Cyberpunk Cub Hunters

04.28.2025

I'm not completely sure why I picked up the Cyberpunk Cub Hunt pack, but whatever cool idea I had for painting these didn't stick around until I opened up the box. There's nothing bad about these minis, but after they were primed there was nothing that really stood out, either.

These minis require arms and head attachment to the body. Like a lot of production-printed minis, the necks are way too long for the divot they fit into. Every time I try to shorten the neck, I end up going too far and the necks never look right. This time, I just left things as they were.

Nothing special or new tests on the paint jobs for these. I pretty much stuck to Army Painter Speed Paints and just focused on not glopping on too much at once. I don't know what cubs these guys are hunting in the Cyberpunk (Red Zone) Universe, but now they're ready to hunt amok.

Next time on minis from games I'll never play: MORE Cyberpunk Red Zone.

Permalink Cyberpunk Red Zone gaming miniatures

Malifaux - Samantha Thrace

04.26.2025

This week, a bevy of little posts covering what I've (finally) finished painting for the first third of the year, starting with a single mini from Malifaux of Samantha Thrace.

I've never played Malifaux and I never will. I've gotten a few minis from the game over the year as they always have an interesting look, and sometimes look like they might fit into some type of game I might play. Samantha here doesn't fall into that latter category. This was just a mini I came across that looked like it would be fun to paint. That's a Miniature Market category for me that equates to adding to my wishlist and see if it ever goes on sale/I need filler to reach free shipping. Samantha decided to go on sale at some point.

While I really like the colors on the box art, I wanted to try a different direction and test out some purple for an upcoming Prince mini I'll get around to painting. Like most times I try to hit a large area with contrast paint, there was more pooling that I wished for on the top of the long coat. Overall this is on my my middle-of-the-road quality paintjobs. Ok for the table top, nothing really messed up, but also nothing noteworthy to brag about. Except some of the base - I had fun adding some Citadel grime to the metal grate on that one.

Next time on minis from games I'll never play: Cyberpunk Red Zone.

Permalink gaming miniatures malifaux

Star Trek Away Team - They have clothes!

04.17.2025

Taking to heart the short and sweet minimum posting I said I was going to do, here's (mainly) Star Trek Away Team minis I've been working on intermittently for a while. Skin, pants & boots, and golden/bronze parts were done a while back. This week I used some Citadel red, blue, and a brownish-yellow for 2 coats, at least, of uniform tops. Last night I went back with appropriately matched contrast paints to help blend things in a little better. I don't know why I'm getting brush shmears on mostly flat surfaces these days, but the base coat + contrast approach works for me in covering most things up. Everyone got some hair along the way too. Next is to touch up the things I managed to paint over while doing all the previous steps - Dr McCoy has a huge blue blob on one of his hands. The bases will probably be kept simple as each has the character name raised on it.

Permalink gaming miniatures Star Trek Away Team

Jailbirds Number 2

09.30.2024

Scenery interlude to paint some people brought my next set from the Jailbirds series - the Coyote Crew Command. I hadn't realized it had been a year since I painted the first set I had gotten from the series. No real reason to mention the time span other than how you really don't notice things like a year between something as you get elderly. So remember that, kids!

I had nothing special planned for this batch other than to not paint Necromunda buildings as I had been mostly doing for the past 3 months. I primed this set of Jailbirds earlier so they would be ready for when the figure-painting mood struck. The mood had been struck. These minis required some assembly with all the parts interchangeable between bodies - head, arms, torso, bottom half (not each leg). My bane with arms is whenever 2 arms have to hold 1 item/weapon. In an effort to avoid this frustration, I went with 1-arm wielding pieces. Granted, it's not the most realistic look at times. I like to look at it as supporting strong women.

As these minis are flat-footed in terms of bases (ie no protrusions to stick into bases), I decided to pin these and use some pre-made bases that have been sitting in boxes for years. Normally I use paperclips for pins, but paperclips are too big to really fit in the feet/legs of these minis. After asking for suggestions in a couple of Facebook minis groups, the obvious alternative of sewing pins was used. Sewing pins beat out the #2 option of guitar string, mainly because I can pick up pins at Hobby Lobby and have no idea where to start for guitar string and the various sizes it comes in.

Snip, try to reduce mold lines, super glue and use my fancy drill to hollow out pinholes and only go too far 2/5 of the time. Just white primer today, no fancy zenithal this time around. I used a couple of different flesh shades on the 5 minis so they wouldn't look like clones this time around. Everything else was a mixture of Citadel Contrast and Army Painter Speed paints. Nothing too fancy, just focusing on brush technique and trying to stay in the lines as much as I could.

I picked 5 bases from my stash that were pretty simple to paint, or at least I was going to paint them simply. After painting, I sealed the minis and bases so as to not rub off paint when going to drill base holes and glue in the minis. Post drill and mini gluing, I went back with some mostly-unintentionally-dry Hardcoat to gloss up the metallic pieces.

Overall I like what I ended up with. It was a nice excursion from buildings, so much so I'm looking forward to the next phase of buildings I have lined up!

Permalink gaming miniatures Jailbirds Minis

Zombie Soldiers

06.05.2024

While waiting for the humidity to reach sub-75% for a weekend so as to not make spray priming/painting the Necromunda buildings more fo a challenge than it'll surely turn out to be, I opened up a set of Zombicide soldiers that I've had a mere 2 and a half months. It was an impulse purchase from a flash sale of some type. Zombicide is a game I don't like (after playing twice), but I like the variety of minis for the game so I still find myself supporting said game.

Zombie soldiers was a box of 6 minis cast from 2 poses. I'm not sure of the game backstory for these muscular gun-wielding zombies, but that's part of why I don't play the game. They look cool and look fun to paint. I'm in. A quick priming on a humidity friendly 10 minute window one day, and from there I was good to paint at my leisure.

And leisure I took it, as I dawdled over the course of 2 weeks to get in about 4 hours of painting/basing. This was my first use of the new rolling rack of paint to make use of the dining table setup. There was a wee transport error which occurred right after I decided it would be safer to roll the rack into/out of the hobby closet in the other (180°) direction. Said error was just an inconvenience for about an hour and resulting in no lasting damage, so that's all we'll say about that here.

With the kitchen table paint setup ready to go, I pondered how to make 3 copies of the same sculpt different. I wasn't in the mood to add greebly bits, so I just went with classic military colors - basically a khaki and 2 shades of green as the bases. While pondering I though of going full-camo with 1 set, but I just wasn't feeling the camo this time.

After adding washes and picking out details with some other colors, those 2 shades of green didn't end up as far apart as they started. And that's ok. This painting session(s) was just for some between-projects relaxation. I wasn't trying to learn something new or tweak some style I've not done in a while. Just slather on some paint and don't fret about it.

I had a little fun with the bases, once again going back to my favorite texture paint of Citadel (Something) Badlands. I just really like the way it cracks. Instead of covering the whole base for all the minis, I added dirt-sploches mixed in with some static grass.

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