Rock Trolls

It is finals time at my college, and with the pandemic, it has been very chaotic. My "boss" the department chair, who was in the army for about six years says I am suffering from combat fatigue. Not to sound whiny, but the administration is so worried about the students' mental health...faculty, not so much. There's been nights where I'm up until midnight or so grading and there's been nights where after my parental chores, I say, "to hell with it!" and call it a night. On some of those nights, I've been doing a lot of painting. I seemed to have swung the pendulum back to fantasy figures. Maybe it was due to the painting challenge I had with an old college friend, or maybe it's just more relaxing to paint an warrior than a tiny AFV. Also, my focus has been on painting things so that my son can I can game. Little by little, he seems to be more interested. 

These are probably the fastest figures I've painted. Splintered Light rock trolls. I got them as part of a Kickstarter. I had no clue how I wanted to approach them, so I painted them gray and that was that. Maybe took about 20 minutes, if you don't count waiting for the wash and the the spray coat to dry, and then overnight to let the flock dry.

Numbering bases for 3mm armies

 This weekend, I started numbering units of my 1/600 armies for my Bovatopia campaign. I didn't get too far, but this is an example of how I'm indicating companies and platoons:

Three companies with four platoons each

Company of M48A5s

For my 1/300 microarmor, I number the infantry bases with numbers. These are too tiny to do that, so, I am using colors to denote company and a yellow tick mark to indicate platoon. I use Fist Full of TOWs organization of units. 

Dwarf Painting Challenge

 Facebook is a pretty good way of keeping up with old (real) friends. In fact, the whole reason why I signed up with Facebook, was to keep up with my friends from my graduate school days at the University of Kansas. I come to find out over time, that one of them is a big D&D gamer. Had I known that way back in the day, we probably could have did a lot of gaming. A couple of weeks ago, we challenged each other to a paint contest, or really a painting swap. We picked out a 28mm figure from Reaper Miniatures, painted it, and then sent it to each other. As I was ordering mine, I ran across another Dwarf who would make a nice companion/partner in crime/girlfriend. I thought I'd surprise my friend with this extra figure. Below are the results.

His miniature:

My miniatures:

He opted for a base of sand, which was courtesy of  Lake Eerie. The skull came from a GW set of a 100 skulls. I used MDF bases that I had lying around for a long time. I wanted a dungeon effect, so I used this rubber stamp that I had bought awhile back and pressed it into polymer clay. For best results, according to the company that makes the stamp, you are supposed to use Green Stuff. I don't have any, but the polymer clay work just as well. 

We ended up with different interpretations, though it was funny that I had originally thought to paint much of my dwarf's armor in blue metallic, but then decided not to go with that. I enjoyed the challenge, but it reminded me of why I don't game in 25/28mm scale anymore.