All Dressed Up with No One to Kill; more Freebooter's Fate

I needed to paint something, so tonight I pulled out another of my Freebooter's Fate models and broke out my brushes. No real rhyme or reason, but I wanted her to look suitably opulent. She's a member of the Brotherhood, but whereas the previous Brotherhood I painted were the lower ranking members, street killers and toughs, she is the Queen of Shadows, a far more illustrious killer indeed.
Nothing fancy about the paintjob, I got a bit sloppy towards the end really, so I might go back and touch up a few things later. Still, it gets the job done and moves me 1 step closer to finishing my FF project, something I'd really like to do, since I'm trying to make myself finish one thing before buying another... (games are like pokemon, gotta have them all...). Already got my eye on a few new ideas.
About three hours work all up, I can calculate that accurately because I listened to ten episodes of the Russian Rulers History podcast while painting.

Cheers, and thanks for reading,
~ Alex/Magos

Some of the Big Guys; new photos of old paintjobs

Haven't had much time for hobby this week, though I did get to play a short RPG encounter on Sunday with my one and only gaming opponent in town. Was fun, if a steep learning curve for two total RPG noobs, but we agreed it bears further exploration.

Hopefully I'll have new painting progress to show soon, but in the absence of new things, I thought I'd post some pics of a few models I painted earlier this year, before I had this blog. I've been sorting through hobby junk, and decided that taking better pics of these paintjobs wouldn't hurt.

So anyway, enjoy a Circle Woldwarden and Khador Berserker!

Thanks for readings,
~ Alex/Magos

How Does He Manage Such a Tan in Winter?; a Red Box barbarian

Sorry to once again go silent. It's the usual story, plenty of work and too much video gaming in my spare time.
But there's at least something to show, yesterday afternoon I picked up the Red Box mini I'd mentioned a few weeks ago and knocked him out with a quick and fun paintjob. In hindsight I shaded the skin too far into the brown, so his warpaint isn't very dramatic. I should have gone for pale blue fleshtones instead. But I'm not going to repaint it just for that, I'm happy with how he turned out. I'm especially pleased with the sword blade. It may not be anything special, but it is street, miles, leagues ahead of any other NMM silver I have ever done before. NMM silver has always been one technique I can't even get the faintest grasp of. Forget looking like stone, I struggle to make it look like anything more than a grey mess. Hopefully my persistence with NMM will gradually pay off. Practice may not make perfect, but it hopefully will make acceptable.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment or critique :)

~ Alex/Magos

Real Life Obstructing Hobby; miscellany and Carnosaur WIP

So in case you hadn't figured it out already, I rather failed at my goal of painting all my Freebooter's Fate in a week. Not entirely my own fault, at the start of the week I thought I'd have abundant time to paint, unfortunately, after a very quiet month of work, things got super busy unexpectedly late last week, and that continued this week, leaving me almost no hobby time (I drove over 1000kms for work this week, phew).

I'll get back to the FF, like I always do with my crazy collection of projects, but right now I've been distracted by a parcel of goodies from the very awesome Dan at Tabletop Empires. Some Dreadball MVPs who will soon join the Mass Effect project, the new GW Carnosaur I mentioned ordering a few posts ago, and my copy of the rulebook for the steampunk Victorian skirmish game, In Her Majesty's Name. 

I've known about this game for a while, but it never appealed to me, simply because the warbands they had on offer, while not bad, didn't really inspire me. Not enough 'steampunk', too much 'Victorian'. Fellow blogger Counter Fett, however, made me reconsider the game after reading his blog posts about it, and so when Tabletop Empires offered a weekend discount on the game the same time I made my order, I added a copy just to see what they were like.
Having now read the rules, I can say that I'm a big fan, they look both streamlined and enjoyable, offering the simplicity I crave (because trying to remember a dozen different rulesets is hard), while still having plenty of tactics and gameplay options. Best of all, the game includes a points system allowing you create your own warbands entirely from scratch. I'm already thinking of the possibilities, now I just need to find the right steampunk models. I'm sure I'll be posting more about this game in the future.

Anyway, in what little hobby time I've had this week, I got the carnosaur assembled. It's a rather lovely kit, nicely detailed and it assembles easily, without too many gaps. I'm planning to create a large display base for it, but for now I've started work on the oldblood riding it. I'm ambivalent about the results so far... Not unhappy, just not impressed. I'm trying to push myself to paint better, but I can't seem to not paint quickly, so the result still looks sloppy and rough. I'd appreciate feedback on what you think of the model, colour choices mostly.

But anyway, here's the WIP pics:

Cheers,

~ Alex/Magos

Crazy Cat Lady; Freebooter's Fate Challenge, Day 4

Day 4, and I continue to slowly chip away at the challenge. After finishing off the Oncas earlier this morning, this evening I got stuck into the first two proper Amazons, a chicomeh, and Tecuani, the Onca cat lady, and not a model I particularly like, I must admit.

Not a lot to say about them really, they're both WIP still, but I don't want to spend too much time on them, so probably won't mess around with already done parts, despite not being overly happy with them so far :/ Let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for how to improve them.

So yeah, that's all for now, stay tuned for tomorrow's post.
One final note, all this painting is really helping me brush (oh no, accidental pun) up on my history, having finished podcast series on both the Byzantines and Sicilians, and now getting stuck into a long series covering Russian history. I'm finding it helps keep the motivation to paint going, since when one episode finishes, I want to keep painting long enough to listen to another...

~ Alex/Magos