Masters of Horror

To my great excitement, these two figures just arrived from the Bears Head Miniatures Gallery Series Kickstarter.  There are a lot of nice offerings in this KS; I appreciated the variety and the impressive sculpting mojo.  But I managed to restrain myself and buy only two figures:

That's right! Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft, two of the most notable writers in the history of horror fiction, and so far the only authors in my collection.  At least until someone does a miniature of Margaret Atwood, that is.  I want to try and paint HPL (the "cultist" version, the "mythos investigator" was a surprise bonus!) as soon as I can, I have a fun idea for him. But I won't let Poe languish under the floorboards with my lead pile, either...

Three (More) Doctors

So these recently arrived in the mail from Heresy:

From L-R, the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston), Tenth (David Tennant) and Eleventh (Matt Smith) Doctors.  Simply incredible sculpts, 9 and 11 especially capture the respective actors amazingly well without being exaggerated caricatures.  They also happen to scale perfectly with my older Doctor Who figures.  I'm terribly slow painting anything 28 mm these days, but I'm hoping I can paint at least one of these up soon.

Review: Black Tree Design Doctor Who figures

L->R: Fourth Doctor, Robot of Death, Fifth Doctor, Cyberman, Dalek.

So I just received these fantastic minis from Black Tree Design. I was kind of amazed that a fairly minor company would have such a prominent license, and in fact surprised that these were even still being made. But "Doctor Who" is the longest-running sci-fi franchise in TV history, beloved by many.

First of all, I was expecting these to be OLD sculpts, from the 80's or so. Fairly small, a bit odd-looking. But they're definitely not. At 30mm, these should mesh nicely with most modern ranges (see below). Really nice detail and proportions, not to mention pretty decent likenesses of Doctors #4 & 5.



The other thing is... the line is HUGE. The first EIGHT Doctors and all their major foes and Companions, all in miniature form. Wow.

The downside is... you have to be patient. It took a few weeks just for my order to ship, and a few more for it to get here. Kind of anomalous these days, but I'm guessing Black Tree is really just a few people. Still, it could be a frustrating if you need gaming miniatures in a hurry.

EDIT: A search of The Miniatures Page forums will reveal a number of threads of this nature, which is very unfortunate. I might order from them again simply because DOCTOR WHO, but I'd email ahead to confirm they have the stock in hand before making any payment (with credit card not Paypal).

Slow going...

Well, my wife is away for a whole month, to improve her French among the Quebecois. Logically this means I should get loads of painting done including a lovely WAMPED! entry, n'est ce pas?
Reality = apathy, and no contest entry even selected :P



This is not shaping up to be one of my better paint jobs. It's kind of a frustrating mini, the overall design aesthetic is "sleek 'n' advanced" but the casting is a little "seamy 'n' pitted". I do like how the top surface looks... so far. But I'm glad I put a few extra protrusions on it to break it up a bit.

(also, right now I'm stuck taking photos with my wife's $700 camera instead of my $99 one, god I miss it. I can't get the damn SLR to stop flashing!)

Oh... and a nifty arrival from eBay:

HeroQuest Hellion

HeroQuest Necromancer ("Skeletor")
28 mm



Finally done. I wasn't sure what that sphere on his helmet is supposed to be, so I painted it as a Palantir-type black orb with point reflections.

I suppose an alternate name for him could be Lord Zuthulu ;D

---

Some Christmas swag from my brother:



A Reaper "Reptus Sergeant" and Confrontation "Orhain the Erudite". I believe I asked him not to buy me minis... so he compromised and dug these out of the FLGS's bargain bin for a few bucks each. I especially like the turtle guy.

And i just picked up some RAFM Call of Cthulhu Deep Ones. ♫ ♫ It's beginning to look a lot like fish men ♫ ♫...

Motley Things

Chick Challenge* Entry
28 mm



OK, I can't actually show this, at least not before the Dec. 5 closing date for contest entries. But I will say it's a lovely sculpt by Victoria Lamb, and it's not at all like a lot of the things I have painted lately. Also, it's very purple.

* The Chick Challenge, in brief, is a female miniature painting contest. It was run for years by Jason Moses, but is now ably managed by Legio Pictorum, a group of Italian painters.

---

I recently managed to acquire ($2, church bazaar) a battered copy of Heroquest! This was a Milton Bradley fantasy board game from the 80's, with game pieces produced by Citadel/Games Workshop. Essentially a canned version of a RPG dungeon crawl, complete with treasure to collect and orcs and other nasties to fight.

It came with a large number of "game pieces":




Hmm, yeah. They remind me of the figures from Battlemasters, or the old Bloodbowl box set. While they're not exactly high-quality even by the standards of modern plastic figures, I have done decent paint jobs on such things in the past.

I feel like these have... potential. We'll see.

Weird Reich

These just arrived in the mail from Dream Pod 9:

Loki and Valkyrie German Walkers
15 mm scale





DP9 minis seem overpriced to me, but since I can't sculpt/scratchbuild my way out of a paper bag, what choice do I really have to satisfy those World War 2 stompy robot cravings?

Plague of Brutals!

This purchase falls strictly under "What Was I Thinking?"



What the eye-bleeding heck is that, you ask? Well, this review sums up the film "Zardoz" nicely, I think. It also explains why I don't remember much of the plot except the "The gun is good, the penis is evil!" speech by the giant flying head (that vomits guns).



Of course, I had to buy THREE of these abominations... I think somebody I know is getting one for Christmas >:D

Transparent

I picked up a couple of these clear plastic boxes at Michael's Crafts the other day. Dirt cheap of course, thanks to overseas sweatshop labour and lax environmental controls :(





As you can see they make pretty decent single-miniature display boxes. A couple of sheets of foamcore were used to raise the mini's base, all held together with double-sided tape.

A whole new kind of "small"

I just picked these up from Copplestone Castings. The set is called "Heroes and Halflings", but they are pretty obviously the Fellowship of the Ring. The humans are a whopping 10 mm tall, the hobbits are more like 6 mm!



My Nosferatu vampire (see below) hasn't gone anywhere yet, but I'm thinking he should be done in greyscale/B&W to fit his cinematic appearance.

Old School

More eBay goodies, these babies date back to 1988 or so. I guess I'm a sucker for oddities...

The shame!

I haven't updated in... 38 days. But then, I haven't really painted anything either. Of course that didn't stop me from BUYING some more minis... in this case some 1980's vintage figures off eBay:

Chaos champion and mummy

Knight, sci-fi mercenary, space dwarf, and two "Techmarines" (with pistols raised)

Score!

I picked up a lot of old Star Wars minis on eBay yesterday. These figures are over 10 years old and quite rare so this is a pretty sweet find:

Minis are: R2-D2, Luke (Bespin), Chewbacca, Luke (Tatooine/Death Star), Stormtrooper, Rebel pilot, Han Solo, Admiral Ackbar, another droid, Gamorrean Guard. Some have previously been painted but it'll be easy to strip that off.