Converted Iron Kingdoms RPG party

So, I'm a miniatures guy, and I have a weekly RPG group. I generally love converting minis for our whole party.

 I don't always get to do the whole thing, because there are other players who also love to convert and paint minis. This time around, however, I got to do a mini for each party member.

 We're big fans of the Iron Kingdoms, so these are all characters from that setting.
 
 
This is our Skilled Ogrun Artillerist/Alchemist. The mini started out life as a Reaper Bones orc. His cannon was made from a Citadel missile.

 
This is our Mighty Gobber Man at Arms/Duelist. He started life as a Reaper Bones female dwarf- he had his head and breastplate completely re-sculpted.

 
This is our human Priest of Cyrris/Arcanist. He was converted less than the others- I altered the hair and ears, and changed the knife in his hand into a tunning device.

 

This is our most complex character. She is riding on a unique dragonspawn. I took Ruby (from Studio McVey) and got rid of the scales on the raptor, and added a little to his head plate so that his eyes would be covered.

Dragon Slayers Cake Topper

I had a couple contact me and ask me to make the two of them into fantasy RPG characters for a cake topper. That sounded great to me, so I was all kinds of on board.



Then they added- and we want to fight a dragon as well. Now, Cake Toppers aren't the same scale as most fantasy miniatures (the toppers tend to be around 5" tall, while gaming scale minis are tiny in comparison).

 But Reaper has been making some fairly large dragons of late, and I definitely couldn't pass up a chance to put Nethyrmaul the Undying onto a cake. They tell me they were thrilled too.

Chibi Centaur

This is one of the Chibi miniatures that Impact! Miniatures has been making of late.

This is one of the earlier ones that they made. One interesting thing I discovered while at Gencon this year- Trollforge (the guys responsible for casting these minis) has been upping their quality quite a bit.

 The newer castings have a much smoother finish on them. If you have some of the older chibis, the surface can be easily smoothed out in any problimatic places using either gloss or fine grit sand paper (I mostly use the second). But the newer ones don't need it so much, and that's quite nice.

 Anyway, here are some images for you.

 

Gencon 2014 Miniatures Roundup

Well, there were loads of cool minis to see at Gencon this year. Here's a selection of a few of the highlights I got to see. Corvus Belli were there this year to show off the new edition of Infinity. They're still as dedicated as ever to releasing the full rules online, but I'm sure their new book will be as pretty as their minis. Speaking of which, the demos they were showing off used the studio minis. That surprised me alot, but I know I preferred playing with such a splendidly painted demo set. Just getting to see them in hand (no glass) was pretty awesome.  Their studio painter was also teaching classes and generally showing off.

 

     

 Games Workshop had a presence (which is nice since it seems there won't be a Games Day in the US this year).  Hopefully, they'll start sending their game developers or 'Eavy Metal painters soon. The big thing they were showing off is their new Hive world terrain set.

One thing I thought was funny was that they were showing it off with a set of Storm Lord space marines. One of the first commissions I got when I started my business was an army of Storm Lords, so they're pretty dear to my heart.  To be honest, I'm often surprised to see that someone else painted them (a google image search for Storm Lords will yield mostly minis I painted with a few outliers). Their bright color scheme definitely pops against the grey terrain.  

 



    Ninja Division definitely had a busy time at the con.  Their booth was pretty packed with people looking for all the new Relic Knights minis. Naturally, there were quite a few of them that I had to pick up.  And I was in on the Kickstarter. Somehow I find myself wanting to collect all of their minis.  I'd best get to painting the ones I have.

   

 I also got to talk to their new studio painter, and I'm definitely fond of his work. The mini below is a new Anti-hero for Super Dungeon Explore (he comes with both a hero and mini-boss card).  I picked up the resin version of him, and it looks like he was popular enough that they're making a plastic version for their Forgotten King Kickstarter backers.      

 

     Something else I found that was pretty cool- Mierce Miniatures is making a game for their Bane Legions line of minis. It's going to be fairly small scale skirmish game.  The mechanics reminded me of War Gods- both players give their soldiers secret orders, then alternate activating one at a time and see how screwed up their plans get. But  the selling point for me was the massive monsters that you get to play with.  Mierce has some winners in their range.

     

Studio McVey shows off Plastics for The Others

Ok, one does not simply summarize Gencon. There's just way too much going on, and no one person who went actually got to see it all. Not even close.

 But I'll make a few posts for a few of my highlights.

 I got to talk to Mike McVey about what they've been up to. currently working on a new game with Guillotine. He didn't talk about the rules- the guys over at Guillotine Games (Zombicide) are in charge of that side of things. But the miniatures looked fantastic. The monsters are embodiments of the seven deadly sins.

 





 The story is that a cult opened up a hell portal and invited these monsters into the world. The heroes include quite a few dark urban style characters (vampires, werewolves, or modern sorcerers).

 





 But even more significant than the beautiful painted minis, they were showing off Plastic versions. After some of the complaints about the quality drop between the resin masters and the production plastics of Sedition Wars, Mike McVey decided they needed to get someone new to produce their plastic minis, and

 

 They were even selling the plastic version of their Pride sculpt. Not the resin one. I got to see it up close, and the plastic detail is fantastic. I honestly stood there looking over the resin and plastic minis next to one another, and honestly I couldn't see any loss of detail.

 

 Whoever they got to cast their new plastic line is really doing a fantastic job.