Painting through the Pandemic (Part I)

Although I've been socially isolating and working from home for six weeks, my work hasn't really slowed down. In fact, if anything, working at an international financial NGO has meant my day job has become more stressful and frenetic these past several weeks as the pandemic has spurred on a massive global recession, just the sort of thing my employer was created to help address. But for my own sanity, I have made time to do a bit of gaming online with friends, including a cameo turn in a session of my friend Rich's ongoing Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, and a session of his Middle Earth Role Playing game that seems to be turning into a standing Sunday afternoon game. Steve Braun and I got in a game of TSR's Battlesystems (2nd ed.), played remotely via streaming video from his dining room, as well as a go at a cooperative scenario recently released for Conan: The Board Game (Monolith).

I’ve been waiting to play MERP since 1984. Good times sneaking around the ruins of Osgiliath in the Fourth Age shortly after the fall of Sauron. Thanks, Rich McKee!

I've also carved out time to batch paint some miniatures I had primed last fall so that I would have them ready at hand to paint over the winter months (it's too cold to do any priming in the winter).

The first batch below are Kings of War skeletons by Mantic that I picked up at one of the HMGS conventions over the past year or so. I've only played Kings of War once (run by Francis Grice at Barrage Con last year), but I bought these figures because I want to bolster my array of skeletons that I can have on hand for a variety of games.

I mistakenly thought being skeletons they'd be fast and easy and that I would get away with using my Citadel contrast paint for most of the job, but these particular skeletons proved anything but easy. They are adorned with shreds of cloth and scraps of armor dangling from every limb and torso, often times making it difficult to tell where one bit started and another ended ("Is that a femur or a goddamn tattered garment?!?"). They were a frustration, and the next time I buy skeletons, they'll be simpler--just bones, weapons, and shields, as god intended. That said, in the end they turned out well enough. I just don't find it fun guessing what this little bit and that little protrusion is supposed to be while painting figures, and there was a lot of that with these.

I addition to the skeletons, I painted a used Hirst Arts bridge I bought from Tim Peaslee for $10 (not pictured), and the skeletal remains of a defeated giant protruding from the site of a long-ago battle. The latter piece was made of plaster by Windsword as part of their "Bone Yard" series of scatter terrain, procured at a recent Historicon. I'm always hesitant to buy pieces from this company because I'm worried they will easily break, but I took a chance on this one and got it home in one piece.

The 20 bandits I painted were on the whole easier and more enjoyable, though I will say there were occasions where I still had to guess at some of what I was painting (e.g., the dagger-throwing assassin, while in a cool pose, had some soft details that left me scratching my head). I've wanted a gang of highwaymen for a while, and am looking forward to concocting skirmish scenarios in which they harass the local lord's men and make a nuisance of themselves with wayfarers and traveling merchants. The figures were part of a Kickstarter run by Midlam Miniatures out of the UK. It looks like they followed it up with a gang of female bandits that I somehow missed.

I painted the nine skeletons in maybe five hours and the 20 bandits in about 10 hours, including basing. Speaking of which, I prefer to mount my figures on clear acrylic bases when possible, but the skeletons were bought assembled by their original owner, and the bandits came with integral bases; I'm not confident enough yet in my ability to remove a figure from its integral base without destroying it, though I know others do it.

I bought the needed material a few months ago to mix up a batch of soil ground cover using the recipe outlined on YouTuber Luke's APS channel. I had been using regular playground sand, but it always felt too course for 28mm. Luke's recipe worked like a charm, and I really like the results, so much so that I didn't feel compelled to bother painting over top the "soil" as I always feel the need to do when using plain sand. I recommend watching his short tutorial on YouTube and whipping up you own batch. What he doesn't tell you in the video is how long or at what temperature to cook the soil you extract from your yard; a quick Google search suggests not cooking above 180 degrees fahrenheit and probably not much longer than 30-45 minutes to disinfect and kill off any of the microbes.

SKELETONS (Kings of War)

BANDITS (Midlam Miniatures)

Oh...and I forgot about these fellas below from an incomplete copy of HeroQuest I found at a thrift store in 1998. I finally painted up the four mummies and the four wraiths that came with that game. I painted these using mostly Citadel contrast paints. These mummies were so easy, and what inspired me to give the skeletons above a try...

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