Is it a bird? No! Is it a plane? No!

Oh my gosh its Mighty Mouse. . a big griffon thing!

Well, the October experiment has wrapped up and the griffon is done. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for the amount of effort I put into. The design flaws were pretty annoying, but I can overlook that to a certain degree as I only paid $10.00 for the sprue. If this was a stand-alone kit, with the expected $50.00 or more asking price from GW, this would be a different conversation. But as it is, not bad for a box set kit.

If you like it, or perhaps there is an elf fancier on your christmas list, it does happen to be for sale :)

If you'd like to see higher resolution pics, the originals are on flickr

Tome Time

Aparently I received a package from Britain the otherday, but my wife didn't mention it, and I didn't see it sitting around anywhere. Finally though, it has arrived and I eventually was made aware of it. It is the new masterclass book from Kevin Dallimore & Wargames Foundry. About 2 years ago Kevin asked me to submit some work for this, and I am happy to say he eventually selected my stuff, and now there it is, spread across 4 pages of the book, warts and all.

As exciting as it is to see my work in the book, I have to say I'm less satisfied by the quality of the images than I had hoped. I thought I provided pretty decent photographs of my figures, but for at least a couple of them the color correction is pretty bad and the figures look washed out and kind of blasted out, which is rather unfortunate. I'm sort of suprised they would publish it like that considering in my brief scan of the book so far I haven't seen any other really obviously poorly edited images. Oh well.

If you have the book, here a couple of the originals to compare to:

http://www.madponies.net/images/WIP/book/DSC_6245.jpg

http://www.madponies.net/images/WIP/book/DSC_6273.jpg

Man these figures seem old now.

Lest it seem like I am unimpressed, that is not the case, It was still really nice of Kevin to invite me to contribute, and it is pretty neat and satisfying to see my work in the book.

Tedium from above

I like how this is turning out, but the lack of any physical details on the feathers makes for some odd painting. I'm trying to find a decent midway point between painting it all in on my own and not doing anything. I'm happy with it, but looking at the wings, beyond whats already on the body. . . *whew* thats a lot of feathers.

You know, for kids

When the warhammer v8 box was released the thing that caught my eye was the gryphon lord included as standard. Having such a monster right from the get go is quite a change from the last time the high elves were in a box set and they offered you 20 spearmen and 20 archers. That probably says something about the direction the game and GW are taking with the new version, but all I'm concerned with is the model.

I have no interest in high elves, but I do have an interest in nice monster models, especially ones I don't have in my own armies, and even more so when there are going to be tons of them floating around ebay when people buy the box sets for the rules and/or the other army included. I picked one up to see if it was worth using as conversion fodder for my empire army. I'm still not sure, but in the meantime I decided to paint it up and see what the market for decently painted gryphons might be (hopefully) before it gets saturated with them.

I'm about this far on it:



I'm still trying to work out a nifty base for it. Perhaps some chunks of ruined walls? Or sections of a tumbled column or two? I'm sure I'll think of something, eventually, but I'm certainly open to suggestions too.

home is where you hang your lion. . . er dog. lion? dog?

Liondog. Sure.

These probably won't see tons of action on my table, being that it is mostly generic fantasy terrain, but how could I not do them? I think there is a scenario in the Mordheim battle lists that calls out one gang's turf being invaded or somesuch. If that ever comes up, I'll certainly be able to use these to clearly mark their stomping grounds. If not, they'll look nice on the shelf at least.


Resin lion-dogs by Fenris Games.

Ambush from ten directions!

And lo it did come to pass that the wuxia warband was finally finished!

Considering how many other things I get up to in a summer I'm pretty pleased that I finished these by September after first laying paint to them in April. I'm also incredibly happy both with the results, and to see the the end of the project. Possibly more so than I have been at the end of any other miniatures project in fact.

So here is the final round up, in 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows on the back.

Monks:



Youths:



Fighters:



Hunters:



Hired Swords:
(assassin & pitfighter)



Characters and Hired Sword:
(1st fighter, captain, warlock)



Bear and bear-master:



Attack from Ten Directions!:

Astute readers may notice that the bear-master is new to this thread. I had originally converted a copplestone figure for that job, but then I was unhappy with her face after I got it primed. I tried a head-swap, but everything I tried didn't match well proportionally. So then I naievely tried to put her original head /back/, which didn't work. I was near just giving up and deciding that one of the green-clad fighters would take the duty, and then I remembered this awesome leaping assassin figure I've had on my shelf. I painted him a few years ago, and he's just been on display as I had no real use for him. What a perfect fit for the gang! And already painted in white to tie in with the bear. So I dusted him off, painted his belt and his facemask green to match the rest of the team, and voila. Awesome bear-dude to round out the gang.

Also, it looks like I missed a spot on the bear's shoulder and some brown is showing through. I'll go fix that later.

Final manufacturer list for this warband:

Perry Brothers

Wargames Foundry

Alkemy

Helldorado

AEG/Clan Wars

Assassin Miniatures

Reaper

Guild of Harmony

100Kingdoms / Black Orc Games

Most of the weapon conversions were from The Assault Group, or scratch built.

Resin bases are all from Dragon Forge Designs