Back with Reaper Bones Marsh Trolls

I took a diversion into nostalgia by picking up a dozen old Rogue Trader figures but after stripping, cleaning, reassembling and customizing those old beakie marines I didn't have the steam left to paint them up. Recognizing the signs of hobby burn out I took a little break until my painting juices got flowing again. Happily, I got the urge to paint again just a few weeks later and used my fresh enthusiasm to knock out a few Reaper Bones figures from the first kickstarter.

Most of the Marsh Troll paint jobs I've seen color them green, but I wanted to give them a bit of contrast when they take the field next to my green snake and lizardmen. I gave them a coat of Folk Art mustard yellow and then various washes of Army Painter and Winsor & Newton brown inks.

The swamp plants are bits snipped from some decorative plastic greens I found at the local craft store. On such a large base could probably add quite a bit more foliage, but I was hesitant to obscure too much of these monsters.

I also knocked out a few more female "player characters": a paladin and a halfling. I'm definitely noticing both the strengths and weaknesses of the Bones material. The plastic is extremely cost effective, but on small, man sized figures I've run into a number of obscured details. Noseless faces, shallow detail, and difficult to remove mold lines make Bones less than ideal for hero characters. For large creatures or monsters (who might look more vicious sans nose), Bones are fine, but I think I'll be sticking to metal or hard plastic for man sized figures in the future.

All the Single Ladies

Christmas saw the arrival of several boxes of figures to replenish Lead Mountain, which means I need to get cranking on some existing miniatures to make room.

This week I finished up few female fantasy figures from the Reaper Bones kickstarter. I've painted quite a few so far, enough to notice that Reaper Bones are great for hordes of monsters or large creatures that would be too expensive to produce in metal. For man sized characters, the quality is a bit hit or miss. The rogue and witch from this group (for example) had pretty soft facial features that were quite a chore to deal with, while the barbarian had lots of character in her face. I can't tell if this is an issue with specific moulds, but these defects aren't nearly as noticeable in crocodile faced lizardmen, or similar monstrous creatures.

Female Rogue

Pathfinder Barbarian

Pathfinder Witch

Female Gnome Wizard

Dwarven Fighter

Fantasy figures always have such weird shield designs. Would prefer a smooth face to detail myself.

I'm still happy with my Reaper Bones, but I think in the future I'll likely pick up metal figures for heroes.

Reaper Bones Commoners

I started these Reaper Bones Commoners near the beginning of October, hoping to use them as victims in a Halloween themed skirmish. Life got in the way and I only managed to finish them up nearly a month after I started them, and a bit too late to hit the horror season.

These are pretty generic figures that could probably sub in for historic games ranging from the late medieval up to Victorian eras.

Even if I missed my window to get a horror game on the table it still feels good to be able to get back to painting and make some progress on my fantasy figure pile.

Painting a Reaper Bones Cthulhu

I painted up Reaper Bones Cthulhu for my dungeon bash, but kept my progress under wraps to avoid spoiling the surprise for any players who might visit this site. This is by far the largest miniature I've painted, and I wasn't quite sure how to proceed. I researched what others had done when tackling their gargantuan elder gods, and settled on using a series of layered ink washes.

I gave Cthulhu a base of black and then heavily drybrushed it with gray and white.

I only had small bottles of GW and Army Painter washes which wouldn't be nearly enough for his noodley eminence, so splurged on a set of Winsor & Newton inks . Using thinned down greens, browns and yellows, along with intermittent application of paint, Cthulhu took on a naseating shade in far less time than I expected. The gray preshading + ink wash looked decent right away, but I kept fiddling about to build up more texture and color variation.

With a deadline approaching I finished Cthulhu up with some vibrant pink tentacles and a quick green/gray drybrush to the base.

He was a bit intimidating to start but I'm eager to tackle some other large figures now that I've got this ink wash technique down.

Dungeon Crawl 2014

My wife and I hosted a full day of gaming out our house this weekend. She handled the Just Dance tournament while I ran a dungeon crawl for eight players. I wanted to capture the fun of smashing monsters, gathering loot and leveling up from hopeful adventurer to epic world shaker, all in four hours. Check out the fantasy saga after the jump.

Reaper Snakes and Wizards

Polished off a few more Reaper Bones figures. First up, a pair of snakemen. The original concept sketch was pretty cool, but I think the final sculpt shipped in the Kickstarter was merely adequate. Still a decent figure, and they paint up quickly.

Metal fig on the left, still in need of basing.

The Kickstarter also included a wizard holding a snake staff, a figure I'd already painted in metal. I had an idea to use both for the dungeon crawl I'm running later this month, so I painted the wizard up in a different color scheme.

Reaper Scorpion, Bones Warlord, and Bones Lizardmen

There's nothing like a deadline to kickstart my painting into high gear. I'm hosting a multi-person dungeon crawl at the end of the month, and using the intervening time to finish off a few lingering figures and dig in to my Reaper Bones pile.

 

This giant scorpion is a metal figure by Reaper I've had in the lead pile for close to a decade. I thought he'd make a good pet for this Mad Max barbarian warlord from the Bones kickstarter

I've found painting the Bones figures can be a bit tricky. The shallow detail can require more dedicated attention when painting. These lizardmen were a different story. They're still Bones, but for some reason I found painting them up a joy.

I slopped on a coat of Spicy Mustard, applied some Vallejo Gunship Green and went to town with various green and brown washes. Maybe my eye was more forgiving to variations in lizard skin texture and color, but I was able to get these guys up to a reasonable standard in half the time I expected. They were a lot of fun to paint up, and with their low cost I'm thinking of picking up dozens more for a fantasy lizard army.

Reaper Bones Kobolds

I polished off a dozen kobolds from the first Reaper Bones kickstarter. Their small size made their details feel even shallower than some of the other Bones figures I've painted up, but the wash helped pull out their features. I still felt like I was guessing when picking out things like their teeth, but they should be serviceable as dungeon chumps for the players to cut down.

I glued them to washers and extended the dungeon floring they were standing on with some milliput sculpted to look like flagstones. I suppose they turned out ok, but I looking forward to getting back to some metal or plastic historicals next.

Easing back into painting with Reaper Bones Beetles

We're moved in, the holidays have wrapped up, but I'm still unpacking and setting up our new house. Happily, I managed to get a bit of painting done: a pair of Reaper Bones beetles. Not too impressive, but it's nice to be able to get back to the hobby finally.

George and Ringo

Reaper Goblins in their Fall Collection

I've spent the last few weeks applying my creative skills to my son's Halloween costume rather than figure painting, but I managed to finally polish off these goblins to join my earlier Halloween Reaper Bones figures.

I had some challenges with this group. The milliput I used to extend the flagstone bases didn't dry properly and needed to be replaced, the reposing using the hot water technique failed to set, and the detail and sculpting on these figs was still pretty shallow. Once I got to painting though, things moved rapidly. I have a ton of greenskin goblins in storage, so I opted for a slightly different color scheme for these guys.

In any case, I was happy to get them finished and they turned out well enough for tabletop skirmishes. And with these figures wrapped up I'll likely be going on a brief painting hiatus. Our new home has finally been completed, we have a settlement date, and I expect to be moving out of our temporary residence within the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to unpacking all of the figures, games and terrain currently in storage and getting back to rolling dice soon!

Flesh and Bones. More Halloween Reaper figures

I dug out a few more horror themed figures from the Reaper Bones pile. First up, a Frankenstein-esque flesh golem, cobbled together from a variety of corpses.

Flesh Golem

"C'mere, give us a hug."

Another extremely bizarre pose, and despite the flexible Bones material, I was unable to contort his arms into anything more fitting. Maybe he should be throwing his arm around his best bro' Sasquatch.

I used three different skin tones: a cold gray, a dark chocolate and a grisly tan to suggest the creature was stitched together from at least three different corpses. Seams received a wash of dark Vallejo Game Color Charred Brown, with brighter red highlights. Stitches got a stripe of black to get them to pop, followed by a highlight of tan.

Arrius, Skeletal Warrior

This undead warrior was part of the Grave Danger set from the original Bones Kickstarter. I wanted to do something a bit different with his armor, so opted for a deep green coupled with a coppery brown for his cloak and trim.

This is a nice figure, a decent pose, and while his armor is a bit extravagant, it isn't covered in skulls or spikes. His cricket bat weapon is a touch odd, but I figure you could remove it and replace it with a sword or something.

More Spooky Reaper Bones: Vampire, Rat Swarm and Bat Swarm

I'm having fun picking out more of the Halloween Bones from last year's Kickstarter. Sticking to the theme is also helping me crank out some of the less interesting sculpts, like these swarms of rats and bats.

The mass of bats had some pretty shallow detail, and a confusing collection of wings, heads and bodies. I used some pretty stark gray drybrushing and a combination of brown paint and inks to pick out the furry bodies, but this still a pretty chaotic mini. If I had to do it again I might go for a pure comic book feel and pick out the bats in bright, blood red to give them a little character.

To match the flagstone bases of the giant rats, I sculpted some dungeon floors out of milliput for these rat swarms. It was fun! I started adding flagstone bases to a few other minis, and even picked up some sculpting tools. Hoping to break out the green stuff and do some more extensive sculpting, as even flagstone bases are tricky for me. Practice makes perfect.

For the vampire, I wanted to keep attention on the actual figure, so eschewed using bright colors on his cloak, saving the deep red for his armor (inspired by the design of Dracula's armor in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula movie from the 90's). Skin was a simple gray three tone with blue ink wash

I was tempted to add a glass of red liquid in that outstretched hand. "I never drink... wine."

I've been checking out the Bones II Kickstarter currently running, and I'm not quite as hot on it as the original. Reaper seems to be loading it up with miniatures that are pretty similar to the ones from Bones I. I might pick up a few of the individual add on figures, but with a stockpile of Bones figures on hand, I think I may pass on the core set.

How Ghastly! Reaper Bones Rats and Ghast

With all of my terrain building materials in storage, I'll need to postpone my celebration of Flocktober until a later date. Instead, to celebrate the Halloween season I've decided to knock out as many spooky Bones from the Kickstarter bundle I received this summer.

Reaper Ghast

This fella has some ropey musculature and a weird pose, but I think overall it's not a bad sculpt. The detail in the face seemed a bit soft, but we'll just chalk that up to decay setting in.

Reaper Rats

Rats don't seem too exciting, but these little guys have quite a lot of personality. I gave them a black undercoat, and hit their undersides and legs with lighter grays. Ears, paws, snout and rail got a base of medium brown. I picked out some ridges on their tales with a few stripes of pink and touched up their ears with the pink as well.

I'm expecting a shipment of the Dwarven Forge terrain and tried out some of Stefan's painting techniques on the flagstone bases of the rats. Black undercoat with a drybrush of dark gray, a few stones picked out in medium brown and then an overall drybrush of greenish tan.

So much kickstarting! Reaper just launched their second Bones kickstarter. I thought I could resist, but already I'm being tempted by the quirky monsters they are offering.

Reaper Bones: Zombies

Working through more undead, I painted up the zombies included in the Reaper Bones kickstarter box. Having read about the hydrophobic nature of the Bones material I decided to try a different technique with these shambling undead. I wasn't too fond of the two disco boogie undead, so didn't mind sacrificing them in the name of science.

I cut the raised arm away from the figure's head and then used the boiling water technique to reposition the hand.

I gave these guys a base coat of green brown, followed by a brown ink wash, and highlights of the original green brown and finally a mix of green brown mixed with a light flesh tone.

I chose not to thin my paint with water for the base coats on these figures to see if I could create a tighter bond of the paint to the Bones plastic. Unfortunately I think the thick paint ended up obscuring details and introducing unnatural clumpy texture to their skin. I continued to finish them as normal, but they wound up looking as if I had given them a hasty drybrush job.

While the painting experiment itself was a bust, these knock kneed zombies turned out to be great sculpts. My paint job didn't do them justice, and I'm hoping to pick up quite a few more to create a real horde of zombies.  The malformed rotten zombies didn't improve much in my opinion though, even after painting. Maybe they could be clipped away from their base and used as dungeon dressing?

Previous Articles: I've already written up a few articles about painting Reaper Bones. You might want to check out:

• Are Reaper Bones Any Good?
• Converting and Painting Reaper Bones
• Skeletons

Painting Reaper Bones for Newbies: Skeletons

Did you get your Reaper Bones shipment? Do you suddenly have hundreds of miniatures beckoning to be painted? I've seen a huge upswing in the number of new painters who have jumped into the hobby with the Bones kickstarter which is great, but I can see how tackling a project like this could be a little intimidating for folks new to the hobby. Since I'd be working on painting up my own Vampire package of Bones, I thought I'd share my thoughts and tips for anyone working their way through the mountain of plastic Reaper delivered to us.

I'm getting started with the Skeleton warband. My tips for getting started painting Reaper Bones after the jump.