They are all mad under the light of the Rent

~ Tonio ~ Leave a comment

I was able to sneak in some painting time last minute, just before the year ended, and get some henchmen done to add to my Doctors of the Ospedale for Carnevale. They are joining that poor Plague Doctoress that has stood alone for the whole year in the cabinet.

I finished a couple of Madmen, and a duo of Lab Assistants. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be using both of the latter at the same time, but I was already going, and it was simpler to just paint them together now than eventually come back to the second.

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Water under the bridge, and the floor…

~ Tonio ~ 2 Comments

Well, as much as I pledged to post a bit more often this year, Mother Nature didn’t agree with it. Our area got a historic level of rain happen at the beginning of August, and our basement flooded because of that. Luckily, we didn’t lose much, but it has been a long process to empty it out, dry and clean everything, renovate, and slowly move stuff back. We are not fully settled back in yet, but it’s finally moving at a steady pace, and I got back most of my hobby setup.

One positive side of that event was that in doing the rebuilding, we managed to create a closed office room for my work and hobby. It’s small, but I have a zone of my own now, which I am quite happy about. It’s also quieter than the playroom I was sharing with the kids, which is another bonus.

While all this was happening, I didn’t get much hobby done or games played. I managed to paint a bit some slower nights, on the corner of the kitchen table, but it wasn’t the most efficient way to do it. Also, without most of my material on hand, nothing was really done, as I still needed to varnish those, and even find some missing bases. It was not the best time for me as a hobbyist, I must say.

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The Hunting Pair

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I am slowly but surely adding terrain to my Carnevale collection. I’ll have to make a post about that eventually, when I have a full table worth of buildings done. I’m almost there, with only needing to use a couple cardboard buildings last game.

In the meantime, I took a break to paint some miniatures instead of terrain, adding a pair of new models to my list, to hunt the opponents of the Guild: a fisherman and an arbalest. We started to play bigger games, and this will let me swap out some models in between games. I did a quick modification to the fisherman, to match his card weapons, by adding a net to his hand, made with cheese cloth, white glue and bits of green stuff for the weights.

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First foray into the Rocavivas

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Now that I have enough Orphans painted for a small force, all they were missing was an opposing force. Since I initially got into the game with the Arbonte’s Menace two-player starter, I already owned the start of a Rocavivas army, which I reinforced with a faction starter back in the 2010s. I wasn’t looking at the rules when I bought them, but by a strange happenstance, both my collections come to about the same point size, so that was perfect.

The recent announcement by Zenit Miniatures that they are relaunching the game couldn’t have come at a better moment for me, as I was already invested in painting and trying the game. That also meant that I want to play it sooner than later, to know if I really like it, before they launch the upcoming Kickstarter project. That made me make the decision to try out painting the Rocavivas a bit faster than the Orphans, in a more army scale way, starting with a test unit of Kyanites.

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Dark Object

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The always productive Kawe from Westfalia Miniatures has just launched a new crowdfunding project for a sombre and gritty sci-fi game, and the models that go with it: Dark Object. I had the pleasure of painting a set of the preview models for it, so let’s take a look at them!

The models were hand-sculpted by Boris Woloszyn. He’s an amazing sculptor, and do really well with dark and moody subjects like this set, but you should check his previous work with Westfalia, as there are a lot of really nice pieces from him in the catalogue. The models are cast in resin, and have sharp details. Some of the pieces are quite thin, so progress with patience in the cleaning and assembly, not to break anything.

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The army of Arbonte is Growing

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Over the last month, I started working on my second Nemesis faction, the Rocavivas, as I mentioned in the last post, cleaning, assembling and priming them. However, I’m not sure yet on the colour scheme or basing, so I decided to continue painting the other Orphans I already had prepared, to keep the motivation going.

These new additions round out my small force quite well in terms of gaming diversity, and also continue the theme of having an extremely colourful warband. Luckily, the forest bases tie them up together visually.

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Delta Station

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I don’t do much commission work anymore, but I was recently contacted to paint a small line of civilian sci-fi models. The project was interesting and small enough to be manageable, so I took the plunge.

The models are from Wyrm Forge, to be released in an upcoming crowdfunding project on Kickstarter. You can register to be notified of the launch. The models were hand sculpted, and they have an old school sci-fi vibe to them.  The look I was asked for was “colourful 70s sci-fi”. I made a colour montage board for it, that you can see below, and followed the mood.

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The orphans of Arbonte

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Back in 2012-2013, I bought into Nemesis, by the Spanish company Zenit Miniatures. What really sold it to me was the Orphans faction, a group of unaging kids disguising themselves as insects, protecting the living forest Arbonte. I painted a single model back then, one of the Mantis, for a painting contest, but the lack of opponents, combined with other priorities, relegated them to the back of the pile.

Flash forward to last month. I was doing some digging in my pile of opportunities, to clear out and sell some projects I now know I won’t get to, or lost interest into, when I stumbled upon the box containing my Nemesis models. Being between projects, and wanting to paint something colourful, I decided to get them out again, and finally paint enough to try out the game. It just took a decade to get back to it…

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The Doctor and the Assassin

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Last December, before the start of my recent painting slump, I finished the year with two new models for Carnevale, after also painting a good amount of terrain. The first was an addition to the Guild in the form of a Rialto Assassin, to add power and range to my mainly tradesmen collection.

The second model is a female Plague Doctor, a start for a small second faction. That limited edition model is such a beauty that I had ordered her at first just to paint. However, after some games, I liked the game enough to grab a starter for The Doctors to have options and maybe give demos.

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On to 2024, well, what’s left of it

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Last year, I pledged to post a bit more, even if shorter posts. I managed to do so for part of the year, but after September, my hobby time slowed down, and what I did accomplish wasn’t as worthy of posting. I failed at keeping my posts short, though, so they ate up a bit more time than I really had, and making shorter ones for single pieces of terrain didn’t feel quite right.

I like to make nice photoshoot of completed projects, and while I did a bunch of small stuff, I didn’t have any bigger, meaningful ones. I’ll have to juggle between length and content again this year.

This post comes up later in the year, because of the same reason. I was in a small hobby slump since December, but that’s over now and I have a bunch of projects I want to tackle.

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