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.

Happy Halloween!

(Video by my son)

Gnolls!

 Here are a couple of gnolls: one originally by Rieder Design and now sold by Alternative Armies (as a "dog man") and the other by Essex. The latter (with the sword) may have a certain iconic status to readers of a certain age, as he was a regular feature of adverts in White Dwarf. 

Ratmen slingers

 

Here are a couple of ratmen slingers from Ral Partha Europe. They're tucked away at the end of the company's Chaos Imperium range, which consists chiefly of Bob Olley figures done for Ral Partha proper. But there are various slotta-based beastmen and the like at the end, which weren't part of the original range. I think they may have been designed by Tim Prow, though I'm not sure. 

These two are taller than classic Skaven and lack tails. But they're suitably ratty, and I'm always keen on chaos creatures being chaotic in appearance. So they'll fit in comfortably with the original Citadel metal Skaven. Slingers are always handy in Mordheim, too.

Blood for the Blood God!

Strange circumstances compel me to put together a Warhammer scenario, of all things, using second-edition rules. As I'm going for a low-level, low-points feel, I need low-end minions of chaos to go along with some beastmen. I thought this Copplestone half-orc and his fellows would make perfect chaos thugs, and here we are.

 

The King in Yellow - in Fimo!

 Quite possibly my son's most horrifying effort yet!

Celtic Miniatures orc boar rider

 This chap's a 3D-printed miniature from Celtic Miniatures. I've painted very few 3D-printed figures, but this orc was an absolute pleasure to paint and - especially - prepare (almost no clean-up was needed).

Minifigs pig-faced orc

 

Here's a Minifigs pig-faced orc I painted up in a sort of comic-book style (heavy blacklining in ink). I'm quite pleased with it; I see this style as the best way to get the most out of the wonderful old Minfigs ranges, which have quite spare and shallow detail. 

This fellow's not quite finished; I need to touch up some of the highlights on his jerkin and perhaps add a sigil of some sort to his chest and backplates. I may well change the base to a slightly less textured surface.

The Cult grows futher ...

 The Cult of the Possessed has achieved starting-warband status: a magister with two daggers, a Possessed with the Scorpion Tail mutation, a mutant with Great Claw and club, and a brace of beastmen with heavy armour and two-handed weapons, for exactly 500 crowns. The darksouls with flail and two-handed weapon are waiting in the wings.

The Cult grows ...

 Two new recruits for the Cult of the Possessed: another beastman and a Possessed with the Scorpion Tail and (possibly) Spines mutations.

Minimalism in miniature: the start of a Cult of the Possessed

I've long been interested in speed-painting miniatures and finding ways to achieve striking effects with minimal effort. Recently, I've been inspired by the Instagram accounts of Standingforms, 1988chewit and Gardens of Hecate. In very different ways, all three achieve spectacular effects with judicious and consistent use of colour.

As I've been playing quite a bit of Mordheim recently with friends and my kids, I wanted to get some quick warbands to introduce some of that game's more characteristic factions: in particular, the Cult of the Possessed. I decided to go with figures that were swiftly and minimally drybrushed in near monochrome, apart from two colourful areas: their weapons and their heads.

This minimalist scheme has two key functions: it allows me to get the miniatures done quickly; and it should make them entirely distinctive on the tabletop. We'll be playing some multiplayer games in the coming months, so I want this particular cult to be umistakeable.

The scheme involves abandoning realism entirely. There's no reason for the weapons to be green (apart from perhaps a hint of verdigris over bronze - but that wouldn't explain the hafts), and there's no diagetic logic behind the red heads and headgear. But besides creating coherence, the abandonment of realism helps, perhaps, to suggest that this warband inhabits - as Cormac McCarthy put it - "regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools".

Oh my god, said the witch hunter ...

Undead warband for Mordheim

 I recently painted up this undead Mordheim warband for a friend: quick paintjobs in time for a mini-tournament that we played out a couple of weeks ago. 

For some reason, four (!) coats of matt varnish have failed to quell the shine from the initial coat of Vallejo gloss. I've suggested to the friend that he try a fifth coat in a week or two. We shall see ...

Ogre for Mordheim

 I painted this ogre for a friend's Mordheim undead warband. He was probably the most valuable fighter for the undead in the five games we played last weekend, although my pit fighter managed to take him out at one point. He dwarfs my old Golgfag's ogres to such an extent that I'm repurposing them as black orcs in Mordheim.

Orc archers for Mordheim

 Here are a brace of orc archers; both featured in my Mordheim warband at the weekend, with the blueish chap promoted to shaman. He proved a better shot than a sorcerer. 

These are glorious old C15 orc by Kev Adams - from the first orc range he did for Citadel. 

A kitbashed orc hero for Mordheim

 

Hot on the heels of the last post, I decided to come up with a much bigger orc hero for the Morheim warband. This guy's massive, but I quite fancy pairing him up with the little Marauder guy as a little'n'large pair of 'big uns': one sly and skilful and the other a lumbering galoot.

In a swap a couple of years back, I'd picked up some GW orcs, a few of which had legs from old chaos warriors. I liked the upright stance and the hulking effect, so I added orc arms and a space-ork head. A bit of greenstuff to fill out his back and boots and cover the joins, and a skull from an Oathmark standard for an outlandish belt buckle or codpiece, and he was ready for paint.

I also found an old black orc that I'd started to paint up in a similar scheme to the last pair. So I added a hefty goblin bow and decided that - for now - he'll replace the C15 crossbowman as the gang's leader, with the latter relegated to the ranks or even the sidelines. With his outsized weaponry and fancy hat, this guy looks just intimidating enough to keep his hefty and doubtless uppity underling in check - for now, at least.

Orcs for Mordheim

 

These are the first figures for a Mordheim orc warband, for an all-day campaign next weekend. The crossbowman is the 'boss', an old Citadel C15 armoured orc tooled up with some extra armaments and a quiver of bolts for his crossbow. He's not the biggest or meanest of the C15 orcs, but he's one of the ugliest, which must count for something!

The smaller fellow is a Marauder orc. The first wave of Marauder orcs are pleasingly short and squat, which means that older Citadel orcs work well as leader types alongside them. Despite his short stature, this chap might see service as a 'big un', given his melee-focused gear and high-end armour. 

I'm painting this warband in a D&D or Gamorrean scheme: essentially the same thing. Citadel orcs were originally D&D orcs (and possibly even closer to Gary Gygax's vision than the Monster Manual illustration; Gygax said at one point that he'd envisaged upturned snouts rather than full-on pig heads), so it seems appropriate. I'm painting the orcs a variety of greens, greenish-blues and browns, with the pink snouts and ears the unifying constant. 

Skaven Rat Ogre

 

This hefty fellow has had an upgrade to paintwork begun by my daughter some years ago. He's already featured in one of our Mordheim games. He's a Reaper Bones giant wererat.

Rust Monster face reveal

 The latest from my son ....

Kitbashed Skaven slingers

 

We've been playing a bit of Mordheim recently. Skaven slingers are handy in that game, and I had but one metal original painted up. So I've started converting some from Oathmark goblin slaves, using Plague Monk and Mordheim Skaven heads and greenstuff tails. 

I painted these guys up pretty quickly, relying on washes over a burnt umber/grey/ivory base for the most part, with a few bits treated with more care.

The world's oldest Space Ork?!

 

This is a converted Fantasy Tribes Orc from Citadel. He dates from 1982 and is a variant of FT06 (Orc Swinging Axe). His axe has not escaped the 80s, so I thought I'd make him a sci-fi figure in the tradition of Gary Chalk (whose converted C15 Orc Chieftain with assault rifle featured in an early White Dwarf).

I have a small warband of converted old-school orcs underway; next up will be Copplestone and Lund conversions.

Oh, and happy Year of the Dragon! Here's my son's latest offering to celebrate the Spring Festival: