Reaper Minitaur Pink Demons

 When Reaper did their Bones 4 kickstarter, one of their little stretch goals was a set of minitaurs... short minataurs. 

 

They're kind of ridiculous, but... perfect for a silly paint challenge over on the Reaper Discord. 

 February's limited pallete challenge was to use only 5 colors, a white, black, blue, magenta, and yellow. Keeping it pure, I went with Pure White, Solid Black, and the 3 newish Clears: Magenta, Blue, and Yellow. 

This meant that there would be no metallic colors... an interesting challenge to be sure! I washed them, and stuck them on bases and got to work... starting by making some swatches.

Then I got painting.

I don't have a lot of WiP pics, as I was going back and forth a lot experimenting to see what colors and effects I could manage to make these things look good. 

My first attempt at Non-Metallic Metals was... eh? It works. 

In the end, I have a pair of pink demon minitaurs that will absolutely find their way into a game at some point. Just gonna have to stat them out for D&D... could easily use them as minor demons in Frostgrave... and I'm sure I can find some other games they'll work in. Now I guess I need to paint up the other 2 to match.

Cardboard Spaceship #2 for #Stargrave part 2

 It seems I neglected to actually post about painting my little ship...

Again, I started with my house paint, making sure that everything was covered. 

Then I used some craft black, and some Reaper Gory Red for the body.

I added some white on the front, and drybrushed some metal tone airbrush paint over it

And picked out a few panels to highlight with off shades from the rest.

And here they are together!

Rappan Athuk: Mouth of Doom - Gnolls and Bandits and Stirges, Oh My!

 Session played on 2/28

Nick the Pike, Fighter 6 (Me)
Borumar, Thief 9 (Josh)
Karl, Dwarf 9 (Julia)
Biffin, Fighter (NPC)

Karl the Dwarf Lord caught up with the party in the tiny village, 2 more arms-men were hired, and everyone headed back toward the Mouth Of Doom. On the way, 6 gnolls with bows had blocked the road. Negotiations were brief, and combat was joined. One of the new hirelings was shot dead right away, and another was cut down in melee before the gnolls were dealt with. A meager 5sp was collected from their corpses.

Once at the MoD, the party agreed to deal with the bandits first, and after carefully stepping over 15 trip wires, they reached the pair of secret doors to their lair. Upon opening the door, the party got the drop on them, but only just. They’d apparently been waiting for an attack, as 4 were barricaded behind an overturned table with bows, while 4 orcs and their ugly rat faced leader waited by the door. Thanks to the gnoll’s bows, the bandits got a bunch of arrows in the face, dropping 2, while Nick cut into the rat faced dude.

Borumar blasted the table to bits while the woman at arms killed the remaining 2 bandits. Biffin tripped over himself, and then Karl clocked Ratface with his hammer.

Nick hits Ratface again, before Karl pounds him into the floor. Borumar kills an orc, and the remaining 3 orcs call for a halt… they offer up all the treasure, and promise to leave the dungeon. We make them dump the treasure and disarm the trap, and then tell them to be on their way. Better return than the gnolls at 175gp and 1sp, but… Ratface’s rapier is crudely inscribed with “Tael the Rat” and Borumar holds onto it, though it doesn’t seem particularly valuable.

Heading out of the bandit lair, the party goes to a room with pools. Karl spends time playing with them, sticking his 10’ pole into them. 4 out of 5 are about a foot deep, but one is more than 10’ deep. One also scares Karl, causing him to run for the surface, hitting 7 trip wires on the way. The party follows the first time, but not the second or third. Meanwhile, through a hole in the wall to an adjoining room Stirges keep coming out. The 3 arms-men are tasked with shooting anything that pokes its nose through the hole. The deep pool is discovered to be not actually filled with water, but to be a tunnel with the illusion of water over it. Karl, Borumar, and Nick climb down the ladder to take a look, see some hallways and doors, and head back up.

After a dozen stirges are killed, the door to the room they seem to be coming from is checked, revealing some wasp-like nests on the walls, and a lot of bones on the floor. The nests are destroyed and some treasure found.

Exploring some more of the dungeon brings the party to a room with a long exhausted dart trap that is still attempting to shoot the long dead body crumpled on the trigger plate. The bones are shoved off the trigger.

From the next room down the hall, rustling could be heard…

Gains: 6sp, 175gp, jade necklace, silver mirror, small cut diamond
Kills: human bandits, orc bandit
Losses: Hith the arms-man and Mack the guardsman

Reaper Snakeman and Giant Cobras

You ever see a really cool image online, and think to yourself, I wanna do that?

 

Well, I saw this snakeman and thought that exact thing. So I decided to give it a try... and maybe on a few giant cobras too. 

I did my usual soapy water scrub with my hobby toothbrush, and glued them onto bases. I primed them with my cream airbrush primer, and then started with Phoenix red... which was too bright.

I then used a sample orange and Sun Yellow to do the markings, and bleached linen for the belly scales.

 The armor was painted with Nightmare Black and Pure Black. The decoration was Dragon Gold, and the blade was Blade Shadow. I used Brown Liner to line the belly scales on the snakeman.

 The bases were painted with Earth Brown that got a bit of Linen White added to it for highlights.

 The Cobras could probably use a dark brown wash to help bring out the scales, but I'm happy enough with them as is.

February in Review

The Pandemic Continues… though an end is in sight. Hearing that the vaccinations are finally progressing at an appropriate pace is heartening, though it’ll be months yet before I get mine. This month was my second of paternity leave, and I’ve got March to go before I’m back to work. It wasn’t as productive as I’d have liked (is it ever?) but I still got stuff done, and had a good time doing it.


Gaming
Nick the Pike continues his explorations of Rappan Athuk, and I’m up to date with all those reports. I’m slowly catching up with my Stonehell reports…

I picked up Sunless Sea (a computer game) and have already logged several hours playing it. It’s SO GOOD, and HARD!

Miniatures
Finished up the IMEF troops, painted 3 giant cobras, 1 nagendra (snakeman) swordsman, 2 minitaur demons, and worked on my new cardboard spaceship. 

Media
Queer Eye (bunch of episodes)
WandaVision
Star Trek TNG season 7 almost finished
Captain America The Winter Soldier
Avengers Age of Ultron
Avengers Infinity War
Captain Marvel
Avengers Endgame
The Expanse (started season 1)
Lost in Space (season 2 in progress)
Umbrella Academy (season 2 in progress)
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Probably some other stuff too

Goals
I have several minis picked out to work on, I want to finish the cardboard space truck I started, and catch up on more of the Stonehell session reports.

Rappan Athuk: Mouth of Doom - Bandits!

 Session played on 2/21

Nick the Pike, Fighter 6 (Me)
Borumar, Thief 9 (Josh)
Biffin, Fighter (NPC)

Still in the Mouth Of Doom, the party heads around to the room the kobolds stay out of. In front of the door are a pair of boots and a gauntlet, all halfling sized. Checking the door, Borumar notes a weird sheen on it, as well as the foot or so of floor in front of the door. Using the gauntlet to try the door handle, it’s discovered that the door is locked, and that the sheen is from some sort of glue. One boot, then the other were stuck to the door. Borumar successfully unlocks the door while avoiding having his tools stick to the door. Within the room, which is entirely coated with the same sheen as far as the party can see, is a chest in the middle of the room. Just inside the door is a skeletal hand cut off at the wrist.

Nick suggests going outside to get a bag of dirt and leaves to make a safe path to the checks, but Borumar uses his crossbow to send over a rope line across the room, sticking the near end to the door. Then sends over a second line under the first, and convinces the halfling (for 200gp on top of their share of the treasure) to climb across and bring back whatever is in the chest.

The halfling makes it across, and thankfully the chest isn’t coated in the glue or locked. 500gp and 1sp were safely recovered before the glove fell off the door handle. Then the boot, and then the other boot, then the rope dropped to the floor, sticking. Seems the glue has a built in timer of some sort?

Nick tossed the silver back into the room. Borumar was bad at math in trying to figure out how the money should be split up.

Continuing on toward where the bandits were supposedly camped out, the party comes to a viewing room, with a closed coffin. 4 zombies laying around the coffin slowly attack the party, the party movies in to attack back (to avoid being bottle necked in the doorway) and one of the hirelings trips on a tripwire. The zombies are cut down easily. Checking the coffin disturbs a grumpy ghoul that apparently slept though the fight with the zombies. It was chopped down before it could seriously hurt anyone, and the heavy necklace it was wearing was taken as booty.

Deciding that the bandits probably weren’t worth the effort, the party circles back to the entrance hall, checks the pit trap (it was empty) then continues around to the east, checking another pit trap (also empty) before coming to a dusty room with a pile of 10 skulls (3 sided pyramid). Investigating further revealed that each skull had a hole in the top of it. The skulls were knocked around, but no gems or gold teeth were found.

Moving on, the next door Borumar unlocked and opened revealed 4 bandits with bows ready for us… Borumar took 3 arrows. Ouch. From behind us another group of bandits led by a big orc and a little rat faced fop. The bandits in the room were killed first, then the orc. With the death of the orc, the rat faced guy called a retreat and slammed the door shut in the party’s faces. Annoyingly the door relocked. Taking a moment to drink some healing potions (getting the halfling up off the floor), the party chesed after them, but lost them, stumbling on a group of giant ants. Not wanting to deal with them, the party retreated to the entrance hall and up the stairs. The ants followed up to where the sunlight hit the stairs. Using some flaming oil and some arrows, 2 of the ants were killed.

The party debats making camp, but decides to hoof it back to the tiny village. Borumar brings the dead uncooked ant to potentially eat and harvest the carapace for armor.  

Nick gives the 2 hirelings a 25gp bonus each.

Gains: heavy necklace, 500gp, body of 1 giant ant
Kills: human bandits, orc bandit
Losses:

Stonehell: Lost Level Burned Library

 Session 157 was played on 7/9

Eiric, Wizard 8 (Kat)
Karl, Dwarf 8 (Julia)
Boris, Cleric 5 (Jeff)
Joho, Mystic (Chris)
Ool, Mystic (NPC)
Borumar, Thief 7 (Josh)
Morgana, Mage 5 (Reggie)
Daton, Fighter 4 (Jay)
Plus war dogs

After dealing with the hogs, the party checks out the next door, and finds a skinny somewhat foppish man hiding behind an old sitting chair. However to get to him, they had to chop down the door, as the voice on the inside of the room refused to unblock the door. Karl used his ax to smash through the wood, grinning, and saying “Here’s Karl!”

The poor man was terrified, and was hiding from the hogs who had tried to eat him (and had eaten his friends). Kayani agreed (didn’t have much choice) to go with the party.

The party sees some goblin scouts, and they see the party. Each just goes their own way.

Continuing their exploration, they come across a tall hallway, and up above a short bridge crossing the hallway about 10’ up. Karl climbs up to scout, and then the rest of the party comes up. To one side of the bridge they find an empty library, and to the other a room with a heaped pile of burned books.

Going back down the hallway, they come to an old armory, and find 4pp hidden inside a rusted old breastplate. Then onto an old dusty kitchen, where the pig tries to make a run for it. He fails, and is soundly smacked about and threatened if he tries that again.

Gains: 4PP
Kills:
Losses: