The many shades of gray

Fun color time!

While I was painting miniatures from 5 different companies (and 5 different genres), I had a few colors out on the palette that I thought could make an interesting horse color.

I wanted to have a very dark brown horse, but to also make it slightly different from the myriad of previously painted browns.

I had a muted, darker flesh tone and some black sitting there, and I mixed them together to see what I had.  This mixing of various colors with black is pretty common for me.  Mixing cyan, purple, green, etc,, with black yields some incredible gray combinations!  Very handy for NMM, to say the least!!

In this case, I wanted the hooves, tail and mane to be as dark as possible.

Mixing that flesh color with the black gave me a war grayish brown, and I loved it right away.

I had been using that color on a Mechanicum heavy transport, as well as western figures, Mierce miniatures, Privateer Press miniatures, Reaper minis, Secret Weapon minis, and probably a few others that I am leaving out.  Oh... Memoir '44!

It's been very interesting painting such a vast array of topics all at once.  This really keeps thing fresh, especially when the painting day begins at 7am and goes until 3-4 am the following day.

A Thrall in time

No matter how many of these I paint, they will still seem tiny compared to the Thanatars and Automatons.  Those things were so massive, I think they have permanently altered my perception!

Obviously the theme is the same, as are the colors, but infantry will never quite be the same...

More to come, so stay tuned!

The practicalities of painting and playing

From the very moment I started painting minis, the color schemes were influenced not only by the story of the army, team, etc., but also by practical needs on the gaming table.

Often this meant coming up with color schemes, basing, freehand, or other hobby methods to help distinguish one type of unit or figure from another rapidly, even in a scrum.

Lord of the Rings turned out to be one of those potential 'scrum' games, with many different individual figures in a larger swirling mass of combat.

To tell the 'regular' Easterlings from the Dragon Knights, I used dark blue on the Dragon versions, with a more 'traditional' red scheme such as this for the standard pikemen.

This was very crucial, since in LOTR, you need to know exactly who is standing behind the first set of figures offering support.  It's important to know right away the relative fight skill of the two figures potentially working together.

The Dragon Knights would be out front with sword, shield, and the higher fight skill, with the less talented, but still deadly pikemen behind.

The one thing in common between them was the purple of the headdress.

It was just enough to link the two together!

A few more pikemen and the banner...

And a set of the Dragon Knights on foot.

The armor of the Dragon Knights also had a warmer gold tone, while the underlings had more bronze/brass coloration.

A light in the darkness

This light is shining brightly from the Ladies of Dark Sword Miniatures, one of my favorite miniature lines.

These are a few images featuring figures from their recent kickstarter.  You will find many of them on the Dark Sword website soon!

http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/shop/index.php/

Each of the sculpts has great composition, detail, and so on.  They will be very fun to paint... as were these:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2012/02/uncovering-some-dark-sword-minis.html

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2013/03/stepping-away-from-terrain-for-moment.html

There is also a great variety in the types of characters you will find there... just about anything you might need for your RPG character.

Oh... and you will find lots of critters too!

The robes are always impeccably sculpted, which makes them excellent candidates for freehand.

A small collection...

Some of the original blisters...

Lots of fun.  Perhaps even a diorama or two like this:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2014/07/from-2d-to-3danother-dimension.html

Dashing through the snow

And snow it has here in the Windy City.  Up at 6 am to shovel out the vehicle.  I believe tonight's additional snowfall should equal what we normally get all month.

Still, it's half of what we got last year in the Polar Vortex groin kick, so that's a plus!

Lots of pointy sticks here...

Guardians of Pseusennes

Of all the items from the Tomb Kings army, this is the one that I most eagerly wanted to see with the new backdrops!

This one really compliments the colors...

If you look through all the blog posts on the constructs like this NecroSphinx, you will see that all of them were painted in this color of blue.

That was to indicate the 'taint' from the new 'god' which appeared to Pseusennes.

I mixed in Vallejo Cyan Fluorescent paint with regular paint colors to enhance the blue.

I also had to get as much variety in the metal colors, as the idea was that all of the armor became quicksilver once the taint had taken hold.

All the colors would morph and change... just like any good Tzeentch tainted thing should!

I barely ever got the chance to use him in an actual battle, which was a bit of a bummer.

He stands ready to make sure all those who enter the Tomb Cities of Pseusennes shall suffer a fate worse than death!

See you in the Funny papers...

Hobart's Funnies, that is.  A rather ingenious set of adapted British Churchill tanks that were created in 1944 to facilitate many tasks involved with the reopening of the second front in the West.

As you can see by this Memoir '44 reference card, they performed a wide variety of functions.  I still have not painted the Petard Mortar version yet.

These next few shots are more about the AVRE 6's themselves...

Just the tanks...

And some of the options.

I really look forward to trying out these equipment load outs in our Memoir games!!!

This will present some serious new thought to our usual approaches, in which most of the tank units have either been elite, Tigers, or flamethrowers.

Bridging the gap, so to speak.

When I saw this image, I got the hankering to paint one of these much larger scale versions!

For now, I must settle for these tiny versions.  Perhaps some slightly larger one might end up in Flames of War games during 2015. :-)  

I have been surprised at the increasing interest I have in the historical figures.  While I obviously enjoy the fantasy figures, etc., this merging of my love of history with my love of miniature painting begs further exploration, to say the least!