Lost expedition - and a Kickstarter

A big game will be running over the next 30 days (or so), and I thought I'll chip in and paint a character for this huge game of archetypes, nobles and heroes, villains and thugs. Old enemies will clash but unknown enemies will emerge as well. Alliances will fall, new will be build.  Will the Old Empire, with such great history but blurry future, survive.

I'll call my character Dr. Jazza Bernard or simply "Doc J". The doctor is a humanist and an ideologist with the noble cause of saving the old world from itself. Jazza is a legendary explorer into the unknown and his now marching deep into unrevealed territories in search of a cure. Because the Old Empire is falling apart. The Empire has been infested by a disease that leaves the population confused and in great despair. Management is failing. There's a increasing authority distrust. Hopelessness has flooded the country. Common sense has gone...

Doc J is desperate trying to find a cure. But will he succeed? Will he find it? Will it work and most importantly, will he be in time?

Let the game begin 😁

Doc J is based on a Politico miniature from  Little Soldier Company/Dear Tony Blair-blog. This wonderful miniature is sculpted by Bob Olley.


Little Soldier Company: Corbyn, Bringer of Equality

MM90 Painting Countdown: 7

And the "Paint-a-ton" continues. More shields have arrived and I only got 6 left to do as Red Skull (down here) is now done.

As anticipated, this one here was a real struggle. I adore the Scull Faced Marauder Chaos Dwarf - but only at a distance. I can't say if it's just my copies (got two of them) or it's the MM90/2C miniature in general but close up, this is such a blurry miniature. Both mine suffers from the same faded out/soft details, nasty mould lines and not-existing textures, Impossible to clean and I hate two-dimensional painting on not-existing details 😖

But I don't want to waste anymore time on this dude. Red Skull is now painted, base is finished, shield attached ... done. Not overly happy with the result, but he can take a back-row set - for now ....


Marauder Miniature: MM90/2C Chaos Dwarfs 

New gun-line

Nothing really significant here, but more volunteers have how joined the Chaos Dwarf Grenadiers - finished a rank of five Ewal Dvergar with guns - all sculpted by John Pickford, of course.

To my surprise, they are actually the first Ewal Dvergar with guns I've done! I would have sworn I've painted more, but apparently not. So, rather than mixing these in with my old Citadels, Twisted Tales and my own first dodgy attempts of sculpting, this will become front rank in a new unit of ten gunners, I think. Should I add a musician and banner bearer? Hmm, maybe I should ...

Ewal Dvergar: EDC-04 Core warriors with guns

You can call me a "Perv"

This one is rather special.... 😍

So, some might recall my CJP-update back in October 2018 regarding a rare find. Back in August 2018 a good collector-friend of mine, Threadbare, sent me a link cause he had found an old Pickford-piece, but unknown to most.

After a bit of a search and few email I'd located the guy (George) behind the miniature, and rather that run away, George actually offered me a chance getting hold of a copy of : "Perv" - the Dwarf Slayer Beast Handler

You can read all about that story here and you'll find him on the Wikia-page here.

And it special today, because he's now painted 😊

MM90 Painting Countdown: 8

Though, I'm a sworn fellow of the "Haters of the Blue" (original phrase by Juan Hidalgo and if you don't know it go check out his awesome painting channel) I've challenge myself doing the next one in bright blue. Still struggle doing blues, but I'm more pleased with this one, than any previous attempts.
Another big problem is my camera, as its as bad at picking up blues, as I am painting it. The "lighten blue highligths ends looking very white, but they ain't as white as seen down here, really.

But here it is, the #MM90PaintingCountdown no. 8 - Mr. Light Blue

Marauder Miniatures: MM90/2D

MM90 Painting Countdown: 9

This was close. Got tricked by Sjoerd's comment about just moving back to the Netherlands and making an 90 year old house into a new home ...?... "bullshit!", I'd say. As soon as he had called the latest one he must have started painting it. And it ain't wall paint 😀

I worked this weekend on my piece and tried a few different things before taking the Spartan route, thought I had all the time in the world.
I finished it at noon, Sunday and while foliage and tufts were drying, I took wife and dog for a walk in the sunny weather (we finally had up here after weeks of raining). When I came back, I spend some time taking pictures and make a few light and size adjustment, but as I announced my finished piece on my "Garage-blog" @ CDO, late afternoon an email ticked in, with Sjored's finished piece. Immediately after, I posted my finished piece in the official "Paintaton" thread on CDO, guessing I came to late, but due to some technicality Sjoerd couldn't upload pictures from home (yes, CDO is one of those old forums, that needs external image hosting), and therefore an emails.
And I shall, of course, not tell him about using "blogger" from a smart phone, that would have hosted his images and then have used thos URLs to posted on CDO, hi, hi.😆

My "Garage blog" on CDO nor a personal email with attachments is not an officially announcement, but as I posted first in the "Paintaton" thread I technically, won this round -  with the announcement of "Leonidas" down here, on the official thread, first. But is only technically, so we shall call it a draw.

Marauder Miniatures: MM90/6d

Objective markers/loot counters

Today's update is rather small and the items often seen as unimportant, but when such items are sculpted by my all time favourite sculptor and comes from a company close to my heart, it deserves a place in the spotlight.

When I took delivery of my pre-ordered OSM Chaos Dwarfs Baggage Train it came with extra baggage and I've used those pieces for building two counters/markers for game purposes. Loo. ks almost like small diorama pieces, I'd say.

Oldschool Miniatures (OSM): Extra Baggage and elf captive

MM90 Painting Countdown: 10

Quit like this "one blog-post a day"-thing going one here, don't you? (I need more holidays staying home😊) - and there seems to be no end to this MM90 Painting Challenge revelation.. either 😊
But there actually is, because this is the last painted MM90 sitting here... for now. I still have 9 unpainted pieces laying here, but another two have just been prepared. The just called MM90/6d and the Marauder Chaos Dwarf Mage (MM90/1a), Sjored already had painted, before we kicked this off.

The one I'd show down here today was painted due to two continental guy communicating in a secondary language (English). See, before I call a challenge I usually ask Sjoerd what he has at hand. He was stationed in the Middle East, but his collection were in the Netherlands, so we were restricted painting those he had at hand. In one of our conversations he told me, not to pick: "hatchet man and sideswipe hammer man...". Probably it was lost in translation, but I took it as these two down here got ruled out. As I thought a Hatchet was a small axe meant to be used with one hand ... 😕

A pair of Sjoerd Trouwee sculpts converted and painted

And speaking of Sjoerd Trouwee's return... 😀

Those of you following his blog: Evil Little Buggers would already know this, but those who don't, here's something quite special. The started of a hole batch of new chaos dwarf sculpts 😮 Not seen since the days of Twisted Tales.

Recently, Sjoerd made a decision to finish what Aly Morrison started back in 1990 when he began creating the Marauder Miniatures MM90 - Chaos Dwarfs range - and that's to do a mini-me version of 27 specific Citadel Chaos Warriors - all sketched by Aly many years ago. You can ready all about the start of this journey here and you can follow progress on his blog and on CDO, here.

Sjoerd has complete four of the dwarfs already and he is currently working on another two - and I can't held off from showing them here as well - brilliant, brilliant works😍 Hopefully these will all be moulded and get cast.

So, offered the prospect of new Sjoerd Trouwee miniatures I've decided to start practising painting his sculpts (again).

MM90 Painting Countdown: 11

"What you don't know won't hurt you"? Now who said that? As this one hurts .... because Sjoerd actually do paint miniatures and he has painted the mini-Slambo already. Actually showed him off 45 days ago ...! What the .... !

Apparently this got posted on September 1st - on Sjoerd's blog

As you can see here: https://evillittlebuggers.blogspot.com/2019/09/mm-90-painting-countdown-14.html and also on CDO.

And how did I not know ...? Well firstly, because I'm not checking my blog-feed regularly (regularly enough), secondly, because Sjoerd didn't sent me a gloating email and thirdly, because for some strange reason CDO-Online has stopped notifying me ... again. I could probably come up with a hundred other bad excuses but lets face it, I lost. Sjoerd beat me on this one ... all due to my laziness.

Now I must get over it, and simply move on.

MM90 Painting Countdown: 12

Wow, that draw of the tiffin card really put this challenge on hold, didn't it? June 3th 2018??  Has it really been that long?

Not sure what has happened to Sjoerd. He has been extremely quite recently, but he did stop by wishing me a happy birthday, so I'm not really that concerned :-) He is a busy man, we know ..., and it has happened before and it will probably happen again.

And my own reasoning for not being around ... health ... yes, the chronicle pain took over, again.

I have this spinal cord stimulating system implant to ease the pains but as the impulse generator ran out of power during autumn 2018, it had to be replaced. The IPG replacement was planned for November 2018, I had high hopes, as it came with a new "burst" effect, and it should be very effective. The surgery came to plan but the effect was absent and it wasn't till May 2019 we actually found a programming that was helpful. But now it's here, and I'm doing great - and during summer I've found a lot more energy. So, with the coming of "darkness" (day length has decreased by more that 7 hours now and winter is coming) - it's time for staying indoor ... and try paint something - so with new-found painting mojo I'm determined to finishing this challenge.

So with no further ado ... let me present the 13th painted MM90 The MM90/1d. The attentive reader of this blog will know that this wasn't the next challenge. This one here was called in June 2018, but as Sjoerd didn't have him at hand, we went with MM90/1b, instead. But now that I had already prepared him and made him ready, it seemed rather straight forward, doing this one first. And also seemed fair giving Sjoerd more time to finish the MM90/1b first - ha, ha.
It's a Sjoerd speciality giving these guys names, but I usually stick with numbers, cause there's nothing wrong with numbers, right? Should I name him it would be something stupid lige Mr. Two-handed Mace dude ...

Marauder Miniatures: MM90/1D

Collecting John Pickford: Hell Awaits - wave 4

Devil Inside Productions is back with their 4th wave of the "Hell Await"s - again it's a KS crowdfunding campaign in support of their creation of a range of 28mm classic demons and other denizens of Hell all cast in resin.

John is hugely involved in this one as he has been sculpting 3 out of 5 pieces.

The 3 pieces are:

Devil Inside Productions: Xipe Totec
First one is Xipe Totec - Aztec Deity, the 'Flayed One'. Yes, a flayed human holding his skin suit. Probably some history behind this, that I don't know of, but it looks cool, I think.

©Devil Inside Productions

Riddler and Professor Pyg

- or what's left of him.

Don't know if it's just me, but after an "intensive" painting project (to my scale) with lots of creative thinking of new colour schemes, contrasting and harmony colours, colour temperature, focal points etc. I fell rather exhausted and it is often ending rather sudden and with a long hiatus from painting to follow. I like the creative process to a certain degree, but rather than finishing I begin to look into new projects with more unified colour schemes or just painting something more historical accurate - just like it happened with the MM90-Painting Countdown ending with painting the Jong-Un and Trump-proxy-figs, in spring 2018. It ended with a long hiatus anyway, but I'll blame the extreme warm summer we had up here for that, though. It wasn't lack of interest in continuing but the climate ruin my paints.

I did a few thing up to Christmas, but I haven't really painted anything, in 2019. Yes, I showed you the Ewal Wizards the other day, but they are actually paintings from around the same time as the Chaos Dwarf Baggage Train. So, not ending up in the same old habit I dug up another historical accurate miniature - or as close as it comes, when you are painting the dwarven Politicos sculpted by Bob Olley (and available from The Little Soldier Company). Cause, I picked up the David Cameron - or more precis, the Underking David, Pursuant of Charm and his Demonic Familiar to paint.

©David Wood

Colour of Magic

About a year ago (December 2017) John began sculpting me a pair of wizards that I could use for my Ewal Dvergar venture.
Like always, the project ended up like a jigsaw puzzle with lots of heads and hands to play around with and it's take a bit of time getting it all finished. But the miniatures has finally been cast up and its time to show you all, what I did to them.

So here the are - the brand new Ewal Patriarch and Acolyte - and if you'd like to see more, take a look here: http://claminiatures.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-castings-has-arrived.html


Ewal Dvergar: EDP-30 Acolyte