Collecting John Pickford: Ants are coming

Otherworld Miniatures has announced their release of the Giant Ants - all done by John Pickford.

I've posted some of the greens previously, but all the 5 different ants are now ready and up for pre-ordering.

At the site you'll find them in two blisters - a pack of 3 Worker Ants and a pack of 2 Soldier Ants. The Ants are also available in a swarm pack with 16 ants in total (12 workers and 4 soldiers).

Otherworld Miniatures: DV6a - Giant Worker Ants (3)

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Otherworld Miniatures: DV6b - Giant Soldier Ants (2)

Shop-link

All the ants are beautifully painted by Andrew Taylor. Some cool paintings on some very well sculpted miniatures. Great job, guys.

See ya' all, soon .... :-)

MySAGA - part 1

And now to something completely different ..... :)

Not sure if its due to my age, being Danish (old Norse), fascination of the Viking Age i general or "simple" just because it's a darn fine game, but I've - like Blue in VT put it - "been bitten by the saga bug...".

The last few months I've picked up all the SAGA books (sold from Gripping Beast) and pulled out some old books about the Norse Sagas and Danish History and started studying. Also gone through the lead pile and found some Viking miniatures picked up long ago from Foundry - but also added some new ones from Crusader Miniatures - all miniatures are sculpted by Mark Sims.

So over the next months you might be seeing something a bit different now and then :)

Don't really think SAGA needs any introduction, but SAGA is a skirmish game for miniature warriors set in the Viking Age (Dark Age) when strength and bravery were worth a thousand men. But if you want to learn more about the game - check out the various blogs and forums out there ... :)

Enough about the awesome game. This is a painting blog so what have I been doing.

First, I've prepared the men I'll be using for my first practise games - so aiming to have a 4pt army done within the next few months.

The starter army will be

Warlord (incl. a musician filler)
2 x 4 Heartguard (Hirdmen) - Armour, hand weapons, shields
2 x 8 Warriors (Bondi) - un-armoured, some will have helmet, spear and shield

So started with the bulk of the Warband the "Warriors" - all build from some old Foundry's, sculpted by Mark Sims.

Wargames Foundry: Vikings

And here raiding the British Isles :)

But that's not all. Also preparing for some terrain. Started small so have started building a Pit House. Those that "like me" on Facebook, would already have seen this, but here is some WIP and the finished piece.


Pit House (Homemade - WIP)

Finished Pit House

Was a lot of fun building - and pretty sure you'll see more like this during the winter :)

Collecting John Pickford: Interloper Miniatures - Cast in Ruin

The Interloper Miniature - Cast in Ruin Campaign is going into its final hours - and what better way to finish this (perhaps a bit overlooked) campaign by showing the (almost) finished "Smart Bug" by John Pickford:

Concept Art by Toren Atkinson

John's WIP

And then Legion McRae has confirmed that John - also - will be sculpting the "Lurching Lizards" range. No greens yet, but we have seen these promising concept pieces (again done by Toren Atkinson):

Shooty Lizard

Netty Lizard

Grabby Lizard

Should be very suitable for most retro Sci-Fi gaming, I think ;-)

Clam's Minis: Grenadiers

And finally, found time for a bit of painting myself. Brush Slave League, Season 1 (@chaos-dwarfs.com (CDO) is coming to an end - and for the final round theme was "Thank you, CDO".

CDO has been kind enough to let us (the painting-o-holics) borrow their forum for our first season - and thought what better way to say thanks then dedicate the last round  to our beloved Chaos Dwarfs. So for this final round I choose to do the 3 Grenadiers that I've sculpted myself and cast up when I started the Ewal Dvergar-project.

And here they are:

Clam's Minis: Ewal Dvergar Grenadiers

And here is a few more shots of them, that will probably find it's way into the Ewal Dvergar-blog some day, too - should they ever return ;-)

Collecting John Pickford: Impact Miniatures Star Player - part 2

As promised a few days ago, I'd post pictures of my metal fantasy football Zoat variant (done for Impact! Miniatures) when it arrived.

Arrived today and here is the pictures

Impact! Miniatures: Zoat the Bibbisaur

The sculpt is as great as the Sci Fi version and the new pose is fantastic. And as the shoulder guard and knee pad are all separate pieces it will be so easy converting it into a traditional fantasy miniature. Think I might try that :)

And a little side bonus ...! When John did the changed to the Zoat, "Axiom" had him turning the original carried Eldar casualty into a separated miniature. Meant for his own private use - but he has - kindly - let me have a copy of it.

Cast in resin and looks like this:

The Gaming Cantina: Eldar Casualty, helmet variant

Wonderful :) - and thanks, Axiom - that was very kind of you :D

Collecting John Pickford: Otherworld Giant Ants

Oterworld Miniatures has just posted pictures of new Giant Ants on their forums.

The pre-view shows work in process shots of two ants in a range of five.

Otherworld Miniatures: Giant Ants

These two are Warrior-class ants and are approximately 30mm long. Now thats some big monsters that will be very useful in lots of different settings and genres, I'm sure.

Also to be found in this range will be 3 smaller Worker-class ants - approximately 20-25mm long. John is currently working on these and hopefully we'll soon see some WIPs, soon.

No release date yet, but I would expect to see them in store early next year.

Collecting John Pickford: Impact Miniatures Star Player and Interloper Miniatures

Yes, I'm finally back and today I have a few announcements to make :)

First, ..

Impact! Miniatures: Zoat the Bibbisaur

About a year ago, I posted pictures of a certain Sci-fi Lizard Centaur (aka an Eldar bodyguard Zoat) done for the Gaming Cantina ("Exoditejon"/"Axiom"). The miniature was originally a limited edition miniature for an annual Gaming Event held by the Gaming Cantina, but afterwards John has been converting it into a Fantasy Football character.

The FF Zoat version has now been picked up by Impact! Miniatures and cast in metal. The miniature is available from the Impact! Miniatures site - and can be found in their "Pro Player Minis"-section, under the name: Zoat the Bibbisaur.

There aren't any pictures of the finished and painted model on their site, yet! Nor have I got hold of my copy yet, so I can only share the picture that was posted in the "what's at Tom's desk" thread on the Impact! forum - but that's better than nothing, right ;-)

Wonderful version of the Zoat that easily can be converted into a classic fantasy settings, I think.

And will - of course - post pictures of the metal version when it finds me.


And secondly, we have...

Interloper Miniatures: Termites/Bugs

The first crowd-funding project involving John Pickford's sculpts has seen the light of day. Would have loved to see his name in the Otherworld Dungeon Adventures-campaign, but that was unfortunately not going to happen.

But then came the Interloper Miniatures project along .......

"Interloper Miniatures - Cast in Ruin" is a campaign to fund a dozen 28mm scaled metal miniatures for use in post-apocalyptic role-playing and tabletop skirmish games. Not really that exciting until you actually see the concept arts for them - as they are certainly one of a kind - and no way they can be called typical (post-apocalyptic) miniatures. The range will consists of ..... Rabbits, Lizardmen, Fowls and bugs/termites - most of them armed with guns :-)

Here is the conceptual art piece from the opening of the campaign - and it gives you a good impression of what you can expect from their campaign:

The project involves quite a few famous sculptors - and in here you'll find names like Bob Olley, Paul Muller and then - of course - John Pickford.

And it can't really come as a surprise that monster specialist John Pickford will be doing the bug-creatures/termites seen here on the right hand site. Certainly the type of miniatures that you would expect to see John do - especially after the many Otherworld Creepy Insectoids/Monsters.

Here is WIPs of one of the three bugs John will be doing:

The different campaign-perks will give you set of 3 miniatures from each of the races. And should you like getting the Pickford's - the $15 "Buuuuugs"-perk is the one to aim for.

And while there don't forget to check out the Fowl sculpt - done by Mr. Bob Olley. It's certainly worth a look (and some spare cash), too.

Darn, don't you just hate crowd-funding's? ;-)