Those Who Work as a Family

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
   - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

the family that scavenges together stays together

Quick one here. I've been doing other projects while I've fallen silent. I intended to do an army-builder style blog about one but work has been kicking my arse and involving lots of typing at a keyboard - so the idea of typing at home has been very off-putting. But that's mostly behind me and while I've since painted a tank and been sick, I did just do these guys!

A little family of scavengers, part of Crooked Dice's 4th Colony 87 kickstarter, a few years back now. Gave them a uniform, painted their little droids - easy.

dear ole dad

When looking up the kickstarter for the above link, I realised that dad's meant to be pulling down a visor - I just painted it as a black band holding on his ear protectors. Oh, well, that still works.

He was actually the last of the team painted - contra. my usual style, this list is exactly in the opposite order to the paint!

mumsie

A hard-nose lieutenant of a woman, this one. She has a weird dot flaw in the cast next to her nose, but I think that just makes her look tougher. Love that she has basically the same gear as dad, only plus a bandana and cool sunnies.

I did enjoy weathering the hell out of their gear.

teens right

boy

Not much to say about these two. I think the boy looks like a right git, in the tradition of early teen boys throughout the ages. I do like that he's a bit tubby.

lil guy

This was SO fun and easy to paint. He really has turned out like I weathered him deliberately, when most of that is just from rough brushing and the Contrast (Iyanden Yellow if you're curious) that went straight over grey - oh, all these guys were undercoated grey.

big guy

Love this guy. He looks so friendly! And yet with the textured white for his head and the red eyes, he's also real creepy. I added the cog and some other 40K transfers to ensure that the crew still ties into my vague sense of setting - the implication is that he's not at all sapient - assuming the local Mechanicus administrators are compliant...

The orange was rough Wild Rider Red and then sponge-applied Trollslayer Orange. Maybe a layer mixing them in there, I forget. I then weathered hell out of him, which is always extremely fun.

makers' mark

One of the other transfers. I didn't want it to go on the chest like heraldry, but instead give a sense that it's a markers' mark or has some other significance, so it got tucked in here. Helps break up all that orange.

obscure symbol

Down on his leg is one of the warning symbols from the Mechanicus transfer sheets. It actually was broken on the sheet, which I found out when I had already soaked it, but that just meant it blended in nicely to the weathering (and then I did even more to it, yayy). I could weather dorky robots forever. Maybe I should do a Mechanicus project.

Anyway, that's it! I'll hopefully post about some games I've had in the last little while and/or that project I mentioned - it was out of sequence, but it's also almost finished, so I don't feel too bad about breaking up my 'complete things' rhythm. See you all soon!

Those Who Work, Those Who Sell, Those Who Record -- Those Folks

 In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another..."
   - Gerrard Winstanley

some regular folks

Moving up in the world, we've reached the working and middle classes - a real mixture of 'just folks'. These are mostly Eureka Miniatures again, slightly small and slight among the more classic GW-style Crooked Dice, but it works for a diversity of a population. Probably. They also go with the kids I've done in the past.

Those Who Venture

Still firmly in the 'scum' category, although Prospector Gan Havelock at least approaches respectable, being a freelance surveyor rather than an... ugh adventurer.

meet all sorts out here

More Crooked Dice miniatures, from their Colony 87 range. Some of these have only been in the collection for weeks as opposed to my usual years. I've grouped these as vaguely adventurers, as they're all a bit armed and rowdy to really be anything else, although Havelock could have as easily fit into the next group (working and middle class types).

Really had fun with these - I always say that for Colony 87 though.

Those Punks

Climbing the social ladder, from animals to cops, to outcasts and punks.

punks and skum

A mix of manufacturers, meaning a range of scales and styles, but I think they all work together as a group. This group of misfits and sods were fun as hell to paint, letting me muck about with colours (I've been using a lot of pink and green lately), as well as some experiments with skin tones and -- well, let me get into it.

Those Who Protect

Following on from animals: space cops.

pigs are a kind of animal, after all

These were all hell of great sculpts to paint, even if being armed kind of puts the 'civilian' aspect of this project as a bit of a lie. But I've done armed folks before and I will again. 

These are mostly Crooked Dice pieces from Colony 87: Wave Four, while the Judge is a Kev White sculpt from Diehard Miniatures. I'm pleased with how they've all come out, so let's show 'em off!

Advertisements and defensive postures

 Just a couple things.

turret and cages

advertising

As part of undercoating a huge pile of civilians, I also built and/or undercoated some of the giant, overwhelming pile of terrain I've built up over the years. Hopefully I can push through procrastination, stress, and decision paralysis by just doing stuff. Of course, doing stuff also results in getting inspired and buying more stuff. Especially with the 28 scene really thriving lately, with tons of small games and tiny cool collections coming out. (Damn you, Ana Polanšćak.)

Anyway, here are a couple easy things. The billboards are from a Fogou Miniatures kickstarter from a while back (before he retired from model making). Not sure where they are now.

I'm not sure where the cages are from. The turret was a free gift from Knights of Dice when a friend sent me a pile of mdf as a birthday present years and years ago. I forgot the cardinal rule of painting something with moving parts, so it is now fixed in its current position, but I took that opportunity to do a lil battle damage and field repair to it, as you can see with more photos - below the cut.

Those Animals: Tame (and weird)

 Couple of things mixed together here!

animals tame (and other)

Alright, getting some things crossed off the list. This lot have mostly actually not sat in the drawer for too long - in fact, two of the models only arrived a few weeks ago! Not too bad. But then again, the Necromunda Wyrd was in the pile for the failed Old World Army Challenge from 2023, so let's not brag.

melty men

First off, some melty men. Like last time's mootants, these are Thunderchild Miniatures. A few layers of yellows, contrasts, washes, drybrushes, glazes, picking out the white teeth and eyes, varnish. Fun and easy. Sorry they're not in the group photo, this is what happens when you break up the painting and photography but not the blog post (also are they even really in the animal theme? eh)

Those Animals: Baggage

Share the load.

green transportation alternatives

I haven't gone anywhere, I just haven't had much to share. It's been either too hot or too wet to paint, and I'm so busy at work - and consequently exhausted - that I haven't been able to schedule any games. But I have assembled, cleaned, and based a ton of new additions to the civilian project (and just in time to receive more Colony 87 from another kickstarter too, so I feel very embarrassed not to have done the last one...) -- and last week I was finally able to get out the spray undercoat. There are a couple of different things in train.

Let's start with a baggage train, eyyyy

After Action Report: Second Squats

 I have noticed that a cat will turn up her nose at a piece of meat if I hand it to her, but she will devour it with gusto if she has "stolen" it. The meat is the same, but the difference lies in the predator's delight in recognizing itself.
   - Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

Ruins of Saint-Mina-Outre-Eaux, Finistère

Scouting action, withdrawal, feint, cautious probe, flattening artillery barrage, feint. The bastards were dug in pretty well - a tacky and reductive thought, not worthy of the son of a pâtissier - and so far the Guard had been unwilling to commit fully. Nobody wants to try and dig out a 'dwarf.

Command was getting impatient with the slow pace. Finistère was as fringe a world as the name implied. Once at the outstretched fingertip of Imperial colonisation efforts, the rotting world had been left to ferment by the contraction of the empire from coreward space since the sack of Badab. This was the first Commissar the world had seen in three generations, most like.

And now here he was, crawling his delicate son-of-a-pastry-chef arse through some backwater grass analogue that reeked of petrichor and ozone and whatever the hell those abhumans used in their anti-plant munitions, Betsy hooked over one shoulder. The Saint-Saëns CXLIV had brought in their ratling auxiliaries, along with a platoon of hulking "Southers" from Đại Du'o'ng. Who knew if those pale barbarians even had a regimental number. It wasn't like they had uniforms -- wait. Was that a motortrike engine?

No whole-of deployment photo, oops.
I deploy on the left of this photo!

Friend of the blog Mangs has a new 6'x4' table and when I asked to help him break it in, he suggested a game of second edition! Neither of us have played a game of second in decades, but he still has all his templates and cards and such, while I've painstakingly reacquired the rulebooks (no templates, though) - so why the hell not?

I suggested some initial minor modifications to the Squats army list in Codex: Army Lists to bring them more in line with the Rogue Trader-era Brotherhood list, as that's what I've been using to organise my collection (as per my old tumblr post on the subject), to which he readily agreed. I then counted up more-or-less what I have painted and arrived at 1560. Mangs put together about the same in Imperial Guard (he didn't deduct points for stripping the Leman Russes of heavy bolters) and we were off.

We avoided psykers to keep it simpler, still got half the rules wrong (Leman Russes have targeters! and I probably had my bikes do hit and run attacks very wrong!), and used way too much terrain, as we usually play each other in skirmish games.

But we set up, deployed, and played all four turns with very infantry-heavy armies in around three hours flat and had a blast (sorry) the whole time. Hell yeah. Second edition is back, baby.

Project: Scabby Terrain

On moonless nights, when the air is still, vessels from across the Turnip world disappear, sucked down the rusty plughole of death to a forgotten ship’s graveyard far below the world known as the Abyss.
   - Scabz, Apocrypha_Now and Max Fitzgerald

normal oil refinery

Ages ago, famous internet miniatures weirdos Max Fitzgerald and Apocrypha_Now collaborated on a game of rusted hulks fighting each other on an oil-slicked black ocean. It's called SCABZ. I got very excited about it, along with the new Turnip-universe game Max was working on called Swill - and then Swill got put on some kind of indefinite hiatus and I lost a lot of emotional impetus.

I still haven't built the ships I intended to buy, although I have gone through a lot of cans of fish.

But, somewhat unusually for me, I did build a lot of scenery first (wild, I know). Some of it I mentioned in my year-in-review for 2025, where I decided not to count it until I finished the final piece. Which I did, a few weeks ago. It's the normal oil refinery, above.

Scabz calls for 3-7 pieces of terrain measuring roughly 5”x 5”, representing wrecked ships, sunken row houses, corroded naval mines, decaying docklands or islands of rotting fish. I've made:

Project: Wet Ømens

 I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite.
   - "Dagon", H.P. Lovecraft

Church of the Fleshkeeper

Welcome back to another installment of "I made a small warband as a break from my larger projects." This time, it's a gang of horrible fishy friends for Ømen Tide. Created by Paolo Boracchi and Simon Schnitzler, two of the luminaries of the Inq28/weirdos-on-Instagram world, Ømen Tide is a tiny skirmish game of salt-soaked body horror, religious fanaticism, and that icky feeling you get if you accidentally touch seaweed while at the beach.

You can find the rules and much more for free at the Patreon.

I found the aesthetic and the inq28-inflected 'make your own' bit as inspiring as always - plus, technically, you only need three models for a warband. I got carried away and made a miniature of every role in the Church of the Fleshkeeper, but I do have some things wrong with me.

I may even make a terrain board, but only if I wind up doing a Mordheim-y waterfront - I've got too long a to-do list to commit to that sort of thing... discipline is boring