I have to confess an undying love of Weird War X settings, throw some werewolves into the trenches and I’m pretty much hooked. So, surprise to no one anywhere who knows me, I feel in love with Konflikt ’47.
This game is screaming for kitbashing, so the Fireflies, Stahltruppen, and mechs from the starter set might be the only official K47 minis I end up using. Plus, I want a sneering vampire leader for the Axis troops, and that figure does not exist… yet.
The Axis leader is in heavy armor and packing quite a sneer. I painted him up in an urban camo scheme, and will follow that up with his honor guard and additional Stahltruppen units.
For the US commander, I painted him up with the standard color scheme I was planning on using for the rest of the fireflies. These guys are fun, but he’ll probably be the only one I put out with a tactical rock.
What’s next? Axis zombies, some rank and file troops, and more enhanced US troopers. I’ll be using Isaiah Bradley as the leader of the enhanced, because why not? Cap is cool.
Corvus Belli excels at offering outstanding lore for their wargame settings, and fantastic miniatures to live out the conflicts represented in that lore on the tabletop. Infinity’s lore has been a lot of fun to follow over the past decade, and Warcrow is proving to be even more fun only a year or so after launch.
Early color blocking over a red a purple underpainting layer, which is really making the main colors pop! The Summoner on the right should be ready to show off soon!
Take the Northern Tribes, for instance. Here be orcs. They don’t expect to live long, and rate their value by what they can take at the point of a spear. They live in some of the harshest climates of their world, and share that space with the Varank, outcast elves that ended up in the frozen wastes.
Bones, bones, bones…
The Orcs of the Northern Tribes are shamanic people, and look to a Wrathmane to lead them in good times and bad. One such Wrathmane is Alborc, who is criticized openly for his willingness to work with the Varank.
Layering in some highlights on the bone armor and mail skirt, and starting the NMM on the sword. I really hate NMM, but wanted to give it a shot!
Alborc has had visions his entire life that he will lead his people to a better life, but only if he brings the Varank along as allies. Which means you not only get to play really awesome orcs in Warcrow, but some very cool Nordic Elves as well.
The finished Alborc miniature in all his glory!
The sculpt for Alborc is very dynamic, but, as it’s from the earlier offerings from Warcrow, I don’t think Corvus Belli had dialed in the casting process for Siocast as well as they have now. With those growing pains in play, Alborc suffers a little from casting artifacts that can make him a little hard to assemble.
One of the other negatives to siocast is that it is surprisingly brittle! Here you can see a shoulder tusk that broke while I was trying to nudge it a little after gluing. Lesson learned!
There’s also some duller aspects of the sculpt here and there, and I really do think that’s part of the early siocast work. The newer boxes of Siocast minis I’ve picked up from Corvus Belli for Warcrow have been fantastic.
The biggest challenge for me on this project was letting the underpainting exist in the final paint. The subtle pops of purple and red shining out seem really obvious up close, but from a distance they’re adding a lot to the overall tonal feel of the miniature.
Still, Alborc assembled and painted is AMAZING. These figures are so detailed and fun that I find myself looking for ways to challenge myself a little, so for my Alborc I went with a purple and red underpainting layer. I don’t have much experience with this, but holy cow… I love the results!
Now I just have to balance a mad desire to do nothing but Warcrow minis for a while! There’s a lot of grey from a lot of games in my backlog, I can’t get obsessed with just one game, hahahah!
Turning my frantic eye back to 15mm scale gaming for a bit, I’ve decided I would like to get one warband finished up for 15mm Mordheim. These minis would also work great for Frostgrave and Five Leagues from the Borderlands!
The first thing I wanted to tackle was a big possessed brute for a chaos warband, and this queen pretty much settles all scores, right? She’s hulking big, with lots of tentacles, teeth, and a little sneaky nudity for good measure.
I have one or two more possessed to finish up, and some Undead to plow through as well, but we’re off and truly running, and I couldn’t be happier!
I am also planning on getting some pretty elaborate terrain finished up for these warbands! The nice thing with this scale is 2′ by 2′ is going to give you all the gaming surface you need, and you can really go mad with kitbashing buildings, too!
As I continue to mend, my stamina is picking up a little and I’m able to paint a little more! Just finished up Emil Blonsky, AKA The Abomination! He’s a delicious figure for sure!
He’s also positively huge, easily twice the size of the Hulk and close to Hulkbuster in stature. Very cool!
I’m still trying to figure out if I want to put him in a Hydra group or a Criminal Syndicate group, the big factor here being which group I’m going to get rid of. The syndicate has some cool models, but the Hydra group has a ton of Jack Kirby coolness that I love. On the other hand, Nazis. I hate those guys.
After assessing my overall storage capacity and several near death experiences over the last few years, I’m leaning heavily towards narrowing the collection down to one or two affiliations. The collector in me is shrieking like a gibbon at the moment, but I really don’t want to leave a ton of minis behind if something does actually catch up to me! That might sound a little morbid, but we all go sometime, and I would like to leave as little of my hobby behind to clean up as possible!
Enough of the maudlin, I’m hankering for some 15mm action!
Here’s another proxy job for my 40mm miniature collection, it’s funny how much energy I spend trying to find that “goldilocks” scale! Rogue in classic MCP suffers from Jim Lee design syndrome, and again… I’m not knocking Jim Lee’s design, I would just like to acknowledge that she’s had other, really cool costumes!
Luckily, I had extra bases from other MCP figs, so I swiped an engine piece from a Necromunda model for her to perch on, and she looks pretty cool!
This is probably my favorite Rogue costume ever, so kudos to the folks who put in the work on it!
I am currently working out some fantasy prints in this scale, as I’m realizing that there are some benefits to working large like this. I love the challenge of painting 15mm scale minis, and you can’t beat the storage options, but 40mm has it’s charms as well! I’ll explore them more in depth in an upcoming post!
I am back after a seven month battle with my pancreas that saw two hospitalizations, a major surgery, and an inability to eat food due to the cessation of my digestive tract. The surgery was undertaken to fix that issue, and I am happily able to eat now! I apologize for the absence, although my pancreas has informed me that it will happen again.
With that out of the way, though, let’s look at some minis! I love the X-Men, and, while I was a fan of the Jim Lee costumes that debuted 33 years ago, I don’t think they’re the end-all, especially when it comes to the original five students of Charles Xavier. Jean’s costume in particular never really gelled for me.
When the Krakoa storyline started a few years ago, I was really happy to see Jean’s first non-school uniform show up again, and spent some time looking for a suitable proxy model to use.
Before anyone rattle a pitchfork too mightily in my direction, I have a staunch take on proxy use! I always strive to own the original model, since I am playing a game that someone spent a lot of time and resources on, I want to support that. I also make sure that my opponent is cool with me using a proxy before we play. This allows cool battles like X-Men VS X-Men, with an obvious time travel element thrown in because of the costume variations!
I found this file of Jean in her Hickman era costume, and here’s how she looks painted up!
While I’m not 100% sold on the pose, I think the sculpt is actually pretty good!
I really do hope that Atomic Mass Games are able to branch out and explore more costume designs in future minis, because there’s a vast and wondrous world of X-Threads beyond Jim Lee, but let’s face it; those costumes were iconic, immortalized in the ’90s cartoon, and nostalgia sells war dollies better than any other marketing tool!
My willpower is legendary. As in “I have no willpower and there are legends about it”. I took one look at the Fistful of Credits squad pack from Atomic Mass Games, and suddenly my wallet was lighter and there were four more miniatures in my house. Oops.
You would think Cad Bane would be the first miniature I would paint in this set, but I actually went crazy for the Devaronian Bounty Hunter! Sure, he’s just space trailer park trash, but he’s my kind of space trailer park trash…
The model is really dynamic, AMG is really coming into their own with the sculpts the are putting on models now. He’s cocky, smirking, and you just know he named those pistols!
This was the first mini I popped out of the Earth’s Mightiest Box Set from Marvel Crisis Protocol, and I managed to get him painted up in less than 24 hours, so I’ll be crossing off another box on my hobby bingo card today…
I really, unabashedly love what Captain America stands for, even if that sometimes doesn’t pair up with what the country is actually doing at the moment. I’m trying to look past the nationalism and at the actual symbolism of what the character can stand for: Our better angels, doing what is right for everyone. Protecting everyone, not just the people that like you. Not being distracted or divided. That’s kinda cool, even if I don’t see that much of anywhere anymore.
The sculpt on the figure is really good, probably the second best Cap model in the line. Definitely the best Steve Rogers Cap. I’ll be posting the best Cap sculpt when a certain movie comes out next month!
New week, new strip of 10mm skellies! This will be the command rank for the skeleton unit, They’re a fun little collection of boney bois!
I’m still working out in my heart if I like 10mm or 15mm more, but honestly, half the fun is painting up the different units in different scales and figuring it out. This is a riddle that may never actually find an answer!
With the original strip of infantry, this makes four ranks of six warriors done, and they look so freaking cool ranked up together!
I’m also having a lot of fun taking pictures of models with finished terrain, it makes a cool looking project even cooler!
Apparently, the holidays broke my damned brain. That’s the only reason I can figure that I would have broken down and tried to paint God’s Forbidden Scale again… I swore I would never touch 10mm again, and yet, here I am, brush in hand and ridiculous grin plastered on my stupid face, painting incredibly tiny skeletons.
And, truth be told, I had a better time of it this time around. The trick to tricking my brain into not shutting down this time was painting with the suggestion of color instead of actually painting the models. The details are so small that you’ll just lose your hair if you approach these like a 28mm model.
But, wow. The finished result is actually pretty spiffy. I love the look of two ranks of boney bois, just shambling up for a scrap! I had so much fun with these that I’m already working on a command unit for these troops, and a commander model for the army!
And, just for fun, here’s a picture with a US penny for scale!
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