Caravan guards

 My first completed miniatures of the new year - some sci-fi caravan guards for a desert scenario. Kitbashed from Victrix Napoleonics and Oathmark goblins and orcs.

The Cult of the Possessed returns!

 

My favourite gaming project of 2024 was my minimalist Cult of the Possessed for Mordheim (and other skirmish games). They're among the quickest miniatures I've ever painted, with speed achieved principally through a complete abandonment of realism. The figures are quickly drybrushed a couple of shades, then their heads are painted red and their weapons and eyes green. The final highlights are added in yellow and white acrylic ink. 

Around the time I put the first warband together, I started kitbashing and painting others - chiefly beastmen. My aim was to put together an allied warband of beastmen that could support the Cult in multiplayer games. Yesterday and today, I finished a few of those off. I also have another Possessed to add, who needs only his yellow-ink highlights. And I have more kitbashed beastmen and mutants to paint up in 2025, to which I'll add a minotaur and centaur.

Of the new lot, my favourite is the beastman chieftain, who's based on a RGD satyr. The RGD satyr kit is great apart from one thing: the satyrs - satyrs! - appear to lack any genitalia (not a mistake Tom Meier would ever have made at Ral Partha ...). With this fellow, I put that right by drawing on medieval and Renaissance depictions of demons, using a spare GW beastman head:

The shaman is a mix of parts from GW beastmen, Wargames Atlantic ogres and Frostgrave snakemen. Why are the severed heads red too? Just because ...

The third new beastman is a snakeman with a RGD satyr head. He's more unassuming than the other two, perhaps, but I rather like him.

Here are the three new boys:

Have a great Hogmanay and a very happy new year!

An old Nick Lund orc

This is an old Grenadier orc by Nick Lund. I painted him to match some orcs I painted about six years ago, which is always a little tricky to do. I used slightly different techniques, but he should fit in well enough. I'll rebase the older orcs to match him (these generic sand/brush/dungeon floor bases work well on all my gaming mats, even if they don't look entirely natural on their own).

And yet more space rats!

 Here are some more ...

The gang grows ...

 

Here's another brace of rodenty types. Like the other two, they're quite simply painted and then heavily black-lined with ink to sharpen them up. Black-lining is an unfashionable technique, but I'm quite fond of it - especially on old plastic miniatures with soft details. 

Space rats!

 Here are a couple of scuttling aliens for sci-fi skirmish games. The chap on the right is a straight-up Mantic Veermyn; the one on the left is a converted GW Skaven night runner. There are few things more puerile - or more satisfying! - than glueing a blaster on a fantasy miniature and calling him a spaceman. 

A Tin Soldier orc in a retro style

 Here's an orc from Tin Soldier painted in a somewhat retro style with heavy blacklining in ink. 

Although I had originally based many of them on pennies, I've decided to put all the 25mm RPG figures I've been hoarding on 20mm square MDF bases (if the figures are roughly human sized). That renders them more easily usable in wargames too, and means that groups of figures can be bluetacked neatly to larger bases for Hordes of the Things and Kings of War and the like: so six of these orcs could fill a 60 x 40mm base to be a 'horde' element. 

Having most figures based in the same way means more versatility and cross-compatability. So hobgoblins in 25mm can be mere goblins in 28mm, and brightly painted 25mm knights might serve as diminutive elf-knights in 28mm, and so on. I find square bases a bit more useful than round bases, all things considered. I can't think of any game system in which round bases are mechanically significant. The same's not true of squares.

I'm also increasingly interested in the idea of switching between RPG and wargame modes in the same campaign (using a 1:10 or 1:20 figure scale for the latter), something that square bases facilitate. So square MDF bases all round it is - with the exception of plastic rounds for 28mm sci-fi and plastic fantasy skirmish figures, and pennies for 15mm sci-fi.