Funny looking elves if you ask me

Okay so maybe I won't paint up the rest of the elves just yet. I had fully intended to but instead the I detoured and painted something else instead.

This week I have been PNKD free for the first time in ages which has been brilliant. The only down side is that I no longer seem to be used to setting hunched over at the table painting for hour after hour like I used to and I now have a sore back. I will have to limit the length of my painting sessions until I recover.

The extra time to paint has borne fruit as you can see below. It also gave me the chance to put a little more effort into my painting instead of painting things in a tearing hurry, as a result I am quite proud of the results.

These two giants are from the Reaper Bones range and will join my KoW Ogre army.

Here is one of the new giants (left) alongside an identical mini I painted up for my D&D campaign last year (right). I'm not sure that the photo shows it but the highlights are much more subtle and realistic on the newer one.

Also joining the painted pile are the two Mantic Lykanis miniatures I bought recently which will be leading the werewolf contingent in my KoW undead army.

These were fun to paint up and quick too.

Maybe now I should be getting on with those elves after all.

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

The end of the year is approaching fast, way too fast it would seem for me to meet my target of 300 painted miniatures this year.

I'm still working though the pile of Mantic elves and I have 20 of them almost done - they just need their bases finished and the shield decals applied for them to be finished. I'm holding off on doing those for the moment until I have the next batch of 20 in a similar state as it will be easier to do them all in one go.

Without these I still have painted 160 28mmeq so far so I should easily beat the 200 barrier even if 300 is looking out of reach.

Purchases
After such a good run of not buying things in the first part of the year I seem to have slipped back on some bad habits.

• 2 Bones Hill Giants
• Bones Stone Giant
• 3 Mantic Ogre Hunters
• 2 Mantic Lykanis (Werewolf leader)
• Dwarf Berserk Brock Lord
• 6 Mantic Zombie Command

Despite this I'm still 115 miniatures in the good as far as the pledge goes and there is a chance I will get all of them painted before the end of the year.

And to round out this update here are the latest additions to the painted pile, a Rust Monster and some Spiders all from my Reaper Bones 1 box. These were a nice break between painting up lots of elves.

The three wiz men

Celebration time - I have managed to finish the last three goblins for tomorrow's tournament with hours to go. As I mentioned in a previous post - I could easily have used some of the many other goblin shamen I have in my collection but I use tournaments as an excuse to get things done which might otherwise sit in the painting pile for many years.

Here we have the three goblin shamans the first by Kev Adams from the Crooked Claw range the second from GW as part of the arachnarok kit and the last also by KA but done for Hasslefree miniatures.

Whilst I was waiting for some of the paint to dry on those I found another Hasslefree miniature which has been lurking at the back of my paint station for ages and added the last few highlights and steps required to finish her off.

Gwen can now lurk in the box with the rest of my D&D minis.

So what next? Well I have one last unpainted Hasslefree miniature in my collection which would be nice to finish but otherwise I'll probably go back to painting elves again.

76 Trombones

Well two goblin war trombones anyway. The first of these is a Mantic Goblin War Trombone which I bought in August. The second is a Citadel Goblin Lead Belcher which has been in my possession for 30 years. I think it was in the Orc and Goblin army list for 2nd and 3rd edition WHFB but has been sitting in a box on a shelf since then. Some of the paint job on Lead Belcher is my original 80's brushwork with a wash and a couple of highlights to make it look a little better.

This means two things:-
1) I'm almost finished on the upgrades for my goblin army for Sunday's event (just three goblin shamen to go and they're not vital).
2) I have now painted all the miniatures I have bought this year.

Unfortunately I'm still way down on my goal of painting up 300 miniatures this year so I had better get cracking.

On a (t)roll

My first batch of trolls to reinforce my goblin army are now complete. These are a Troll Horde and a Troll Bruiser from Mantic.

And here's a group shot with the trolls I painted up last year.

I'm now working on the Goblin War Trombones which hopefully won't take to long. In other news I'm now having to use my magnifying visor more and more - my reading glasses no longer seem to be sufficient for detail work. The good news is that comparing the trolls I did last year with the ones I've just completed I can see a definite improvement ... maybe I should have ditched the reading glasses earlier.

Clearing the way

And those Mantic Elf Scouts (Kindred Gladestalkers) are now complete which leaves my workbench more or less clear to crack on with those goblins and trolls.

 I've got speed painting Mantic elves pretty much sorted so I am hopeful that I can come back to the tray of unpainted elves and work though them before the end of the year. For now I am on to more pressing matters which will involve a lot of green paint.

And now for part 2

Returning from my summer holidays it looks like I'm going to have to get cracking. So far my "year of completing projects" hasn't exactly been going to plan with a grand total of er.. zero projects finished. Secondly this is about the time of year I begin to focus on my Clash of Kings army for October. After taking Elves to the last three events with mixed results I decided it was time to take something else instead. With the current meta being what it is I have opted for goblins with a few upgrades and upgrades has meant purchases.

I did manage to go 8 months without buying miniatures which is probably the longest purchasing embargo I've had in years but the prospect of some discounted trolls proved too much temptation for me to pass up. I have bought 6 more trolls, a troll bruiser and a goblin war trombone - all Mantic. Together with some items from the lead pile these will allow me to field a goblin army at the Clash of Kings that stands a reasonable change of doing well (I hope).

Before getting cracking on with those I decided to try and clear some elves I had already started off my workbench. This small chap has been a work in progress for a while and it really is about time he was completed. The new Mantic elf dragon is made from board game plastic and is an adaptation of the model they produced for Dungeon Saga. The material holds a reasonable amount of detail but I ended up painting the body scales individually as they weren't quite distinct enough to dry-brush as I would usually do. The rider is metal and is nice and crisp.

The model is much larger than the original Mantic elf dragon I painted recently, here they are together with my GW elf dragon for comparison.

I'm looking forward to a game where I can actually field all three at the same time.

With the dragon done I'm not putting the finishing touches to some elf scouts which are nearly complete and once those are out of the way then it will be time to get on with those trolls!