January Minis Painting recap

I'm going to start doing my minis recaps/picture posts as monthly updates, we'll see how this works.

I started the month with 103 minis primed/unpainted.

I added 104 miniatures this month:

• 2 Mega-Minis cockatrices
• Mega-Minis ghost
• Mega-Minis Guthrie Druid
• 3 Mega-Minis dogs: bull terrier, Scottish terrier, German Shepard
• 2 unnamed Reaper monsters (Dark Ages campaign-specific)
• 92 HäT Sumerian infantry (1/72 DBA Army)
• 3 HäT Sumerian chariots (1/72 DBA Army - 12 donkeys, 6 figures, 3 war wagons)

I ended the month with 168 miniatures primed/unpainted.

Yea, you read that right. 104 new miniatures. Ye gods, I doubled what I started! Still, for 92 infantry, $10 is a steal! That's 11¢ a mini! You can't beat that, and they will look great as mass combat figures. Once I get my armies configured, I'll update the list. As I'm learning when one buys these mass sets, you may end up with minis you won't use and I'm sure this will be the case - I think I'll use ~60 to 70 of the Sumerians. (and in my case, I ended up needing a lot more archers than came in the box... 24 more, to be exact. Ugh!)

However, on the good side of the ledger, I completed 39 minis! I started with my "already primed" to-do list and worked my way through that (along with 5 of my new purchases, as the players may need those PC/monsters soon...)

To reduce the size of this post, I'm using a slideshow to give you January's minis! Not all are shown, a couple have to remain "hidden" until I spring them on my Dark Ages players. :)



So that was January. I ended up finishing 31 of my "39 primed", with the caveat that I had to complete a few of January's new acquisitions for upcoming games.

I started working with Super Sculpey to create more interesting bases than either the standard sub-standard slotta/plastic discs or boring washers with spackle on them. The Cavalier's base was a bit too thick, but represents where I want to go. The Bathalian Exarch and Hellborn Troll were on sculpey-stands. I also started using aquarium terrain stones, painting the bases with washes and using static grass. I like the results of all my basing experiments.

I also started doing a bit of custom sculpting with my pack mule. While I'm not up to Otherworlds or Tom Meier level, at least I made my own and they didn't turn out half bad! Ya gotta always have a "first time" and this one was mine. I can only get better (I hope!)

For February, I'll finish up my 8 remaining figures from my original "primed" list:

• Fire Beetles x3 (Otherworld Miniatures)
• Damien, Hellborn Wizard (Reaper Dark Heaven Legends #03321, modifying to remove the Tiefling parts, thank you Dremel tool!)
• Aziz Al-Jawar (Reaper Dark Heaven Legends #02426)
• Orc Brutes x2 (Reaper Dark Heaven Legends #02550 Orc War Party- one figure out of the three was already finished - I'm going to do these with the Otherworlds Orcs from below.)
• Red Dragon (Wizards of Coast #40017)

Once that is done, I have the following list:

• Otherworlds Fire Beetles x3 (I found these in my case, primed, so I'll do these with the 3 above)
• Mega-Minis dogs 3x
• Otherworlds pig-nosed orcs 3x (combined with the Orc Brutes above to form a command unit)
• Otherworlds barbed devils 2x
• Reaper "Amathor Arch Mage" - my brother in law bought a long time ago
• Sumerian DBA army stands using the HäT Infantry/Chariot figures (approx. 60 to 70 figures)
• Reaper Dark Heavens Silver Dragon (prep/prime - not sure if I'll have time to do it in February)
• Otherworlds skeletons 3x

With regards to my Sumerian DBA armies, it looks like I'm doing enough stands that I could play either the I/1b and I/1c armies (not enough to do both at the same time). I will also do enough that I could field a I/1a, assuming that I use some foam-board flats to represent archers - I need 32 archer figures and the set came with 8. It'll be weird taking a break from fantasy.

Once I've got all those completed, I think there's a Demon Idol that's whispering my name...

Edited Feb 4, 2011 to add:
To make the pictures and miniatures "linkable/searchable" for anyone else looking for these minis, I'm providing the following list that links to the pictures:

• Female Armored Cleric (Mega-Minis #0936)
• Female Wood Elf (Mega-Minis #0935)
• Rogue Adventurer (Mega-Minis #0934)
• Grey Wizard (Mega-Minis #0894)
• Adventuring Thief (Mega-Minis #0838)
• Cavalier (Ral Partha #03-039)
• Ghost (Mega-Minis #0014)
• Expedition Mule (Otherworlds #HH1a)
• Cockatrices (Mega-Minis #0011)
• Ketch (Ral Partha #11-463)
• Slug Eat Your Face! (Thunderbolt Mountain #4010)
• Orcs (Mega-Minis #90013; Reaper #02550)
• Bathalian Exarch (Reaper #50062)
• Hellborn Troll (Reaper #03407)
• Moria Goblins (Games Workshop #99121499003)
• Hovercraft (Unknown Mfg'r)