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

A couple new ones

I'm on spring break so I do have a fair amount of time, but not a fair amount of models to paint, which I suppose is the drawback to only having one unpainted unit at a time. Regardless I managed to get my hands on two, one which I had been looking forward to for a while and another that I didn't even know I wanted but it turns out I very much did. I did however based all the models I have now and I'm pretty happy with the result of everyone together. I played my biggest game yet on Monday (35pt) and after seeing them all lined up and happily slaughtering everyone, I decided that it worked well with them.

So the first one is Lich Lord Venethrax, who has an awesome (in my opinion) storyline, a pretty cool model (even if he does have that genestealer broodlord pose that I dislike) and decent rules. Overall he's my favorite warcaster in the Cryx army so I'm quite happy to have him. Overall I think he turned out pretty good but I still feel as though something is missing so I'm not going to call him done yet, but I will stop painting him for now.

I realize the picture quality is less than stellar but I think this gives a decent idea of what he looks like.

Next is Aiakos, Scourge of the Meredius which I think is the most recent or one of the most recent models added to the Cryx army as a whole. He was a Kickstarter reward for that Warmachine Tactics game (which I heard isn't being received too well) and then it seems he was resculpted for the masses, which is good because the other sculpt I've been seeing online is pretty 2D in my opinion. I have the good new one. He is Cryx's only journeyman warcaster and only 3pt and I look forward to playing with him. I sat with this guy all day today (not doing much else actually) trying to figure out how I was going to paint him and there was little inspiration online but I think he turned out pretty good. The flesh was a bit intimidating but I think I managed it without it looking TOO cartoony. He's basically one of those models that looks great 3 feet away but a pretty blotchy up close, kinda like those stage performers and their make-up. Anyway he's below: 

Both are great models and also I based them the same way as everyone else so that should give a good idea of how that went. 

Let me know what you think.