Scythe Base Game Miniature

I've been working on these a little at a time since my last post inspired me to take a look at some of my own board games for more miniatures to paint. If painted minis make wargames more fun, board games? So Scythe is one of my favorite games. My wife and I just played though the third expansion while I was painting these (don't worry, no spoilers), and if we're including that then I'd say that perhaps it is my favorite board game.

Scythe Base Game Minatures

Some were definitely more difficult than others to make look good, as would be expected, and others I was just either more or less on my game. Just like last time I'm just using my phone to take pictures on top of my kitchen island because it oddly seems to have the best lighting in my place. I hope the speckles aren't too distracting. More background (stories, art, etc.) are at Stonemaier Games.

Anna and Wojtek

 

Anna and Wojtek (the bear) were the first of the group that I painted because Polania is my favorite faction to play. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of detail on this model, and yes I know I should have remove that awful mold line but it's not as obvious in person as in pictures so I didn't think about it until it was too late. It's the same for the rest of the minis too. I decided for simple faces for these folk since not even the original artwork has eyes, and I think it works fine. I had to freehand Wojtek's name on his pack as well as all of the red and white. 

Bjorn and Mox

 

The Nordic Kingdoms are a close second favorite faction for me to play, as their style is kind of hilarious. The way I play them is that I just start spreading my workers toward my two flanks from the beginning because they can swim and then use my mechs and character for guerilla fighting from lakes. Anyway, I'm happy with Bjorn, I gave him a darker skin tone and fiery orange beard making a decent contrast with the blue of his overcoat and Mox. With Mox, I tried a lot of different things before I settled with what became the final product, a dirty and snowy (hopefully) coat of fur and a greyish face. As the only character who rides his animal companion into battle, Bjorn is clearly the most badass of the bunch.

Zehra and Kar

This one turned out to be my least favorite of the group to paint. Not only was the model completely different from the artwork, the details were shallow or lacking all together. Kar, for example, didn't even have a defined beak and so I had to freehand it (and it does not look very convincing unfortunately). I suppose I could have tried to sculpt it myself (why else do I have green stuff?) but after all this is only for a board game and everyone I've shown it too hasn't mentioned it so that's probably good enough.

Olga and Changa

I'm actually really proud of these two gals. Olga looks competently done enough but is clearer dull in comparison to her Siberian Tiger companion. Many people think that Rusviet is the most powerful faction in the game (I tend to disagree) so I anticipated my friends would frequently pick her in our pickup games so I really wanted the tiger to turn out well. I painted Changa from a reference image of a real Siberian Tiger, starting with a sulfur yellow which you can still kind of see in the face and then mixing the right shade of brown/orange for the top coat and a whitish yellow for the face, paws, and tail. With the strips I tried to match the face to the picture and for the body I just did what looked natural. Like I said, very happy with this one especially after the last one.

Gunter and Nacht

Ohhh Gunter. You are the most aggressive faction in the game, and by far the least subtle. I don't play you if I can help it but you definitely have a playstyle that I'm sure some people like. He was tricky because of all of the black. In the artwork, Nacht is just a silhouette with yellow eyes, but I brightened it up to make it more interesting. I have to say, I've enjoyed immensely the combination of human and animal companion in the same model for a lot of textural variety. I don't think either model would be that interesting solo, but together each make a decent pair. There wasn't anything special about painting Gunter and Nacht, I have a lot of experience painting black between my old Cryx and the 40k miniatures from years ago so I wasn't too worried.

I enjoyed painting these guys a lot, and my game is a lot more vibrant because I did. I likely won't paint the mechs, but in the future I do intend to paint the new miniatures in the first and third expansion (I'll put spoiler warnings for campaign relation figures).

Until then, I hope you enjoyed. I think my next project will be to finish up some more of my Khador and go show them off at the game store.

Gloomhaven Miniatures (no spoilers) Part 1

About a month ago, I was lucky enough to weasel my way into someone's Gloomhaven campaign by offering to paint the miniatures inside (the owner didn't even suspect that I also enjoy painting so a double win for me!). I took home the models after a board game night over at his place some time in December and then just stared at them for a while. Some of the models are actually sculpted very well and were nothing but entertaining to paint, but a couple of them had dulled details and horrendous mold lines.

 Here is the team shot to give you an idea of how they look together. I tried to both follow their artwork colors while also giving each a unique palette of colors. A few things I noticed were that all of them had glowing eyes in their art. Now don't get me wrong, I liked glowing eyes as much as the next model painter (they're probably the easiest for me personally, tied with just putting the eyes in shadow) but that seemed a bit boring to do that for all of the models, so I just chose half of them for that. The other problem I ran into is that their art portrait is always in complete shadow or otherwise odd lighting, so I had to be a bit creative. Overall I'd say I enjoyed painting them though, and I'm looking forward to painting the others as they are revealed. I'll put in the title of those posts whether or not they contain a spoiler reveal (they obviously will since I've just posted all of the starting characters). I decided not to base them because I don't like basing. And it could fall off during play, but mostly because I don't want to.

Each character:

Cragheart

 He was the first one I painted. The picture (which I know is bad) makes him look far more blue than he actually is. See the group shot for reference. But he was a ton of fun because of all of those shards from his body and the cloth made for a good amount of texture to hold on to.

Brute

I figured out a better picture spot in my apartment (my kitchen). This one is probably my favorite. He is huge compared to the other five, and has texture everywhere from the fur to the bone armor to the horns. He was a breeze to dry brush and then just pick out the details. I don't think I ever posted them here but he reminds me of a unit of WHFB beastmen that I painted several years ago that also had ice blue fur with red-brown fur accents and red eyes. Might be a coincidence but either way I love the combination so I was excited to see it here.

Mindthief

"I'M MENTOK THE MIND TAKER! BOOOOWEEEEOOOO!"
Except now 60% more rat like. I must have saved the best for first because these three were the most fun to paint. I couldn't resist a cartoony aesthetic with a giant psychic rat (and his two rat buddies! one on the ground and the other on his shoulder). Minor glowing on his face, which is supposed to be coming from his hand or his brain or something.

Tinkerer

Okay I didn't like this guy much at all. So many little details on such a tiny model (the smallest I think). He single-handedly wore out my detail brush and I had to reshampoo it after him. Not only that but his colors in the art were all just different shades of brown with a blue accent. Not very exciting. I did the best I could (well actually no I just painted until I got fed up) and I'm pretty happy with how he turned out. I doubt anyone will even see most of the details that I had to put on him.

Spellweaver

This model made me realize that I in fact do not own any purple. At all. I thought about buying some but I'm also thinking about buying a whole set of Army Painter colors soon so I just made do with mixing colors (yes, I know, gross). But I think she turned out alright. The flame is cool and the ice is hot. The face however is neither. She is supposed to have glowing yellow magic eyes but by now I was a day before our first game and in a rush so varnish her up and call it done.

Scoundrel

The last and in my opinion the worst of the models. I don't know if it was a manufacturing mistake or just a bad sculpt but the details on her were so dulled and rounded, that my initial wash didn't even show most of them. I had to look up how other people painted her to find them all. Even then I'm sure I missed a bunch. That blue by her right hand is just undried varnish by the way, not paint. I was in a rush as I had to paint her the day of the game so that they would all be done in time. Also she looks like the Green Lantern.

So by now I've already varnished and handed them all over but I still welcome any feedback. I am really looking forward to doing the rest, this has been a refreshing break from the Khador that I have been painting lately. 

Whoa... Bigger warjack...

Here's Behemoth as promised. I finished painting him months ago but never took pictures. He has the military green color I was talking about in a previous post and I'm quite happy with him. Amazingly, that's the same base size as the other three 'jacks, just to give you an idea of his size.

Again, bad pictures (time to buy a new camera?) and as always it looks a bit better in person, but even still you can see how the scheme is working. That gritty, dirty green gives me Death Guard vibes, but now with more imperialism (and in this case that makes it better).

I particularly like how the soot on the stacks turned out but it might need work in the future. Right now it just looks like black paint, instead of a dusting of industrial grade carbon. If I remember right, GW had a soot texture and I may consider that.

I still haven't decided how I'm going to do these bases yet. Snow is the obvious choice and would probably make my colors pop well but I'm thinking more of a muddy snow melt, but that seems quite difficult to not look awful. We'll see whenever I do a test miniature.

Next up should be some Iron Fang Pikemen (and their solo). Hope you enjoyed.

Added a new 'jack

For my birthday last year, my wife (I've gotten married!) got me the Khador army box, containing 50 points of badassery!

I hadn't had much of a chance or motivation to paint them up until recently, because I've found a new game store to show off at play games at, which means my models have to be painted.

I've actually made quite a bit of progress but I'll just drop the one that I've taken a picture of here now and add the rest later, but let me tell you I'm pretty excited.

Crappy picture, but I tried to match the Destroyer with the other two battlebox 'jacks but still have some progress. I think the shading went a lot better with this guy. He looks better to me, but that might be because I've been staring at him for the last couple days. Hope on some level I'm getting back up to the level I was at before, but I still have a lot of work ahead of me.

I'm very happy about the axe specifically. It doesn't have critical freeze like Sorscha does, but it does have critical amputation and I wanted it to look special.

In future posts I'll show off Behemoth (who is done) and some Iron Fang Pikemen (who are quite close). Maybe even a battle report if I'm feeling ambitious (don't hold your breath).

EDIT: Cropped photos.

Added another Khador warcaster

I've now got a Sorscha and some Winterguard. I really like the Winterguard, but Sorscha came out great too. Very happy with how they both turned out.

I'm doing predominantly white for the important figures to create a visual hierarchy. I plan on basing them eventually in grey and snow. I also touched up the battlegroup some more and they're below. Especially the freehanded Khador symbol on the top of their hull.

Alright that's the full update, like I said last post I haven't had a whole lot of time. But I'm planning on getting a bunch more models here soon. I've also thought about changing the color scheme from the standard Commie Red to a Military Green like here from reddit user u/JustarianCaesar:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warmachine/comments/7jcqgf/my_soviet_trencher_themed_khador_starter/

I thought these were fantastic and very inspiring, I've since seen others with similar ideas and they honestly look a lot better than the red. I'll think about it.

Until next time,

-SJ

For the motherland?

Hey hey!

Just a quick update post. I'm in grad school these days and don't have as much time as I'd like to. I also moved up to the Chicagoland suburbs, so if you know of a great place (or at least not terrible) to find some games and good people, leave a comment and I'll stop by.

But miniatures!
I got tired of Cryx for now. I thought about selling them but nobody in Lexington was interested so I've just been holding on to them. What I got instead is some Khador!

BEHOLD!

Sorry for taking pictures with a potato. So I just have the starter battlebox, and I played a couple games with them before (this was nearly a year ago, but I'm very very slow). I'm pretty excited about them.

I was reading about the various types of armies I could play and I'm thinking I really like the infantry style with some of the Irusks or Sorscha. 

Will post again with updates.

-SJ