Contrast Colors and a visit to a local Wargames Club

Some weeks ago a friend invited me to come over for a paint session. He introduced me to the (for me) new Contrast Colors from Games Workshop and so I tried them on some Reaper Miniatures.

Here are the (not completely ready) results. The lizards where primed and then simply painted with "Contrast Ork Flesh" and "Contrast Mantis Warriors Green". No washing, no shading. The giants leather jacket (can't find the name of the mini) was painted with "Contrast Snakebite Leather" and the nice leather effect came immediately. Again, no other paint, no further work step. The Troll was painted with another contrast color I can't remember and then washed with "Strong Tone" from Army Painter. Most of the painting was done in a few minutes, details came later.

I must say that these paints are an astonishing product. They may not be suitable for all kinds of miniatures and used too much may result in creating a very specific look, but chosen to paint some parts of minis can bring nice effects and speed things up. I am definitely going to try more of the contrast colors.

And while I was visiting him, I took a photo of his painting place. Like a lot of the younger generation he is all into the Kickstarter and 3D-Printing thing. Which will become (or is?) the biggest threat to the business model of Games Workshop and the like I think. When he started printing I was very skeptical but he has his 2nd printer now and the quality of the miniatures is really high.

  

On that Sunday we also visited the Club he is a member off. They reside in a large bunker and during the Covid crisis the club grew from about 30 members to around 100 members. At the moment they are in progress to double their space and furnish another floor of that building.

One of the three(!) playing areas.

Part of the building and painting area. They also have a special room for spray priming.

The dead hate the living... always

When I started working on my new fantasy project last summer (that feels so terrible far away now) I realized that I don't have a lot of figures for the dark side of my setup. And this hasn't changed much since then.

But I found something in my box for Ebay sales that took me a step forward. A group of skeletons from Reaper Miniatures that was bigger than I remembered them. I had sorted them out someday because I thought I had enough monsters and evil folks for dungeon crawls. Setting up an new 'army of darkness' was not on my list. 

They are here now and we all know, nothing represents the forces of evil better than the undead, normally shown as skeletons (and nowadays as zombies). A very old cliché that is actually a little bit strange because a skeleton is a part of every human body and we all will be only skeletons someday. But somehow we resent the undead when they return to life and automatically think they are evil. Maybe it's the smell. Consequently, whenever they appear in legends, movies, books and games, the undead always hate the living. 

From the movie 'Jason and the argonauts' (1963). The hero is finally confronted with a horde of skeletons who arise from the ground. The following fight is a masterpiece of stop-motion animation. A typical example of good vs. evil. Although we have to wonder if Jason, the thief of the golden fleece, is actually the good one in this story. (Picture: © Columbia Pictures)

 

The skeletons had not been painted very well and the shield was painted over two or three times because I was never realy happy with the result. Undead may be resistant against a lot of things, but not against a big portion of paint thinner. Don't do this with plastic minis, they would go straight to hell...

 

Here the the are, cleaned and ready for new priming. The archers on the left are from the boardgame 'Descent: Journeys in the Dark'. All in all 25 warriors plus 6 Archers.

 

Priming done and mounted on 25mm square bases. Another pile of bases where I had to close the slots with matchsticks. I would like to avoid this work, but I still have so many slotta bases and I don't want to throw them away.

The first test paint to find out which colors to use. 

And the result. Twenty five guys for the evil side of the game. The Skeleton that is attached to the standard is nothing religious by the way, only a different kind of 'banner'. Spontaneous comment from my wife : 'My God...!'