Dreaded Scorpions of Indeterminate Scale

 Probably the least exciting paint job to be paraded on the humble blog (especially after a fortnight of posting silence!): some scorpions. I have no idea what manufacturer these were made by, all I know is that they have been in the "animals and monsters" box of my lead pile for ages.

"Aargh - Scorpions!"

Funnily enough though, for all their base coat & dry brush gloss finish, they can be used by all my scales. Either as large-ish scorpions for my 28mm, or giant ones for the 10mm and 15mm troops. This will have them as side complications\hazards for 28mm, to serious monsters for the 10mm dungeon. A quick bonus!

10mm Stonehenge

I was making an order to Amazon the other day and decided to treat myself with one of those miscellaneous things you find and wishlist. In this case it was a "Build your own Stonehenge" kit which I'd read about ages ago on some forum.

Quick scale shot with Pendraken 10mm Dwarf and Barbarian

Here is what I pulled out the box. The base is a thin jigsaw with markers on to place your stones. Aside from perhaps a rough guide it is of little use to me. A more durable one piece base will be used.

A view of the whole kit

The stones themselves are surprisingly solid and tough plastic. I doubt it they would chip or break without some serious effort.They are unpainted but should take paint well. Whether to completely base coat and paint or to just add a few drybrushed highlights will be the question.

I know that some of you will be happy to make a simple terrain piece from scratch, but for under £5 (including delivery) I doubt you can really go wrong.

Pendraken Painting Competition 2013

One of those "That time of year" events, the Pendraken Painting Competition, is upon us again. Last year I used it as a springboard to get some adventurers and some Ratmen painted. Clearly using such events as motivation is a good thing, as I 've hardly touched a 10mm scale figure/item since (although I did finish the dungeon extension eventually).

As ever these things have a habit to being timely. I am just planning out a new "Projects" page for the blog to help myself keep on track with current projects in working (or at least that’s the idea). I have a notion later in the year to try a dungeon crawl using my 10mm set, of course, and the Ganesha Games RPG "Tales of Song and Blades".  This competition should hopefully put a few more painted figures in the reckoning.

Watch this space for updates - probably around the 27th Feb!!

A Wash and Dry(brush)

It's amazing what you can get done when a few projects all stall at a similar point. In my case this weekend I had a flurry of activity doing dark washes and light (or brown) drybrushing.

It all started with the expansion pack of my Pendraken 10mm dungeon, which had been sitting around base coated grey for months. So a wash and dry brush later:

and when added to the main box I have:

Another part finished project was a pack of Games Workshop craters. Dry brushed light in the scorched centre and brown on the outside to match the main table surface.

And finally, following my own advice (I know, I'm as surprised as anyone) the ground round my rubble creations along with lightening the debris.

My Sci-fi tunnel project also saw some similar attention, but I'm saving that for a bit later after some more work has been done to it.

You Little Rat(s)

Well, I may have missed the Painting Competition deadline, but here are my Dungeon Dwelling Pendraken 10mm Ratmen. Painted in red livery to match with my ratmen warband used in my first Songs Of Blades and Heroes Campaign.

10mm Painting Comp Entry

Here's my first (rather optimistically indicating there may be a late second one) entry to the Pendraken 2012 Painting Competition. The standard of painting really makes a mockery of the scale. I'm not expecting to win anything, but am using the comp as a bit of motivation to get some painted. My ratmen, however, may be a bit too late to get finished in time, but I will get them done at least...

10mm Paintng Competition

Sometimes painting motivational events come along at just the right time. Sometimes it's starting to play a game again, others a show on the horizon. In my rough production line of projects I'd loosely planned getting back to painting my 10mm dungeon figures after sorting out my Beastman warband was in my mind. I managed my beastmen on schedule (end January) and was thinking about my 10mm adventurers when an email came through from their manufacturer, Pendraken, announcing a painting competition, taking entries in February. Perfect timing then!

My painting really isn't up to competition standards, but as a bit of fun and a target to aim for I'd be daft to resist. I hope to at least get the extra dungeon adventurers pack done and finish off the dungeon extension box that I bought last May at Carronade. After that I may try my hand at making a couple of custom dungeon pieces (cavern walls and bridge for example) or have a go at the horde of ratmen I also have.

We'll see - adventurers first...

SoBH 10mm Dungeon

On Saturday Arabiansquire and I managed along to Livingston Battleground. The wee lad has been periodically asking me when we'll play with the Pendraken 10mm Dungeon set I had painted (most of!). I quite fancied it, so cut some short/medium/long sticks from coffee stirrers and we set up. I must point out that the dungeon set comes with a perfectly good set of rules, but I am trying to cut down on my working ruleset number so thought I'd try the familiar Songs Of Blades and Heroes.

The first quandary I had was actually the lengths to define short/medium/etc. The main rule book gives lengths for 15mm but not 10mm (not really a surprise though - 10mm isn't really a usual skirmish scale. The SoBH dungeon rules do, however say that the largest room shouldn't be more than a "long" measurement, which conveniently is the length of the standard Pendraken large room. And although "medium" does look a bit long, this makes the "long" measurement is less of an advantage, which I would imagine is quite realistic in your average dungeon.

The next problem were the dungeon dwellers. We were playing a GM-ed dungeon crawl, with Arabiansquire running a group of 4 adventurers and myself controlling the dungeon. The SoBH rules do offer some hints via a short section on solo gaming, but nothing concrete. I will have to work on this, but I suspect the rules suggestion of picking an occupying force twice the points value of the "invading" force will be a good starting place. I'll have to look at drawing up a table or cards for the next session, whenever that is. For this section I fudged it, presenting a reasonable number of low level troops of mixed melee and ranged capabilities worked just fine for a quick game, with a Troll and a magic user at the two key points of the game just to make him think. Pendraken do a lovely line of traditional D&D style monsters, so I'll have to hit the generator tables for those.

Plenty to think on for next time anyway. Should be fun all the way through!

(oh and in case you were wondering, the evil wizard was defeated in the end!)

10mm Dungeon Denizens

As the Carronade ordering deadline approaches I managed to knuckle down and put paint to some more of the Pendraken 10mm dungeon set I bought at last years show.

I realise that this post technically is after the event, but you'll just have to trust me that these were done before the show. Honest.

L-to_R: Vicious Grub, Troll, Slime, Orcs with swords and a Deadly pudding

L-to-R: Healer, Rogue, Barbarian, Elf, Wizard

I have to say that once you get your eye in these are great fun to paint.

Dungeon Interior Design

The bricks and mortar of the 10mm dungeon are now painted. Only managed to squeeze off a couple of shots before my camera battery died. (must remember to pay more attention to the little icon on the back screen!).

Undercoated grey (Halfords auto primer) , washed in diluted black/brown mix (cheap artists acrylic & Klear) and drybrushed grey (wall paint tester pot). The floor edges have been drybrushed with Miniature Paints Earth Brown to simulate the accumulation of muck that gathers at the side of tunnels. I did play with the idea of using fine sand, but thought that it may hinder the placement of doors, etc as well as maybe looking out of scale - I'm sure a grain of fine sand at 10mm must come close to a pebble scaled up!

A few spots of algae covered damp (drybrushed green, stippled with green ink & bright orange and coated in PVA glue) have been added to the corridors for effect. I've not put any in the rooms, as I'm assuming they'd get enough use not to let damp accumulate. That may change though...

First 10mm miniatures

Having picked up Pendraken's 10mm Dungeon Pack, I've begun making inroads to getting it painted up.

As these are the smallest figures I've painted, thought I'd best start with favourite beginners target of the Skeletons.

Nice and easy - basecoat white, Citadel Brown ink , drybrush Miniature Paints Pale Flesh, Vallejo Sepia ink the spear/bow shafts.

Next notch up on the paint-o-meter the goblins:

The detail on these made me opt to use inks more than paint - Basecoated white, skin washed in Valljo black/green ink, boots washed in Citadel Brown ink, chainmail painted in Miniature Paints Chainmail & washed with Coat d'Arms armour wash.

Having looked at some online 10mm pictures I'm not sure if the green ink skin is bright enough to stand out at this scale. The actual dungeon pieces may need to be painted up so that I can gauge it.

As an asside, now I've started on 10mm, suddenly the term "miniature" doesn't really seem to fit my standard 28mm figures!!