Review: Reaper Bones Zombies (5 from Kickstarter 2)

As a backer of the second Reaper Bones Kickstarter, I've been going through my pledge. Some monsters that I don't think there are enough of, are zombies.

Games Workshop, for many of their army lines, have great generic figures. Their zombies are terrible. Mantic on the other hand, has some great zombies but you might not need that many in a horde.

Thankfully Reaper is here with some zombies.

These zombies have been primer with the Army Painter Necrotic Flesh. It provides a nice solid cover. Almost too nice! It'll bleed through paint placed on it and might require multiple coats. The good news is that it goes over the Bones material with no muss and no fuss. I used a hair dryer to quickly dry it off and get painted.

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I decided for humour sake more than anything, that I was going to paint these using the Zombicide Paints. There are three sets. The paints are a little odd. They require thinning and a gentle hand when getting paint from the stopper. It's like you put pressure on and nothing, nothing, nothing, and bam, a huge blob of paint that you have to scoop back into the bottle.

Another reason I wanted to use the zombicide paints on zombies? Keep it to a limited pallette.
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The first thing I did was use a 'toxic shader' to try and force myself to view the details on the figures. The toxic shader was thinned with a little standard Liquitex acrylic thinner. I was surprised by how purple the color was.

Seeing some of the details, I made a few mental notes. In most cases, it was a layer back onto the base color and then a layer mixed with another lighter color to bring out some more details. At the end I decided why not and used the glistening blood effect. It's a neat little paint. It's semi-transparent and gets a nice effect.

I apologize for the quality of the photos. My bad is shot and I'm painting while lying down which means I don't have access to better light and well, I was never good with taking photos in the first place.

The zombies are a nice group. The shuffling gait they have is well captured. The turned in feet for example, are a nice touch. The crouching lurking vibe? Solid.

The only thing I would like to see more of, are well, wounds and perhaps trophies. The only one I saw with a wound was the young lady and that's on her neck and appears to be from a straight cut.

Overall I'd say most of these can fit into almost any campaign setting and are a solid buy for someone looking to bulk out their zombies.

Center Stage Miniatures: Fog Giant, Mountain Giant, Friblog Giant Reviews

The above represent three figures I received from Center Stage Miniatures for their 28mm Demons and Devil Kickstarter. But Joe I hear you say, those aren't demons, their giants! Yes, I ordered some of the existing stock. I have a fondness for giants but due to their size, their often very expensive. The Kickstarter had them for a nice sale price. Note the Fog Giant is missing but from left to right we have the mountain giant and two friblogs. The friblogs are a little tall for my taste as my recollection of them is kind of like 'noble hill giants' but not quite so stupid. The mountain giant on the other hand is a nice side.

My problem if you will in the sculpts is the wide leg stance on the mountain giant and the middle friblog. The fog giant has the same 'issue'. Mind you, this isn't a problem in terms of the pose. I find them all in good stance. The problem is that the width of the leg stance forces them to go on larger and ever larger bases which I could hold off on when possible.

The figures are light on detail. This means that their quick to paint. I got the set Monday and finished these four off today. I love some figures from Werne and Tre but man, belt buckles, skulls, ropes, straps, bones, and lord knows what else are hanging from them. These have a few pouches and belt but nothing crazy.

In terms of figure preparation, they were 'dirty'. It wasn't lead rot, they weren't crumbling or anything like that, but there was a lot of mold release agent or something on them. I would recommend some fine sandpaper, some files for the easily reached areas and a nice wash of warm water and soap. I probably could have did a better job on these guys in terms of cleaning but

For assembly, each figure had one connection point except the fog giant. For the fog giant, it was the hands to the two handed sword. The body and legs, up to the pelvis, are also separate. Pinning that would make for a good strong connection. For the mountain giant, it was the arm with the club. The shoulder attaches to the body. For a good attachment, you might want to pin it. I brushed it down with sandpaper on both contact sides and just used the old superglue. The club runs along the shoulder so I popped some glue there as well. In all cases the fit was fine and didn't require any massive playing with or chopping or green stuff. For a lazy person like me, that's vital. I want to assemble and paint not assemble assemble assemble.

The middle friblog is similar with a join in the hand and leaning against the shoulder. The third one has two contact points, one for the hand to the wrist and one for the sword point to a point in the base itself.

Here we see the same figures, again minus the fog giant. The reason these three are together? Army Painter Barbarian Flesh primer. It's a great thing that you can just spray over the whole figure. Perfect for when the majority of the figure is one color, as in the case a lot of these figures were.

And as we see, I still can't take a picture to save my life. The flesh is mainly a few washes of Ogryn Flesh and Delvan Mud from GW with a few touch ups of the medium flesh color.

Regretably, more dark photos. It's like the three lights I have on top of them are not shedding normal light or something.

The fog giant is the largest of the bunch. He's also the one I used the least amount of actual paint on. His flesh is a light blue primer from Vallejo, followed up with some white primer. The armor is the old GW blue wash a few times with the studs picked out. The hair has nuln black wash thinned down while the belt is nuln black wash without being thinned down. The flesh was washed with the same blue wash but thinned down again to make it less blue.

With the right primer, you can cut out quite a few steps. The only thing? If using washes like I did to 'paint' the figure, be sure to put some protection on it between painting. I knocked the fog giant down once and rubbed off a whole bunch of ink causing me to have to repeat the layering process on those parts.

Army Painter and Air Brushes

While I was at Games Plus the other day, picking up an advance order for some Gale Force 9 official D&D miniatures, including a Purple Worm.

One of the guys in the store was talking about buying the figures and how expensive they were. Now I'm not saying they're cheap or anything but a few resin figures for $50 bones when Games Workshop and others are selling single figures for the $15-$30 range? Not terrible. We then discussed using an air brush on the Purple Worm. The guy wound up buying both packs.

As I was checking out though, he noticed that I had an Army Painter primer. He was a little surprised that I talked about using an air brush while buying spray primer.

Well, I enjoy using my air brush. I'm still new to it. I have a lot of paint. I have a lot of Vallejo Primers. I'm looking forward to buying some more color style primer from AK Interactive when it comes out to the states.

But to use the airbrush...

1. Get the big old box that sucks up the paint air ready and plugged in.

2. Get the compressor ready and plugged in.

3. Get the airbrush and make sure it's working and plugged in.

4. Test the airbrush on the side.

5. Paint!

Army Painter.

1. Grab the can.

2. Shake the can.

3. Spray.

While it may look like a mere two step difference, there are worlds of set up time that popping the lid off a can and shaking it up don't cover.

In addition, Army Painter sprays are good primers for the most part. Not all airbrush material is a good primer. When I can get primer in a color that's going to go a long way to laying down that base coat, why not? Alien Purple for example, will probably be perfect for the purple worm.

I try never to dismiss a tool that can be useful and while I think that the air brush has a lot more variety and utility in its use, simple is something we shouldn't be eager to throw out, especially when it works.

Necroglyph and Steam Engine by Tectonic Studios

So putting together the Necroglyph should have been a breeze but I'm clumsy and impatient. I use that spray that hardens the super glue instantly so when I flubbed the attaching of some of the pieces, well, those pieces were on for good in that manner. I did a Army Painter steel primer spray followed by an Army Painter strong tone dip and then some green wash over it. I went with the green wash because I was thinking Necrons, despite the fact I don't actually play or own many of them. Of course I could have went with that because of the faction in Warmachine... Cyrix, who also has the green glow.

That's an unfinished Anima figure. He's tall, probably 32mm. The Necroglyph is supposed to be around 60mm tall.

The Steam Engine was another easy one to put together. I used that same primer but this time dipped it in Vallejo Black Wash and threw a few colors over it before dry brushing it with some silver. I might touch up the base a little but...

Chaos Portal by Tectonic Craft Studios

 

Another one of the Tectonic Craft Studios pieces, the Chaos Portal. I decided to paint it purple because I wanted to see what it would look like. Were I do to it again, I might instead go with a rusted metal look.

Assembly wasn't bad. There's the one center piece, two identical middle pieces and two identical outer pieces that all go into slots in the main base.

I used Army Painter's Alien Purple spray primer and then the old GW purple foundation paint with some of the old GW Purple wash with a few quick stabbing dry brushes over it.

There are a few limitations inherent in the Tectonic Craft Studio miniatures. The first, is that unless its a straight cut, the edges are not smooth. The second, is that there is no variation in the detail. Those pieces are all even pieces so if you're relying just on drybrushing a broad flat surface your results may not come out as you are used to. Think of it like painting a big flat plane vehicle and plan accordingly.

The base is just some of that basing material from Vallejo. When using it on larger projects like this its much less expensive than the Games Workshop stuff.

Tectonic Craft Studios: Well and Barbed Cage

After putting the suckers together yesterday, I realized I put the barbed cage together wrong. The clue didn't hold on the top where I threw the small piece but it did on the bottom and I know from previous experience on similar material that the glue will hold past the product's tolerance so that's okay. It is still a barbed cage without it.

So taking that and the well outside this morning at a little after five AM, I used some black matte army primer. I knocked the nozzle off when I opened the can. Done that a thousand times. Put it back on and it started spraying all over the place in a radius around the can. The nozle fell off and it continued! Thankfully I was on the back porch and had a garbage bag nearby and quickly threw it in there.

I then decided to follow this folly with some grey primer which went off without too much trouble and spent the rest of the day washing the black primer off my hand.

When I got home, I hit the cage up with tin, boltmetal, chainmail, mithril silver, all the old GW colors which I was trying to finish off. Then a splattering of the last of my old GW black wash.

If I ever order from them again, I might actually get the cage again. While parts of it were a PIA to punch out because of the narrow pieces, especially at the top of the cage, I do like the way it looks at the 'three foot rule' and it has a good size. It would make a good prop for the Shackled City even.

The well was easier to assemble and easier to paint. It has a good size, the base is a good size and while up close you can see the various ridges cut into the 'stone', even in this pics unless you view the originals up close, it looks like a standard piece of gaming terrain.

I also put together the sundial and yup, just as I predicted, part of the lower part of the sundial where the reaper and his scythe is, didn't hold. Also glued together the chaos portal. Think I'm going to go with some Purple Primer on that sucker and see how it paints up from there.

Mantic Skeletons

I've already spoken about my assembly of skeletons from Mantic. Below is the semi-finished and then the finished result.

 

The above is one layer of paint over a black primer with Army Painter Strong Tone. As always, I'd recommend anyone using Army Painter go back in, especially over large flat surfaces like shields with some thinner and even it out. The other bad thing about Army Painter is that it pools. You might want to keep some clean paper tools around to dab that off.

 

 



The above picture has been hit with Purity Seal, given some basing material and well, it's done. I could go back in and dot the eyes and add some more basing, add some highlights to some of the cloth and shields and chain mail but that would defeat the purpose of using the Army Painter methodology to begin with.

Reaper Reven (Orc) Warlord Archers

I honestly have no idea how I wound up with so many figures for a game I don't play. I've had these guys for quite a while. I went with a fairly simple paint scheme so that I could finish them relatively quickly. A few washes and some Army Painter basing materials and while they could get a few more treatments, I already had to go back in and glue the flock down as it became one mass and was starting to lift. Ugh.

Still, when I run fantasy RPGs I'll have many an orc or goblin to throw at the players.

On the bench...

I know GW gets a lot of flack for their Finecast and pricing but the Giant is an exception of value. Lots of possible variations and he is huge.

I've been thinking of getting an airbrush for a while. One of the painters I follow on Youtube and the other parts of the interwebs, Les from Awesomepaintjob, uses one quite a bit for example.

Anyway, I did some research, felt comfortable with the price tag I was willing to pay and did some more research into all the things I'd need.

Some may wonder why I'd want an airbrush at all.

Part of it is being lazy. If you have ten or twenty skeletons sitting around and want to prime them all at once, well, a paint brush is a bad way to do it. Spray primers will work for that, but then primers have their own issues.

When you prime a model, it can be hell on the brush.  This is true even with some of the new primers out and about.

And speaking of that priming, the new Vallejo primers come in some nice colors and don't have the odor that the Army Painter ones do. Another plus side.

And while I'm never going to hit any high marks with it, when doing things like terrain or large figures? Yeah, base coating will go a long way too.

If it saves me a few brushes, and more importantly, some time, it's a good deal in the long run even if I'm never using it at the higher levels they can be used for or never using it outside of base coating.

I ordered some material from Amazon.com and some from Chicago Airbrush Supply. Why the two? One of the things you need is a spray box so your paint isn't flying all over the place. The latter didn't offer to ship that free and there was a Facebook coupon and I know that sometimes these things get a little weird when you try to use online coupons on a 'small' store so I figured I'd just order X from one and Y from the other.

Amazon breaks up my order into a few bits. Probably because they are shipping them from different areas. No problem as I'm an Amazon Prime member. I don't delay the order. If I did, I would have received credit to purchase music. I figure with two day delivery, that should match the ETA of the Chicago Airbrush Supply timeline.

Paasche HSSB-16-13 Hobby Spray Booth, 16-Inch Wide by 13-Inch High: Arrives no problem. Huge bastard of a box. I'm sure the UPS guy is going to wait for me outside one day and kick my ass.

Model Stand, Badger Air-Brush Co. 50-0052B 3/4-Ounce Jar and Cover, Box of 12, Badger Air-Brush Company Ultra Fine Needle for Renegade Series, 3ml Plastic Transfer Pipette, 500 pack all arrive in another package. Good stuff and Amazon as usual makes it two day delivery bit.

Chicago Airbrush Supply is where I ordered the actual airbrush and compressor. I get the cleaning material, the hose, the filter for the cleaning kit, the gas mask, and... no airbrush and no compressor.

Call leaves me a message that the compressor is too big to ship with the other material and ships it the next day. Uh... I work in a warehouse. If we have to break up an order for some obscure reason, then we ship both boxes out at the same time. We even have special instructions to follow up on these things.

So no compressor. And probably not tomorrow which means at the earliest... Tuesday. Maybe.

And the airbrush? Badger Renegade Krome 2 in 1 with Hard Case . Here's the bad thing. The website is 'dead'. It doesn't list if the product is in stock or not. There's also no option to hold the order and ship it out all at once.

So I find out that the airbrush is on a 2-3 day backorder. I placed the order 2 days ago. Not in. Person I spoke with didn't seem too sure about when it would be in. Ah, phantom inventory. A product that you'd like to carry, that you'd like to sell, that you have no problem charging your customer for, but actually getting it in? Well, maybe wait another 2-3 days... weeks... So that order that I could have held back and received credit on? Yeah, those things are going to SIT until I get.... you know, the actual airbrush itself.

So yeah, Chicago Airbrush Supply, despite being well known for various things, has had fail here. Inventory needs to be live, option for holding the order needs to be present, and you know, shipping everything that you do have in stock out at the same time? That needs to happen.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the situation on the airbrush. There is another one I'm very interested in, but it's so high up there in price and function and I'm a clueless hack when it comes to the things, that it'd be waste for me to upgrade it, assuming that the Krome never comes in. I'll only put up with that 2-3 day crap for a week. I'll be generous and not count the weekend or you know, the holiday so I'll give them till Thursday to have it at the very least in stock and shipped out to me before I put on the steel toes I wear in the warehouse I work in for a different purpose.

People wonder why places like Amazon are taking the lunch for the little guy? With their resources, Amazon is able to deliver the goods in a timely manner and you know when you order, you're going to get it.

Reaper Reven: Black Primer Follow Up Post

I can paint at a pretty good clip if I know what I'm painting and have the paints close at hand. The reven skin was done up in Andrea's green set, the armor the traditional old GW metallics with P3 Armor Wash and GW Mud wash. Wood was done up with Old Wood from Panzer Aces by Vallejo and then lightened with Denb Stone from the old GW foundation line and darked with GW Mud Wash. Base is some Army Painter black with some dry brushing over it and some Army Painter plants.

I don't notice any difference between the two sides so it enhances my earlier thoughts that the two black primers.

Golem Final Prep and Paint

So after filling the side with some pumice past and putting down some more Woodland Scenics material on the base and allowing it to dry, I gave it a couple of quick shots of Army Primer's Matt Black Primer.

I then did a little underpriming. Well, that's what I've heard it called. You take another color spray primer and then hit it from an elevated angle so that you're not covering all the old primer. In this case it's Army Primer Leather Brown.

I did several dry brush passes on the base with gray. The body I touched up with the Army Painter's paint. It does a good job of matching the primer color. I then went over the whole thing with Games Workshop Sepia and then Mud. I could have tried out the Army Painter washes that come with their paint set but I'm trying to finish off the GW stuff.

It's a nice sized figure and can have several uses. While it's a Golem for Hell Dorado, I suspect that more people will use it as some type of rune scribed earth elemental for traditional fantasy role playing games.

It was a figure very easy to fit together. The arms and torso didn't require a lot of prep work. The surface has a lot of sculpting to it if you're the type who wants to do intensive highlighting and shading unlike myself.

Miniature Prep

I have a bit of a collector's problem. If I see a really good sale and some other bits of nonsense logging around my brain, I tend to buy even if it's not something I need or something I'm playing at the moment. Take the golem up above in four pieces. Miniature Market often has sales and clearance items. This guy is from The Hell Dorado game. It's also in French. Not something I'm not unused to as Confrontation, prior to being a kick ass game in English, was actually some kick ass miniatures in French. But I'm always up for a large figure and it comes with a spellcaster that controls him as well.

So in prepping this guy, what were the stages?

1. Preassembly. I tested each part to make sure it fit.

2. Sanding. I use some fine sandpaper to give it a shallow surface cleaning as well as make sure that when I do glue it, that there are some teeth or marks for the glue to settle in.

3. Wash it. Hot water, soap, and an old tooth brush with patience. I'm not sure that it does all the wonders people say it does but... I figure its only going to add a few miniatures to the process, this is a big figure and if there are oils and other bits from release agents from the mold, get them out now.

4. Super glue! I'm terribly lazy. I should use some pins on him because he is a fairly decent sized figure and it wouldn't take that long to pin. I should especially pin the center as there is a lot of mass there. But there's the lazy thing again. Fortunately this isn't like some nightmare pieces I've had an after cleaning a bit on the chest piece on the bottom, he fits very well together. If I wind up using him a lot and breaking him, then the pins come out!

5. Adjusting the base. I throw some Army Builder rocks on the base and some sand.

6. Attach! Then the big guy gets glued to the base. I have to fill in the area where he didn't fill the tab all the way and I'll need to add some glue to those areas to compensate for the missing basing material but after that...

7. Set. I'll let him set for 24 hours. I know you probably don't have to but I tend to do it anyway. I have plenty of material to work on in the meanwhile.

So after that, I'll still have to prime and paint him. Good thing though is because he's just basically a large walking pile of rock, he'll be easy to paint up.

Texture Testing

Okay, here we have three Reaper Miniatures. The big green guy is an Orc Warlord leader for the Even Faction. The two lizard dogs are from the Dark Haven line. I've owned both for years and decided it was time to paint them. That meant a repaint on the orc whose armor was originaly black. Did I mention I'm terrible at painting black? (Yeah, go ahead and snigger internet. I hear you say "it ain't just black." The lizard dogs I just used brush on Army Painter strong tone after using Vallejo brush on primer that was like German Green or something along that nature.

I decided I wanted to test Games Workshops new Texture Paint. I'm not one of these corporation haters who won't use a product just because it's from company X. On the other hand, GW does tend to be more expensive and well, their decesions from an outside view can sometimes look stupid.

Anyway, Hobbytown had a coupon for $10 off of $40. I figured I'd pick up the new paint set with the high elves. They didn't have that of course. And their starter set they did have was the old one. Not a bad deal if you wanted to hoard that stuff. Anyway, I decided the one thing I didn't have a lot of was something like the texture and the black primer. I'll discuss the black primer in another post if my squirrel brain can remember it.

Anyway, they did have all of the new paints and I picked up the texture, the primer, and a few shades or washes or whatever their calling it these days.

I then used the Lustrian Undergrowth Texture on the lizard beasts and had the Brown Earth by Vallejo on the Orc already.

Interesting.

The GW stuff is like $3.50+ a bottle for very small quantity. The Vallejo is like $12 something for like six times that amount.

But they are different. The GW stuff is almost like dry paint with some large pieces in it to give it some texture. The Vallejo material is almost all texture. Both can go on with a paintbrush and both benefit from multiple layers. But the Vallejo material is almost more like a layer of highly textured material like incredibly fine sand while the GW stuff is like popping down some big hunks in some paint. I'm not sure which one I enjoy more but think that both will have use in my table. If you want some real texture though, be prepared to use a lot of either of them.

This picture is pretty similiar to the other one but with a Celtos elf hero on some cork. I wanted to use the Brown Earth to try and disguise the cork a little. I don't think it really did anything of that nature.

Looking forward to trying out the Snow Texture. I've always had a problem with that as well. Yeah, I know, can't paint black, can't do snow texture on a base, is there anything I can do? Time will tell!