Bones everywhere!

I have to confess, I must have the adult version of ADD because I tend to be waist deep into a variety of projects instead of completing them one at a time.  I decided to try my hand at my first Reaper Miniatures Bones product with their Werewolf #77009 by Ben Siens.  First off wow what a great product in terms of price alone.  This miniature was a bank breaking $1.99 retail and I saved 10% off that as part of our hobby shops regular discount.  This harkens back to the old, old days of miniatures when you could go into a hobby shop and buy a loose Superior miniature for a buck or two!  I had to fight the urge to buy a half dozen of them at that price.  I have to be honest, their cost and level of detail are a couple of the reasons for me getting back into the hobby.  Not sure how this casting medium does with paint but I'm about to find out!

Here is a pre-opened shot of the miniature.  I'm a fan of the Weird West genre and have collected a variety of Old West miniatures over the years with the odd horror one here and there for those weird games.  That was the impetus behind this purchase

Here are some size comparisons left is a variety of Wargames Foundry Old West and Plains Wars miniatures.  On the right we have an old Citadel Night Horrors Lon Chaney-esque werewolf, a Horroclix werewolf, and the Reaper Bones.  I suspect that I will probably trim off the base to lower his profile on a slota-base.  That will come later.

Did a little online research and I went the wash it first rout with a little Dawn dish soap.  They are a bit pliable but nothing like the old soft plastic Airfix models.  I did notice it was a bit hydrophobic as i rinsed it off so we will see how the prime/base-coat goes.

I've primed it up in this picture, but not with any special product.  One of the attractions of  the Bones material was that it really supposedly doesn't require a dedicated primer.  So this is black paint straight put of the pot with just a hint of water to let it flow better since it is craft paint from Joann's.  It should be ready to go for finish paint.  I went with a black basecoat since I indent to highlight up the figure it seemed the most logical choice.  More to come!

Space Elves

I was a Warhammer/Oldhammer player and collector long before Rogue Trader 40,000 came out and to be honest I was never a fan of the fairy folk.  Not sure why, maybe I had too much of the greenskin aggression in me or tainted by a bit of the power of the warp.  Regardless I never found any elf models that really enticed me other than the old Melnibonéan range that evolved into the High Elf range.  Then 40K came out and the Space Elves were released putting the faey folk back on the radar. For those of you who aren't as grey or long in the tooth as me the initial Space Elves release of 12 miniatures would evolve into the Eldar and Dark Eldar ranges of today.

Design wise seem to be a sci-fi evolution of the Melnibonéan/High Elf/Silver Helm models with the command group being a direct take off of the "demon" faced Melnibonéan cavalry figures.  Take a look at Lancer 1 and Sword 2 and then Cmd Avele Swifteye below.

I enjoy the design, smoother lines without the bulk and hard edges of the Space Marines. As a wee lad I had a problem that I’m sure we all shared, very limited disposable income, which prevented me from indulging myself back when they were current releases.  I think I instead jumped into the RTB01.  But I digress, I managed to pick up an ebay lot of 8 on the cheap.  3 of which were weapons platform crewmen.  Initially I wasn't all that enthused by them but then inspiration struck.  "Why not use them as test figures for you color schemes?" I pondered to myself and this fellow was born.

Just playing around with some color selections.  I kind of like this one which is similar to one from Brian Ansell's collection as show over at Eldrich Epistles.  I'm still going to play around a bit and land on my first squad’s color scheme soon.  My intent being that each squad will have its own color scheme.  They are pirates/corsairs after all so I don't see the need to be uniform across the entire army!  Once I get these painted up I'll tackle a dreadnought or two from the earlier post.