Norkers

"The little bugger bit me!" Nimble yelled, as much from pain as embarrassment. 

The pink little bugger in question was barely 3 feet tall, but had sunk it's teeth into Nimble's hip. The others giggled with their wide wet toothy mouths. 

"Don't let them get so close next time" Rathgar laughed, booting one prone and running it through with his sword. He jerked to the side just in time to avoid the tusks of the boar that went racing past him, but not far enough to avoid the mounted norker's heavy club.   

"I can see why the village asked for our help" Feris said, knocking aside the blade of the norker poking at him. 

Norkers

Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 2+1
Move: 90 (30)
Attacks: 1 weapon 1 bite
Damage: 1d6/1d3
No. Appearing: 2d6 (5d6)
Save As: F2
Morale: 9
Treasure Type: E
Intelligence: 9
Alignment: chaotic
XP Value: 25

Monster Type: Humanoid, Uncommon

Norkers are noxious and obnoxious creatures, superficially of goblinoid stock, but twisted and nastier than the average gobbo. They organize themselves into roving bands that loot, pillage, and burn an area before either moving on for greener pastures, or being driven off. All their loot (whatever isn't destroyed) is kept at their base camp under lock and key of the norker chieftain (4+2HD) and his 1d4+1 guards (3+2HD). 

Norkers keep boars as guard animals, mounts, and beasts of burden. All roving groups of at least 5 members will have 1 mounted on a boar. 

There is a particular enmity between norkers and fairies, and norkers will always be wearing hobnail boots, and as many bits of iron as they can. Cookpot helms are especially popular and fought over among them.

---

I hadn't planned on painting them pink. Originally I wanted them to have yellow skin, but since painting yellow is a pain in the ass, I went with the paint it pink first trick. The thing is, I liked how they looked with the pink skin. They're rather cartoony already, and it felt appropriate. And if you look really close at the mounted norker's boot, you'll see a squished pixie stuck to the bottom! 

Kalanzar the Wicked part 2

I finished painting Kalanzar a long while ago now, and forgot to circle back around to show off how I did it and how it looks all finished off.  You did get to see it in the Year in Minis post from back in 2023, but here's a detailed look at the process. 

 

I wanted to keep the palette somewhat limited, both for consistency across the mini, but also for my own sanity, so this was the selection of paint I picked.   

I started with the wings... 

 It looks really bright here... and it is, but this is just the start. 

Then it was off to blocking in the colors on the body. You'll notice the head is missing. I neglected to take work in progress pics of the head, but it was painted separately from the body. 

 There were a few small gaps, but it was big enough to bug me, so I filled them, and sculpted some kinda matching scales to blend it all in. 

More work on the body, deepening the shadows, trying to hit all the highlights. So many scales... 

I regularly plugged the wings into the body to make sure everything was still looking good. I didn't paint with the wings attached both because they got in the way, but also because it was really difficult to try to keep hold of the dragon without them. 

More highlighting...

 

The foam on the base was obviously the wrong texture, so I coated it with mod podge and sand. 

Then I got to painting the lava. Oh, and there's the head. 

And checking how Kalanzar fits on the base... 

 Turns out it needed some extra support. I added some more foam bricks and chunks and then gave them the same mod podge and sand covering.   

 And here it is, all finished up! 

2025 in Miniatures

2025 was an exceedingly productive year, with 146 minis in total painted, plus a bunch of terrain! As with last year, my goal was to paint about half non-reaper minis. I hit 40% with 58 non-Reaper minis, and 88 Reaper minis. That beats last year's total, which included terrain! 

 

It's hard to say exactly how many pieces of terrain I painted, as a good bit of it is modular.  

I'm not sure what my favorite thing to work on this past year was, but the Pepto Norkers are definitely up there.  

 

My goals going into 2025 were: 

BFG/Other Space Ships - Success!

More Frostgrave/Stargrave - Success!

LotR Sauron & Ring Wraith on Fell Beast - Sauron yes, Ring Wraith on Fell beast, no

~50% non-Reaper Minis - Close

Build & Paint some Sci-Fi Terrain - Yes! One scratch built, the rest 3D printed. 

For 2026 I'm going to have some similar goals:

BFG/Other Space Ships - Finish the original Tau fleet ships I have and then get started on... something else. Eldar? Forgeworld style Tau? Chaos Battleship? 

More Frostgrave/Stargrave - paint some minis and use them in a game!

LotR Balrog & Ring Wraith on Fell Beast 

~50% non-Reaper Minis

Build & Paint some Sci-Fi Terrain - Scratch build a few more pieces with all the junk I've collected, including another trashbash spaceship

 More jungle scatter terrain for my alien ruins?

Amamao Paint Pens Review

2 years ago a friend gave me a box of Amamao paint pens for the holidays.. and I was skeptical. I'm really happy using my reaper paints on my minis, and I didn't see what advantages these brought to the table.

I remain skeptical on their use painting tabletop minis, but I discovered back in April that they are fantastic for working on my 3D printed terrain. I also this month discovered that they're great for my 5 year old to use to help me paint my terrain. 

Not only does it minimize the mess he can make as compared to the craft & hobby paints, but he has a lot more control with the pens. An additional benefit is that he has the entire array of colors to choose from, and a love of rainbows, so everything he's worked on has ended up a lot more colorful than it would have been if I'd been doing it by myself. 

Being 5, and easily distracted, he's a little sloppy, but with the pens it's easy enough to go back over and tidy things up. I've also made sure to use the craftsmart antique white somewhere on all the buildings to help tie it all together. 

As for the pens themselves, each pen actually has 2 colors, one on each end. Interestingly the tips on each end are different. One has a larger tip, and the other a smaller one. Both come to a pretty fine point, but for terrain painting, I've largely found the larger tip more useful, and have switched pens and colors if I wanted the bigger tip. There are a few narrow spots the pens can't reach into, but that's a minor issue overall, and mostly spots I'm going to paint a dark shadow color anyway. I've also found that the paint colors don't always match the tip. Not a wild difference, but enough that I've a couple of times swapped pens for something more to my liking. 

 

The color selection is almost perfect. My biggest issue is the lack of a good red in the set. Seems an odd oversight. The selection of metallic paints is fun, but I would have liked a dirty bronze color to work with. 

I have to say that for the price these are absolutely worth it, especially if you have a bunch of terrain to paint. 

Goblin soldiers

I built these minis a long while ago, and they were part of that batch that I printed with white spray primer that got super chalky and hard to work with. It was some years ago, and because it was so miserable to work with I put basically all the minis away, and didn't do anything else with them for years. 

It finally got to the point that they were taking up space in my figure cases that I needed for actually painted minis, so I pulled them all out and looked up what to do with them last summer. The answer was a wash with alcohol. 

It mostly worked. The primer still wasn't the best to work with, but at least the paint would stick and not rub off. I started with the frostgrave barbarians, then the gnolls & cultists, and now the goblins are the last batch of white primed minis I have to work with. THANK GOODNESS!

They were painted with reaper paint colors: 
Wilderness green for the skin
Leather brown
Purple for the hair
Linen white for the teeth, horns, and shield freehand, and adding to the other colors for highlights
Brown liner for lining
Dwarven bronze 
Gunmetal (vallejo paint)

The bases were covered with a rough blend of gravel and coffee grounds (dried) that I covered with gesso and then dry brushed with various shades of grey.

While not my best work I'm happy to have completed them, and can finally be done with that awful batch of white primed minis. 

Also, while working on them, I was pretty sure they were orcs, but when I finally found them online, they're listed as goblin soldiers. Pretty beefy for goblins, so should I ever get the chance, I'll probably use them as orcs. And yes, one is a frostgrave gnoll body with an orc head. I'll use him as the boss. 

Sauron

The Dark Lord himself, an imposing figure of shadow and death wrapped in armor with the One Ring blazing away on his finger, reaching down to slay Isildur at the height of his power, the moment before his defeat.  

I've owned this mini for literally decades. I bought it when it was originally released. Last year I decided I was finally going to paint it, and added it to my "to do" shelf. Then I didn't get around to it. This year, I finally did. It's honestly such a beautiful sculpt that it practically paints itself... but first, assembly. 

Sauron is a solid metal mini, and the connection points for the head and arms are both flat. Not ideal for such a heavy mini, and just asking to be knocked over and have an arm or 2 snap off. So out with the pin vice and wire, and make sure that The Dark Lord is solidly assembled. 

I primed Sauron with Stynalrez Metal Tone primer, a favorite of mine when the weather is too cold to spray prime, and also a great base layer for the armor. 

The cape I painted first with Reaper's Red Liner paint mixed with Brown Liner. I washed it with black wash, then did pure Red Liner, followed up with some highlights using Asmodeus Red, washed that with black wash, and then more Asmodeus Red mixed with some Cloudy Grey... followed by yet another black wash. Are you seeing a theme? 

For the armor, I highlighted the armor tone primer with Shadowed Steel, followed by yet more Black Wash. I repeated the highlight and then used a Numinara Rust wash splotched on to add a little more color. 

Finally the One Ring I painted first with Asmodeus Red, and then with Dwarven Gold, and teeny tiny highlights of Dragon Gold. I then went back and added just a bit of the Asmodeus Red to the shadows of the helm.

As seems to be a theme this year, I haven't done anything with his base. He deserves more than just some sand, but I haven't decided what yet. So here he is, finished, but not based.

Purple People Eater

One of the Reaper Challenge League challenges for this month was "one eyed one horned flying purple people eater" with the caveat that to meet the challenge for this category is that you only needed to hit one of the parts of the challenge... but what's the fun of that?

Of course I don't have a mini in my collection that fulflls all the requirements, so I went digging. I do have a large cyclops, but didn't feel like painting a giant. So I kept digging and came across my bag of early Bones Kickstarter demons, and the ape demon felt perfect. Well, aside from the 2 eyes and no horn. 

I can fix that. I just cut off his face, and grabbed the greenstuff. The hardest part was the teeth. I wasn't originally going for big flat mollar type teeth, but I liked how it turned it.

Once the greenstuff had cured, it was time to paint. I primed/base coated with Kraken Ink (purple liner) and the eye with linen white. 

I then used a mix of Kraken Ink, Clear Purple, Ruddy Flesh, Dragon Red, and Aged Bone to do the rest of the mini. The final step, aside from basing, was to apply a gloss varnish on the eye and the tongue. 

 

Not sure when I'll get to the base, so here's the finished but the base pic.

Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

 A wolf-in-sheep's-clothing is a vegetable monster that lurks in undergrowth or grassy meadowlands, creeping from place to place by pulling with its root tentacles. The body of the creature resembles a tree trunk, with a vertical maw full of jagged teeth, and 10–15 feet long eyestalks. It can sprout a growth that resembles a small furry creature to attract prey. 

This monster was originally published in the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and then reprinted in the AD&D MM2. 

It is a ridiculously silly monster, as befitting the same module that introduced the gaming world to the Froghemoth. On the other hand, when Reaper made a mini for it, there was no way I was not going to get and paint it! 

I'm not entirely happy with the eyes, but overall, I had a ton of fun painting it!

Reaper's Baba Yaga's Hut

 Back in the fall of 2023 I started working on Baba Yaga's hut. It came assembled, and while the chicken legs are great, I wanted to be able to use the house on its own. So I started the process to remove the legs in a way that I hoped would allow me to use them in the future. Ideally I'd be able to put the house on the legs and take them off as needed. They were very tight, and practically soaked in super glue, so I knew this was going to be a process.

First I boilded some water in a pot we no longer used for cooking.And while the water was heating up, I got some heavy duty gloves.

Into the water it goes. I think I ended up soaking this thing half a dozen times total. After each soak, which got the legs wobbly soft, I would take it out of the water and pull as hard as I could. That was enough for one leg, and it popped off, but the other leg I had to get my xacto knife to cut at the glue

Eventually I got there! 

Of course there was then so much water in the house itself, I needed to let it drain. 

But I could get the legs back on! Success! 

It would then be more than a year before I actually started to paint it. 

It started with a coat of Brown Liner, followed by Redstone Shadow for the walls. 

The roof was a succession of Desert Stone, followed by Desert Sand dry brushes, which were also done to the walls. I wanted this looking as dusty, rotten, and in desperate need of some TLC as it could. 

I went lighter on the roof support beams, and then began splotching on Olive Drab, followed by Olive Drab plus more and more Pure White

Then it was onto the windows. I made sure to repaint them with Brown Liner to get them dark and clean up any stray brush strokes from earlier steps. and then hit the glass parts with Kraken Ink. Initially I kept the highlight on the broken edges of the glass small, but it didn't look as good as I wanted. 

So I made the glass less dark overall, and that worked. 

Finally it was adding a few details to the doors and the chimney, and it was done!

Actually painting the hut only took a few evenings worth of work. Dry brushing once the main colors are blocked in made it go really quickly, and then it was just a matter of going back and cleaning up the details. 

Now I just need to do the base and the legs so it can be a proper hut for Baba Yaga!

2024 in Minis

Another productive year, with 122 minis painted (including some terrain) 65 of them are Reaper minis, which is just slightly more than half. As my goal for the year was to paint more non-Reaper minis, I'm going to count that as a win! 

 

Further breaking it down, about 10% of the minis are sci-fi, a stat I want to bring up for 2025. Once again Undead are also sorely underrepresented, though there are a good number of Demons.  I'm also happy to have put a good dent in the old WotC Chainmail minis collection I've got.

 

And that doesn't count the 19 trees I make and painted this past summer! Adding them in brings the total up to 141, which would be my best year since I started tracking it.

As for my other goals from last year:

• BFG Tau fleet - Never touched. Didn't paint a single spaceship in 2024
• Frostgrave & Stargrave figures - Success!
• LotR Sauron - Never touched it.
• Baba Yaga's Hut - I painted the hut! I have plans for the base & legs, but I'm not there yet. 

The other fun thing about this year's work is that after I put them away after taking the picture, I ran out of space in my figure cases. So I just ordered another one that should get me through this next year, assuming I keep up my average painting rate.

I don't know if I'll manage more than 100 minis next year, but it isn't just about the numbers! It's being happy about what I got done, and this year, I am. It wasn't all great. I had some issues with the white spray primer I used on a lot of the Frostgrave minis I worked on, which made them chalky, even after a wash with isopropyl alcohol. Of all the minis, I think I enjoyed getting the Chainmail Drakes done the most, but it's hard to pick one, or even one group of minis as my favorite.

Anyway, for 2025 here's what I'm thinking:

• BFG/Other Space Ships - no particular goal, just paint some
• More Frostgrave/Stargrave Minis!
• LotR Sauron & Ring Wraith on Fell Beast
• ~50% non-Reaper Minis
• Build & Paint some Sci-Fi Terrain
  

Blood Demons

"Do you hear that grunting?" 

"Who's working out in a dungeon?"

 Looking through the doorway, the party sees a wide circular chamber that stretches down at least 60 feet, with a winding stairway wrapping around the wall. Down below, half a dozen buff red demons were busy flexing, stretching, doing one armed pushups, squats, box jumps and jump rope with a chain...  

"According to the map, we have to go down there." Allianora grumbles

"I hate gym demons" Rathgar moans. 

"Who doesn't." Feris says. "Ice storm?"

"Yeah, lets not get into their reach if we can avoid it." Nimble says, looking down at the bulging muscles

Blood Demons

Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 4* (M)
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 2 claws/ 1 gore or special
Damage: 2d4+1/2d4+1/1d6+1 or special
Number Appearing: 1d6 (1d6)
Save As: F8
Morale: 11
Treasure Type:
Intelligence: 7
Alignment: Chaotic
XP Value: 175

Monster Type: Demon, lesser (rare)

Blood demons are the gym bros of the demon world. While they love the chaos and destruction that they can cause, they also enjoy psychological intimidation that their impressive physical forms can instill, and will mock anyone and anything that is less physically developed than them. Because they're so energetic, unless properly restricted by the summoning spells, they will continue to cause mayhem and destruction until banished or destroyed. 

In combat, the demons will attempt to intimidate their opponents and flex and pose to show off their physique. Anyone viewing this must make a save vs spells or be in stunned for 1d3+1 rounds. While stunned they will suffer a -2 to all attacks, AC, and saves. This effect can only be done once per day per opponent. 

Like all lesser demons, they can be turned as undead (as mummies) and have the bonus demon strenth of +1 to damage (included above), and are immune to sleep and charm spells, and are immune to fire. 

Terrain: any

---

These demons are from the Reaper Miniatures Blood Demons set, and were painted with the following reaper paints: Red Liner, Asmodius Red, Seoni Scarlet, Sunrise Orange, Dragon Copper, Carbon Grey, and Skeleton Bone