Big horse, big guns...

You bet!  Big horse, twisted by magical energy, toting some serious pirated hardware.

This is Stone Fist, the only horse to survive the process of becoming an Energy Beast.

As a result, he can carry the guns of the enemy, which now project the flame of the rage once fired from them.

This is a sidekick figure, I believe, and he can do some very neat things in the game...

I'm definitely looking forward to trying out Stone Fist for myself!

The view from above...

And on a different backdrop.

Stop the presses...

Not really... just another Privateer Press figure!

I like this pose the best of the group...

Stay tuned for more!

Shhh... Aliens are Secret...

Speaking of Secrets... here's a fantastic base design from Secret Weapon Miniatures!

This is the round lipped Alien Temple series.

Here's a link:

http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=79_33_120

 Let's get things started with the 50mm bases.

While the largest bases come in a set of three, the 40mm versions come in an ideal pack of five, designed for just about any kind of squad or unit that would require this size.

There are also ten 30mm bases.  This is the first batch of five...

Followed by the rest.  As you can see, each one is unique!  And, Mr. Justin has taken great care to leave you enough space for guys (or gals) to stand on them!

Now for a size comparison of all three types.

The entire set of Alien Temple.  I couldn't resist doing marble, but also some funky patterns... it's ALIEN after all!

As I have mentioned many times, the bottoms of the bases are always flat, and never belt sanded!  You also don't have to waste many valuable hours of your life washing and scrubbing mould release from the resin.  Excellent!

So, make Mr. Justin happy and go get some!!

Fire and silk

One of the things I am REALLY hoping to do is play some Lord of the Rings at Adepticon.  I am also very eager to try out a new army that I have never played.  It's a combination of spiders and Morgul Knights.

The Spider Queen is a big part of that mix.

As with my other 'Evil' army, speed is the key.  Horses and spiders crawling and running everywhere!

The advantage of the spiders is that they are not slowed down by terrain, so I can keep them hidden in forests to ambush enemy units that are attempting to engage the heavily armored Morgul Knights.

Those Morgul Knights also cause fear, which means that there is a possibility the enemy won't even be able to engage them.  I know this from experience, having fought against them!

The spiders also have multiple wounds, so I can artificially increase my numbers simply by doubling the wounds.  Factor in the horse and rider separation of the mounted Knights, and 20 guys are effectively 20 when it comes to wounds from shooting.

Finally, the Spider Queen has the ability to put out swarms of her young'uns in key situations.  I could toss them out as a screen to prevent enemy heroes from joining existing scrums, or even keep them from using might to move their own units around.

I don't know if this will work or not, but I am certainly eager to try!

With the value of each individual figure in LOTR, it's important to consider multiple roles for everything you include in your army.

I have to worry about fighting high fight skill things like elves, so for than instance, I am also working on a Wraith on a Fell Beast.

He's not a 'named' character, but at least it will be able to toss out some high fight skill in that all important situation where the Spider Queen can't block out enemy characters from a fight.

Plus, it will be able to hop over terrain and get into areas the Knights cannot.  It could also fly over a combat and hit things like spearmen and pikemen from behind, negating their extra attacks.  Obviously, this idea comes from my Eagles!

Life in the Windy City

Well, this might not be news to many of the loyal Wappellians out there, but I figured it was time to make an "official" announcement here of the 'new' Windy City Miniatures facebook page.

It was first created by Cathy a long time ago... and then somewhat forgotten in the blog mania (that image you see is one of Cathy's Anima Tactics minis)!

All the impetus went into that format, and the WCM page was left by the wayside.  It didn't seem necessary to do both at once.

Cathy got a Facebook message along the lines of "It's been a bazillion days since you last posted to this page...", which brought it to the fore again.

I believe at the time it had less than 100 likes.  This was around December 12th, I think.

I posted a few images to it, and the flood began immediately!

A link for you, by the way:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Windy-City-Miniatures/164984403516838

It didn't take very long before I realized that the WCM page would be the ideal place to have all the photos of my completed miniatures.  They could be organized into individual galleries and albums such as these, making them WAY easier to locate!

Finding such things on the blog is becoming more difficult for newcomers, of which there are many.  I have been shocked to discover how many folks have never seen the Lizardmen, Tomb Kings, Demonhunters, and other massive projects from the past.

This became more and more apparent when I took the old minis out to take nice new photos of them with the new lights and backdrops... the images I always wanted to take.  So many people were seeing them for the first time...

I will probably add a new gallery, or album, once a week.  The best part of this format is that people can locate a type of gallery just by seeing an image, as opposed to scrolling through bars of text or doing searches in a tiny white bar in another column!

I have also noticed that the blog has increasingly become a "work zone", filled with work in progress posts, tutorials, announcements, unboxings (look for a few of them in the coming weeks!), and sneak peeks.

Finally, one day wisdom overtook me and I realized that I needed a place to put all the "Pretty Pictures"... a one stop shop where you could melt your brain with pictures of painted minis!

I have a small collection of nearly 27,000 images to go... not to mention the dozen or so new images that are added to that mix every day.  So running out is an impossibility.  Yes indeed!

You can see the rather stunning growth of the WCM page already.  In less than 5 weeks, it has gotten 1000 likes!  Many thanks to all who have visited, and who have liked the page.

All of this growth is 'organic'... no boosting or anything like that!  Just posting image after image after image.

So, if you are interested in seeing the ten thousand Reaper figures I have painted over the years, for instance, all you have to do is head over there and scroll to your heart's content!

Obviously there is a LOT more to come!!

Seeing stars...

Here is one of my all time favorites!  He was also really handy in our games :-)  Master of the Heavens, chucker of Comets... Baby Babo himself!

Otherwise known as Tette-ekko.  The ultimate skink priest.

I sculpted the entire thing from sculpey and various Lizardman bits.

Here's a post on the construction:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2013/01/back-to-future-new-pics-of-tette-ekko.html

I had so much fun painting this!  I loved painting the sun on the back panel.

Plenty of constellations, as Baby Babo is the Master of Skies.

And on a few different backdrops.

Paint your wagon...

Today we have the very cool wagon from Burn In Designs!

You have already seen the assembly post on these, and you can tell that they are very easy to deal with!

I had a lot of fun painting this.  You don't have to prime these first.  They take the paint very nicely.

I used airbrush paints and craft paints, as I have on the other Burn In Designs pieces, since that is already quite thin, and it applies very easily!

Here are some Reaper and Wild West Exodus figures as a size comparison.

As you can see, Lathan, as always is very careful to make sure that you can actually use your miniatures with his creations!