Red Coats are for Christmas

 It's that time of the year when you start to see random people on the streets (and everywhere) dressed in vibrant red, usually their beards waving in the cold wind. The vision of those red garments tends to bring joy to everyone, and calls for heartwarming feelings.

Oh, if only I could pay tribute to that feeling with my minis.

Oops, but I don't currently have anything even remotely similar to that. Or do I?

Oh, some time ago I got these gorgeous not-Praetorians from wonderful Victoria Miniatures (they are called "Victorian Guard" on their web). They certainly have the red coat and many of them have proud beards. Their vision brings joy to all faithful servants of the Emperor and calls for the annihilation of His enemies. Hmm. Close enough. They'll have to do.

I'm not sure about them bringing gifts though.

Anyway, let me show what I got. First of all, a 10 men regular squad.

Joy to the world and all that

Ho ho ho, have you been nice this year?

I didn't add any heavy weapon, just a melta gun. I'm not starting a full army, simply wanted to have a fistful of minis. I thought they'd make a nice escort force for my Governor mini (which is already dressed in red!), so I wanted to keep them light in equipment, if ready to face any potential threat to the boss. So I'm building a couple of infantry Squads: this one and a Command Squad.

Fortunately they are not Star Trek redshirts. In WH40K their life expectancy is bett... Oh, wait

I gave them my usual treatment about Squad identification, with the parted circle, the left half signalling the Platoon and the right half the Squad.

I should have started with 1-1. It occurred to me later

Here you have the other Squad, the Command one. There were some nice bits I wanted to use (mainly the bugle), but I added some other minis and conversions.

The special character, called "Cpt. Caine", should remind you of somebody

I got a few characters that gave some personality to this force. Apart from the Captain, which you have just seen, I got two other minis that don't belong specifically to this Victorian Guard. One was the drummer, a not-Mordian mini which only needed a replacement on the hat, and the bagpiper. I've always loved bagpipes (please check my first post on Imperial Guard, 12 years ago). They were easily integrated into this squad, and I like how they look. The banner pole was a conversion and the banner itself is just painted on a piece of paper, as usual.

But in the end they all work

The whole Command Squad

But I not only got these. In fact, the infantry squads were but a side purchase. It all started with the Kickstarter for Rough Riders, which got my eye since the very beginning. I got this squad:

I have to say that they are impressive in every detail. The design is flawless, every piece fits in smoothly and the casting is simply perfect. The horses look marvellous and imposing, and the whole squad looks great.

Codex cover

So once I got the Rough Riders I couldn't let them be alone and got the infantry fellas. They all form the Governor's Retinue, a flexible and agile ceremonial detachement ready to defend him from any unexpected issues that may appear (Oh, how handy would these had been that time when the Governor had to escape!).

Here you have the whole Retinue with the Governor:

Now I have to create an scenario for them!

Well, maybe they are not the bearded blokes with red coats you were expecting, and they may have horses instead of reindeers, but I hope you'll indulge me given these days.

Anyway, speaking of the date, just let me wish you all merry Christmas and happy new year!! Here's to 2025, I hope to read you all pretty soon. Enjoy these days!!

Some ugly beasts

 While committing to other stuff, I've decided to take on a small side project, one of those palette cleansers that help you to feel closure and that you get your damn stuff done. It consists of Frostgrave and Stargrave minis, all of them creepy monsters for scary encounters. Nothing special on mind, but just some eerie creatures that you can use in a number of different games.

Eeeek

In the pic above you have an example of each mini, but I painted two of each. Trying to decide how to approach this project, it looked clear to me that they needed to look ugly, dark, ominous. Nothing about bright colours or any kind of flamboyant patterns. So totally opposite to my work on the World of Twilight stuff. Then I thought of a fun experiment. What if I gave them all the same base coat and then tried different approaches? They should look sufficiently tied in, yet distinctive.

It looked great in my mind, seriously.

I primed them black and then I used a mix of dark brown, black and grey for the prime layer. Then I abundantly agrax-ed them:

They look all the same. Ugly and dirty. I'm pretending to say it as a good thing

From this point on, however, I walked different paths with each kind of creature. Let me start with the Leechwolves. I guess the name is quite descriptive on its own.

Uuuugghh

I wanted these to look pale and sick. Leeches are in fact quite opposite, in the black scale of things, but I really thought they should have this kind of look, and Itried to define the muscles and so, just using the three base colours I used on the original mix, but adding more and more grey to each layer.

Cute puppies

Next, the Grothek. Again the palette was kind of the very same, but this time the mix had quite more black and grey. The creature is a strange hybrid of bat and boar or something in that line, so I thought that dark greys should look fine.

I really thought that "animal crossing" was a totally different concept

I only added a different tone of brown on the back when painting the final layers, to provide some additional hues to the result:

A nice family!

The Chronohounds were a different challenge. I decided to go with the dark brown palette, always starting from the same point as the other monsters. I used little grey for the highlights, and then the result fell on the brown side. But they looked too dull and the texture of the minis was calling for something else. Then I came up with a weird idea. As these beasts move in time, coming in and out the continuum, I considered they should have their skin burnt, if not full of nasty tumours. So while staying with the same colours, I tried this:

They are also blind, just because they look scarier

So let's have a look at the final results. The good thing of having two minis of each model is that I can show both sides at the same time:

I'm still struggling to decide how does the Batpig sound

Oink, oink, screech

I prefer not to think of their sound

I really think some vet should take a look at those skins

Imagine a forest in the dark and then you find these. Nice, huh?

It's been a nice challenge, trying to get different results (as different as I could) with just the same three colours. They look like predators, but each one in their own way, and I believe they'll make some interesting encounters in any game they take part of.

I'm currently working on more stuff, and it will be quite different from this; coming (hopefully) soon!