve myself in many Kickstarters. Most are neat enough to watch & follow as they progress, but few catch my attention enough that I actually invest. This month found the creation of two such kickstarters. The first is the crazy-popular Bones 2 kickstarter, and the second is from the less well known Stonehaven Miniatures.

Stonehaven already has two KS drives under their belt (Dwarven & Gnomish adventurers). They first caught my attention with their Gnomish Adventurers drive. Their gnomes were fun & whimsical while staying close to their fantasy roots. Plus there was a wide range of fantastic classes & schemes they covered (who wouldn't want a Gnomish Knight on a riding dog?) Sadly, I didn't notice the group-funding effort until it was already over & done.

I heard they were doing another one, & I wasn't going to miss it. Their new kickstarter is Elven Adventurers.  had a fun variety of wee folk. So far they've shown some intriguing concept art such as the Kitsune, Necromancer, and Sorcerer below.

Art from Stonehaven Miniatures, Copyright 2013 Michael T. Evans

They also toss in some fun nubbins with their pledges like, like familiars, musical instruments, character biographies. Their scale is similar to Reaper, although judging from the size comparisons they probably aren't on the "heroic" side of 28mm. After this Kickstarter they've made comments for a few other races they want to produce. Most notably for me are Half Orcs and Halflings, two poorly represented races in fantasy minis.

Art from Stonehaven Miniatures, Copyright 2013 Michael T. Evans

 The Kickstarter has 20 days to go at this point, and I'd encourage you to go check it out.  Of the concept sketches they've shown so far I've been a big fan of over half, which is a good ratio for me (I like the other half too, but don't necessarily feel the need to own them). This is definitely a miniature company to watch and support. Go check it out.

~Muninn

Easy Dragonborn Paladin Conversion

A few years back I picked up a Dragonman Conversion Kit to build a Dragonborn sorcerer a few years back and have been looking for easy conversions for the rest of the bits ever since. Head swaps can be a little finicky, so I always kept an eye open for a good pairing.

With the onset of bones, I found it. the Bones Duke Gerard mini was right on several levels. It looked spot on for a Paladin or Warlord, and being plastic meant it was easy to carve the head away. I couldn't stop the sword from curving, so I swapped it out with a blade from the Black Templar's Emperor's Champion (Games Workshop).

I've already painted blue and red dragonborn, and this time around I really felt like making a black one, and keeping in mostly monochrome (there are a few blue, gold and brown accents though). Black can be a bit tricky, since it can tend to look unfinished, so to combat this I'm not going to keep the mini a bit darker, hence the black shield and cloth. I also added a little bit of a blue tint into his scales, and am using the blue accents to hopefully tie it together.

The armor is mostly done, but most everything else needs at least 2-3 layers before I'm happy, but you can see where I'm going.

~Muninn

Dark Elves leaks from White Dwarf

We finally have some shots of the new Dark Elf minis that we've been hearing so much about. I've always thought the army looked pretty dated, particularly the Cauldron of Blood, and this release looks like it'll bring the army right where it needs to be. The photos are courtesy of the folks at Blue Table Painting (or at least their Facebook page).

 The Cauldron of Blood, and Bloodwrack Shrine variant, are probably the most welcome updates. Not only was the old cauldron stuck in the 80's, it had very little conversion potential. Looking at these shots I'm bubbling with ideas (mostly revolving using the Khaine statue) Wouldn't that make a great c'tan, or Eldar Avatar? The serpentine medusa also holds some interest for me, namely her potential use in a Daemon army as a Keeper of Secrets or Herald.

The next most interesting addition is the Kharibdyss model. In case you don't know the reference, Charybdis and Scylla were a pair of immortal monsters that Odysseus had to sail between in the Odyssey. Charybdis was a monster that created giant whirlpool that would swallow ships whole, which plays nicely with the Dark Elves niche as seafaring pirates, and monster wranglers. Maybe they'll make a Scylla monster at some point.

No Dark Elf army would be complete without an assassin. Shadowblade here looks neat, although that cape begs for some details to be painted on it so it doesn't look like a trash bag flapping behind him.

Rounding out the rest are some new units. The Witch Elves look like they're banking on the popularity of the plastic DE Sorceress mini. The Sisters of Slaughter appear to be from the same box, and I'm guessing they represent warriors from the Cult of Khaine. I think I prefer the Witches.  Then you have the Dreadspears. I guess the DE needed their own equivalent to the HE Sea Guard. Eh, they don't appear to be fancy, but they'll probably have an important role in the army book. 



More when I find it.

~Muninn

Herald if Nurgle, on the cheap

For my Daemon army I have troops from all four gods, and Heralds from three. Now that the Herald of Nurgle is worthwhile I thought I'd go ahead & add him to my army.

I like the plastic mini GW put out for him, but it's a bit spendy ($25). I kind f balk at the idea of having to pay that much for a single plastic mini.

Instead of ponying up the cash, I found a neat conversion that is easy, looks great, & costs 40% less than the official Herald.

I started with the Warriors of Chaos Nurgle Chaos Lord, from fantasy, and did a simple head-swap with a plaguebearer. I didn't use this head originally because I didn't like the big horns for the regular 'bearers. Here it works though.

The chaos lord mini's head is divided into two parts, a mask, and the back if the head. So the plaguebearer head fits nicely onto the body without having to reshape it at all. I did greenstuff the base of the neck, and add some fatty folds to make it blend on though.

The model is corpulent, rotting, and tall.about two heads taller than a Space Marine, everything a chosen daemon if Nurgle should be. And cheap, that's nice too.

~Muninn

For sale: Khador Starter

I just finished snow flocking the Destroyer this morning, so I thought I'd show off the whole battle group.

This is first time I bought & painted minis with the expressed intent of selling them. I'd been wanting to try out the Zenith spray technique for a while and this seemed like the best way to get it done. So now that these guys are complete I'll probably seal them, & toss them on eBay. Don't worry, I won't be labeling them "pro-painted." I reserve that label to folks who are a lot better than I am. Rather, I'll probably say they're painted to a "high-tabletop standard."

I've never sold anything online before, so I'm not sure the price they'd fetch. I suppose I'd like enough to pay for the investment in the minis, as well as enough extra to buy some more.

~Muninn

How to Paint High Contrast Red

 

Reds can be a vexing color to paint at times. It can be tough to get a good basecoat, and shading can get tricky if you don't know what you're doing.

As you can tell from the minis above, I usually use the same technique for painting red. I picked it up from reading project logs by Spikeyjames on Warseer (he painted the White Scars army you see in the Space Marine codexes). It's a relatively easy process, and it takes less time than you'd think.

Step 1 is a basecoat of Mechrite Red, it usually takes 1-2 layers to get a nice even coat.

Second is a wash of Thraka Green. That sounds odd, but it works really well.

Once that dries the third step is a layer of Blood Red. Again, this can take a few applications to get even, but the dark red basecoat makes it easier.

You then layer highlights from Blood Red to Mecharius Orange through Golden Yellow. This step goes by really quickly, since I try to wet blend a little bit. The mini will probably look more orange than red at this point.

Finally, you give your mini a wash of Baal Red. This brings the orangey look back to a nice deep red, and covers up any green from the first wash.

~Muninn

Meet the PC: Arahan Nolatari, Elf Ranger

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

Another Elven Ranger? Yep! Although this one was played by a friend of mine, Mary.

The back story for Arahan here was very similar to Aeon: In the post cataclysm world the Elves didn't exist, or maybe they just didn't interact with the rest of civilization, who knows. Arahan here wakes up after a lengthy hibernation to discover the rest of her kin are missing, and so she sets out to figure out what happened to the world. At some point she joins up with the "Everyman Company."

The last member of our company was a Dragonborn Sorcerer, so we simply used the mini I'd painted for an earlier campaign.  So in summary, We had a Fighter (close range), an Artificer (mid range), an Assassin (mid range), an Archer (long range), and a Sorcerer (mid range). So we had a tough time in standup fights, and so many of them were standup fights.

I'd bought this mini close to a decade ago for another game (back when we were playing 3.5) but never finished painting it. I was dragging my feet in painting it for this campaign too, so Yorrik took it & ran with it. The mini is a Selwyn, Elven Captain for Reaper's Warlord game. It's pretty generic, but so was the character.

~Muninn