A Song of Ice and Paint week 5 (2021 week 48)

This week we finish off this enormous batch with Sworn Brothers which, like last week's offering, they're part of the Night Watch which I'm sure means something to Game of Thrones fans.

I like these figs. They have nice, dynamic poses, and not super difficult sculpts to paint though their fur linings are kind of a pain. Many of them have the same wide poses as last week's guys so they're mostly on big 35mm bases, too. The nice thing about bigger bases is there's more space to put random junk on but they don't play as well even though my game requires 2" hexes.

A thing I don't like about these figs is that they're gigantic. The Mountain's Men from week 46 were also big and these guys are nearly as tall. They stick out among my normal 25mm and 28mm figs in a not great way. They've also got a lot of details which took extra time to paint. 

These two sets were 25 figs done in just over 31 hours so slightly less fast than the first batch. This is mainly due to my screwing up of their cloaks and their overall level of details. Like last week, I think these figs can hold a better paint job than the one I did and also like last week, I think they work fine. 

2021 finished mini counter: 332/100

A Song of Ice and Paint week 4 (2021 week 47)

This week we continue the current theme with A Song of Ice and Fire 
Builder Crossbowmen. I have to think these are unaligned units that can be added to any army like salt or pepper or jalapenos. The documentation tells me they're part of the Night Watch which I know nothing about. 

These guys were a mess. Next week's will be too and for the same reason: I messed up with my airbrush. I stuck a grey over some of their cloaks that was a) too dark, and b) too messy. This resulted in a lot of extra work highlighting those cloaks since the Pro Acryl Transparent Black really wants to go over a light color. Cleanup work with a brush, especially across a batch is a tedious thing especially if you're in a hurry.

Another thing of note is that even if these guys aren't particularly tall, most of them have a really wide stance. Good for balance. Bad for basing. I had to crank out the 35mm bases for these and a bunch of the next batch so I'm glad I had a pile of these on hand. Also in basing news, I'd bought a new batch of cut-rate 25mm bases and wasn't careful with them. I usually have to glue a spacer between the base and the magnet to get them to sit right and while these needed a spacer, the ones I normally use are slightly too tall--like half a mm. So many of them wobble, too.

Overall I think these guys work. I mean, they're probably going to be killed by player characters more often than not so they don't get a ton of screen time. I do think they'd hold a better paint job if I weren't on a mission to hit 365 this year. So there's that. 

2021 finished mini counter: 319/100

A Song of Ice and Paint week 3 (2021 week 46)

This is our midpoint in this theme and we have a fun one this week. These beeftastic dudes are The Mountain's Men and again, I have to note that I don't know Game of Thrones lore so I can only imagine that "The Mountain" was some really big dude and I'm too lazy to google it.

These are done like the previous units in this theme starting with airbrush, following with washes, highlights, metallics, and gloss washes on the metallics. In retrospect, many of these guys have so much armor that I really should have airbrushed them with shaded metallics rather than the other way around. That meant that the metallic steps were especially grindy and rather flat. I'd intended to do more highlighting on the metallics but these are the guys that convinced me not to.

The next two weeks were done as a slightly smaller batch which means they'll have their own set of problems (and boy, do they). These first three weeks span 38 figs and were done in 39.5 hours which puts us at right around 1 hour per fig which is right around where I wanted them to land. Note that this is the painting only not including scraping of mold lines, building and mounting on bases, or priming. Next week we'll get some different dudes and, well, it hasn't gone as well.

2021 finished mini counter: 307/100

A Song of Ice and Paint, week 2 (2021 week 45)

Like last week, we have Lannisters from A Song of Ice and Fire again. These are Lannister Guardsmen known far and wide for I guess their plumey helmets and big shields. As many soldiers as I have in my collection, I really need to have my PCs fight more wars. Apparently.

These first three offerings (next week included) were done as a huge batch and I really wanted to see how much I could do with my new and fancy (and cheap) airbrush.What I wanted: a simple basecoat that I could stick a wash over and do a minimal amount of highlights on hopefully speeding up the process. This kind of worked. I experimented with washes. The blue, green, and flesh washes are Army Painter Quickshades which I quite like. They blue-grey guys are washed in Vallejo Dark Grey Wash which can make things look dirty if you don't get your highlights right. The blue wash is Daler Rowney Blue Ink mixed with matte medium and flow improver. This worked really well so I expect it to show up more in future work.

The metallics are Vallejo Metal Color mainly Steel, Dark Aluminum, and Gold washed with Nuln Oil Gloss which is my go-to for most things. Vallejo Metal Colors are absolutely worth investing in if you have the means and use metallic paints for these kinds of projects. Even though I didn't do any shading/highlighting on these guys, these paints readily mix with any of your highly pigmented acrylics and mix especially well with Badger Ghost Tints which I like a lot.

2021 finished mini counter: 295/100