Reaper Dragons: Shadow and Wood

Still painting away on the Reaper Kickstarter Bones. The first image is, I want to say a Shadow Dragon. I painted it up pretty much as a black dragon. It's a nice large figure that if I had any more huge sized bases, I would have put it on one. Detail is fairly good, but this is usually true for the larger Bones figures.

Middle picture is just a scale shot. The shadow dragon stands well above 28mm while the Green is a little under, but wings may make it up that far. The dwarf is another Reaper Bones minaiture.

The last one is actually a metal miniature. He required a little prep work as you have to glue his arms and wings into the base. I also threw him onto a round lip stand because I thought he could use the support thanks to the wings and arms going on. Assembly was fairly easy and didn't require any green stuff but I'm sure I could have added some.

Glad to see Reaper making metal miniatures again. I have a few others that I'm getting ready to work on in various stages of prep but that gets back to the whole problem of having too many miniatures from backing several kickstarters at once and then several of them showing up at one time. It's a good problem to have mind you but sometimes I feel a little indecisive about what I should be working on.

For example, I've got a few lizard men in various stages of completion. These are more Bones figures from the Reaper kickstarter that I'm not actually doing anything with but just had them out when I was painting some other green stuff or priming stuff. I need to figure out my gaming priority as January is half over and I'm still flipping back and forth between different sets of miniatures.

Anyone else have that problem? You backed a kickstarter, like Drake for example, and are like, "Man, I'm going to paint all the dragons!" and it shows up and your like, "Later. I'm going to paint all the dragons later."

Glacial Devil by Center Stage MIniatures

The Ice Devil is another figure I was glad to paint up. It doesn't have a lot of belts, buckles, skulls, or other things hanging around it. It's some neat insect design with a single weapon. The skull on the base is made of green stuff that I stamped out from my Happy Seppuku kickstarter.

The miniature was very clean in terms of mold lines and flash. In terms of assembly, the miniature comes in five pieces. The tail, each arm, and skull, are all separate pieces. The arms fit into the slot fairly easily and provide you with a little leeway in terms of how you assemble it. I put it the way I did so that it could lean against the body and have another contact point for the glue.

In terms of assembly, the only 'bad' thing about it? It comes with a 40mm base. That base he's on in the picture? That's a 50mm base. In addition, the feet are so wide spread, that even on that larger base, I couldn't cut the base to accommodate the tab, so I cut the tab off. This might not have been a bad thing overall, but the feet are raised on that tab so as you might be able to tell from the picture, I couldn't remove all of the base. Mind you I could have worked on it so more but there's that whole lazy thing going on over here.

The figure is sculpted by Federico Genovese who did several miniatures for the 28mm Demons and Devils Kickstarter as well as other miniatures for Center Stage MIniatures prior to that.

This brings me up to 23 miniatures for 2014 and January. Let's see if I can keep it going.

Kagunk Reaper Ogre Bones Miniature

Another miniature done from the Kickstarter from Reaper Miniatures for their Bones line. This is Kagunk, an ogre chieftan miniature. He's done up by Tre Manor and like most of Tre's miniatures, has a ton of detail to him.

We have the numerous straps. We have the pieces of steel plate over the chain mail. We have the various pieces of leather with the numerous studs. We have a horn, and a series of skulls.

For those with a ton of patience, it's a great piece and can really pop when someone who appreciates it takes brush to it.

 The shield is another huge piece. In metal, it's quite heavy. In Bones, it's light. The detail is still very good though. Even the feet, which normally tend to sink into the base, seem good to go here.

On Amazon, they have the Bones version for $3.07. Bad news? The s&h is like $4.00

In metal, the same figure will run you $15.94 but has free shipping.

I can see a few uses for Kagnunk ranging from ogre, to ogre champions, to hill giant. He's just that big.

Reaper Bones Skeletons and Warrior Woman

One of the things I'm trying to do in 2014 is finished the partially painted miniatures I have. THis warrior woman, who is a true 25mm personality, is one such figure. It was in various stages of painting for years as I just didn't like the sculpt. It came in one of those multiple packs that were sold by the guy who routinely sold the true 25mm fantasy figures including a lot of the old Grenadier range. I'm blanking on it now but if someone remembers it, please share.

Any any time I'm painting, if I have something I can quickly finish, like say some Reaper Bones skeletons? Why, all the better.  Amazon has a SKU under Skeleton Spearmen but I'm not sure if those are the prepainted ones or not. Relatively inexpensive because of the Bones material at $4.75 but the s&h kills you.

These guys were primed black, given a drybrush of a dark ivory I have, one layer on shield and spear, two layers on spear heads, then given a brown wash, and then a lighter drybrush with a standard ivory. That was more than enough for skeletons of which I have dozens if not hundreds.  

Note that despite the fact that these are the same figure their stances are slightly different. This is the Bones material at work. The first one I had to dip into near boiling water and try to straighten out. The back one you can tell that the base itself is warped. For characters that would really aggravate me. For no name skeletons? M'eh.

So total for 2014 is 21 miniatures. Let's see if I can keep this train rolling.

Baphomet by Center Stage Miniatures

That big boy is Baphomet from Center Stage Miniatures. He is sculpted by one Jason Wiebe whose done work for numerous companies including Reaper miniatures. Baphomet is the lord of minotaurs and retails for $24.95. I received him as part of the 28mm Demons and Devils Kickstarter that Center Stage Miniatures recently finished sending to me.

He was well worth the wait.

The figure is cast in resin and required minimal clean up. The figure does not have a slot base, which I was too lazy to add him to. I figure if I ever use him as a big bad or something I'll do so at that time. He's another one that I fully painted up in 2014. I used the studio paint job as a basis. I find it's often harder for me to decide what colors I want to paint the figure than actually painting it so when I have a foundation to go on, I'm there.

The figure comes in three separate pieces. The massive head with its multiple horns, is one piece. The left arm raised and ponting, is another piece. The main body is the majority of the figure. Assembly was easy and required a little cleaning of the resin from the head to the main body. I could also have used a little green stuff but there's that whole I'm a lazy bastard angle going again.

I hope that one day they do a variant of the Lord of the Plains again because that too was a great figure. Make it a champion of Baphomet or something. Heck, rerelease the original one during the original convention time to celebrate the anniversary or something.

I added this shot, also of miniatures I just finished, for a size scale comparission. While the warrior woman up front is true 25mm, the skeletons are supposed to be 28mm. Guess that doesn't make a difference when your all bones eh? Anyway, you can tell by the height of the spears and that Baphomet towers over even those, even when behind them, that this is a nice sized figure. He'd make a good minotaur champion if you didn't want to use him as a higher powered entity.

Agramon, Pit Fiend in Bones

This is Agramon, an $11.99 miniature in the 'Bones' material. I received him as part of the original Bones Kickstarter. He's pretty big. He's also an old sculpt by Gene Van Horne that I have in metal. Looking over at the figure in metal, he's now $33.49. Ouch. Hell of a difference there.

Clean up was pretty mild on the figure. There's a lot of detail here. I didn't break out my metal version to see what the comparison was because usually the larger Bones figures are okay. The feet always have that weird shrinkage problem though. Also not a big fan of the base, but too lazy to put him on another base because I already have him in metal on such a base.

I went with my 'standard' for red. The Vallejo Red-Brown primer, followed by GW's old foundation red, followed by one of the new GW's reds, and touched up with some Blood Red, which is one of GW's oldest reds no longer available. I threw an army wash red over all of that and just used a few grays and greens to paint the base.

I have a love-hate relationship with the figure.

On one hand, it's a great sculpt. The fire in the hand, the powerful musculature, the wings, the jaws, the massive tail. All great.

On the other, he's a bitch to store. The wings give him extra height and the tail gives him extra width.

In addition, because he's a pit fiend, the SRD puts him at a challenge rating, for 3rd and Pathfinder editions anyway, at 20. There will not be too many opportunities to use such a figure outside of the highest levels or the most powerful characters.

Still, as part of the first Bones Kickstarter, he's a nice figure to have. Because he doesn't have a lot of belts, buckles, skulls, straps, or other nonsense, he's a fairly quick one to paint. I've seen some other great paint jobs on this guy and those who want to push it past the simple reds I did can be well rewarded with it.

Brings the total up to 17 for 2014.

Reaper Kobolds Bones or Kobolds on a Stick

So in Chicago it's well below freezing. So much so mind you that work actually called me and said to stay home.

I'm not one of those people who are unable to entertain themselves for a day or thousand so I broke out some kobold miniatures made of the bones material from Reaper. There are six of them, each sprue having three. They're relatively small, like kobolds should be and instead of being on the dreaded broccoli bases common to the metal miniatures from Reaper, these are on carved stone bases.

In the photos the ease of using the sprue should be visible. I used some blue tack and a wooden block and painted them on there. I started with some Vallejo red-brown primer and gave most surfaces two layers up and then a sepia wash. As they're kobolds I wasn't too worried about it. They're also really cheap. I think Amazon has them for like $3.49, but the shipping is actually more expensive then the figures and it's not on prime.

So six and 10... sixteen miniatures so far? One of my friends is doing like thirty a month, and he's done it before and he'll do it again. No possible way I'll be keeping up with them. I'm usually happy if I get 52 done, which is why back in the day I was part of the 52 Minis in 52 Weeks blog.

Anyway, I think I might have to start actually looking over the miniature games I play and see if I can get some stuff done for them. There's a lot of things I want to try out this year or continue playing including Hordes and Warmachine.

Reaper Bones, Reaper Metal, Rackham Metal, and Spyglass even!

That's one of the Hellborn aka Tielfling Reaper Bones miniatures. Another example of me not being able to take a shot to save my life. The daggers are kind of deformed and funky. The paints are supposed to have openings or slits in the side but due to the lack of detail bone miniatures hold... The base is one I picked up from Adepticon as I hate the broccoli style bases many Reaper figures come on and figured I had the base, might as well use it.

Another example of not being able to take a photo. I've painted this half-orc twice now. I lost the original figure, which this one is, in a state of semi-painted status and found him and figured, finish it. Normally I would have lopped it off the base but her's actually metal. While my photo doesn't do him justice, he is sculpted in the musculature fantastic and a good painter could really make him pop.

This is the metal version of Reaper's Necropolis leader, Naomi. I have the Bones version. While it beats this one in price, the detail, like the flying bats out of her raised right hand? Yeah, Bones version ain't happening. I've had this one from the original Warlord boxed set that had Necropolis versus Crusaders and still haven't finished Lord Ironraven or Halbarad. Ugh.

This is a Molydeus, a 'powerful' demon type from the miniature company Center Stage Miniatures. This is another one from the Kickstarter. Good cast and not a lot of mold lines, but I did miss the one running on the top of the figure's arms between head and raised forearm. By the time I saw it paint was already over it so... no, that wasn't getting touched. He comes on a 40mm base I want to say. I based some of the colors on the appearance from the Codex of the lower planes or whatever it was during 3rd edition's run but didn't go red enough on the flesh tones.

This is a figure I've owned for years and decided screw it. I could never figure out how to paint him. The details are so intricate that it's hard to tell where rag ends and bone begins, where chain ends, and bandage starts. So I figured I was never going to be happy with it so get to it. It's a 'Ram' figure, like some type of death knight for the Confrontation game.

Spyglass did a lot of great simple figures. I miss them and was glad that Heresy picked up a lot of them. This is another one I've had in stages of completion for years trying to figure out what colors I was going to go with until I finally just decided to do it. Her base is a Micro Art Studio base.

And as the Beatles would sing, "All Together Now." The ram is very tall and wide shouldered and he's on a standard 25mm base. The molydeus is a huge figure, towering over even the archer on her downed tree.

So that's like... 10 ten for 2014 so far? Lot of Reaper here, but a pleasant surprise with a few of them being metal figures.

Beraded Devils by Center Stage Miniatures

The digital camera is a cruel mistress. I can see I'll have to go into those eye sockets a bit and mess around with them but hey, they're done. Basing is done with the very simple GW basing paint with a quick drybrush over it.

The bearded devils by Center Stage Miniatures came two to an order. They are three pieces, a main body, the glaive, and the base itself. The glaive isn't as terrible as I feared it would be as I tend to absolutely hate anything that needs to line up in two separate points off one other piece. I have an Anime figure that has swords crossing behind him and they never fit. I had two of them so the second one, which also didn't fit, I cut the swords up and assembled then reglued them after they were fixed.

If you have a really small pin drill bit, you could probably pin the hands. I myself went with the much easier and simple accelerator. Hold it down while the glue is there and give it a quick spray and bam, it's on! Now mind you I hear that isn't as strong as a regular glue bond but whatever, they're done.

So 4 miniatures down in 2014 so far.

Throbin Death-Eye and Bailey Silverbell

I am the proud owner of an incomplete Dwarf Lords of Legend. I LOVE the character that these old GW dwarves have. They have a very strong influence on how I think when I think of dwarves. It's one of the reasons I enjoyed Stoneheaven's first Kickstarter to produce dwarves. I thought those dwarves had a fairly good... 'nod' to the old style of Games Workshop.

Mind you I think that the dwarves that GW produce now still include a lot of fantastic characters. The thing I don't like about a lot of the modern figures though is they are over complex. Throbin Death-Eye for example? He doesn't have a whole lot going on. He is on a Micro Art Studio base.

On the other hand, the female dwarf is a Bones figure, one Bailey Silverbell. Her base is a Happy Seppuku base that I started off with the 'dirt' mound and then after that dried out, added some random steel plating that I chopped up and messed with. The lack of detail on her compared to a standard metal figure is telling when painting. It took me a while to figure out that was a crossbow she was holding for example. Still, the cost was right and she's done!

So for 2014, I'm off to a good start. Death-Eye I had started prior to 2014 but Silverbell? Primed her this morning with brush on black primer and finished her this evening. Most of it three layer with a wash.

For the other painters out there, what do you count as completed? Stuff that you just assembled in 2014? Stuff that was in various stages of completion? Something else?