Nord-a-thon week 1 (2022 week 22)

After our mini-theme we have a maxi-theme. I own quite a lot of vikings and they need paint! These would be the first batch off the workbench of the Viking Hirdmen 10 of whom were last seen in Week 50 of last year and yes, we're finishing off the last 34 of them this go-round.

This is the blue team which is hopefully obvious. One or two of these doods in each batch is kitbashed in the way that you'd expect mercenaries or adventurers to scavange usable equipment from...well, wherever they get it from.

2022 finished mini counter: 95

Kitty-a-thon week 2 (2022 week 21)

This week we complete our miniature mini-theme of kitties! I might have a problem.

First up we have a trio of cat rogue 3d prints. These guys have shown up a lot: a pair of them in week 50 2020 and one in week 24 of 2021 who got a lot of screen time in my Saturday game which is in its last few sessions as this goes up unless it's already complete. These are fun. On top of being free models which drives my cost per print down (yes, I include hardware), it's fun to compare paint jobs spanning multiple years. Some day I might even do a side-by-side and I would super expect to get more of these guys next year, possibly in a slightly larger form, to boot!

Next up we have another Skivvara from Twin Goddess Miniatures and the originator of the Black Cat Challenge (TM) from 2021 week 32. At one point I was going to paint her white but forgot about all of that that and ended up painting her tawny like many of the other kitties in the batch. I mean, it's right there on the palette. This fig went through some mess and at one point I snapped her off the base at the ankle so there's a lot of badness there. Her hand holding the bow also broke off a couple times which is plainly obvious if you look at the attachment. These things happen.

Last up we have a pair of Cat Captains from Vae Victis Miniatures who make some of my favorite figs, like this one! On the dark fig, I probably should have pushed the ochre details to a higher highlight; probably a yellow. I think it still works and the desaturation of both the greens and the reds seem to have effectively prevented the dreaded "Christmas Colors" issue. These figs have a great mix of volumes and details and this dark kitty will count as a high quality paint job.

On the other kitty, I probably should have desaturated the orange and punched up the dark spotches. She's supposed to be calico, "Captain Calico" as it were, but it really just looks like I wasn't looking where I put my paint. Possibly additional markings could have sold it better Could there be a Calico Challenge(TM) next year? Mayhaps, yea. I think the desaturated blue of her coat works well with the saturated purple of her corset. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this paint job.  

Last up we have a Reaper Bones Avatar of Sekhmet. This kitty saw a lot of screen time in the first campaign I ran in 2016 and I'm glad to have completed painting her. I can't claim this is a good paint job because it isn't. I also wasn't able to fix her bendy staff and I didn't do nearly enough shading on the many, many metallics. I do feel I improved on Week 16's Anubis Guard's tinted metallics (Pro Acryl Light Bronze + Badger Ghost Tints, if you're keeping score) so that's cool. Done in a couple hours, I'm not unhappy with this paint job.

2022 finished mini counter: 88/100, 7/10 high quality

Kitty-a-thon week 1 (2022 week 20)

This week we have something fun. These are a mirror pair of Tabaxi Dancer 3d prints by Vae Victis Miniatures and in addition to being one of my favorite sculpts (and not just because they're kitty girls) they're also supportless. I've saidtyped it before--supportless for 3d prints is like a super power.

I'm pretty sure I've noted elsewhere that I don't particularly like dealing with folds in fabric. Well, these two have disabused me of that since they're mostly folds in fabric. I struggle with this because I suck at blending and I'm too lazy to stipple (I also don't want to ruin my brushes faster than necessary) so this was really good practice. I can't claim that I've done a particularly good job, but I can claim that I did push well past my usual stopping point. I do think I've leveled up on these two in the skill department, anyway, and that counts for...something.

As an added bonus, these two are variations in similar color palettes. The dark kitty is in split complementary (ochre, blue, and purple) and the tawny kitty is in a reasonable facsimile of triadic (ochre, green, purple). The dark kitty will also fill the bill for 2022's Unofficial Black Cat Challenge(TM) and other than not bringing the darks as low as I should have, I think she turned out well. The tawny kitty is an experiment and gearing up for at least a few more kitties in that same color scheme.

Overall, I have few regrets beyond breaking the dark kitty's foot off when removing her from the build plate. I certainly could have spent more time on them clocking in at about 25 hours for both but that's about as far as I thought I should go. I also probably could have done more with the airbrush, too, but had I done so I probably wouldn't have learned as much. I think these are a good result and I'm counting both as high quality figs. Will I print more of them and paint them at a higher quality at a later date? Watch this space!

2022 finished mini counter: 81/100, 6/10 high quality

A thing a week 2022, week 19

No theme this week, just a trio of painted figs. These three are Dark Mantle Assassin from Crippled God Foundry in both masked and unmasked versions. And if you're wondering why there are three and not four, it's because the fourth lost her arm in a terrible printing malfunction. In fact, if you look close, most of them have some pancaking going on. They were a little fiddly to paint, especially their faces which have a lot of cross-detail going on. I also had quite a lot of difficulty pinning them down through the one foot. 

Someday I'll figure out how to use my printer correctly but I'm waiting for it to warm up some before trying again. Supposedly these devices work better when it's warm which might partially explain why so many of this last round came out so bad (printed in at the end of last year). Some of it is almost certainly not having spent the time to dial in the device. 

Probably I'll buy a new one sometime soon. Unfortunately, the newer versions don't seem to be particularly more user friendly though they do print a lot faster. 

2022 finished mini counter: 79/100

A thing a week 2022, week 18

And now for something completely different. Almost a year ago, week 22's offering was the Asnofre city map. Just over two years ago, 2020's week 6 was the same kind of map for Cedarwood ending that campaign. This week's offering is the Asnofre Playset intended to be used in the finale, likely over two or three sessions. Apparently I like ending campaigns with big battles. Notably both campaigns were single-city affairs with lots of factions and intrigue so maybe those things go together.

We had intended to do a normal session last night but a couple folks were unavailable so we playtested instead and it's a dang good thing we did! Some of the rules didn't work super well and I had drawn the zones too small. The picture shows the hand-drawn zone boundaries I did after the fact and I reworked both the rules and the units. The map itself is printer paper mounted on medium weight chipboard. The units are also printer paper mounted to adhesive magnets. I wanted something weightier than chipboard for the unit tokens but I don't think their stickiness is particularly helpful.