Joan of Arc core set terrain and some accidental Night Goblins

 One of the things that really got me hooked on the Joan of Arc (JoA) Kickstarter from Mythic Games was the amazing visuals they created with the terrain elements of the game.  My 15mm terrain collection is a bit dated and I thought, if the game was awful, I'd still be able to use a lot of the components in other 15mm games.  Fortunately the game is actually pretty good... maybe even very good... maybe even awesome! 

 The core set comes with a church, a large farmhouse, two small farmhouses, a ruined church, a well, 5 low walls and 7 defensive stake lines, 5 bushes, 4 rocks, 10 trees, and a small shrine.

I've managed to knock out: Church, houses, walls, trees, bushes, stakes, and rocks. 

 All of this was painted directly onto the plastic models without trimming, cleaning, or primer. I wanted to paint these fast and leverage the pre-colored plastic where possible.

Paint adhesion was excellent and I think they'll hold up well to use.  They were sealead with Krylon Satin Clear Coat but I'll probably zap them with a final light coat of Dead Flat.

 To get the variegated roof tiles I used three basic colors and rolled some dice to decide where they went!  A fun little exercise that turned in a good result.

The trees were pre-colored green and brown So they got some highlights and some Secret Weapon Washes.  I wanted to mix some green highlights and blew my color theory check and made a large batch of a totally wrong green....

... which resulted in a frantic look round for something to use it on... I located a box of "Battle for Skull Pass" which I think is something like 5th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles and set to painting up the horde of Night Goblins it contained.  The sculpts are actually very entertaining and really marked the beginning of GW's shift in hard plastics from were awful to very good.  Now, of course hard plastics are amazing and the sculpting takes full advantage of the material's properties to give us things very dynamic posing and flying/levitating models.






Not being able to let the pile sit I finished up the spear, bow, and character models from the set all the while thinking about Night Goblins as the poster children for keeping serious religion and greenskins separated.  The Night Goblins have created a society that does not need orcs! They are successful in their own right and field armies that are a potent, and all too successful, adversary to the powerful Dwarf Kingdoms. 

Back to the brushes!

Joan of Arc terrain WiP

 For my first go at painting since the big move I decided to work on the Joan of Arc Board game.

This is a game that could only exist because of the great golden age of board-gaming that was brought about by the confluence of Kickstarter and the explosion of 3D miniature design and printing.  Its a very ambitious project that combines elements of RPGs/Tabletop Miniature  Wargames/Dungeon-crawlers.  Its already in a 1.5 Kickstarter to re-balance and expand the tabletop elements... I'm a bit obsessed.

 With the proliferation of board-games containing high quality "Designed for painters" components its no surprise that a few have ended up on my painting desk. Previously I've tackled the Dark Souls: The Board Game core set and The Order of Vampire Hunters Core set. Still in my queue are Fallout(The Board Game),  Chronicle X, Gloom Haven, and the inevitable... and seemingly endless, Kingdom Death: Monster.

 One of the things that interests me with these games, in addition to the really great sculpts, is the very well defined scope of each project.  Traditionally tabletop wargames and RPGs are essentially open ended endeavors so the sense of closure is pretty cool with the board games.

Many of the games like Joan of Arc (JoA) have made use of colored material and I've attempted to leverage that color base here basically shading, highlighting, and weathering using the existing color as a base. 

 Paint adhesion can be an issue but on hard plastics (as these are) its not a big problem and it occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that I could spray with a clear primer... after all I've done it before... notably when mistaking the clear primer as a clear-coat sealer...  Let me tell ya its not the same! ... but it does let the original color show strongly and would work well for this sort of thing

JoA comes with a nice selection of 15mm buildings and the minis are very nice too... one of the fabulous things about 15mm is the ease of achieving the visual effect of mass troops, huddled villages, and massive monsters.  JoA does all of these superbly!

To the left you'll notice a pair of Japanese houses.  These are repairs that I snuck into the task list.  They are resin and were originally painted in the '70s in a sort of pygmy true 25mm scale. I've forgotten the manufacturer but they have the feel of the JR style about them.

While mixing up a green color I missed my mark in a big way so... base-coated the skin of a GW Ork and Goblin army from the Battle at Skull Pass... This chariot has a copyright date of 1993 on it so ... I guess its about time it got tinkered with!

Next time should have the JoA core set scenery wrapped up along with the surprise Night Gobbos and maybe some Forward Base underway.

Until then.