E.H.P.

Here's another Bones Kickstarter figure.

I don't know what the SKU is for this one, or even if it's for sale yet — it takes quite a while for the Kickstarter figures to filter through to the online shop.

I like it mainly for the over-the-top shield. I have a weakness for that sort of thing, probably from early exposure to the old Warhammer stuff back in the day.

For those unfamiliar with the term: E.H.P. stands for Evil High Priest. I don't know if it's still used, but it was common shorthand back in the distant primeval past.

Gelatinous Cube

Here's Reaper's translucent Bones 77305 Gelatinous Cube. Being translucent, it's a bit of a tricky thing to photograph.  I haven't put any paint on the cube itself at all; I've seen some translucent figures that have been tinted in various ways in an attempt to bring out the detail, but in my opinion the results are seldom successful.

It comes in three parts; two for cube itself, which I joined with clear silicon sealer, and one for what is supposed to be the contents of its last meal, a rather nice pile of skeletonized adventurers and their gear.

The hapless adventurers are supposed to form the base of the creature, but they're completely wasted as a model that way, as once they're inside the thing they can only be made out as a blurry, formless blob.

So instead, I've kept them separate, and they'll come in useful as dungeon dressing. A pile of skeletonized corpses will always come in handy.

Enhanced Interrogation Client Containment Module

Amongst the Reaper Bones Kickstarter III offerings is a set of pieces to dress up your friendly local torture chamber.

One of them is this one, an iron maiden.

I've used a couple of Vallejo's GameEffects rust paints on it, and I quite like the effect they give. You can slop them on straight from the bottle, but I find they give best results in several layers of washes, not too thin.

This is the rest of the Torture Chamber set. I think there might have been some other bits and pieces in one or other of the Kickstarter expansions, but I didn't get any of those except the Cthulhu Mythos set.

Gug

 Here's one of the Cthulhu Mythos creatures from the recent Bones Kickstarter, a Gug.

I really don't know what that is; I've played a bit of Call of Cthulhu but never come across one of these. I suppose I could look it up, but I'm lazy.

Half-Orc

Here's another Reaper Bones plastic miniature. I don't know if it's actually meant to be a half-orc or not, but that's what I'm using it for.

I have a couple of half-orc twins in my campaign, a brother and sister, and they're in need of figures.

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NOTE: Apparently they're actually meant to be hobgoblins. Too bad, they're half-orcs now.

Here's the other one.

Back to Painting Monsters

This is one of the Cthulhoid critters from the recent Reaper Bones Kickstarter. I think they call it Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, but I'm not completely sure about that.

Just a side note: Windows 10 did an update recently, and since then Photoshop's colour balance has gone entirely to shit. What I see in Photoshop has no relation to what I get as output, and I'm really struggling to figure out how to get it back. That's why all of these images are too blue.

Sacrificial Altar

This is a piece that came in the Mythos expansion pack to the Reaper Bones III kickstarter, a good old-fashioned stone sacrificial altar. Tim the Enchanter I've shown before; he's just there for scale.

This is the sort of terrain piece that comes in handy quite a lot. I can foresee getting plenty of use out of it. Unfortunately, I'm a little short of terrified and helpless sacrificial victims; I shall have to see what I can do about that.

I originally left the incised rune band dark, but I decided in the end to inlay it with some gold.

I used Vallejo ModelAir Bright Bronze, which is very thin and very shiny. I find it quite difficult to do justice to shiny things with my limited photography skills; it looks much nicer in real life.

Yet another miniature painting WiP post

If I ever get back to DMing my own campaign, I might have the need for a half-orc or two. Fortunately, I got a half-orc or two (or three) in the most recent Reaper Bones kickstarter fulfilment.

So far, all I've done is glue the plastic figure to a steel washer, and extend the stone base texture out with Green Stuff.

Ettin

I need to decide what I'm going to do about the skin tones. I've been using a snotty greenish colour for the very few orcs and ogres and what-not that I've done thus far, and I'd like to echo that a bit, but I don't want to go the full green-skin for the half-orcs.

Orc archer

Maybe some kind of pale Caucasian skin tones with a greenish filter over the top might serve. Only time (and experiment) will tell.

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Later....

I started, as usual, by spraying the whole thing black and then doing a zenithal spray with white. That helps a bit when it comes to establishing highlights and shade, but mostly it just shows me very clearly where the contours and detail of the miniature lie.

My experiments with filtering paler skin didn't work, so I've fallen back on my standard orky skin. The base colour is Vallejo VMC Japanese Uniform, washed with Citadel Athonian Camoshade. You can see the colour of the wash on the clothing, which up until then was still plain white.

I highlighted the muscles a little with a couple of tints of of the base colour, lightened with VGC Bone White. The tonal range is a bit broader than I'd like; it has a bit of a "chalk and soot" look, but I can live with it.

Bones III — the Beginninging

My Bones III Kickstarter fulfillment arrived a couple of days ago, and I've been happily sorting through them. I've engaged in all three Reaper kickstarters so far, but I doubt that I'll do another — it's not that they're not a good deal, but there's always a very, very long wait for them to arrive, and they've all been very heavy on the character figures, of which I really do have an ample supply. I mainly want the monsters, and it's simpler just to buy them individually when they eventually appear in the shop.

I chose this one to start the painting with, mainly because it would be very quick and easy to do, and in fact it only took about twenty minutes. It probably would have taken longer if I'd actually removed any of the mould lines, which I kind of forgot about in my enthusiasm.

I don't know what its SKU is; I couldn't find it with a (fairly brief) search on the Reaper site.

Reaper Harpy

I thought it had been too long since I painted a fantasy figure, so I reached into my Big Bag O' Monsters and this was the one that came out.

It's Reaper's 77041 Harpy by Julie Guthrie. As usual for me these days, it's one of their plastic Bones miniatures, and if you want one it will cost you the princely sum of about three of those Yankee dollars.

Censored!
(for linking to sites
that
FEAR THE BOOB)

More Bones (because I didn't have enough)

 Arrived at long, long, looooooooong last, my Reaper Bones Kickstarter III. It's been so long since I paid for this that I'd pretty much forgotten all about it until I got the shipping notice about three weeks ago.

It took that long to get from Sydney to Christchurch. For the geographically challenged, that's NOT VERY BLOODY FAR. However, it appears that the reason it took so long is because it was kicked along the road all the way.

The only expansion set I went for this time is this one, shown above — the Mythos set. It looks pretty useful, though its thunder has been stolen somewhat by the release of games like Cthulhu Wars in the interim, which includes a bajillion creepy Lovecraftian critter miniatures and what-not that are just as good in quality.

Nevertheless, the Investigators, and especially the pack camel (which is really good, I could do with about a dozen of them) will be very handy figures that I expect will get a lot of use; they'd suit any number of Steampunk/Call of Cthulhu/Pulp Action sorts of games. I'm sure I can find a use for Shub-Niggurath as well. And I still have Cthulhu himself hanging around somewhere, from way back in the first Kickstarter days.

The composition of the resin they've used for Bones figures appears to have changed. There's the colour, for a start — they're not all just bright blinding white. The miniatures feel a bit stiffer and slicker too. Bones has always been pretty good at resolving detail (apart from some notable early exceptions), but this formula seems, at first sight at least, to be better than the old one.

Jenny No-Nose

80003: Ellen Stone by Bob Ridolfi

I'm pretty sure this figure must have come from Reaper's first Bones Kickstarter, because they had real trouble with facial features not filling out properly in the mould on a number of the miniatures. This is one such.

In Reaper's catalogue, this is 80003: Ellen Stone, by Bob Ridolfi, but I always call her Jenny No-Nose because, well, she has no nose. Rather than try to fill in her missing features with paint, I've just painted her with a flat rag-doll face with no eyes or nose and just a gash for a mouth. She's a Weird West gun-babe.

Reaper Bat Demon

77261: Bat Demon by Bob Ridolfi

Next up on the Bones-painting production line is this one, 77261: Bat Demon by Bob Ridolfi.

At first I was going to paint him classic devil red, but I went with green in the end to give it a more serpentine look. I don't know why I wanted that; there's nothing very serpentine about the sculpting, but there you are. The heart has its reasons.

The wings and elevated position make this figure a bit more imposing than its stature actually warrants. As far as its body goes, it's just very slightly — if at all — larger than the average Reaper bloke.

Reaper Blood Demon (Babau)

77258: Blood Demon by Bob Ridolfi

Here's another of my vast stash of Reaper Bones figures, now splashed with paint. This is a very quick and unfussy paint job, and not really a very good one, but it will do the job. It took me about half an hour.

It appears in Reaper's inventory as 77258: Blood Demon, but it seems pretty clear that it's based on a D&D minor demon called a Babau that I first saw in the MM2, published in 1983.

Disgruntled Bearer

77141: Townsfolk: Oswald the Overladen by Bobby Jackson

I've painted this figure before — I got two of them in one or other of the Reaper Bones Kickstarters.

Both of them ended up with decidedly unhappy facial expressions, but of the two this is the one that looks the least trustworthy. He really seems to be holding a grudge against his exploitative employers, and no wonder.

Reaper Blue Wizard

77034: Kieran Tallowmire, Wizard by Bobby Jackson

Here's another wizard from one or other of the Reaper Bones Kickstarters. I've had him sitting on my work-table for ages, and I thought I'd better get him out of the way.

Tim the Enchanter

77174: Leisynn, Mercenary Mage ($2.49) by Tim Prow

Reaper calls this guy Leisynn. Mercenary Mage.

There are some, however, who call him..... Tim!

Ghastly Ghasts

77159 Ghast by James van Shaik

I got these four guys in the last Reaper Bones Kickstarter. They're ghasts — a sort of uber-ghoul, for those who don't know D&D monsters. Retail price is about $2.50 each.

I just wanted mooks, so I painted them up as quickly and simply as I could bear: black primer followed by white zenithal spray followed by white wet-brush followed by greeny ink-wash followed by ivory dry-brush followed by inks for clothes and ground, and that's it. Actual painting time, not including waiting for things to dry, was about twenty minutes I guess.

The only thing I don't like about Reaper's plastic Bones figures is the mould lines. They're a real pain to get rid of.

Mummy

Reaper Bones 77145: Mummy Captain by Bob Ridolfi

I painted a thing.

This is Reaper Bones 77145: Mummy Captain by Bob Ridolfi

I've made barely a dent in painting all the figures I got in the last two Bones Kickstarters, and there's due to be another lot arriving in the not very distant future.

Although it's described as a mummy "captain", I think it would be of considerably higher rank than that, since that's the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt it's wearing. I can't imagine a pharaoh would be happy with any rank under, oh, let's say... God.

Just a Tick

This is one of the critters I got in Reaper's last Bones Kickstarter — 91006: Prairie Tick Queen by Bob Ridolfi.

It's a simple paint-job that required very little in the way of thought or skill, which suited me very well at the time.