Yet Another Minis Catch Up Post; Part 6968.3. Probably.

I have a theory. Some time back in the late 70s or early 80s a wargamer REALLY pissed off John Nathan Turner. I'm not sure what it was he did exactly, save that it must have been terrible. Terrible enough that JNT swore bloody vengeance on all painters of little metal people, from that time onwards. And in he waited, and plotted, and when the time was right he unleashed a torment such as the world had never seen before.

No, not that one. A DIFFERENT torment.

And thanks to that one nameless fool we're all still paying the price to this day. Because there will come a time in the life of everyone who shares both miniature painting and Doctor Who as hobbies when they suddenly realize that they're going to have to try and paint the 6th Doctor.

Now, to be fair in these enlightened times we do have options. Thanks to the Real Time webcast and following Big Finish productions there is a canonical version of the costume which exists with a nice, simple, sane blue color scheme. And whilst this is a perfectly acceptable option to go for, you can't help but be haunted by the question "Dare I?"

Yeah, I dared. I dared HARDCORE.

The surprisingly part of trying to paint this costume is how deceptively simple it seems when you're actually working on it. Oh, it's fiddly. And you need to pay attention to reference photos in order to make it look right far more than any other Doctor. But the various coat panels are actually clearly delimited on the mini itself, so blocking out the various colors isn't really hard at all. Even adding the cross hatching and lines for the checked parts wasn't really that bad. No, the real terror in this is after you've been going along quite well filling the piece out and then you come to the stage you'd normally start inking. How the hell do you ink a color scheme like this? I tried using a dilute black, but it really did more harm than good, muting all the colors and creating a lot of work trying to touch things up again.

But still, all things considered I think it actually turned out well. I'm fairly pleased overall, and can now look forward to seeing how many shades of beige I can mix up when I get onto painting the 5th Doctor

But this isn't the only thing I've been working on.

Here we have a Sorceror Of Pestilence from the Avatars Of War Range, along with a couple of Plague Gits and base by Titan Forge. As you can probably tell I had a severe hankering to do something a bit Nurgley. and whilst Games Workshop themselves continue to just kinda suck in a variety of ways, these days we don't have to put up with any of their shit any more! There's a whole variety of companies producing miniatures in the vein of old school Citadel stuff without ever trying to claim they have a copyright on commonly used phrases! It's a win win situation as far as i'm concerned.

This is a gorgeous piece I have to say. Well, in a thoroughly grotesque way. In addition to the base and totally not Nurglings I also added a small lantern to one of the tentacles, which was taken from an accessory sprue made by Black Cat. Which was a bit of a pain as it originally had a hand attached, but that's what files were made for, right? Anyway, I really wanted one of the tentacles to be holding something, and I think that looks pretty cool. I did consider adding a few other bits and bobs, but there really wasn't anything that didn't clutter things up or look out of place.

Then we have this beautiful brute. Apparently a Horned Owlbear from Hackmaster, this boy is(like all really cool miniatures) no longer in print. But if you think I was going to pass up an Owlbear WITH HORNS when it popped on ebay you obviously don't know how I feel about Owlbears. Anyway, I decided to try doing this guy as an Infernal Dire Owlbear. Because D&D is silly like that.

Having had some success with a similar effect before I thought I'd try making his horns all fiery and glowing. You know, in keeping with the Infernal part of being an Infernal Dire Owlbear. Or possibly from reading Hellboy comics. Either way it at least gives him something that stands out over all the other Owlbears. Probably adds like D4 fire damage to Gore attacks as well, but I wouldn't really know about that. I always just looked at the pictures in the Monster Manual.

And since the only thing better than one Owlbear is MOAR OWLBEARS we come to this unusual specimen: A Jewelled Owlbear. The miniature itself is an old school Ral Partha one. I decided to have a go at doing a statue / golem in the shape of an Owlbear rather than just a regular one. The plumage is gold and platinum, the eyes are rubies. The teeth and claws are diamonds and the body is decorated in finest silver. Unfortunately the frame is iron and steel, and it has a has a habit of coming to life and killing anyone nearby before they can try to sell it.

I know I keep saying this, but there really are only so many ways to paint an Owlbear before you need to start branching out a little.

Finally we come to the Minor Fallen One from the ever reliable Heresy Miniatures. This particular project was a little more involved, as the original positioning had the weapon only held in one hand. And the other hand pointing with one finger. Really I guess the most fiddly part was re-positioning the finger, as at least the scythe and arms were large enough to hold. The trick in making everything look right was in the drilling of the hand. Obviously I drilled straight through the fist to run a pin for the two ends of the scythe haft. But I also drilled it out a little either side wide enough for each piece piece of handle to fit in, just a mil or two. Makes the join a bit more secure, but also really helps it look right. I also added a pentagram base insert from Black Cat because, really, what else would I use it on?

For the color scheme I wanted to go for a classic, Diablo style look since I'd been playing lots of path of Exile. You heard me. Whilst being a big red monster does lend itself to my rather limited talents, it has to be said that this guy has a LOT of horns and pointy bits. Which you need to watch out for when your trying to any blanket inking or highlighting of the general redness. But an imposing piece. maybe one day I'll have to look into doing a Major Fallen One to go with him.