Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I have a fun little update for you today – I’ve taken a break from my GA crew & started working on terrain items, objectives, and painting up monsters – all very much with a Ray Harryhausen vibe! First up, I’m absolutely over the moon to share this wee objective marker with you all:
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You may be thinking ‘that’s all very nice mate, but what’s the big deal?’ Well… this marker was originally sculpted by me, and was sent to Ramshackle Games to be cast up & included on the Ramshackle webstore, so this is my first commercially available ‘hobby fing wot I made!’ You can pick one up here if you like – I got a handful cast as my payment so I don’t make any money off the sale, but my mate Curtis would be grateful for the business I’m sure. Here’s a few more angles to consider:
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Next up, I felt the need to have an appropriate guardian for my Goldie Looking Fleece – there really is only one way to go here, and luckily, I had a Hydra waiting for a paint job thanks to the Mythic Battles: Pantheon set that I’m working through with my youngest son. He designed the colour scheme & put down the base layers, but I got stuck in with the more fiddly details:
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I’m really pleased with how this came out – it’s almost entirely painted with Contrast paints & washes with a bit of drybrushing to bring out the detail… This seems to be a combination that works particularly well on models like this. I really like the bone colouring on the heads – my son chose these as a nod to the Skull Crawlers from the King Kong movies, and I think it works really nicely! Here are a few more angles & a little diorama for scale:
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And so that’s it for another post – tune in next time for something truly massive…
Greetings Terrans, how goes it? A while back I posted this & described a Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago invitational I was getting involved with. As most of you will probably know, Ghost Archipelago is a pirate/lost-world themed skirmish game written by the excellent Joseph McCollough, and set in the same world as Frostgrave world. It uses the same ruleset with some tweaks here & there to make it more combat oriented & less magic-based. It’ a great looking game, but hasn’t seen the same commercial success as Frostgrave – most likely because the terrain bar is quite high for GA (jungles, pirates, dinosaurs, rivers, pools, etc) whereas FG was very forgiving from a terrain perspective. I’ve also put off getting heavily into GA for that exact reason, so I am really pleased that the invitation arrived & gave me the kick up the arse I needed to get into this. Since my initial model, I have refined the concepts that I’m applying to this project & thought I’d share my thinking with you all:
1: Island of Dr. Moreu inspired warband – use long-neglected beastman-esque figures but de-chaos them and make them more anthropomorphic – they are the once-human victims of cruel scientific experimentation rather than ‘because magic’ capital-C Chaos types. I’m using up a load of minis from the lead pile & oversculpting them to suit, so no splashing the cash. I’m also going to cover as many specialists as I can & have spares, so that I can adjust the warband as it gains in wealth & power.
2: Lost-world bestiary – a mix of mythological creatures, dinosaurs, pulp monsters, etc. Inspiration includes anything by Harryhausen, classic dinosaur films, Tarzan, Indiana Jones, King Kong, etc. (all firm favourites from my childhood!). I’m permitting myself some purchases here, but again, mostly this is going to be using up what I already have.
3: Jungle terrain… this has been on my wishlist for a long time now, but I’m going to make it happen… I’ve got all the bits I need for the jungle itself so no purchases necessary, but I might splash out on some jungle ruins & maybe some water features too.
4: Other items needed to play GA (boats for example, or specific terrain items), and maybe a big-assed pirate ship to use for a home base.
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So far, I have worked through about half of the minis I have earmarked for the warband itself:
Heritor Edward Prendick (centre) and two crewmen – these guys had clothing sculpted over them & in the case of the crewmen, had their swords re-sculpted to move away from the fantasy genre.
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Stormwarden Niamh (centre) and two more crewmen – same here, although I kept Niamh’s trident-dagger (looks suitably magical) and pig-man’s axe.
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A trio of Mercenaries – two-handed weapons & heavy armour – I sculpted the Conquistador helmets on to Lion-Man & Turkey-Man, and Lion-Man got shoulder armour too. The tall fella is unmodified – he’s probably a bit weird for this warband, but I think he’s pretty ace.
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Freebooter – heavy armour, hand weapon & shield (left) and Crackshot – Heavy armour & counts-as crossbow (right) – the Freebooter got a Conquistador helmet & re-sculpted sword, while the Crackshot had his pike turned into a musket.
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The crew so far.
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I’ve taken a leaf from The Imperfect Modeller’s book & made the bases a real feature of the minis – I really wanted them to feel different from anything else I’m doing, so put is a bit more effort in this regard.
Aaand that’s it for this week – I hope you’ve enjoyed the pics & me sharing my thoughts on the project. Plenty more fun stuff to follow 😊
Greetings Terrans, a bit of a strange post today – a sombre affair in many ways. As you probably know, I’ve been working my way through my existing mountain of minis over the last year or so, trying (and mostly succeeding) in not buying anything new… (or more importantly, in not buying any oldhammer goodies from ebay). Instead I have been picking things out to suit projects that have had me excited, or occasionally painting something I just fancied painting!
Last month, I found a gorgeous fan-sculpt of an undead version of Jes Goodwin’s famous Hrothyogg Ogre Captain from 1986, (itself inspired by a Blanche piece I think). Now I don’t recall the exact circumstances of me getting the undead version – I suspect it came up in the OldHammer group, but I confess, I don’t remember for sure… What I do know is that it screamed out to be painted & here’s the result:
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Now for the poignant bit. I went looking back through the story behind this mini, knowing that I would want to do a good job in this post. I learned that the guy who sculpted it was called Justin Coutange, and sadly, that he passed away back in 2019. It sounds like he was a similar age to me, and while I didn’t know him personally, he sounds like my kind of guy. It made painting this mini much more of a reflective experience than it usually is for me – enjoyable as a painting project, but more melancholic perhaps… it was an absolute privilege to paint.
There are some very nice words on Justin here if anyone wants to check it out.
