Rangers of Shadowdeep

 Two posts in one day! Miracles will never cease to happen in the land that is my hobby miniature toy soldiers!

Okay so since the great plague has us all, I am sure, finding and discovering new ways to enjoy their hobbies. It's had me on a journey to discover rule sets that not only provide Solo play mechanics, but also to be able to play cooperatively and/or go head to head. I have found several rulesets that do this, and good ones to boot. Two of my favorite right now are "Core Space" (scifi), and "Rangers of Shadowdeep" (fantasy).

Rangers of Shadowdeep has you taking a Ranger (which represents you) and a few companions on a perilous quest to fight your way past monsters, find treasure, but ultimately to discover why the darkness is spreading across the land.

I am almost finished painting my Ranger up, but a friend of mind shared a youtube video of how to paint fur. One of my Rangers Companions is his loyal Dire Wolf. So I was like okay I'll have a watch. The color theory the gentlemen shows had me open up my eyes to a different way to paint. Where I layer paint dark to light, he shows a way to go light to dark. I was like man I have to try this. So I did, and I hope you like my results.

I present my Dire Wolf from Game of Thrones line that "Dark Sword" makes, and they are awesome.

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Kevin

Carthaginians 28mm

Saga (a set of rules to play various periods at skirmish level throughout pre gunpowder era) has come out with a new set called "Age of Hannibal". I ask you, what little boy who ever was interested in military history has not heard of this man's name and fantasized about being this Great Captain of history? Well me for one, and to this day it still stirs something within me when I see books, figures, etc. covering this period of ancient times.

Of course I selected Carthage to paint up as my army, I leave the Barbarians, Greeks, and Romans to my friend to collect. I'm sticking to the studs of the period (okay in the end Carthage was conquered etc etc etc, but hey). 

I've chosen Victrix plastics to start off with because they are pretty good and cover everything you need for the period. As usual I glued my fingers together more than once and I broke like three spears and a sword which had me swearing about why they had to make these items so bloody thin. Come on man make them thicker or put some miracle ingredient (as long as it doesn't cause cancer) in them to keep them from breaking so easily. After all I have to push them around the game table and have them survive being handled. 

There are so many cool things to paint, it was what do I paint first! I decided to hold off on the Elephants, the Numidian cavalry, and other assorted goodies until I painted some of the Carthaginian veterans themselves. 

So up first are 16 veterans from Hannibal's campaigns. My pipe dream is to use Saga as a gateway to eventually have enough to use for Command & Colors Ancients. I have a 6 foot by 4 foot mat with five inch hexes on it and it's a quality mouse pad type. Very excited about having it. Not excited about painting 400 troops (cause I have to do both sides). 

Anyways enjoy the pictures. 

 

Cheers

Kevin

The Iron Throne

 There is only one thing certain in our quest for power and that is death.

:)

Core Space: Crew of the ""Ion Hope"

 Greetings fellow Bloggers!

I painted up a Core Space crew for a friend this past week. Someone who I had told I would paint something else up a long time ago and never did. So this is kind of a make up. This is why I don't paint for people. My interests change faster than rabbits had babies on the Ark. That is just too much to keep interest in painting for someone else. Heck I can't keep up painting things for my own self. In fact during our "Great Isolation" it's becoming clear to me that while I enjoy painting, it's more like I enjoy painting a model. No quota's, no armies. Just paint a few models while I read a book about the period, or a story, and that I find inspiring. It's my way of immersing myself a little deeper into the subject by transporting myself into that time through the painting. Touching the model, seeing it in the real. Like I was there kind of thing. 

My hobby is a mish mash of several hobbies all together that feed off each other. I love to read, I love to board game, I love to miniature game. If one of these inspires me, then I use the others as props. Painting jumps into this. 

That said, it doesn't mean I have never hunkered down and painted an army of this or that to game with. But lately painting a figure/model gives me all the satisfaction I need. If that leads me to paint more on the subject... great! If not.... then on to the next subject.

That's just me. But enough rambling, here are the photos of the Ion Hope.

[Captain Arianna of the Ion Hope]

[Gak Arianna's gun man... brute]

[Roykirk the old man, soft spoken and wise]

[Tirgarde a youngster in it for himself but highly skilled and intelligent]

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Kevin