Gloomhaven Starting Characters and some treasure chests

Being anxious to explore the enormous Gloomhaven board game it was time to knock out the characters that are initially available to play.

Also migrated into this are a couple of treasure chests from Mantic's Kings of War Strategies and Objectives set.  I think they'll make perfect replacements for the cardboard counters included with Gloomhaven so one is presented as "Gold" and the other as "silver"

I decided to do these fairly close to the box art because Gloomhaven, while ambitious for a board game, is not a full blown RPG and the characters are predefined. I wanted players to be able to identify them easily.

If I'm honest the character models are not of the same quality of a lot of the new boardgame offerings like Kingdom Death Monster, Etherfields, Chronicle X, or even The Order of Vampire Hunters but is higher than RWBY: Combat Ready and Dark Souls (Player Characters... Dark Souls does have some very nice Boss models and Gloomhaven has zero Boss models).

I think most of the effort was put into other kinds of presentation in Gloomhaven. For example the little tuck boxes that conceal the locked characters gives a great sense of anticipation so I look forward to seeing them... no advance peeking!

I used that new basing scheme I stumbled on while doing RWBY: Combat Ready except for the Mindtheif and the Spellweaver because they were just stuck awkwardly on the base and required some greenstuff to transition.

The characters are primer white with most colors achieved via washes and layering using mostly Secret Weapon washes and Reaper Paints.

 I've finally located my actual camera following the big move and am setting up the lightbox ... so I'm hopeful that the next batch of pictures will be better quality.  These, as have been all my posts since the move, are just taken at the paint desk with the iPad camera and I've struggled with lighting quite a lot.

Back to the desk!

RWBY: COMBAT READY!

 RWBY: COMBAT READY is a board game that I have not played... it looks super abstract but I'll eventually get round to giving it a go.

I am enamored of the RWBY anime and totally bought the game to mine it for minis... forgetting that they *might not* be in a useful scale...  

The models are in a soft plastic and are a little bit larger than GW Heroic scale. They come mounted on a 38mm-ish beveled base .... awkward! We can see Penny is a bit taller than Sister Veridyan.  I *may* re-base these later and mix them with the Kingdom Death: Death High series but maybe not... some of the models actually use all that base-top real estate.

Penny is my favorite model in the set:

She is a fun character and the least flash ridden of the set.  The models themselves are of relatively low detail and the faces are a poor match to the original art for several of them.

I did find a fun way to paint the base that I'd like to remember how to do...

Black wash

Cloudy Grey (Reaper) blobs (diluted) in a rough cobblestone pattern.

Base White (Reaper) stippled on the grey blobs.

Sewer Water (Secret Weapon) washed thinly over the whole base.

The Sewer Water wash wash attracted to the black washed base and blended the edges of the gray blobs without any help from me.  The White stippling added subsurface highlights giving everything a nice feeling of depth for very little effort.

Moving on from Penny to the natural pairing of Blake and Yang

These had the roughest of the faces but, since anime is so color coded, it all works out in the end.

Other groupings... sisters Yang and Ruby.... and Ruby and dreamy mean girl Weiss

These really use all that base...

Finally the Villans!

All in all I'm reasonably happy with the project.  The characters are easily identifiable and will be fun to have on the tabletop.  I'd have liked them to be a little more in scale with regular tabletop models but they are not so egregiously scaled as to be unusable with Heroic scale models.

Thoughts... Board Game Kickstarters as sources for cool models.... 

I'll be doing a lot less of that unless the models are presented in a scale that is useful to me. So far RWBY: COMBAT READY!, and Darksouls: The Board-game have been in funky scales while The Order of Vampire Hunters and Chronicle X have been in standard heroic scale with bases.  Excluding the board games that are made by war-games manufacturers, like GW and Mantic, or Board-games that are intended to function as, or compatible with, tabletop wargames... like Joan of Arc (15mm) I have to be aware that my idea of proper mini scale is not universal.

With that said... I wonder where Etherfields is gonna land for figure scale?

Next time I finish up some Void Elf Executrix troops that I started working on before the big move and have relocated.

Back to the desk!

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.

The Order of Vampire Hunters Board Game - The rest of the Kickstarter Exclusive Hunters

The remaining eight Kickstarter Exclusive hunters are ready to pack.  I'm racing to wrap up the open projects on my desk before the big move... lots more to do!













First up are Akecheta and Samuel.  I think of these as  'ranged heavies'.  They are done mostly in earth tones and raw metals.

 The next set I think of as 'finesse melee' types. They like to get stuck in but are not relying on overpowering their enemies to win.

These are more colorful than most of the hunters.

Emma looks straight out of Vampire Hunter High with the rising sun tee and pink sneakers.

Daniel Stoica was the first Kickstarter Exclusive Hunter and its unclear whether or not the rest will be seen at retail.  I hope so because there are a lot of cool archetypes that will otherwise be few and far between. Daniel is the Samurai-esque Hunter that is done in emerald and saffron.

 Isabella is a Conquistador themed hunter that seems wildly out of time... Who knew that Vampire Hunters tended towards cosplay!

Painting her reminded me of a buccaneer themed Ogre Kingdoms army I painted that featured various colorful, usually striped pants/pantaloons.













The last set of hunters is Jean-Louis, Bram, and Billy-Bob.

Jean-Louis looks like he caught the Time-ship during the Napoleonic era although closer inspection revealed that some vampire sourced bits have augmented his uniform.

Bram is a classic tough guy hunter in an armored duster while Billy-Bob is a bruiser with electrically augmented boxing spikes.

Finally I'm taking a moment to remember a friend who passed away yesterday.

Rich was a great friend and a genuinely fun guy to be around.  He very much inspired me to keep the ogre pants theme going for an entire Ogre Kingdoms army some years ago. His jovial good nature, quick wit, and constant encouragement made that project very special indeed.  We ever-after greeted and made our farewells with shouted OGRE PANTS!  Farewell Rich, I'll see you on the other side.

 RIP OGRE PANTS!

A WiP kinda day... Tabletop World Fisherman's House, Order of Vampire Hunters and a 3D printed Skiff.

 I've been busy this week doing, mostly, batch painting.  Lots of wood textures that are easier to do when there is a pile of them ready to work on and the last of the Order of Vampire Hunters hunters.

I love the Tabletop World stuff and the Fisherman's House is no exception.  The resin cast is clean and crisp with tons of atmospheric details.  I have to version of this model. This one will likely get the most use as it is designed to sit on a flat table or gaming mat while the other one is mounted on a river section that integrates into a larger river system. 




The river system looks amazing but takes a lot more work to make usable on the tabletop.  That project will certainly be the subject of a future post!


The wood here is all done with the standard wood process. The white walls are P3 Jack Bone and Splintered Bone (Reaper) transitions between walls, wood, and stone are edged with Baby Poop (Secret Weapon. Ropes and nets are the same with a top dry-brush of Buckskin Pale (Reaper)

Because the Fisherman's house is also a place of business I am going with a weathered blue roof. Most of the merchant buildings in my Graystone Village have blue roofs to welcome custom.

The Fisherman's House is also getting a weathered red balcony to make it easily identifiable to other fisherman as a place to sell their catch.

There is still a bit of detail work to do on these, especially the metalwork on the balcony, windows, and weathering of the roof tiles.

 This is the accessory kit for the Fisherman's House...ignore the black balcony... its actually part of a Wizard's Tower that I should be working on next week.

 The end is in sight for The Order of Vampire Hunters Kickstarter Exclusives box.  This is a great game and its unfortunate that so many cool hunter types were only made available for the Kickstarter. I still have a big pile of expansions to work and although most of those include new adversaries there are few new hunters in them.  Room for future development!

This is a "Skiff" I 3D printed.  It was large enough that its in three section and I magnetized them for ease of storage and transport.  I've been scratching my head about printing the rest of the fleet due to the small build volume of my Snapmaker... so I was very happy to hear they are making a z-axis expansion module for it that should significantly increase the size of the objects I can print!

Back to the desk!

Kingdom Death- Gold Smoke Knight

The Gold Smoke Knight is one of Kingdom Death: Monster's end game bad guys and a really cool model to boot.

The whole Model was done with the usual Primer routine:

Primer Khaki
Dry-brush Graveyard Bone (Reaper)
Dry-brush Splintered Bone (Reaper)

The cape and the Skulls on the base are the Reaper Bone Triad with shaded with Strong Tone (Army Painter)
Eyes in the skulls are Splintered Bone Scrofulous Brown (Vallejo) and Sun Yellow (Reaper)

The metallic areas are done with my standard yellow and white metal workups. 

Yellow metal: 


Base coat Brass Casings (Secret Weapon)
Wash with Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon)+one (1) drop of Glaze Medium (Vallejo)
Glaze low and recessed areas with Amethyst Purple Wash (Secret Weapon)
Dry-brush Brass Casings
Highlight dry-brush Shining Gold (Citadel)
Top highlight dry-brush Rustungs Farbe (Gamecraft for Fantasy Forest)... which is a silvery metallic color which looks more like mercury than silver.

 White Metal:

Engine Metal (Secret Weapon)
Wash with Armor Wash (Secret Weapon)
Dry-brush with Rustungs Farbe

Smoke:

Emerald (Vallejo)
Targeted Wash Green (Secret Weapon)
Highlights Emerald lightened with Splintered Bone.

Purple:

Amethyst Wash (Secret Weapon) over the primer treatment Splintered Bone colored with Amethyst Wash for Highlights
Very thin glaze of Amethyst Wash for blending
Targeted re wash of Amethyst Wash for better color depth.









Shown with the ubiquitous Canoness Veridyan for Scale the Gold Smoke Knight is appropriately Monster sized.

Raging Heroes Executrix Troop should be the next up on the desk but who knows for certain!?!  There are still a few pesky Vampire Hunters remaining to be completed as well.

The Order of Vampire Hunters Kickstarter exclusives

 A big batch of KickStarter exclusives for The Order of Vampire Hunters.

The vampires of this game are along the lines of the vampires from "Blade" rather than the more common Anne Rice-esque sexy modern vampires. I've done these in a very cartoony style and relied on big recognizable color areas rather than going for hyper detail. 

First up is Theyr, a vampire Elder who summons guardian hounds... kind of a shaman. With skin of these being basically dark blue I decided to go with red or yellow as the basic color of clothing... black would have been too low of a contrast for the intended use of the models as board game pieces.

 Evaki is also an Elder with a fear causing scream.  Evaki is much more overtly monstrous than Theyr.

 The blue base being thinned Nightmare Black (Reaper) over a Khaki (Craft) base dry-brushed with White (Craft).  Reds are the Reaper Gorey Red Triad.  The Skin was washed with thinned Strong Tone (Army Painter) and the whole thing washed with thinned Soft Tone (Army Painter).  This process was used throughout today's models.

 Baba Yaga is one of my favorite characters.  She's in a yellow robe woked up from the standard Khaki base with Palomino Gold (Reaper) Highlights with Buckskin Pale (Reaper) and a final wash of Soft Tone (Army Painter) thinned with Glaze Medium (Vallejo).  Like the reds, whites, and blues, the same basic process was used for all the yellows in this batch.  In keeping it cartoony I wanted these to be easily identifiable as belonging to the same "Bad Guy" team for players who encounter this game for the first time.

 Lord Kurivan is the largest model of the batch.  A vampire Lord with an AoE attack and enormous wings.

I did one layer of wings red to avoid a huge blue wall of a model on the board.  The red of his collar is much darker than the others as it was painted over the blue base instead of the Khaki.

 Sneaking in Sister Veridyan for a scale check!
















Grelrok is an Elder with a bit of self healing.  He is powered up by the presence of Upyrs in his area.. which seems kinda odd since I sorta thought he would have been the Elder of the Burrowers...  The variations on blue are varying amounts of Strong Tone being added to the Nightmare Black before being further thinned with Glaze Medium.

 Canoness Veridyan returns for a scale check with the mists.  The mists are a swarm creature done here with Hexwraith Flame (GW) over the Khaki/white base and Splintered Bone (Reaper) for final highlights.  Hexwraith Flame is a quick and effective paint for ghosts and spooks of all sorts... I also use it a lot for power weapon effects and energy source bleed.

 Above the whole day's batch shown as a group... very cartoony!

Henry is a Vampire Hunting Vampire... mechanically he's a hunter and can be turned like any of them... but... he's already a vampire.... anyway... done with a white lab coat instead of a black thing... making him look a little more like he is one of the good guys!

 Lord Kophas... a fast and fearsome vampire Lord.

Big wing/cloak

 A couple more thralls. 
The dress was fun on his one with a 60's inspired mod sunshine pattern... not so busy that its a distraction but breaking up a color block a bit.

Lord Marku really digs being vampire royalty.  His wings are fleshy instead of red to make him stand out from the others as a "Big Deal" while still sporting the red, blue, and yellow colors of his team... albeit in a less unwashed kinda way!


The remainder of the Kickstarter excluseives set is additional hunters.  They'll likely be up next week along with a Raging Heroes executrix squad... unless things go sideways... as they so often do!

Back to the desk!