Unboxing Reaper Bones Kickstarter Part 1

It came! My Reaper Bones Kickstarter pledge came today, and I'm pretty damn happy. I've been painting all these months to get back in the swing of things for these minis... and they're here... and they're awesome! I've taken apart one of my two vampire boxes during breaks from a remarkably successful night of patty-cake with my baby. Which is not off topic! I justified getting all these minis partially because of her! Back in October, back before we knew the sex or were telling anyone about the pregnancy, I thought, "What the hell, get some extra minis for the kid, it'll be a great thing for dad and child to do together!" She can't clap her hands yet, so she probably doesn't have great brush control... Luckily I got a pile of minis big enough to lay that long!

Tonight I unbagged my first Vampire box and laid them out on a printout from the website to take inventory.  Out of 238 in the box I'm missing one, a ghoul. But I got two extra spider swarms! Here's the proof:

Ashardalon and Practice Bones Done!

Today I finished Ashardalon, Ancient Red Dragon, the last piece in my Wrath of Ashardalon set. I've still got the whole set out, so here's their yearbook photo.

Ashardalon himself came out okay but looked dodgy during the process, I thought the wash was too heavy and would make the whole thing muddy. But my highlights worked to bring out the colors I wanted. I'm starting to blend a little with a watery midpoint when the shades and highlights get too dramatic, and it's a good technique. So he's ready to set fire to all adventurers within two tiles.

On Friday I didn't have much time but I did finish that young Green Dragon. Here's all my practice Bones together... except for three goblins that are already downstairs filed under G for Goblin.  I love these Bones.

Thursday Night WIPs: Wet Dragons

That's the Bones Young Fire Dragon on the right and Ashardalon on the left, both having received washes. Big A is dripping and pooling. My Reaper dragon is almost dry, I can just see one or two wet spots that will fuck up a drybrush if I start it. So tomorrow night both of these guys get the Finishing Moves.

In the foreground is the Rage Drake from the Ashardalon set. He's not wet, he's done. He came out looking a lot like my prepainted drake... so mission accomplished!  Now in an encounter I can field two of them!

Wednesday Night WIPs: Rev. Shiny and the Spider

Tonight I knew I could finish my Bones Giant Spider, but I'd only get through the Ashardalon Human Cleric if I was lucky. Which I was, although I'm also up late. So Spider here is a simple drybrush job, lots of chitinous surfaces to catch four ascending shades of blue. I did the mandible in transparent blue to suggest that they were dripping with venom.

The cleric looks pretty good for how fast he came together.  You'll just have to trust me, though, because he's designed to photograph well on the shield and the cloak and nothing else. I had to hold his plastic arm down while I did the face. I guess you don't enjoy photos of minis; that the actual use case is the physical mini that you turn around and look at, but this sculpt blocks you at literally every turn. It is dynamic, I'll give them that. The armor had lots of big interesting blocks, and this would be a good candidate for NMM, but instead I just went all metallic or white. In sharp light it gives the effect I was after: the White Cleric to go with my Red Fighter, Blue Paladin, Green Wizard, and Yellow Rogue.

Monday Night WIPs: Don't Panic

I finished one of these guys yesterday, but my baby had a five hour meltdown and there was never time for a blog picture. So! Two from Ashardalon: the Half-Orc Rogue and the Otyugh! Accompanying them is the star of yesterday's WIP pic, the Bones Minotaur!

This rogue is a badass, a really expressive sculpt. He may be getting sneak attacks because the monsters are afraid to admit they spotted him. I love how he's a rogue and... how to put this... not a halfling.

I wanted to do the minotaur in white, so I started with yellow and worked up. White bulls are more likely to have grey skin folds, but I know I've seen animals like him somewhere. I may end up with one or two more of these guys to do different hides and colors.

The otyugh turned into the Hitchhiker's Guide Guy, but in my defense not until the very end of my paint job!  The traditional colors are brown or orange, but I got a nice dinosaur look out of this green and yellow; it grounds him in reality even though he had three legs and two hairbrush tentacles.

Tomorrow is Paint Club! I've got nine more minis in this set, and I might knock out between four and six of them!

Sunday Night WIPs: Yellow Bull

Friday Night WIPs

And that's the Bones Ogre, done. I'd been envisioning him in more of a red scheme but that's not how he worked out... funny how unless you work with a strict plan, these things kind of choose themselves.

I also started on my Duergar. The three Duergar Guards have a wash applied, but their Captain's only two colors into his basecoat. I get to paint all tomorrow morning, so he'll shake out quickly!

Tuesday Night WIPs

I finally got my baby to sleep and got to work on the orc shaman... I like him, he's got a real crazed look about him. I mixed up some brown highlight that went wrong and turned into fleshtone, and I had a lot of it, so I started on the Bones Ogre earlier than I'd planned. Finally, I did one snake in my experimental method of transparent paint over grayscale. I'm going to see how it dries, I might want to go brighter on the next one.

Friday Night WIPs

I completed the Bones Bugbear, and took three orc archers to the wash. I really like the bugbear's face, the tusks were built up in layers likeI would do bone, and it turned out well.

Thursday Night WIPs

This Gauth is done, and he turned out pretty well. It's a smooth fleshy sculpt, without hard surfaces for drybrushing, so I tried to get as rich a color as I could with just washes.

The Paladin is done and I hate her. Seriously, WOTC, how old was that mold, and what happened to her face in the intervening years?

The Bones Bugbear just got a heavy wash, so he's still in progress. Like the gnoll, he's been a joy to paint.

Monday Night WIPs

Tonight I concentrated on my Bones Gnoll. Somewhere in the intersection of sculpt and material is the perfect painting experience; I absolutely loved making this guy. I want to run out, get a D&D game going, and then kill everybody with gnolls in a "random encounter."

His armor is Tamiya Titanium Silver, nice and dull compared to Chrome. His shirt is another attempt at fishscale, a mix of Titanium, Chrome, and mettalic blue. It doesn't evoke fishscale but it's more interesting than one metallic.

Okay, pal, until the Kickstarter gets here, you're King Gnoll.

Bath Time!

The subject is miniatures that don't need undercoats, the problem is mold release chemical, and the solution is soapy water.

Tonight I filled a big tupperware full of Reaper Bones and the contents of Wrath of Ashardalon. The Bones shouldn't be primed, according to Reaper; you're supposed to apply the base coat right on the plastic. I've heard similar things about the D&D minis, although not from WOTC. But my last round of D&D stuff (from Ravenloft) was sprayed with three different types of paints, and they all came out tacky. But I've heard that the minis have mold release left on them from the casting, which can repel paint. This kind of dunking is standard practice in the world of customizing action figures, and there's little reason not to apply it here.

This will be my project for the next month. 6 Bones, 40 D&Ds... maybe a little more than a month, we'll see!

Descent Wizard, Goblins WIP

Tonight I applied a wash to my goblins (four from Descent, six from Reaper) and started on my first magical Descent hero, Leoric of the Book. I'm doing Three Color Goblins (green, brown, and black) which is why I can stand to do ten at once. 

It was a joy to work on that mage because I got to put down a lot of GW Enchanted Blue. That paint is as smooth as butter.