Thursday 9 April 2020

A merry band of adventurers

Hello everyone,

Hope you all manage to stay safe and healthy!
No quarantaine here in Australia, but a lot of do's and don'ts. Also, the restaurants are closed and people stay indoors because many of them are scared. For example, before the extended Term 1 holiday there were less than 40 children still attending the school, including my three boys.
One of the reasons I decided to keep my kids at school is the fact I know my own limits. Homeschooling is all fine and dandy, but I'm no teacher and can never give them the same level of education they receive at school.
Luckily, the shops we go to for groceries are slowly getting the 'essentials', like toilet paper, back in stock now many people have locked themselves in at home with they're 100 TP rolls and 50kg of pasta and rice.

I did a few courses over the past few weeks and had far less time to paint. Nevertheless did I manage to finish of a few models, I'll share them over the next few posts.
Another thing that happened is the fact I got on Instagram, which is a lot quicker and easier to use than blogger. There is a big BUT though, one of the things social media doesn't allow you to do is actually tell a story and give your post a title; which I think is one of the main selling points for blogger at the moment. My biggest problem with the platform seems to be the fact I'm following way too many blogs and find myself drowning in posts I want to read but just haven't got enough time for. Another issue is the fact it just doesn't seem to work so well to create a post on my phone.
I decided to keep on blogging, but I have to go through my readers list and make some hard decisions to stop following some other blogs, just to keep it manageable.

Anyway, welcome to a new post about my progress on getting enough 15mm fantasy miniatures painted to start playing the actual Rangers of Shadow Deep campaign.
The models below would also be perfect for some 15mm Dungeon crawling, something I'm considering of doing somewhere in the far future.
I didn't spend a lot of time on these because the holiday was almost over and I knew I was going to have far less time once school and my courses started.

There's a couple of Rogues, a fighter and a Wizard of sorts, which is still the traditional make-up for many fantasy roleplaying games.
But let's start with the best companion for any group of adventurers.



My second knight, nothing special. One of the things I wanted was to have the royal symbol on at least one of the two knights so I can create a themed force for other skirmish games like Song of Blades and Heroes.


Some thieves/rogues I did real quick and with a limited palette.


My wizard in this post isn't necessarily meant for Rangers of Shadow Deep. I'm thinking of sculpting a lovely apprentice for him once my sculpting skills are up for it and use for Frostgrave. The snow/frost effect I did near the edge of the base is meant to represent a spell that originated from his wand. Despite the fact that I had a colour scheme in mind this didn't work out as I wanted and he looks a lot more blue than white.


I also created some more markers and started working on my terrain. For the wattle fence I used a technique I found online, didn't work out that well for 15mm terrain but it's still usable. 
The tokens are from a french game called Alkemy and are a kind of spirit well token if I remember correctly.




Despite my late post, I'm happy with the progress I made during the Christmas holiday and hope to keep a steady pace throughout the year. 

Thank you all for reading!

Wouter








20 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks a lot Michal! How are you doing by the way?

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    2. Well thank you. I work at home, actually the whole family is sitting at home;)

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  2. 1st, glad to know that you and your fam are ok.

    LOL that TP and pasta comment sure got me off guard. Once people noticed it wasn't so essential, sales switched to alcohol: as there is no need to behave properly anymore people started to live 24/7 in pajamas and drunk. Nice to know how is it going there. And I got the idea of a TP golem for free!

    Here, kids-wise parents are going crazy, specially with younger ones, both because they got bored easy and cause trouble and as you said, the lack of educational progress, but it was crucial to mitigate the spread, so better safe than sorry I guess.

    Tokens (and horse) are the best part IMHO. Are those tiny dead leaves!? Glowing blue eyes and frosting in front of the wizard are awesome too.

    Looking fantastic so far, great group. This weekend I'm jumping in the RPG bandwagon too so I'm quite busy at the moment. Everything else is ok I guess: My parrot is screaming my sanity off me and the lockdown is accentuating my already pale skin and poor fit status.

    Pale, unhealthy and insane. OMG I'm turning into Gollum! :D

    Still not fond of Insta and proper quick social media so I'll stick with blogging which lets me bore men to death.

    Cheers, stay safe!

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    Replies
    1. Hahaha, a toilet paper golem would be awesome. A bit like a giant mummy in a sense.

      One day I spotted some dead leaves in different colours outside and decided to gather some and shredded them into tiny bits. Cheap and almost perfect as a ground scatter.

      Please stay healthy, you probably have a lot more projects in the pipeline to treat us with. As long as it's the parrot you're talking too and not yourself I suppose you're safe from Gollumism.

      Like I said, blogger certainly has it's charm. These days everything has to be fast and accessible, so in a way blogger is perfect for old grognards like me 😁.

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  3. So pleased to hear that you are safe and well. I am also happy to report that toilet roll has been spotted more frequently in the UK shops again, a good sign I feel. Love the work you've been doing, so good.

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    1. Thank you Michael, I was very happy to hear you're safe, well and manage to keep yourself busy on your blog too.

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  4. They look great. 15mm is a fun scale for fantasy, I got a bunch of Splintered Light stuff that I used in place of tokens for the Dungeon boardgames.

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    1. Cheers, 15mm is a scale with a lot of advantages. It's strange it doesn't get more exposure all kinds of platforms, it's still considered to be quite niche in most hobby circles.

      I love to see what you did with them, are they on your blog?

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    2. Let me dig them out and I'll get a post up.

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  5. I think they all look gorgeous. I especially love the first thief, it's quite a nice mini. The wizard looks fabulous, don't push that hard on yourself!
    Stay safe. Things got kinda weird here at Spain, but hopefully we'll get through this and steer the situation. At some point. Eventually. Sure.
    All the best!

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    Replies
    1. The second one looks like someone who wouldn't be able to enter easily to Mr. Trump's Tavern. :D

      Yup, 1st one is a lovely piece.

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    2. @Javi LOL

      @Suber Thank you mate, hopefully it everything will get back to normal in a few months or so. In the meantime all we can do is keep ourselves and others safe.
      The second 'thief' looks a less like an RPG character and more like an assassin of sorts. Maybe I should have painted him black 🤔.

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  6. Thank you very much Richard!

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  7. Diversified and splendid production, always useful for new adventures...

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    1. Indeed, great for any fantasy setting or game. Thanks!

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  8. Great to see you back posting again, was worried as hadn't seen you around the blogs for a while.
    The models look excellent, and look forward to seeing what else you've been up to

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    1. Thank you very much Dave, won't be too long before my next post now.

      Just had less time than usual. Hope you're all safe and healthy over there.

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  9. This is simply excellent work Wouter. And at this small scale ... supremely excellent if you ask me.

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