Fantasy Painting Challenge VI: Orcs, Part 1

 This is the only post of the latest fantasy painting challenge. Its not a work in progress post because they are done. 

It was a last minute challenge. Even though my friend proposed another challenge, neither of us seemed overly enthusiastic about it and it almost seemed like it didn't matter what we painted. I was still in the armored warrior mood after painting those fighters, so I picked orcs. A whole bunch presented themselves on the Reaper website, but a set of two stood out (those are the two in the middle of the pictures). I then fell in love with a rather fetching female half orc, so she had to be included. In my order, Reaper threw in a freebie plastic orc archer. So, my buddy is getting four orcs. Here they are:

The creative juices really got flowing once I got them from Reaper. It took me about a week to get them done even with my usual limited amount of free time. 

My challenge was to try to make the armor and weapons rusty. I was somewhat timid and didn't heap on the rust colors, but between using a brown wash on top of the usual one I use for iron-based metals and sparingly adding tiny dots of various shades of red-brown did the trick. 

The part 2 of this challenge will be my friend's interpretation of the orcs. 

Another Game of Scifi Carnage

 My wife went for a few weeks in February to visit family in China, so the boy and I had time to ourselves. This meant lots of eating out a restaurants and watching cartoons and Disney+. 

We managed to get a game. As usual, it was a scifi battle. I really wanted to use all the fantasy and medieval figures I've been individually basing for Dragon Rampant rules. But it was scifi or no game at all. 

The battle consisted of opposing sides rushing each other. There was a loose objective where I had to protect the president of the Galactic Union from the bad guys. Here are a few pictures I took.

Machine gun armed recon vehicle makes an appearance.

The president of the Galactic Union and his
bodyguard await the impending doom

As usual, the cyborgs and their xenomorph "pets" managed to overwhelm the combined efforts of the Galactic Union alliance. Even the mysterious alien Rocky with is powerful laser beam eye could not make ad difference. He went down fighting with all the rest. Perhaps a mecha on the good guys side rather than a small scout vehicle might have turned the tide. 

As a change of pace, I used the felt game mat that I bought years ago. It added a little touch to the battlefield and removed the need for measurement. 

Checking out 3D printed 15mm from Etsy

 There are a lot of interesting miniatures out there that can be printed, but until I take the plunge and buy my own 3D printer, I need to buy them pre-printed. I have already bought a lot of mostly aircraft, but lately I've been looking at fantasy figurines. Etsy seems to have a lot of shops that will print off figures, but most are in the 28mm to 32mm scale for TTRPG or in 10mm that is the latest craze. I came across one shop that had the license to print off various files and was willing to print off those pesky 10mm at 15mm. Unfortunately, I lost the packing slip and I can't seem to find the shop on the website. All I remember is that they are out of Poland.

I ordered these various foot troops.

They seem a little on the small side, but I will make a comparison once I've removed them from their stilts and base them. My big worry with all these printed miniatures is the possibility that things like thin weapons will get easily broken. Maybe some day they will make a printer resin that is like what Reaper Miniatures uses for their plastic figures that is reasonably hard but more flexible. 

As I recall, they weren't all that expensive compared to some of the other Etsy shops that sold comparable minis. The delivery time from Poland wasn't that bad either. Lately, some of the orders I've made from the UK seem to take forever. 

I will paint some of them up and see how they match up to existing 15s.