City in Ruins - Ruined Houses pt. II

I have slowly been building some ruined buildings, using pieces I had already cast since somehow I'm in no mood of casting any new blocks. Fortunately I managed to build the houses I intended, although the broken corner of the house with a full-story basement is a direct result of not having enough arch-pieces for an intact level. But that's a boon of making ruins: such shortcomings are easily accommodated into the designs.

The basic structure of the buildings is thus in place. Next steps involve using latex filler to texturize the foamboard and to fill any gaps between the windows and the doorframes, then spraypainting the interiors to a matte black, assembling some rubble outside the buildings as well as texturing the bases all over, and constructing the floors using balsa wood. After that, it's just the task of painting the buildings, and perhaps if the inspiration strikes, some superdetailing as appropriate. Especially the recessed arches on the basement level scream for something. Coat-of-arms, perhaps.

To be honest, I still need a couple of corner pieces, and also some small bricks for the well, so I guess I'll have to do some casting eventually before I can go forward with the construction. But at the moment, what with weather being so uncharacteristically fine, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Some Hasslefree goodness

HFH057 Ferrus and HFH065 Veda-Ann

Here's a couple of Hasslefree minis that arrived into my mailbox recently. I just could not put them in a drawer, to wait for a better time, but had to assemble and base them right away. Pinning Veda-Ann's sword arm was especially nice: it's always a special kind of thrill drilling a 1mm diameter hole into a 2mm piece of metal. I also had to do some 'stock removal' on Ferrus's axe and Wolf's sword to fit them to my taste, although the latter is still by no means dainty. There are still some mold lines to tackle with, and some gaps to GS, and then I can perhaps leave these to wait for their proper turn. Well, maybe basecoat them first...

That's pretty much the rest of the Personalities I need for the Wulfheimer warband. Finding the regular troopers might prove trickier, though...

HFH046 Wolf and HFH068 Boudi

New painting - Elder Vampire

Heresy Miniatures: UNDEAD004: Vampire in Manbat form

Time to get some Heresy on board, as well!

This figure had lain on my figure drawer on a semi-finished stage for a while. I had originally based it on my regular humanoid base, which is about 21mm across, but although it did fit nicely, the pose of the figure was so front-heavy that it was constantly on the brink of toppling forward.

Then, as I was fiddling with the Ruins & Ratmen statistics for the Vampire Duellist, Valerie Dupuis, and thought that she would need a worthy opponent to hunt for in the ruined city. Thus was born the concept of Nemeses, arch-enemies of the Independent figures, that have a chance to spawn to the game if and when Independent models are fielded.

Now that I had an incentive to finish the miniature, it happened quickly. I knew I had to alter the pose a bit, and took an easy way out as I saw a suitably sized barrel in the bit box. With a bit of bending the figure accepted the new pose, and all I had to do was to paint the barrel and add some highlights to the figure.

I'm glad I found use for this figure. It's quite good-looking (Marcus from the Underworld series comes to mind), but unfortunately the wings make it a bit awkward as a game piece. With the elevated pose, that problem is somewhat alleviated, and the figure looks more imposing, to boot.

New painting - Divine Champion

Reaper: Dark Heaven: 03364: Isabeau Laroche, Female Paladin

Here's another Reaper/Werner Klocke collaboration. A two-part figure, I had a bit of problem with the separate shield arm. Not because of bad fit or anything, but rather no matter how I tried to attach it, it did not look natural. Oh well, in the end I selected a pose that showed the shield the best.

Initielly, I was going to do some freehand on the shield, but after a try or two I gave up, and went the old school way, that is to say I printed the image on a BW laser printer, and glued it on the shield. All went well, although I was a bit surprised how thick a regular 80g/m2 office paper would look on a miniature. Fortunately, a bit of Green Stuff did the job of blending the paper. Maybe next time I'll try this technique I'll try to sandpaper the paper edges somewhat thinner.

New painting - Slavonian Huntress

Freebooter Miniatures: SOL 002 Female Hunter

Most of my Werner Klocke -figures are from Reaper lines, but this one is from his own Freebooter Miniatures -range. Although I like his Reaper sculpts very much, I generally find his own range of figures a bit too busy for my tastes, and they are for the most part multi-part figures, as well.

There are a couple I've set my eyes on, however, and this huntress was one of the first that caught my eye. It's wonderfully anachronistic figure, actually more suitable for a post-apoc game than anything else. For me, that was no deal breaker. Tho bodice might have been, but hey, if one would collect female figures with only sensible outfits, the collection would be small indeed. At least she's not wearing bare metal against her skin... Actually, my biggest complain about the figure is that as she's supposed to be a hunter, her spear shows an alarming lack of lugs.

Oh well, in Ruins & Ratmen she's going to get a role as a professional hunter of Were-creatures.

New painting - Mercenary Witch

Reaper Miniatures: Warlord: 14330 Gars Necka, Mercenaries Mage

Another recently finished Reaper miniature, this time from the Warlord range.

Once again, the pose sold this figure for me, simple yet effective. As a rule (actually, it's more of a guideline..) I like my figures as a one piece casts. Not because I don't like pinning or assembling, I probably would not do any conversions if I did not like that. It's more like I often see multi-part figures as 'needlessly complicated', something that could have perhaps been avoided with a slight change in a pose.  And I also see the ability to design the figure in such a way that it has both a dynamic pose and single-piece castability as an art form in itself.

New painting - Elven Swordmaster

Hasslefree Miniatures: HFE007 Ceril

Here's another one of the recently finished miniatures. As soon as I saw this figure, I knew he had to have white hair, and the rest of the colour scheme came from that. I've dubbed him Eanur Gloamblade.

Lots of flat armour surface, just crying out for some freehand decoration like silver inlay on steel, sadly I was not up to that yet. But I am glad about the hair and the face, they came out pretty much as I had imagined. I'm also glad that the figure sports no visible pointy ears, it look really elven enough as is.

I also like the pose of the figure very much; It's quite dynamic, much better than a plain posing one, and not over-the-top action-y either. Just calm, self-assured, menacing, even. Dang, now I feel like doing another version of this figure, with completly different colour scheme...