Big photodump of minis

Here’s some of the minis I’ve finished in the past couple of months.

The smallest one first, a mutated rat that was an extra piece on the sprue for the vampire’s corpse-wagon. Mounted on a penny.

One of Citadel’s stranger mutants were the “Beasts of chaos” series, and none stranger than this “Beast of Nurgle,” which is a sort of giant slug with legs and mass of suckers on its front. In the Warhammer game, the suckers shoot streams of acid. This figure is maybe two inches long.

Here’s the profile.

Nurgle is the chaos god of decay and disease, so he’s all about slime and other fluids gushing or seeping about. Here are two “Nurglings,” imp-like creatures that are tiny images of Nurgle himself. Both are also mounted on pennies.

I especially liked the angry little maggot crawling out of his mouth.

Continuing the demonic theme, here are three Rafm “death angels.”

The “Harbinger of Hell,” which is a bit reminiscent of the flying demon in the movie House. I mounted this one on hexagonal tile I recovered when remodeling the bathroom at my old house. Waste not want not.

The next one is the “Faceless Demon of the Void.” He came with his own pillar to perch on. I went with a more traditional red for this one.

Lastly, the “Specter of Doom.” His base is a bunch of rubble and bones, suggesting a ruined tomb or mausoleum.

Otherworld Miniatures has some great if pricey models. They’re a bit hard to find in the US, at least in my experience. These two are barbed devils, closely modeled on the Trampier illustration in the original AD&D Monster Manual.

And now for something completely different, some Old West figures. These are figures my brother originally painted decades ago, but which had lost a lot of paint to wear and tear, and a couple that were never completed. I tried to retain his original color schemes for the touch-ups, although some were painted with PollyS/Floquil paints that I couldn’t easily match. We’ve been playing a Boot Hill game again, so I was motivated to get our PCs in a finished condition. All are Grenadier “Gunslingers.”

The next group are figures we used in a previous Boot Hill campaign. The two cowboys are from the same Grenadier set while the Native Americans are actually from fantasy ranges: The chap with the big axe and headdress is a Citadel barbarian, and the one with the bow is a Ral Partha ranger. Obviously neither is particularly accurate for any real tribe. Could be worse though.

Back to monsters, here’s one of Julie Guthrie’s trolls from the Grenadier “Fantasy Lords’ line:

These manticores are (l) Maurauder and (r) Ral Partha. A study in scale creep, the once fearsome Ral Partha figure is more of a cub in comparison.

I got the Maruader manticore in a lot of figures sold on eBay as scrap tin! He was missing his wings, so I filled in the sockets with putty and textured them to suggest a continuation of his mane, which was already spreading down his chest anyway.

The oldest figure featured today is this Minifigs fell beast, missing his Nazgul rider:

It was part of their “Mythical Earth” range, absolutely not a ripoff of “Middle Earth.” This figure was actually listed in their catalog as “ME57, Ringwraith and Nazgul.” The publicist must have thought “nazgul” was the name for the beasts they rode. The Mythical Earth range was started in 1972, making this possibly my oldest fantasy figure. It’s hard to say for sure as Minifigs is still in business, and parts of the range are still in production. I think my copy is pretty old though, since it came with a bunch of figures from long-defunct manufacturers.

The last blast from the past are these Ral Partha “trills” — bigger than orcs but smaller than trolls.

The shield design is a total cheat, I cam into some old Citadel shield transfers, which you soak in water and glide onto the surface, where they adhere as they dry. The next two figures are much newer.

The “Umber Cuke, aka Nipper,” a riff on the AD&D Umber Hulk was pretty fun:

This is a much newer figure for the “Lowlife” game designed by Akron artist Andy Hopp.

Slightly less silly is this Wargames Foundry orc mercenary. All business except for the tasseled tail-cap.

Lastly, the largest and most impressive of the bunch. Also by far the biggest pain to finish. I am still noticing details I forgot to paint. Ral Partha’s “The necromancer’s throne of bone.”

A couple of shots taken before I finished the base show some better details.

The skulls and ribcage on the base are spare bits from other kits. The long bones are real bones recovered from an owl pellet I found in my backyard back around the time this model was first produced. Some of the bones from the mole or shrew or whatever was in there grace the bases of several other figures too.

From 1986 or so, and it could be on the cover of any heavy metal album from the period. Bikini-clad chick with a snake, tons of skulls, gross dude in a thong — it’s got it all.

Advent Die Geburt Krampuskind

Just noticed my #shamelesscommerce in the last few posts is being frustrated by the fact that the publisher’s site is down (though you can still cop a pdf at DTRP). Anyway here’s another seasonal repost. <Update — new site to buy it in hard copy>

In just eighteen days we’ll be celebrating the nativity of the Krampuskind!

Left to right we see a manger animal (Reaper Miniatures), an angel (Ral Partha), Krampusjoseph (Heritage Models), the Krampuskind (Dollar Tree),  Krampusmary and two magi (all Metal Magic), and a third magi (Grenadier).

Krampus gloriam in excelsis!

Amen!

Click the image below to embiggen…

Skeletons and Lemures

It’s October, so what better time to paint some more undead. Click to embiggen.

The first set here are figures from the D&D “DragonStrike” board game. The detail on these guys is kind of shallow. Some of the DragonStrike figures are pretty clearly based on Ral Partha designs, but as far as I know these are not. They are pretty unique really — scythes, which are commonly associated with skeletons in the Warhammer world but not so much in D&D, and headgear that sort of recalls the art of Brom that was associated with Dark Sun. I decided that with the partial bandaging they might be at home with mummies and the Eureka skeletons I posted last time, so I made their metal all bronze. Otherwise a very simple color scheme. Their red garments and brown weapon hafts were painted with some Heritage Models paint that is more than 35 years old!

These four skeleton swordsmen painted up really fast. On the left, two Ral Partha models, on the right, two Heritage skeletons — one is from the Cavern of Doom set, and the other from the Crypt of the Sorcerer. Both broke long ago and I’ve replaced the sword on the leftmost with a bit of paper and wire, and the the far right one has the hand and scimitar from another RP skeleton.

Lastly, two Reaper Bones lemures. It was really quick to paint these too, basically just a Caucasian “flesh” base coat followed by a red wash and some pink highlights. These guy are much more bloated than the old Monster Manual illustration and if anything, more gross. Lemures are sort of the bridge between the undead and devils, being confined to the nine hells, but liable to be promoted to wraith or spectre. There was always ambiguity in the Monster Manual about the exact status of certain creatures, and I kind of prefer that to the stricter taxonomy imposed by later editions of D&D, where everything has one or more tags that define them as specific types.

Zombies!!! and that balrog

Haven’t been doing a  ton of painting lately but I did manage to paint the wingless Ral Partha “Armored Balrog” I posted about earlier, and also some zombies. All the photos should let you click to embiggen.

I started off painting his skin completely black, but it seemed a shame to cover up all the detail in the sculpt. Grey highlights would make him look too cold, so red it was.

 

I might have spent more time on the flaming mane, but the contrast was good enough IMO to get the idea across. He was just a side project while painting up the zombies anyway.

The zombies are part of a larger set I started working on some time ago. The “Zombies!!!” game is a good beer & pretzels kind of boardgame, but what sold it for me was of course the 100 zombie minis. Over the years I’ve picked up a few “Bag o Zombies!!!” sets, though I wish you could get them in smaller quantities. Anyway because the poses are pretty limited, I started making minor conversions to some to see if I could achieve some more variety. Here’s the first few, based on two male zombie poses, the female zombie, and the zombie kid, as well as a couple of zombies from the Doom boardgame. The paint jobs are pretty simplistic, and I used a pale green skin tone to make them more immediately recognizable as undead. I had in mind the crummy colorized verison of “Night of the Living Dead” that you used to see on VHS in dollar stores.

First up, some boy souts and their scout leader. In hindsight the red bandannas look too much like more gore.

Next up, a bridal party. I still need to figure out how to do a flower girl. The guy had tails added to his jacket to suggest a tux and the girl had her dress extended, a veil added, and the severed head normally in the pose’s hand removed.

 

Two bikers — the big guy is from Doom, the skinny guy is from another Zombies!!! set.

Some miscellaneous people. A punk rocker with mohawk (Return of the Living Dead!), a surgeon (just added a mask and cap), a farmer (head swap from a cowboy), and a security guard (Doom again).

And of course you need a zombie Santa. His right arm was pinned back to hold a sack, and the sack, hat, belly, and beard were all added with some Liquid Nails (the older thick formula which I can’t find at the hardware store anymore).

I still have a lot more of these to paint, and some ideas for more variations, but that may have to wait a while.

Lastly a weirdo monster that I can’t really identify. I believe it was from a HeroClix set — I picked up a bunch of HeroClix stuff from a bin in a hobby shop a few years ago to use for conversions. Some kind of alien critter. This one had to have his two hind legs replaced, but for $.25 you can’t go wrong really. I stayed pretty close to his original color. He seems to have two tails and two tentacles in addition to four legs. If you recognize this from the DCU or MCU let me know!

Pandemonia

So here are all my demons, devils, and efreeti. Gargoyles, fire elementals, salamanders, and fire giants did not make the cut; nor did Cthulhu-type entities or angels. Still, probably enough to ruin a D&D party’s day.

I think the majority have been featured in previous posts as they got painted, but I noticed a handful of Ral Partha demons and devils that could be touched up or repainted. Just making a head count I find:

• 10 Grenadier
• 2 Heritage
• 15 Ral Partha (if we count the MageKnight knock-off and 2 Citadel/Ral Partha joint releases)
• 1 TSR
• 6 Metal Magic (MegaMinis recasts)
• 1 RAFM
• 8 Reaper
• 1 WOTC
• 4 WizKids (possibly knock-offs of other companies)
• 6 scratch-built (larvae)
• 10 plastic toys or board game pieces
• 1 repurposed Christmas ornament

 

The last of the devils and demons

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to paint any miniatures. But on New Year’s Day I had some free time and decided to finish up the devils and demons in my collection. As you can see in the picture, I have a Reaper Bones marilith, a Reaper Bones female devil, a Grenadier efreet, a Ral Partha “gremlin,” a demon or gargoyle of unknown vintage (recast in plastic by WizKids for Mage Knight), a Ral Partha efreet, and two Heritage avenging angels. Apart from an incomplete figure or two, and some Mega Minis figures that look more like random monsters than demons, those are the last of the demons & devils.

The marilith is still not done. But the rest are finished. I didn’t take quite as much time as I sometimes would, such was my enthusiasm to get a category of minis finished.

Apologies in advance for the image quality — new phone, too much gloss in the sealant, and still figureing out the flash.

First up, the efreeti. Actually these were both figures I painted decades ago but stripped to repaint a bit more aesthetically. The Grenadier efreet is the last version they made for the Tomb of Spells set (I vastly prefer the older sculpt based directly on Trampier’s illustration but this guy is ok). The Ral Partha efreet I purchased some time around 1983 when I was on a family vacation to Baltimore. The three things about that trip that stand out are visiting the aquarium, paddling around the harbor with my brother (where we found a number of dead seagulls floating on the waves), and the incredible hobby shop in the mall on the harbor that had glass cases filled with miniatures from every manufacturer I knew of and many I never heard of. Any money I had at the time was spent there. I’m not sure what other minis I might have bought but I recall my brother getting an ogre and troll made by Castle Creations. I used the efreet as a half-ogre for a while. (all photos, click to embiggen)

Next up are a trio of devils. The crouching figure may or may not be an original sculpt for WizKids’Mage Knight line. The guy with the spear is a very old Ral Partha. I couldn’t figure out a way to straighten his spear without removing it entirely and replacing it so I left it alone. The female devil is by Reaper.

The avenging angels are pretty unusual. I couldn’t find any painted examples in my googling, and they may be fairly rare. They were made for the Knights & Magic line, and would have come in a blister pack with one each of an angel with a flaming sword (like these), a spear, and a bow. I picked these up second-hand from a toolbox full of old minis at hobby shop that has since gone out of business (or at least gone online-only — Spellbinder’s of Kent, Ohio). The odd thing was there were only two wings, and when began assembling them I realized they were both the right wing. So one angel has plastic wings clipped from a plastic toy bird (the neat rounded feathers on the right) while the other took some reconstruction. I bent one wing into shape and added some Liquid Nails to the top edges so they look more symmetrical. They almost look like they were meant to be this way. I love the raggedness of these wings too — it seems like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie. (Actually, the bird-wings could be out of Brazil and the original wings out of The Fisher King, maybe).

Unrelated, but not appearing here before, I had a couple more minis that I painted over the summer and never photographed. They are a Reaper fire elemental and a very old Grenadier cleric. The cleric (who I always think of as Cedric the Cleric) lost his mace long ago and I replaced it with a somewhat oversized morningstar from the plastic Zvedza Orks kit.

Die Geburt Krampuskind

In just ten days, I believe, we’ll be celebrating the nativity of the Krampuskind. Left to right we see a manger animal (Reaper Miniatures), an angel (Ral Partha), Joseph (Heritage Models), the Krampuskind (Dollar Tree),  Mary and two magi (Metal Magic), and a third magi (Grenadier).

Krampus gloriam in excelsis!

Amen!

Click the image below to embiggen…

Dimensions for Children: Demons

Last weekend I was mostly busy with yard work and cleaning my gutters (not a euphemism), but I managed to paint up a few plastic minis I’d gotten in trade from another blogger. The first batch includes:  four statues (pieces from the Risk “Godstorm” boardgame depicting gods), a TOYCO giant or ogre, and a some DFC demons/gargoyles, along with a couple of TOYCO DFC-knockoff demons.

DFC (Dimensions for Children) was a toy company that produced a lot different play sets but the one I am most familiar with was the “Dragonriders of Styx.” These came as action figures (which I’d never seen before researching DFC more recently) and a fantasy toy soldiers set I’d seen a coveted as a kid. Some of my friends — the same ones who introduced me & my brother to D&D — gave me one of the figures from that, or maybe I “borrowed” it. I eventually painted it and added it to my collection of D&D miniatures. Anyway when the opportunity to get some more of the DFC minis arose, I was pretty happy. The guy who sent me these also had some TOYCO models. TOYCO was (is?) a Canadian company that made knock-offs of the DFC playset. (In fact, they even filched the box art from DFC, right down to depicting DFC figures instead of the ones that TOYCO actually made for the set! That link also shows the full line of fantasy figures they made)  The knockoffs of the knights, wizards, and demons are all pretty recognizably based on the DFC figures, but TOYCO replaced the orcs, ogres and Viking giants with slightly smaller barbarians or cavemen, ogres with cat-like ears, and somewhat classical-styled giant. The giant reminded me of the Harryhausen bronze golem “Talos” in Jason & the Argonauts, so I painted him bronze with glowing eyes.

Bronze paint with a green wash.

He’s about 2 1/2 inches tall. 28mm Viking for scale.

The demons from DFC came in two varieties — shaggy-legged demons with hooves and slimmer demons or gargoyles with skinny, almost bird-like legs.

The TOYCO knockoff split the difference giving their demons shaggy legs and bird-like feet.

The two TOYCO knockoffs I got have pretty sharp detail — they seem to have been molded a lot more cleanly than the DFC pieces. In fact with the DFC guys, it is hard to tell if some of them have horns or all just have really long pointy ears. I gave it my best guess when painting them.

The faces on the TOYCO figures are very cleanly molded and quite different from each other and from the DFC figures. The axeman has a face that looks a lot like a Japanese oni mask to me. The swordsman’s face is eerily calm, and the only guy lacking fangs. He had a pronounced bump between his eyebrows which I decided to paint as a third eye. Since the TOYCO demons are a little taller and more muscular, they’ll be the leaders of this group.

DFC, TOYCO, DFC

Although I initially thought that the inconsistency of the DFC demons was just shoddy craftsmanship, once I painted these guys I kind of liked the variation it created. The two demons with scimitars are quite different looking even though they were presumably meant to be duplicates — the thick-necked guy looks brutish and bestial, while the thinner-necked one seems more human.

Left, the slim demon; right, the thick-necked version with a more upturned nose. He very strongly evokes a bat.

The demons are about 2 inches tall and mostly based on wooden dominoes (that’s how they came, and they actually make very good bases). So in D&D terms they are most like Type VI Demons or Horned Devils (except that they lack tails and horns, for the most part, so demons then.)

Lastly we have the Risk gods. I almost made the “wind” god into an elemental, but I already have several elementals I almost never use. Before looking it up I was thinking he was either a trident-less Poseidon, or the patron of pocket pool, based on his pose. Anyway they are all on short columns so making them statues was no-brainer.

Risk Godstorm gods as statues

They’re about the size of 28mm figures, so they could just as well be cut from their bases and used characters or NPCs, though only the goddess with the orb has an active pose.

Studies in red and green

Over the long MLK weekend I managed to get a little painting in. I’ve been kind of torn between prioritizing adventurers and monsters.  Although I have a fair number of player character types painted, we always end up using the same dozen or so for every campaign — there is a particular shortage of human rogues, rangers, druids, and bards, as well as demihumans other than dwarf fighters and elf archers. But then again we use a lot of different monsters and I get a sad sort of feeling of accomplishment when all of a given type of monster have finally been painted, sorted, and placed in a labeled box. (There might be meds that would help with that.)

Anyway for some reason I kept to a palette of mostly greens and reds for this last set.

Four adventurers: a gnome mage, a halfling fighter, a human thief, and a human bard.

The gnome is Ral Partha, the halfling Grenadier — one of my oldest minis in terms of how long I’ve owned it. My brother & I bought the Grenadier AD&D halflings and dwarfs boxes back in 1981 or so. The gnome is a much more recent acquisition — it was among those sent to me by someone looking for a better home for their old lead.

The thief is also Grenadier. Now that I see the pic enlarged I see he needs some eyelids — though I guess he could just have hyperthyroidism, or surprised.  He’s one of the minis I rehabbed a while back.

Lastly, the Groo the Wanderer “Minstrel” mini from Dark Horse. I didn’t get the color scheme quite right (his hat should be entirely yellow and the bells and belt gold) but I am happy with him. I traded for this guy though I forget from whom. 😦  I love Sergio Aragone’s work in Mad Magazine but never read the Groo comics. I still have one other Groo mini — a wizard — that I am holding onto for a former player. He left it at my place several years ago, and I rarely bump into him any more.

Lastly, two demons — a Metal Magic succubus (actually a MegaMinis re-cast from their monsters box set) and a Reaper imp.  The imp is probably mini-me to the D&D 4th edition version of Orcus (link goes to an image in someone’s Photobucket — I think it is actually art from a module cover?), what with his mini Wand of Orcus.  FWIW I prefer the older version of Orcus, bloated, grey, and decadent, to the new buff generic demon with goat horns, but that’s me.  The succubus unfortunately has a flattened nose — either from falling face-down at some point or just an imperfection in them old. So to compensate I painted her face to suggest overdone make-up and draw attention to the eyes. NSFW if you work in a fairly puritanical environment.

jjj

Devils, demons, and the mushroom king

This weekend I finished up some guys I’d been working on intermittently.  I have just a few demons and devils left to paint now!

So first, a plastic miniature.  This was made by Wiz Kids for the MageKnight line, and is a copy of a Ral Partha sculpt.  Apparently Wiz Kids got a number of Ral Partha sculpts into its line, which I suppose was a consequence of RP going “out of business” after FASA bought them.

Left, a Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figure (he’ll be several of these pictures for scale).  Center, the Wiz Kids figure, and right, an original Ral Partha demon in lead.  He came in a set of three devils and you could choose from four heads for them.  The head he got seems like the most obvious choice (the others were much smaller horned heads and a goat-head).   Apart from having no integral base of his own, the plastic guy is a little smaller and his left hand is in a different position.  It’s harder to see here but their knees and legs are in slightly different positions too.  I’m not sure if there was actually a variant RP sculpt or if Wiz Kids just needed to alter him a little to fit into a mold (lead and metal figures are cast in soft rubber molds and can have a more complicated shape; plastic is usually cast from metal molds so the figure has to have no contours that would get caught in the mold).

The next guy is a really old Heritage devil, which was sold in a boxed set (as well as in blister, I think, in the Knights & Magick line).  I got mine second hand somewhere.

I like the armor, which was uncommon in older devils, and the integral fire on his base.

Next up, a Ral Partha demon.  This guy was sculpted by Tom Meier, and released as a “Ral Partha Import” in the USA and as a Citadel miniature in the UK. With the whip and sword, he’s obviously referencing Tolkien’s Moria balrog.

Here he is next to a Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figure, for scale.

I have two of this casting.  One I bought ages ago; the other was given to me along with a bunch of other old lead and pewter minis, and is the one the one I finally painted here.

I kind of like the contrast here; sort of positive and negative.

You might be thinking, “yeah, but why would you want two balrogs?”  You’re right, of course.  You’d really want four to give a party a good challenge!

Left to right, a Grenadier Type VI demon; the “gargoyle” from the HeroQuest Milton Bradley/Games Workshop game, and the two RP/Citadel demons.

The last two demons are from the Grenadier “Action Art” Fantasy Fiends set.  I had them painted sort of randomly before, with greenish fur on one and grey on the other they didn’t really look like demons so much as mutant bears or something.

I was lucky enough to get a third copy of this guy, heavily converted by Scottsz.  He added a tail, built up the nose and arms, and covered the weird ridge on its back with fur.  Here’s the backs:

These three should be the stuff of nightmares.  Those claws would be 2 feet long in scale.

Now moving on from the demons, here’s a banshee made by Rafm.

And finally, I’m pleased to say the mushroom men finally have a leader.  No more directionless wandering and disorganized assaults on villages.  Behold the mushroom king!

He’s a Reaper mini, and nicely made with a lot of little details.

Again for scale with a human.

And finally the grand procession of myconids: