Hunters and scoundrels

Last Christmas, I couldn't resist getting some Star Wars Legion minis -- My wife and I don't play SW Legion, but we do play Zombicide Invader. So we've got these two teams (plus one more yet unpainted) to use as alternative survivors for the game (I still need to make custom cards!)

My wife had fun painting all the Mandalorians (except Boba Fett who I got to paint), and I enjoyed painting the classic characters.

Nothing special to mention about the painting or assembly of these figures. They assemble very easily, and there's no conversion work. I'm still hoping Legion comes out with one more bounty hunter or rogue who will fit in with Jabba's pre-New Hope gang here so I can make it a full 6-survivor team.

Dreadball: New teams (to us anyway)

My wife and I painted up a couple new Dreadball teams to play!

She did a great job with a full team of mechanites -- The Loose Cogs.
I assembled them for her, and expected to help out painting a few, but she took over and did a great job. She did it all: She "built" each team member on paper; organized her strikers, jacks and guards; and chose colors to reflect that organization (mostly green are guards, tan/beige/gold are the strikers, and blue are the jacks.) 

And then she painted all of them, and despite the different colors for different roles, she used a nice limited palette to keep the team unified. I'm proud of my sweety -- and also scared of her team; I'm pretty sure my hobgoblins are going to take a beating.

Speaking of which, I painted myself the "Hobgob Scachens." Not much to say about them except they were fun to paint! Also, I painted up the team captain, Graggot. He's one of my first all-resin figures, so I'm a little daunted, but I haven't chipped any pieces off yet! But he painted up just fine.

Space Hulk!

 Like many people, I entered the hobby with Warhammer (for me, it was 40K first edition in the summer of 1987 -- the old Rogue Trader edition -- damn, I loved that book and don't know where it went.) Eventually, I sold my 40K Imperial Guard and Space Marines and switched over to Warhammer fantasy (using the old orange book.) 

I still have much of my Warhammer Empire army boxed up, still needing some paint, but there's just too much there to bring out, catalogue, paint, organize, and play with. When SPace Hulk 4th edition came out, I took the opportunity to not only get back into 40K, but to get an iteration of the 40K universe that was much more convenient to paint and play. 

Much of it is already painted, and you can see my "Orphans" (the name of my Chapter) elsewhere in this blog. Still, it was nice the past couple weeks to take a break from my mandatory projects (Conan, Okko, Zombicides  -- yes plural -- Rise of Moloch and yet-to-arrive Everrain.) Since I have all the Orphan terminators I need to play with painted, I decided to paint up one more squad as if they were "elites" within the chapter. Really, they just have a slightly different paint job (a little more red up top to honour they Blood Angels from which the Orphans were seeded.) I also gussied up my Chaplain a little bit (I added a cape!) He will serve as a proxy sergeant for this new squad. I already have three figures painted for the squad. I'm waiting for better weather to prime the remaining pair.

Catching up: Conan Pt 2

 Here are most of the minions from the Conan game. These also represent the first collaborative/assembly line-painted minis between my wife and me (with a couple exceptions, such as with the Aesir and frost giant ((by my wife)) and the Stygian assassins ((by me)).

Catching Up: Conan

 This is by far our (the wife and me) largest project -- the Conan board game by Monolith. We've been painting the figures on-and-off among our many other projects since the game arrived the same year my wife and I met.

We've completed all the minis in the core and King's pledge boxes. We're still working on figures form the expansions. By which I mean I'm still working on figures from the expansions; my wife has completed 95% of the figures she was "assigned" to paint (we split the work 50-50.)

I guess I just need to hunker down and make than final push so that we'll finally have everything for Conan painted and ready to play.

I'll split this post into two parts (Part 2 will be posted a day or two from now). This first part shows the heroes and some of the monsters. The second part will focus on minions.

 

Catching Up: Okko

 

Okko is the most recent game that we have started painting. By "we" I mean Elizabeth -- my wife. 

I got lucky finding her. She is a monster (in a good way) at the painting table -- with a better paint-work ethic than me. We've divided up the figures between us to lighten the load, and she has finished most of hers from the previous games mentioned earlier on this blog -- so she's moved on to Okko, a nice-looking 1-vs-many miniatures board game based on the comic of the same name. 

Elizabeth only has a few things painted, having only started two or three weeks ago, but it's a few things more than I have done. The images here are all her painting. I still have stuff from Rise of Moloch to paint!

Catching Up: Hate

 Hate was a game I didn't think my wife would enjoy. It was one I had been waiting for since it was announced during the Zombicide Black Plague kickstarter campaign. My original intent was to get the core game so I could use all those barbarians in Black Plague (as well as forces for various fantasy skirmish games.)
"But, Carmen, Hate IS a skirmish game!"
Yep -- and my wife and I played it together, wailing on each other with rusty blade and devious spell, and loved every moment. She beat me handily in our first played chronicle (campaign.) I look forward to the rematch. We both love it -- not just the simple gameplay (after we decoded the terrible rulebook), but for the excellently sculpted minis. I think my wife said they were the best sculpted she's ever painted. I'm not sure if anything has beaten  them yet as that trophy-holder.

Usually, we are somewhat sticklers for painting the minis as they are represented in the original art for their respective games, but the Hate figures were a little too close in "look" for that to be feasible; we like to easily find our forces on the table during play. So Elizabeth came up with the idea of choosing alternate skin colors as well as color schemes for each tribe. It worked like a charm.

It's still not finished. We have a half-dozen tribes yet to go as well as a few monsters and mercenaries, but we do have enough tribes painted to do a full 6-player chronicle. One thing about these figures is there is an absolute TON of detail to find, decipher, and paint. We only paint either a couple figures at a time, or a couple colors at a time for each tribe. It took me about a week and a half to each of my tribes. But damn, we love our little families of barbarians. 

Elizabeth, are you ready for a rematch? No? Still need to play more Invader, Conan, Rise of Moloch, Sleeping Gods, Aftermatch, Space Hulk and Outer Rim? Ok. Yeah, we love our games.

Catching Up: Zombicide Invader

Zombicide Invader was the first Zombicide Kickstarter my wife and I decided to get, and the painting seems to have gone a little faster with this one. We have a majority of the survivors finished, but still have plenty of xenos and abominations to complete.
This isn't everything, just the most recently finished figures. I've also included the bots, sentry guns, and some custom objective markers taken from various manufacturers.

Catching Up: Smog, the Rise of Moloch

 This was the first Kickstarter game my wife and I chose together. She was into the Victorian theme whereas I just enjoyed the sheer freakiness of the whole ensemble. We're still painting it on and off; we haven't played it in a long while, but I think we're getting close to finished with it. 
I already posted a huge array of what we finished in our first bout with the game a couple years ago (3 years??) Here are a few more random figures that have been finished over the past few months/year.