Ape Attack!

Here's an interesting trio. They were a part of the Reaper Miniatures "Bones 4" Kickstarter, labeled as "Ape Attack." As of yet, they are not available separately. They are available as "Ape Lord" and "Killer Apes (2)."

This is General Simius, immortal supervillain. Empowered by a Roman alchemist's potion, Simius gained intellect, size, strength, and immortality. After a brief tenure as a gladiator, then a general, Simius liberated himself from his Roman masters and has spent the last 1800 years studying the arts of war and alchemy. While he's been unable to replicate the potion that created him, he's had limited success in uplifting other apes with lesser versions of his own powers.

Here we have Formido. He's a big ole fella.

The paint scheme for these guys is quick and simple. Over a black base coat, the fur got two drybrush passes of grey. I love these big critters with a lot of drybrushing area.

The skin is a mix of blue and grey. Teeth and nails are beige.

The eyes are tiny little points of white. Actual gorilla eyes are brown and black, but I can't really paint tiny eyes. The white dots give them an intense look. Also, a kind of crazy look.

Here is Pavor.

Originally, I was going to call these minions Deimos and Phobos, but I swapped over to the Roman equivalents (which I had previously not known the names of).

Pavor's the more bestial, aggressive minion. He's a real terror on the battlefield. I considered kitbashing a few human minions as well, but it turns out I don't have any Roman legionaires left to give assault rifles. Oh well, maybe someday.

Now, usually I forget to take size comparison shots when I do these big miniatures. This time was no exception. So I went back and set up a few minis to show General Simius' size. He's on a 50mm base while the smaller guys are on 25mms.

Here's a meeting of some league of supervillany. Looks like the "league of holding up weapons in your right hand."

 

Dr. Singh

This is a "Reaper Miniatures Savage Worlds Bones 'Deadlands: Noir Patent Scientist.'" That's a mouthful.

I'm thinking I can use this one as a superhero/supervillain. He's got a cool blaster, kind of steampunk-looking.  Overall, just a nice model. For now, I'll call him Dr. Varad Singh.

I went with a red, along with various earth tones. The metal bits are bronze and brass. There are a handful of blue accents just to make it pop.

Mercenary and Monster Hunter

Here we have two largely unrelated figures. First, we have another member of the Coinpike mercenaries. She's another doppelsoldner with a zweihander, but unlike the previous one, she's wearing armor. She could also be an alternate captain for the company.

I think the face came out really well. She looks angry. She's going to ruin's somebody's day.

Everything but the head is from the Warlord Games landsknecht sprues. The head is from the Female Survivors sprue from Project Z.

The paint job leans into the red of the company colors, limiting the amount of green. The colors may look a little busy, especially with the dirty blonde hair, the bronze armor and the steel sword, but it works.

This brings us up to six total members of the Coinpikes.

Secondly, we have another monster hunting member of the wardens. This is a Reaper mini, one of the three from their "Women of Dreadmere (3)" pack.

While I like the pose, the actual molding is really soft and a little awkward. The face, especially, has a "potato-esque" quality, not helped by my mediocre paint job. It's good enough for the table, but it's not great.

Aside from the blue coat, she's got purple clothes and some steel armor(?) for color. I'm really not sure what those metal scales are supposed to be. Is there more armor under her outfit? Is it just decorative?

While these pictures don't show them side by side, the warden is about a head taller than the mercenary. The 28mm heroic scale Reaper miniatures look kind of ridiculous next to to 28mm true scale historical minis.

Star Spawn

Spara realizes that shopping at Discount Scroll Warehouse may have downsides.

Here we have some type of eldritch monstrosity like a star spawn from the Cthulhu mythos. This is a Reaper Bones model that they call "Eldritch Demon." It's on a 60-65mm base. (For scale, Spara is on a 25mm base.)

This model has been basecoated solid green forever (since forgotten aeons, really), but a few quick drybrushed layers, a light wash on some of it, and a few picked out details finished it off.

I'm glad it's finally done. Projects are not dead which can eternally lie half-completed.

Spara Cagleoni

Here we have Spara Cagleoni, battle wizard, fire specialist, and planeswalker.

This was a fun little build that turned out pretty well. You can see an early stage of design to the right, held together by sticky tack.

• The majority of the figure is from Warlord Games Landsknecht sprues. The main body is from the missile troops sprue, while the metal right arm and matching plastic left arm are from the Landsknechts with Zweihanders box. The weapon was originally a halberd, but I cut off the main blade and painted it up as a staff/spear. The spell component pouch on her hip is also from one of the Landsknecht sprues.
  

• The head is from the Warlord Games Project Z Female Survivors sprue. 
  

• The heater shield on her back is from the Frostgrave Soldiers box. She seemed a bit bland with nothing on her back, and none of the backpacks felt right. I guess she picked up shield proficiency somewhere along the line.
  

The staff/spear came out as the focal point of the build. Being a battle wizard, a simple staff of power doesn't quite cut it. Spara's staff has a foot-long blade at the end that burns white hot. She might run out of spells (eventually), but she'll never run out of spear. In Dungeons and Dragons terms, given she's a high level wizard, I'd probably say it's a custom job that counts as a Staff of Power with +3s instead of +2s that also deals an extra 2d6 fire damage per hit. It probably also gives a damage bonus to fire spells. Let's call it "The Firebrand Staff," a legendary spear.

In terms of the paint scheme, it's pretty straightforward. Grey clothes with red accents. The tip of the spear is the only really interesting bit, paint wise. It's a simple blend coming up from red, through orange and yellow, to the white tip. I think the blend works pretty well. The metal on the staff is bronze metallic paint.

The shield bears the heraldry of a group that Spara works with, the Chargarde Veterans. My freehand skills aren't great, but the shield gets the point across.

In addition to being a great choice for an RPG character, she could clearly be a wizard in Frostgrave.

Mercenary Pavise Crossbowmen

These poor soldiers of fortune have been sitting in various stages of completion on my desk for months now. Partly because I haven't been painting much, and partly because of trepidation regarding a new technique. (I'll get to that in a moment.)

This is a pair of mercenary pavise crossbowmen. Mounting large shields on their back gives them cover while they reload, letting them shoot others while being less likely to get shot themselves. Win-win!

They're members of my Italian-esque "Red Hart Company," hence the red deer on their shields. Obviously I'm not particularly skilled at freehand, especially on such a small scale, but I think the emblem gets the point across.

As mentioned, I tried something new for these guys. I got a box of some 300 tiny rare earth magnets, 2 mm in diameter and 1 mm thick. Often people drill into models and use hidden magnets to allow for swapping arms or heads, but I used them to attach the shields. So, these guys don't always have to bear the burden of their pavises on their back if they want to take a break. Here's a picture of their backs without the shields (below).

A mockup with a random online emblem.

Because I mounted them on the surface, the magnets are obvious, but they're small enough that they don't detract much from the models. I really like them! I may have to get a 2mm drill and try making swappable arms sometime.

As a final side note, I've discovered that I accidentally installed the magnet pairs in opposite orientations. The unintended side effect is that each soldier can only use their own shield. They find using their mate's magnet to be... repulsive.

Slasher

I decided to speed paint a figure tonight and pulled out a Project Z miniature. I'd previously started this guy, but I mangled his face pretty bad with some thick paint, so I covered everything in black and started over from primer. Immediately, given his pose and messed up face, I decided he should be a slasher movie villain. The finished product is probably about an hour's work.

The face paint/mask reminds me of the characters in We Happy Few, though that wasn't intentional. He also appears to be wielding Gordon Freeman's crowbar, since all crowbars should have that color scheme.

Not bad for a quick, unplanned project. No idea what I'd use him for, but I guess he could also be a supervillain. You can never have too many supervillains.