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Love the Peace Sells! Banner!

Such a epic and metal skeleton unit

So, I painted some samurai:







These are all from the long-dead Clan Wars line. I got the starter box brand new, and piked up the infantry and cavalry expansions along with several blisters of personalities, and then promptly lost steam on the project. In the decades since, I have been slowly chipping away at the backlog, but this is the first unit I can call complete.




I also must have picked up some models from Bartertown way back in the day, because I have several that are already based and spray-primed white, something I haven't done since the Great Primer Disaster of 198-. Curse you Ral Partha and your grainy sprays! These guys allowed me to add a splash of color to the unit, as there would have been at least a few suits of armor like these in any group.



These last two were painted up several years ago. Instead of doing color washes on the lacing, I hit them with a black wash, followed up by a brush on, semi-gloss sealer, which then stripped some of the paint off, leaving shiny bare patches here and there. They will go in the center where my mistakes will be invisible.



And a group shot. There are only two poses of infantry, which would have been par for the course back in the day. They are much easier to rank up that those Zenit samurai I painted way back. I'll add another 10 in the other post to bring the unit up to a full 20. But before that: zombies!

Good job on the clan wars stuff. Shame they dont have a few more poses but its too be expected of the old stuff.

The clan-specific samurai had alternate poses, but I don't have very many of them-- just dragon clan, I think. Once I get through the mass of zombies I starter this morning, I might break them out.

Nice samurai!

Love the progress!

Kicking it old-school with the Nightmare Legion there. Great freehand work on the shields and also the banner. I saw that album cover so many times back in the early 90's when I was working in a CD warehouse, so I recognised it almost immediately as Megadeth even though I've never listened to it (didn't remember the title either to be honest). Love it - A Very Metal Unit!

Samurai are also looking very nice. They make a strong looking unit. I remember Clan Wars/L5R. Never played it myself, but I had some monks to paint for a friend at one point. I'd be interesting to see if those figures are still available from somewhere - then you could still add other clans' models to your force.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. The samurai are much brighter in person. I need to replace the battery on my light box...

I painted those wights in my early 20's, when I was getting back into metal. I painted up about 40 RTB01 marines as Metallica album covers (Kill 'em All and Master of Puppets), but sold them all off a long time ago. I'm not sure I have the patience for that kind of free hand any more.

Swards are a bit wide but given the age, plus they're kind of imposing that way Good paintwork as usual!

Yeah, the swords are huge. It keeps them from being as bendy as more realistic weapons, though.

Going back a page I adore those Dream Warriors, what magnificent and characterful sculpts. The painting is great to, I have never really tried wet blending but it looks great on those.

And the "Peace Sells..." standard is great too, a great trip down memory lane from a lot of the standards you saw on fantasy minis in the 80's.

Keep it up.

Thanks for your kind words. In truth, I didn't do any blending in those guys-- it's all drybrushing and glazes.

As I think I've mentioned before, undead were either my first or second army for WHFB (back when four or five Chaos Warriors could cost as many points as a full army of, say, elves). I still have lots and lots of the original Citadel plastic skeletons that I got for a song when they were first released. Zombies at the time, though, were all metal and too expensive even for a high school kid with an after-school job. By the time GW released a set of plastic zombies, they had already split "undead" into VC and TK, and I was focusing on the latter. So I've never gotten around to painting up any zombies until this past week:


Here we see a regiment of Mantic zombies. I got them with the undead army box, and did what I assume everyone does and hybridized them with ghouls. The skin is Army Painter necrotic flesh, the clothes are various drab colors, then guts are AP chaotic red highlighted with whatever the light red highlight paint from GW is called. The whole thing was then dipped in AP Strong Tone, whipped around on the end of a milk frother and left to dry. A quick coat of paint-on matte sealer and some detailing on their bases, and finished. These guys were a lot of fun to paint, and once again I was reminded why I like mantic bases for fantasy miniatures-- since they have to fit on those little circles, they are dead easy to rank up.

"But wait," I hear you say, "who uses regiments of zombies in KoW?" The answer is "not me." Here they are in horde formation:




I make my own movement trays using Tamiya plasticard, steel paper and sheet magnet on the model's bases, so it was easy enough to make this horde base modular. I just left of the plastic strip on one side of each base so they can form up without screwing up the frontage too badly. I used the same technique to make two more troop-sized trays, for a full 60-zombie unit:




I now have the option to field a mega-horde, a horde and a regiment, or three regiments. You have no doubt noticed all the white space. That's because I don't actually have 60 zombies. The army box comes with 30 zombies and 20 ghouls, but that's not a wholly accurate number, because six of those zombies are just spinal columns:


I did up two of them as piles of guts dragging themselves toward the enemy (note that I left the shine intact on the guts), but I didn't want a whole rank of headless, armless zombies. That left me with these guys:


These are just zombie/ghoul legs and spinal columns, with GW skeleton ribcages attached, followed by spare heads and arms. I'll be using Tamiya kneadatite to add in skin and muscle on the backs, necks and chest, leaving the abdominal cavities open for guts to hang out of. Combined with one metal zombie that I found in my bits box, that takes me up to 53, leaving me short seven zombies which I hope to trade for sometime in the near future.

As an aside, I had planned on padding out the unit with the box of GW zombies I've had in the closet for the last ten years or so, but when I finally opened it up, I was shocked by how much bigger and crappier they are compared to these. I suppose I could add neck bolts and chains and call them Frankensteins or flesh golems or whatever, but I'm far more likely to just trade them off to someone locally (meaning somewhere else in Japan).

Great stuff, gotta love hordes of zombies

Yeah zombies!!

Those are some very nice looking zombies

Great Zombies, Josh. That's one kick-arse horde you have up there. I think I also need to hire you to make my movement trays

Who would work on zombies .

I like the piles of zombie bits.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I really enjoyed painting these models.

azazelx: the movement trays are just 1.2 mm plasticard with 3mm triangle edges. I suspect just buying the supplies over there would be cheaper than posting them from Japan...

Really nice work there Josh Those zombs look suitably gribbly.

I spent my morning painting time working with kneadatite. Here are the results:

Wow, nice work. Really look a bit more like zombies now than the bits put together (not that it didn't work as is, this is just better).

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I really enjoyed painting these models.

azazelx: the movement trays are just 1.2 mm plasticard with 3mm triangle edges. I suspect just buying the supplies over there would be cheaper than posting them from Japan...

I made some for my Ogres ages ago and they actually turned out really well. But I've got no room on my paint table and I hate making trays, so it'd be much easier for me if you'd just come over and make them for me. We can even have a game. Deal?

Fleshing up those Skeleton torsos on the Mantic Zombies looks really bloody good. I reckon when they're done, those are going to be your stand-out unique models of the horde.

One of the cool things about my job is that I don't actually have to be here all day during breaks. I use the free time to crank out bigger projects than I can manage during my early morning painting times. I cranked out these zombies in about two hours yesterday:








These guys looked pretty dodgy when I was putting down the base colors, but the dip really worked for them. I don't think it will replace my normal painting techniques, but for big units of undifferentiated grunts, it works wonders, especially if they are all earth tones.

Here's a group shot:

Yep, zombies look good, nice work.

My wife and son are away visiting her mother, while I had to stay behind for some continuing education seminars tomorrow and the day after. I'm using my sudden wealth of alone-time to crank out some larger projects that I just haven't gotten around to. First up, GW's Garden Of Morr kit:


While I have little to no interest in GW's games or minis, their hard plastic scenery remains top notch. I picked this kit up shortly before my son was born six years ago, and it has been languishing in the upstairs closet ever since. It was fairly easy to paint, although it is Festooned With Skulls just like everything else by this company, and I had to keep going back to paint the ones that I missed, but as far as I'm concerned, it's finished and ready for the tabletop. I have roughly one metric ton of grave markers as well, so I may have a full on graveyard to show off this weekend.

Next up, some Japanese scenery:


We see here a torii and small building from plastcraft. I got these for backing Zenit Miniatures' Indiegogo campaign. The expanded styrene material was a little strange to work with. I tried basecoating the little building with some brown spraypaint I had lying around, but the can was so old that I ended up covering the building with little droplets of paint. This had a net positive effect, in that it added a sort of stucco texture to otherwise silky smooth walls, resulting in a more interesting model. One of the shops in Japan that I deal with carries this particular scenery line, so I may get some more of these buildings sometime in the future.

It's not ready to show yet, but I am currently working on RAFM's Necrodrake, which consists of six giant pieces of white metal and is therefore taking a long long time to assemble. I should have something to show tomorrow.

I freakin' LOVE those skeleto-zombies. Great idea, great use of bitz and fantastic execution. They look great painted up.

JEALOUS!

Thanks, boss. I may get around to doing a few more like that to finish off the unit-- I need eight more to get up to a full 60...

After another marathon painting session, I have these guys to show:



I actually painted three of these guys many years ago, but since they didn't match the ones I painted a couple of months back, I stripped them down and re-did them to match the other unit. I had to replace the spear shaft on the screaming guy because the original one had broken off,and it seems likely that I'll have to do it for the other guy holing his spear leveled.




I was planning to use this guy as a leader for a cavalry unit someday, but he fills out this unit quite nicely, I think. Here's the unit all together:


I spent the rest of my painting time yesterday assembling this guy:


That's the RAFM Necrodrake I mentioned yesterday. It's solid pewter and weighs a ton, and every joint had to be pinned. Thankfully the metal was soft enough to drill, but even then it took many hours. This morning, I spraypainted him ivory, and will try to finish him off tonight. I have an all-day continuing education thing to go to, though, so I won't be quite as productive as I was the last two days...

Great stuff!
The skele-zombies have come up great. Scenery looks very nice, and certainly effective. Do they have shops that sell touristy tat over in Japan? Might be a good place for scenery elements, in theory at least.

I love your Garden of Morr. Hopefully I can get mine done when it warms up into spring or summer. The ethereal undead are great as well.

That Necrodrake is going to kick some serious arse once he's done. Not that he doesn't already! That's a very impressive kit.