My entries, round by round, with ruminations and what the minis actually are:
Round 1: It Came from the Smog, Take 1
Gothic Horror themeI called it “It came from the Smog, take 1”, had to keep it short because of the 30 character limit to the title. Anyway, “Vampires in the mist” had more of a jungle vibe to it. Since the first round had the optional theme of Gothic Horror, it made more sense to keep it more 19th century urban.
I originally had done another group of minis for this round, but they were a bit lackluster and the photos did not turn out too well. Then I chanced upon the film crew minis which sparked off some ideas for a scene for the team.
Now, I have absolutely no scenery that might fit this theme, so I opted for the simple but effective cotton wool fog or smokebomb-look. The placement of the minis says the rest, a film shoot.
The colour schemes on the Victorians are inspired by the “town walk” outfits of Mina and Vlad in 1992 movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Minis used:
Reaper Miniatures Bones 77631 Vorvorlaka
Reaper Miniatures Bones 80068 Victorians
North Star Military Figures Pulp Heroes: PHP01 The Film Crew
Round 2: Raising Livestock 
These minis are primarily from Bears Head Miniatures, the 2017 kickstarter “March of the Dead”. The leftmost one, however, is a repainted and rebased Mage Knight mini.
I painted the whole lot in a flurry of sudden panic the day before I was to send in the pictures for the first three rounds of the league as I discovered that I was lacking a team. Luckily, zombies are very forgiving when it comes to sloppy painting.
All the bases are bespoke 3D printed.
Bears Head Miniatures:
Rude Skeleton
Undead Horse 4
Undead Cow
Undead Sheep
Zombie Pig
Mage Knight Whirlwind: Zombie Hound
Round 3: Whoops, I did it again!
I think this is the first time I have set an overt tableau using terrain in the story like this, and in hindsight there are things I would have done slightly differently to emphazise and make it clearer what story exactly it is supposed to tell. For example, I should have placed the background piece slighty more to the left or more askew, placing the beam directly over the fallen figure , and the guard on the right should have been rotated to look at the action. Also, I was struggling to get a clear picture, as the edges always were out of focus. I originally had two more minis in the party here, but had to reduce the numbers because of this as I did not have time to find out what settings I needed then and there. I have since looked into this and I hope I have found better settings for future photography.
The story here might not be immediately apparent, so here goes: The “I” character is the shieldbearer in the middle, who has the hapless task of carrying the chief/king/bossdwarf/master around on a shield. And he has let the master brain himself on a crossbeam of the tunnel they were moving through. With the companions looking on in annoyance and consternation, the annoyance supposedly conveying that this is not the first time this has happened.
I did not have a large enough loose shield part, so the shield used in the photo is a round and curved piece I designed in Tinkercad and printed out for this. I used some plastic putty to smooth out the worst of the printlines.
Models used:
Oathsworn Miniatures:
King Kazgar's bearer
King Kazgar's right side bodyguard
Dead (Drunk) Donald McFiggin
Morag McFiggin
and
Lead Adventure Miniatures:
The Lorekeeper
in addition:3Dprinted terrain elements:
The Mine Plateau from EC3's Skyless Realms series
3 different Goblin Grotto walls from Printable Scenery's Clorehaven and the Goblin Grotto series.
Round 4: AUGH! The Great Pumpkin Came!
In homage and reference to the longstanding Peanuts theme of Linus sitting alone in the Pumpkin Patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come bringing gifts, Santa Claus-style.
It’s a pity for him that Halloween is all about the scary…and the Great Pumpkin probably is not a very nice being.
The miniatures are all by Reaper, the fences are from Mantic’s Kings of War Vanguard terrain. I found the simplicity of the fences really helped to sell the story here. As one of the commenters in the LPL-post stated: “Less is more”.
Linus is from a pack of three minis called “Townsfolk: Modern Children”, in the Chronoscope line. This model comes on a skateboard, which I cut away. The security blanket is rather ineptly “sculpted” by me in so-called brown stuff. This is the first time I used that putty and it was much more soft and floppy than expected before it set. At least I managed to avoid fingerprints.
Linus is usually clothed in a red t-shirt with thin black stripes, black shorts and brown shoes, I had to adapt it a bit as the model is wearing a jacket. The setting and the blanket should still make him recognizable.
The thin black stripes are drawn on with a fine tipped pen. The ink is a bit more reflective than I would like, leading to a lot of bright spots in the pictures.
The Great Pumpkin, aka The Bonesylvanian Jack. Bonesylvanians are a series of superdeformed / Chibi horror-themed Bones miniatures made by Reaper. I believe they were first seen as add-ons in the Bones 3 kickstarter. I bought this one for this entry. It was actually quite fun to paint.
The three Grave Minions are from the Graveyard Expanion of the Bones 3 KS. I painted them in the colours of the three munchkins from the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie.
The Pumpkin Golem mini is cast in one piece, and therefore a bit flat. To fill out the base, I added some pumpkins I downloaded from thingiverse and printed out.
Of course, there should have been vines going to all the pumpkin tops, but there wasn’t time and I think it might just have muddled the impression a bit by making it too busy.
In all honesty, it looked a bit patchy until I added some of my autumn flock.
Reaper Miniatures:
50042: Townsfolk Modern Children
77604 Bonesylvanians: Jack
77537 Grave Minions (3)
03377 Rotpatch, Pumpkin Golem
Round 5: We are Ogres with RE nor OR!
Just the minis themeOgres from the classic 1980’s C23 series sculpted by Jes Goodwin, Supreme God of Sculptors. They were purchased sometime around the dawn of time and has languished in the Drawers of Doom™ these many latter years.
These were really fun to paint. There is something about the simplicity of oldhammer minis that really appeal to me, the characterful sculpts have clear, deep detailing and are not too busy like many modern minis are.
I have been fixing to paint these up and use them for an Ogres army in Kings of War for ages. I do have a few more of these, plus a bunch of the similarily sized Mantic Ogres waiting for paint, and in some cases even to be built, Maybe the release of third edition can spark me to actually make a list and dig out the minis for it, and hopefully even paint them up so I have a workable army ready to rumble.
This set of minis also won me a golden button at ontabletop.com as I started a project for the ogre army after the round was done.
Round 6: Bring Out Your Dead!
I envision this as a wandering band who collects the dead. Sometimes they need to make ther cargo dead first. Being death warmed over themselves, they do not know what else to do with their unlives.
The main piece is the Corpse Cart, a plastic model from the old Warhammer Fantasy Battles Vampire Counts, or Age of Sigmar Death – Legions of Nagash faction, (and maybe others).
The astute reader will spot that there are bits missing, such as the bell, torches and/or fire pot. This is what can happen when you buy stuff second hand and prebuilt off ebay. What you see is what you get, bits might be broken off and alternative parts of the original kit are rarely included. They are often fixer-uppers as well. Luckily the missing bits are not really essential to the model.
I do not have the official base, so I made one for it and printed out in 70x105mm.
I actually have the original metal version of this (painted and with thick gloss varnish, and somewhere in storage) This is a small cart pulled by a skeleton ox, with a wraith driver, a pile bones in the back and with large cartwheels made of bone. The new version is much larger, and features zombies instead of skeletons.
Not much more to say, The corpse cart was rather sloppily built and had several broken pieces, so I had to pull it partly apart to get at mould lines and to put it better together. Since I bought it several years ago it has languished in the Boxes of Doom™ only to be rescued for the LPL. Inspiration is key to get things properly done.
For the LPL I wanted to do the zombies below, and this corpse cart afforded the perfect accompanying piece for them.
The Zombies are from the C18 Undead Zombies and Undead Samurai lineups by Citadel Miniatures mid 1980s.
Round 7: Pride and Joy
Being a nice walk in the park for the Lovecrafts.
The miniatures are from a recent 2019 kickstarter by Bear’s Head Miniatures, apart from the large Star Spawn that is from the game Cthulhu Wars by Petersen Games (available in resin from Fenris Games). One of the kickstarters for that game had an option for one each of the miniatures extra, and this one is from that set. I hacked off the moulded base it originally came with so I could have similar style bases for the whole family.
Notice the belly buttons on some of the puppies. Star Spawn are mammals? Sanity check required! Ah. Aha. Ahahahahahahaha!
Round 8: Short Wart's Cohort Mort
Being a band of bony retribution soon to cross the Brandywine and come a-knocking on little round doors under the hills.
Short Wart, or to present his given name “Martram Slyberry, Halfling Necromancer“. This mini is from Oathsworn Miniatures’ 2013 Heroes kickstarter, delivered back in 2014.
–
Martram was always the strange boy, shorter than the other children and bullied to boot. They called him Short Wart. One day he had been chased around again, he sought refuge in the Old Barrow Woods where the other children were too afraid to go. Whilst hiding in a hollow beneath a blackened, giant dead oak he heared strange whisperings. Entranced he crawled deeper into the hollow, pushing past tangles of roots to find a cave of sorts, with a Big One skeleton holding a small ball. Drawn to the ball as if in a dream, when he took it, the world exploded in all colours then black.
He woke up knowing everything. The ball was his friend, The ball would grant him power. The ball would let him get even. The ball was his Pal.
Pal wanted to see, so he picked up a likely piece of the Black Oak’s roots, the rootlets on the end bending to grasp Pal like a claw, forming a staff just his height.
Pal wanted out of the cave, and with a puff of bright green smoke showed him how to make the Big One skeleton move and dig.
They emerged to the night, Pal leading the way deep into the woods, the skeleton shuffling silently behind. After walking for several nights they came to a clearing in the forest. Short Wart could feel it. This was a place of true power. Here there had been many deaths in times gone by. Here lay the bones of fallen warriors…and something larger.
He could hear Pal speaking to him inside his head: “You always wanted to see an Oliphaunt…oh, we have such sights to show you!”
Most of these skeleton minis are from the same second hand purchase where I got the zombies that were featured a few rounds ago. I got the incomplete undead mammoth off Ebay several years ago, and Short Wart himself is an Oathsworn Halfling Necromancer. All minis have been given 3D printed bases, most of them 25mm.
The models are:
Oathsworn Miniatures: Martram Slyberry, Halfling Necromancer
Grenadier Miniatures: War Mammoth of the Undead Legion
Zol from the C18 Undead Samural range by Citadel Miniatures. mid 80’s (found in the 1986 catalogue)
Gunner from the C17 Skeletons range by Citadel Miniatures. mid 80’s (found in the 1987 catalogue)
Wanderer from the C17 Skeletons range by Citadel Miniatures. mid 80’s (found in the 1987 catalogue)
a “cast your own skeleton” model, by Prince August, mid 1980s. (Sold as moulds, not figures)
the howdah crew and the rest of the skeletons are
North Star Military Figures: FW1004 Skeletons (many of which also have been available from Harlequin Miniatures back in the day)
Round 9: Susie and the Snow Goons! RUN!
In homage and reference to the seminal comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Here we have Calvin’s instantly recognizable wierd snowmen, and Susie, his neighbor/friend/schoolmate and part-time nemesis in addition to Calvin and Hobbes themselves.
I made Susie's santa hat in plastic putty.
The Models:
Reaper Miniatures:
50042: Townsfolk Modern Children
03668: Tiger
03296 Monstrous Snowmen (3)
Ral Partha Europe:
XM1802 Sinister Snowman
Round 10: Band of Brothorks
America themeThe polish company MaxMini held a kickstarter called “The Green Alliance” back in 2014. These were very good looking Space Orks for 40k with WW2 US-inspired equipment, uniforms and vehicles. I did not pledge at the time, I honestly don’t remember why anymore. Maybe it was too expensive for me just then, maybe it had red flags up the wazzoo. Maybe something else entirely.
At any rate, when I came over a lot of minis from said kickstarter on the trade forum a couple of years ago, I seized the opportunity and secured the lot of 10 shoota boyz, a jeep, 10 grotz and a warboss. And since then they have been awaiting their time in the sun.
When the optional theme was announced, it was either these, some All Quiet on the Martian Front US forces or some Shadows of Brimstone cowboys and indians that immediately came to mind as fitting the bill. I looked at the different minis and was drawn to the Orks, so Orks it was.
Being bought second hand, the shootaboyz arrived assembled and undercoated black, while the jeep was undercoated green. The other minis were bare metal and resin and are yet to recieve some paint. Which might not be too far off now that the ball is rolling…
The infantry are in metal with resin heads. I opted to switch the original 25mm bases for more up to date 32mm bases, which involved some drilling and pinning. During this process some of the arms came off, and also a lot of the undercoat. The paint has chipped and rubbed off really easily on these minis so I suspect that they might not have been washed before the undercoat or something.
I probably should have scrubbed them and primed them anew, but did not think to do that until it was too late.
I have been very busy the last few weeks, as work has been picking up. I was afraid I might not have the time to finish the entry, so I concentrated on getting at least five of the minis plus the jeep done before moving on. Turns out I managed to get six of them done in time for deadline.
I have since finished the remaining four Ork Shootas.
The MaxMini Green Alliance kickstarter supposedly produced several other types as well as the aforementioned ones, such as close combat boyz, flyboyz, sherman-like tanks, walkers and half-tracks. However I have only seen a very few sets available at retail (not that I have actively been searching for them though). I had understood that the KS had been delivered, but see that some backers still claim that they never got their rewards. I do not know the details or facts of this.
I was saddened by the recent news that MaxMini is closing down. It seems that an overly amitious and successful kickstarter campaign might have claimed another small company. There are reportedly other reasons than the KS, yet again I do not have the facts.
At any rate, I love the minis as they have so much attitude and character. I would really like to get a hold of other models in the series.
--
I enjoyed participating, and even though it did become a bit of a slog towards the end, I am looking forward to next year's league.
You can see many more pictures of the models in the entries together with any others that I paint at my blog
https://themountainsofminis.com/
Welcome, Guest. Please 
April 19, 2024, 07:42:10 PM
