A Start to a new gaming board

These past weeks, I only finished painting one tile of my Realm of Battle board and prepared some models for priming – so only a quick update today.

Pict 1008: Realm of Battle Tile

Finally I got a real start on the gaming board I want to do this year. Here is a first tile of my Realm of Battle board. I struggled a bit with the greenery - at first it looked to regular with every patch pretty much the same size. But after realizing this, I went back and connected a few and added some smaller ones, so that now I'm pretty happy with the result! The grass matches the other scenery I did in January so everything should look cohesive when its all done, I hope.

Pict 1009: Elendil mounted (Conversion)

Other than that I prepared a few more models for priming. Among these is this conversion of Elendil, High King of the Dúnedain mounted on a horse. I cut an Elendil on foot in half and made sure to also remove the wing shaped tassets protecting his thighs. I then stuck this back onto a mounted Aragorn, Elessar and resculpted the piece of cloth under the tassets and connected the two pieces of cloak.

ArcWorlde Halflings and WHFB Swordmasters

I spent these past two weeks finishing my Halfling band for ArWorlde and started to paint some elite troops for my High Elves with a regiment of Swordmasters of Hoeth.

Pict 1003: ArcWorlde Halflings

Pict 1004: Knight of the Ram, Halfling Militia and Monster Hunter

Pict 1005: Knight of the Ram, Halfling Militia and Monster Hunter

So, here is the rest of the Militia the Halfling Starter Set. They were painted as a group with only the highlighting left to do after my last post. The two additions are the Monster Hunter raising her fist and the amazing Knight of the Ram. The latter is a bit of an older sculpt, with all other models being new for the second edition of the game. But the Knight still fits right in – one the strenghts of Alex's scuplting.

Pict 1006: Swordmaster of Hoeth

After finishing the Halflings, I changed gears and went ahead on some metal Swordmasters of Hoeth. This guy was painted as a single model to work out how I would apply my Eataine scheme onto them. Since the model has only a few different areas to it, this went rather fast. Thus I could get a good start on a group of ten of them by painting for a short time during last week's evenings:

Pict 1007: Swordmasters of Hoeth (WIP)

ArcWorlde: Wild Elves and Halfling Testing Colours

These past two weeks I spent pretty much only on ArcWorlde miniatures. At first I finished up the Wild Elven Centaur and an Ascendant to finish up the Elves I own right now. And after that I also got started on to the Halflings of Hobbleshire and decided on a colour scheme.

Pict 996: Wild Elves vs. Halflings of Hobbleshire

Pict 997: Wild Elven Centaur and Ascendant

Pict 998: Wild Elven Centaur and Ascendant

This Centaur was quite far along when I last showed her. Finishing up the skin colours and details on the upper body went pretty quickly and since I was on a roll, I also painted the Wild Elven Ascendant. With him, the war paint provided a bit of a conundrum, because of the different angles his legs have, but I think it looks cool the way I managed it. With these two done, I painted all the Wild Elf miniatures, I own right now. So now it's on to some adversaries and then of course some games as well!

Pict 999: Halfling Sheriff

As the Sheriff of my merry band on Halflings, this guy simply had to be painted first. He also provided a good opportunity to test the colour scheme and get to paint some different surfaces. For the colours themselves, I did something I never thought I would and looked at some historical reference!

Halfling Historical Reference – Leo Ignaz von Stadlinger: Geschichte des württembergischen Kriegswesens (History of Württemberg Military), K. Hofdruckerei zu Guttenberg Stuttgart, 1856

I have this theory, that the part of the world I'm living in (and it's inhabitants!) have some striking parallels with Tolkiens Shire and this has become somewhat of a running gag. With my Middle-earth Hobbits already painted to match the movie aesthetic, I took this band of ArcWorlde Halflings as an opportunity to try and replicate some of the local coat of arms. Thankfully the internet knows everything and a bit of googeling produced these coloured plates of uniforms from the Kingdom of Württemberg. Now obviously I could not reproduce any one uniform accurately on the miniature, but they severd as references. For example I never would have thought to go for white pants and gloves, but here we are!

Pict 1000: Troll Hound and Halfling Militia

Pict 1001: Troll Hound and Halfling Militia

Since the colours came out pretty much like I wanted them, I also painted the first Halfling Milita and the Troll Hound from the starter set. Again, these scuplts are very characterful and the big surfaces are very fun to paint. The best detail here have to be the flapping ears of the Troll Hound - very dynamic!

Pict 1002: Halfling Militia (WIP)

And here is the rest of the Militia: one more with a torch and two each with crossbow and shield/handweapon. For now, they are basecoated and had some washes, so that finishing them should not take to much time. After that I still have two more Halflings and the it's onto the beastiary.

Beasts of the Forest

These past two week, I painted two big beasts for my ArcWorlde Wild Elves and started to work on a Lion Chariot.

Pict 990: Briar Elk and Unithorn

Pict 991: Unithorn

The Unithorn was the first of these bigger summoned creatures I painted. I like how it came out but in hindsight I could have chosen some other colours for the mane. The hair brings in a different texture and it would have been nice to bring that out. But I also don't quite know what colours I could have chosen to fit in with the simple red and black scheme...

Pict 992: Briar Elk

This Briar Elk is even bigger than the Unithorn but it painted up even faster since now I have the colours down pretty comfortably. I went a little lighter on the bones that I did with the Woodfiend and the Lichenhawk but I like how it draws the eye to head of the monsters.

Pict 993: Wild Elven Centaur (WIP)

At the same time I was putting the basecolours on the Elk, I also did the same ones on this Wild Elven Centaur. It's a cool concept – instead of riding any mount, you simply summon the lower part and thus still have both arms free to do stuff such as shoot you bow! The details and highlights on the elven part of the model are left to do but this should be done rather quickly.

Pict 994: White Lion (WIP)

Pict 995: White Lion Chariot (WIP)

The other big model I'm working on right now is this Lion Chariot for my High Elves. After figuring out what to do with the lion cloaks, I wanted to see how this would look on a full sized lions. I'm quite happy with how the cat looks but working on all the other parts of the chariot will probably take some more time.

Scenery: Arcane Ruins and a start on the Garden of Morr

These past weeks I took my resolutions to heart and painted more scenery pieces: the Arcane Ruins I had started and the statue from the Garden of Morr kit. Other than that, I also painted two more Highelves and a few more bits.

Pict 981: Korhil and Chracian Noble

Pict 982: Arcane Ruins

Pict 983: Arcane Ruins

First up, here are the Arcane Ruins I showed in my last post. It was great fun to put the different colours onto the stone but the piece really came to life with the different flocks.

Pict 984: Garden of Morr Statue

Since the Arcane Ruins were so much fun and a great success, I also painted this Statue from the Garden of Morr / Sigmarite Mausoleum kit. I added a base and some more flagstones made from plastic card to blend it in some more with the other terrain pieces. I also scraped of the sculpted on foliage and flowers. They are neat details but they don't fit the other flocks I put on.

Pict 985: Arcanite Markers

Another small project were these Crystalfield bases made by Tabletop Art. I had them in mind to use as objective markers for ArcWorlde when I read the rulebook. Oftentimes in this narrative system you will find yourself fighting over scraps of Arcanite, a magical crystal and these bases fit the bill perfectly.

Pict 986: Korhil and Chracian Noble

Pict 987: Korhil and Chracian Noble

Pict 988: Korhil and Chracian Noble

And here are two more High Elves. Korhil Lionmane, Captain of the White Lions and a fitting Noble from Chrace armed with and axe, a shield and a lion pelt. These white lion pelts troubled me - at first I tried to shade them with Seraphim Sepia but that made them look to dirty even when highlighted. Now they simply use a mix of Steel Legion Drab and Screaming Skull without any washes. And one more thing might be the Noble's shield - I want to put on some heraldry or an elven rune but for now I was not able to decide on any device.

Pict 989: Unithorn and Garden of Morr (WIP)

With the Arcane Ruins and the Statue, I almost made good on one of my New Years resolutions. I prepared the first of the Garden of Morr mausoleums, once again adding a base. And to the left here stands another ArcWorlde miniature: the Unithorn, a bigger summoned monster of the Wild Elves line.

Testing Colours for ArcWorlde Wild Elves

This first week of the year I still had a bit more time to paint and got started on my resolutions with a set of Arcane Ruins. I also tried out the colours for my Wild Elves and their summoned creatures.

Pict 976: Wild Elven Warrior, Woodfiend and Lichenhawk

Pict 977: ArcWorlde Wild Elven Warrior with Bow

I really had great fun choosing the colours and painting this model. At first I tried a lighter skintone but the went for a darker grey anyways. The red war paint is a bit held back because I was afraid to ruin the model and I did not want to go over all of my nicely painted skin. But other models from the line, especially commanders and mages will propably be covered in more warpaint. After painting I also wrote up my recipe so that I wont forget how I did the model.

Pict 978: Woodfiend and Lichenhawk

The Woodfiend was the first of the summoned units I painted and it was surprisingly easy to paint. I had not experimented with a glow from the deeper parts of a miniature before. Glazing different reds went pretty well however! The Lichenhawk was done following the same steps and I'm looking forward to replicating the scheme on the bigger monsters as well.

Pict 979: Arcane Ruins

I also painted this part of a set of Arcane Ruins. I like the beige sandstone but I could have gone a little lighter with the streaking of the washes. When painting the main part of the ruins, I might just try and only tint the colour of the stone instead. I bought the set of scenery years ago and it sat primed on my shelf for almost as long. So painting this is a big win! And again, I made a note of my recipe for this ruin - I will use a similar way to paint other GW terrain as well and who knows when I will get to that...

Pict 980: Arcane Ruins (WIP)

Speaking of Arcane Ruins, here is a WIP of the rest of the set. As for now it has pretty much only had a few layers of Steel Legion Drab. This took quite some time considering the size of the kit. The next step will be drybrushing several additional layers but after that, it will be sone quite soon!

The Butterfly's Tally 2020

As is customary, in this first post of the year, I take a look back at what I did last year and make resolutions for the new one.

Pict 971: Uruk-Hai Army

Hobby Tally 2020

If you want to have a look at the tallies of the past: The Tally 2017, The Tally 2018, The Tally 2019

And these were my resolutions for 2020:

• Paint all of my Infinity models
• Paint the Uruk-Hai army to a playable level of 600 points
• Paint 25 miniatures for D&D, concentrating on the Critical Role miniatures
• And of course paint more models than buying them...

Pict 972: Sekban Naval Unit

Quite obviously I did not manage to paint all of my Infinity miniatures. In fact I bought some more and only painted the five Sekban in June. Since I played almost no games of Infinity, I lacked the motivation to do more, even with the release of a new edition of the game.

Pict 973: Uruk-Hai Army

Pict 974: Lutz and Friends

The Uruk-Hai however are quite a different story! The same week I finished the Sekban, I also put the finishing touches on a phalanx of Uruk-Hai Warriors. But the stand out for this project will have to be my conversion of Mauhur. All in all, I painted about 1850 points. Great sucess!

Pict 975: D&D Miniatures

Almost all of my miniatures could be used in D&D, but some of them are specifically to play RPGs. I'll have to add in the Shadow Deep miniatures as well as Valten and Bertrand's Bowmen of Bergerac to reach the 25 I wanted to do. But I will still count this resolution a sucess even if I did not paint that many CR miniatures. My highlight here has to be the Hill Giant - I'd venture to say he's my best painted miniature, barring maybe the Unicorn from the end of 2019.

And lastly, as you can see with a look at the Tally to the left, I once again failed to buy less miniatures than paint them. I did however sell quite a few as well and thus improved my ratio of painted to unpainted miniatures nontheless. And 283 painted models in total is also quite an impressive number!

Last year, I also decided to swich my postings to every other week. This shedule worked better with my life outside the hobby and I pretty much kept all of the dates. I count this as a sucess as well and will stick to this shedule in 2021.

Hobby resolutions for 2021

Seeing as I could not quite keep my resolutions this past year, I think I may have been overzealous especially with the goal to paint all of my Infinity miniatures. So for 2021, I will try and keep it simple: As per usual I want to paint more miniatures than buying new ones. Other than that I will only add one more goal. I want to paint a 4x4 gaming board and at least 4 pieces of terrain to play smaller skirmish games on.