Marauder Miniatures Lich

What makes a lich(e), a lich(e)? For those of us who grew up with the first edition Monster Manual, we would say it's a nice crown, perched up on his bony noggin. I mean, look at this guy:

What do you notice? The glowing eyes? The spooky skull? The impending threat of being tickled? No! It's that stylish crown.

Which brings us to THIS guy:

What are we looking at, here? All the hallmarks of lichitude are there, but what's the deal with the hat? Is he, in fact, an undead London Metropolitan police officer? Where's the sweet, sweet crown?

All kidding aside, I am one of those weirdos who like most of the miniatures that Trish and Aly Morrison and Colin Dixon made for Marauder Miniatures. This lich is probably my favorite of the lot. Kind of different from what one would usually expect from the typical undead sorcerer, with a slightly goofy aura about him to offset the menace. I swear this miniature was the inspiration for the infamous Nagash miniature.

My plan here was to challenge myself with a palette that I don't usually use. Evil undead wizards usually dress in ominous reds and blacks, but why not one in yellow? (I've been using yellow for my BB Skaven, but not as much on one miniature as with this guy.) For the second color I added purple, which is a color that I hardly ever touch - I painted his collar and stole(?) with Reaper's Faded and Bruise purples. I'm not super happy with how it turned out, but I'll put that down to inexperience with the color.

Like most Marauder Minis, this guy is pretty big:

Granted, he's standing next to an old, old Fantasy Tribes lich (note the crown!), but the MM lich still holds his own with most of today's minis.

Gee, I wonder where the FT lich got his pose from?

"Tickle, tickle, tickle!" "...No."

The next time I paint up a lich (and I will, because they're one of my favorite monsters) and it doesn't have a crown - WELL - I'll give that lich a crown...

...Liches LOVE crowns.

Chugging Along - BB Skaven

Not feeling too wordy tonight - here's the four Bloodbowl Skaven players that I started a while back:

I like how they turned out, even though my eyesight is having trouble with the freehand numbers. Time for some reading glasses, I think!

Mandatory team shot:

Of all the ratman sculpts that I've seen, Jes Goodwin's are still my favorite.

Oh Em Gee, I Painted A Thing!

A crappy thing, but painted nonetheless.

Number One Son and I spent a few hours at ReaperCon in Texas today. Might as well, we only live about 10 miles away from it, and we both needed brain breaks from school. He's getting more interested in painting and gaming, so I'm using him as a lifeline to keep my interest going too.

As always, Reaper has one or two "Paint and Take" tables set up, which is always a favorite of NOS. As he worked his way through a Bones sea hag of some sort, I picked up a vicious rat man, made of the same stuff. I didn't really have a plan for him, I just noodled around him with the paints and brushes that were available. This is the horrible result:

Truly dreadful, even for me. I'm not a fan of painting away from my comfortable work area, and certainly not a fan of limited paints, well-used brushes, horrible lighting and crowds all around as I work. I'm by no means an award-winner, but I've done better.

In all honesty, I was going to just abandon the beastie then and there at the convention hall, but when my son looked at it, he said, "That's good Dad! Take him home with you."

Well then - there's no way I'm going to leave it behind when one of the most important people in my life honestly says that they like it. Remember how I said I'm using him as a lifeline to stay interested? Well, that was a pretty fekkin' obvious one right there.

So here is my latest entry to my painting history - terrible to me, but not to a 14 year old whose opinion is worth the world to me. I'll seal the mini in dullcoat, and add him to my "dungeon crawl games" collection of monsters and  bad guys.

Sappy post aside, it's always good to finish painting something - even a smaller Reaper Bones miniature, which I'm not a fan of. They're getting better in the detail department, but when they have mold lines - ugh. Near impossible to remove. I prefer to have large monsters, dragons, giants, etc. in Bones though; it's where the material shines through.

Will painting happen again, soon? Who knows? I have a month and a half before I graduate from Radiology school, so my free time - as usual - is wonky, and I tend to spend it doing stupid things like computer games and crap. Time for an intervention, I think ;)

For Posterity

I decided to take a couple pics of Trooper Bush for posterity, so I can compare the old paint job with the new (whenever I get around to repainting her). Fortunately, she was only in SG for 10 minutes at that point, so no damage to the paint just yet.

Actually using my photo setup makes a difference, it seems. Still using the cell phone, though.

Not too sure what I'll do about her gun, though. Bunging a plastic lasgun barrel to the miscast part didn't really work out last time. Might just give her some sort of sawed-off gun next.

'Ee's a biggun, isn't 'ee?

Where Trooper Bush discovers that Space Marines have finally grown into the size that the fluff describes them:

Upon making this discovery, the good trooper suffered from a bout of self-awareness about her 20+ year old rushed paint job and hopped into a vat of fresh Simple Green. I've never been happy with her paint job - much less by the fact that the miniature was a miscast and I did a hack job of repairing her las gun. Originally, she was meant to be a Chaos cultist, but now I'll just repaint her to match my old blue-and-black Planetary Defence Force.

While it's not a great paint job, the gloss coat and my cell phone really conspire to make it worse. Might be time to steal my wife's nice camera.

BB Skaven are still in the queue (yeah, yeah...), but I'm just assembling the new WH40k 1,000,000th Edition (I've lost count at this point) miniatures because I like how big the marines are now. Plus, it gets my hands steady again so I can do the real work of painting.

Painting Ain't Happening

Damn it.  School sucks the enthusiasm out of me, I'm afraid. I've assemble a few TTCombat buildings though (HIGHLY recommended, by the way). Maybe I'll throw pictures of those up here if I can stop obsessing over my comp count for a few minutes.

More BB Skaven

Oh yeah - I finished these a while ago and forgot to post them, oops.

To the right!

Four piddling Skaven linemen from 2nd edition Blood Bowl. Nothing fancy here - paint, wash, and messy-assed highlights (in other words, my usual SOP). I'm not really that great a painter anymore - age and lack of practice have taken their toll - but I really need a better camera. My phone makes them look worse than they really are.

To the other right!

When these were cast, GW was having some serious trouble with quality control (at least from my perspective). Miniatures with slipped molds, miscasts, and missing or wrong parts got to the shelves on a regular basis. The set that these linemen come from was no exception. These four represent the worst of the lot - a couple had bad mold slippage, which I fixed as best as I could. The Skaven without gloves appears to have a ventilation thread on his right hand which I missed (he was covered in them before I painted him). At least they're painted!

The team so far...

I'm already chugging through some positionals (thrower, "gutter runners", etc.) I'll put them up whenever :) Unfortunately, my school break is ending this week, so it's back to the grind I go on Monday. I'll do my best to make time for the hobby, as it mostly keeps me happy and calm(ish) during stressful clinicals.

Ah well, time to do something about that ventilation thread on number 13 :(

Sometimes, We Hate Our Children

Spring semester is done at last, and I passed quite handily. To celebrate, I threw paint at the first unfinished miniature on my desk that I saw. Unfortunately, it was...this guy...

This Dark Elf spearman has a weird history. I actually started him about 10 years ago for whatever edition of Warhammer was around then (I actually got the miniature faaaar longer ago that that). Mostly because I didn't like the edition, and because I was well into 40K at the time, I abandoned him just before the wash stage. Several months ago, I pulled him out with the intention of finishing him and converting him and the army he came with into a Kings of War list. Cue school and no time to do anything.

Well, school's out and painting happened. Well, it's more accurate to say I "painted at" him, anyway. If I could drop this asshole, I did. If I could mess up the highlights, I did. If it could go wrong, it did. To cap it all off, I failed at painting his eyes SIX goddamn times before I gave up. Yes, after all these years and miniatures, I finally finished one without doing his eyes. I blame age.

Mandatory ass shot.

Orlygg at Realm of Chaos '80s wrote about having our own Miniature Moriarty, and this bastard is definitely one. To keep this post from going too negative, I'm happy that I got the "Moon and Banshee" shield device right on the first try. Only about 60+ more to go! 

So yeah, I don't love this guy too much right now. Best to put him away for a while so I don't have to see him and work on my BB Skaven next.

*Deep breath* ... but at least I'm painting! :)

Dirty Rat!

Ahhh, finally found the time to finish something! So back around 1990, I discovered Blood Bowl 2nd edition while living the life of an unhappy college student in Waco. Already having most of a Skaven army for Warhammer, I immediately collected a team of the little rat men. Of course, these being showy little American Football analogues I just couldn't paint them in dirty drab colors like their army brethren, so armed with a lot of red and yellow craft paint I happily holed up in my crappy little one bedroom apartment and painted them.

MANY years later, I have decided that most of the paint jobs aren't all that presentable for the newest version of Blood Bowl, so into the Simple Green most of them went to await a more modern look. I decided to paint my Rat Ogre first, as he was about the only miniature on the team who never got finished all those years ago - no idea why I didn't, either.

So here he is - my Warhammer Fantasy Rat Ogre stand-in for the Skaven Blood Bowl team, the "Warpington Ratskins".

With his weird little helmet and chain-wrapped fists, I always thought he looked the part of a BB player. Paints are a combination of, well, everything - craft paints (yes, still!), Reaper, GW and a very old bottle of AD&D paints "mold yellow" (which is my favorite yellow at the moment, and I'll be sad when it's gone).

Booty shot.

Even though he's pictured on a venerable AstroGranite (tm) pitch, I base all of my players with grass and dirt, which matches most modern BB boards. I actually like how he turned out - glad to see that I can still paint when I take the time to!

Last, here's a shot of my freshly painted Rat Ogre with two of his little brothers, a lineman (kicker, originally) and blitzer respectively. These two are the only ones that I spared from the Simple Green bath - I am still ok with how they look, even though they're a bit brighter overall than the RO. Back then, I really liked my paint jobs as obnoxiously bright as possible.

Well, I've already started four more linemen - hopefully they'll be done before the start of the summer semester (jeeze, am I ALWAYS in school?) If these two guys start to really stick out, I may have to get them in the Simple Green too.

EDIT: Annnnd I forgot his earrings - it's always something...

Fantasy Tribe Skeletons

Yes, yes - yet another post about something I painted a couple months ago, but it's new to YOU, good reader!

Two 'orrid little Citadel skeletons from their old Fantasy Tribes line. These were literally among the first miniatures I ever owned, being given to me by my parents for my 13th birthday. Yes, it took me 34 years to get around to painting them.

Not 100% happy with how they turned out, but then again, they're pretty rough sculpts. However, seeing them painted on my desk never fails to bring a smile to my face, as it reminds me of when this whole "Gaming" tomfoolery was a new and wonderful unknown to me.

By today's standards, these are some seriously dinky little guys - more like halflings in their proportions. I tried for a dirty, faded look on the clothing, but making black look anything other than overhighlighted is currently beyond me. Add some rust on the metal and some gold on the crown (Liches LOVE crowns) and my oldest gaming companions are complete.

Remember How I Told You I'd Improve My Photo Skills?

I lied, because nobody got time for dat.

No time to paint anything new either, with me attempting to keep my head above water in school these days. So it's not a total loss, here's a chap that I dug up for a photo op, despite having painted him in 1995.

Yes, we loved the high gloss sealant in those days, along with the obnoxious green base rim. Obviously, my color scheme was highly influenced by the painted Bloodthirster in the RoC "Slaves to Darkness" book (love that one!) Eventually, this guy will get a dull coat and a less, er, obvious base. I usually paint fantasy-type miniatures with a brown base rim these days, so he needs to match. I intentionally chopped off his helmet spike, though - it just seemed off to me. Still does, really.

Amusingly enough, I have been trawling Ebay for another one of these guys, but with the different body style (the right arm raised above the head one). Too bad most sellers seem to think they're made of gold!

Tune in next time for false promises of new content and improved photography!

Ahhh, new blog smell! Here is where I will waffle on about tabletop gaming, miniatures and such when I have time. I am currently taking a Radiology Program, and I have discovered painting miniatures is one of the few things to ease the stress from that - again, when I have the time.

I've recently fallen out of love with large-scale gaming such as Warhammer 40K, and am switching gears to smaller scale stuff, such as Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Matakishi's CROM game and even Fairy Meat of all things. Gotta love small groups of miniature painting projects.

I do like the "Oldhammer" movement, and may attempt to get a Warhammer 3rd edition army together whenever my large-scale battle doldrums end.

And to give this bit of nonsense SOME purpose related to the blog, here is a Talisman Sprite that I painted up a month or so ago for the wife who wanted some sort of fairy for her terrarium project. Probably what got me looking at Fairy Meat...

And yes, it's not based in the picture - rest assured that the base is indifferently covered in green and brown flock like my pictured forest terrain. If you're good, I'll even try to improve my photography skills one day.