The Americas 1

this post is mostly extent types but a couple of extinct ones made it in, well maybe more than a couple. And first up are the Bison, or as we call them Buffalo. The herd started small, 4-5 figures then I kept finding more at flea markets to add in. These have a nice variation in size and poses, calves to old bulls. But, this also means I have no idea who the makers are for most of these figures. Included in the herd is a large bull I am using as a Steppe buffalo bull, you can see in the second picture he is a little larger than the rest. 

The Long Horn Buffalo like the Steppe bison are extinct, but all three are related, with the Steppe considered ancestorial to the other two. The Bison Latifron (Long Horn  Bison) started out as the ones from Acheson creations, but they were much heavier built than the normal American Bison I had. So inspiration struck, their horns came separate from the bodies and so with some Green Stuff putty I made them some long horns instead. So a small group of three Bison Latifron can wander the table. The pictures of them are from a set I asked Mike Demana to do up for me.

Well for one of my scenarios for Song of Drums and Tomahawks I needed a dead large body animal.  The second one is my original, he came from a toy store, was close enough to the right size and took only a little changing to fit nicely on a base. I cut out some between the legs and off the back side so he would lay flatter, think it took some heat for the back legs. Was going to continue the next day on him as a project, but luckily was surfing the web and noticed in an old painting of buffalo hunters that some of the dead bulls had their legs sticking out and hanging in the air. So the cutting and heating ended and painting began, he finished up looking good. The upper buffalo can pass as a European Bison or a young American bull or a cow and works fine.

Next are the pronghorn, the only extent antelope  in the Americas and the fastest land animal in the Americas. They got fast for a reason and that reason will be shown in a later post.

My small herd of American horses, these are Acheson zebra figures filling in as the closest figures to look like them, may or may not have had tails like modern horses. But, probably had the standing manes like the  extent Przewalski’s wild horse, line back dun and gray(which I didn't use) seem to have been most common color.

But there weren't only medium sized horses running around, my version of Hagerman Horse or the American Zebra. There is debate over whether they were Horses or Zebra, so I went with horse color. If it turns out they had stripes I'll add them later (may anyway as they look to much like their smaller cousins). They were large Equids, and went extinct around the same time as the small cousins did in the Americas.

And since I can't seem to get clear of the extinct types in this post. Here is a pronghorn cousin (they think) and some camels. Camels evolved in the Americas along side the horse and migrated from there to Asia and was later introduced by Humans to Africa and Australia. The Antelope started as a toy Pronghorn from Hobby Lobby and then underwent some alterations. It was fairly simple to find a Large member of the family to copy. Take off the front forks of the head horns and add a nose horn. And we have giant Pronghorn relative. The Camels for now are inter-changeable in Africa, Asia, Americas or Australia. Looking for some to represent the northern species and the longer necked ones. I'll probably add Llama and the South American breeds later.

And now for some of the extinct, I know I said Extent, but these are the Giants that still have relatives around today.

Fist the Giant Beaver followed by his smaller cousin. Castoroides was the size of a black bear but seems to have been herbivorous like its later cousin in the next picture.

One of the Giant Armadillos, Doedicurus. Wonder if they jumped up when startled? One of the reasons you see so many dead present day armadillo along the roads down south, just like the little guy in front of the girl in the second picture. He is joined by squirrel, eagle, beaver, bobcat and Prairie dog.

There was a Giant Raccoon in North America once upon a time, probably omnivorous as his modern cousins and thought to have been displaced by bears. His small modern cousins are in second picture.

A couple of Giant sloths, no extent ones yet, but their big cousins look much more impressive. First one representing Glossotherium is mid-sized from Reaper Miniatures. The second one representing Megatherium was the largest and rivaled the Mammoths in size, it is from one of the Hobby Lobby toy lines.

Nest is a Peccary cousin, larger than his modern relative.

And what would a North American landscape be without Turkeys for those special days.

Well that's it for this post, next up are the predators or more just wildlife, or maybe both. Or maybe something else new and exciting. We'll see when I post it up.

 Well, still working on the rules for this, but still painting up minis for a game that I hope to have working soon. Doing actual extent animals is tougher than extinct because you can't just make it up as you go. A Jaguar is a Jaguar and his coat has a certain pattern to it. Even if the pattern does change from animals to animal, painting multiples of the same type start to get to you. This project has me understanding why I dislike painting more modern periods of soldiers, as opposed to ancients and Medieval warriors. And why I love doing the American Natives for SDT (Song of Drums and Tomahawks), our FIW rule set. No set pattern to follow other than the war paint colors used and each pattern is different for every warrior. Much more satisfying in my mind, than doing 30 belts, then 30 cross belts, breeches, coats........ Just don't like them as well.

First up are the Zebra, almost bought two more packs of these not long before I started painting and glad now that I didn't. And that a few of these figures became early wild horses for the Americas.

Next three had me putting 4 and 5 back into the do later box. The three of them took as long to do as the whole herd of zebra had. (Not sure why the second shot is so much darker than the first.) Enjoyed the first one, but by the third was seeing little brown squares where I hadn't painted the lines in yet. And for both the giraffe and zebra, I base coated them and then painted in the lines. For giraffe it worked much easier that way, and for zebra and tigers was a must. I started one zebra and a tiger using a method I was told about years ago. Base coat with stripe color (black) and use overall coat color (white or orange) to create the stripes. That method drove me nuts, or at least more than normal. Like the guy had said small lines were easier and little slop over onto a stripe didn't show badly, but to get a nice white or orange coat color was taking 4-5 coats of paint and still didn't look quite right. Was glad I switched back to my original thought, which was easier to do. Paint the coat color as base then add stripes, much easier, good enough though not as nice as the ones the guy had using the other method.

Did not have all my chimp pictures turn out well, but the one below is good enough for now. Would like to find some more poses just to vary them up some more.

The baboon troop looks good, but would like a little more variety in the poses. Maybe I'll find some more of these as well.

The Ostriches are just a male and two females, had to rebuild the head on the one pecking at the ground. Not sure if it was supposed to have buried its head or what as is it didn't have a head and wasn't attached to the base. So just created anew head for it looking for food.

Oryx and Kudu, these are fairly common antelope on African plains. I thought they painted up nice and are another group from the Ral Partha/Iron Wind bulk box at cons. Looking for Some of the smaller types next, Impala and gazelle would mix in nicely. 

Not last by a long shot but the biggest, Elephants. These were by far the easiest to paint and came out fine. Would like a few more poses, but this works.

 Animals everywhere!!

Hi everyone, well I've been working on a set of rules for Victorian/Prehistoric Game hunting. A set that in realty will cover from the stone ages to Sci Fi ideas of time travel or parallel dimensions. We read about the fantastic waste of the Big Game Hunters of the late 1800's, but WHEN you look deeper into it you start to realize that it is that more people lost their lives Hunting dangerous game than became known for it. Look up stories of men hunting buffalo( both African Cape and American Bison) and you find stories of men dying at it. Wild Boar, Big cats and more can be as dangerous to man as man can be. Modern Hunters are hurt or killed every year by the animals they thought to take home. 

Well the rules started out to be about hunting for meat for the group, tribe or family. And evolved to take in the period after the Asteroid hit killed off the truly big game, to modern day. Hopefully we will be playtesting these at conventions by the end of the year. But, for now here are some of the animals that will populate the tables. Extent and extinct are included. First up Afirca

These are going to my African bears, Agriotherium on left and an Atlas bear on right. There were bears in Africa until almost present day. The Agriotherium was an ancient lineage that died out. 

With the lion pride I painted up the males to represent most of the known mane colors. They prey on about all the animals in Africa, smallest to Elephants are all prey, granted older elephants unless hurt or very old are safe but anything short of full grown has been seen getting stalked. With humans being well within the range of a quick meal.

And while lions are dangerous, the second most lethal animal to humans in Africa isn't the lion but Hippopotamus. These bad tempered herbivores kill a large number of people every year. The Lions are even in the top three, but Hippos are every year. Get between them and water or enter their territory and they use their 2 foot of tusk on you.

Gnu or Wildebeest are very common on the plains and savanna, they are prey for all the large carnivores. But don't be in front of them when they stampede.

This African Python is a hidden danger for hunters, in the past they came a little larger than todays ancestors.

I thought my Cheetah came out looking good, except for the King Cheetah on the left. He is ok but looks to tiger like, think I could do better, and I may try sometime to find a cheetah in a different pose to paint up.

My Cape Buffalo herd lead by an old male came out well. I was surprised that they can run from brownish black to grayish black to full on black, mostly by herd and area. Mine are the more brownish type. Aggressive, large, and herd mentality make them something to fear. They may run away or they may start hunting you.

A black Rhino, he was sort to bitter-sweet to paint up. First I have always admired them as animals that while having their faults were pretty must live let live when shown in the Wildlife shows of my youth. Plus this model when I opened his package was missing most of the body between the legs on the back side, a bubble had formed in casting. I thought it was unusable, but some Green stuff and lots of mistakes and fixes later I have a hard time figuring out which side it was. 

The girl used is a Reaper Chronoscope mini, the animals come from everyone from Acheson, Reaper, Ral Partha, North Star and more. Some figures came from flea markets and others from my RPG days. More and more are appearing on Etsy and other 3D sites in multiple poses. More next post, still in Africa, but much harder painting ahead.

 Ok, not animals but Avars!

Well decided to get caught up on some of the posts I was planning. This one is a saga in itself, about the painting of a SAGA army. I originally bought these figures for SAGA v.1 and their Steppe Peoples from one of the books. When SAGA v.2 came out was not convinced that it was an army I wanted to run. Well eventually I put it on the paint table and got started. The build is all mounted, warriors and hearth guard, the sting them like a bee then hit with a sledgehammer idea. Well these Aventine miniatures painted up nicely, after gluing men, horses and accessories together. I left a few of the accessories off as I could see them being the pieces I was gluing back on continuously, such as bow cases, the javelin quivers and bowmen shields. Hanging shields for horse archers had been a pain with one of my DBA armies until I removed them and touched up the minis, in 28mm I could see a real problem developing. Oh, do I wish that was the biggest problem I ended up with. 

Well first some pics of the Avars.

Above and below are of my Leader base, flag is based off what is believed to be the Avar nation Flag.

Next two are of the Princess and Priestess I pained up for use in scenarios. Not sure of manufacturer of these two minis, but did add some of the extras from the Aventine minis to them, to make them look a little more important. 

Next are the three groups of Hearthguard, still working on my list setup for this army. 

And last but not least at all for this army, the 3 Warrior groups. 

Ok, one thing that  happened and I can't figure out. I use Polyshades tudor, black or walnut to finish wash and protect the paint jobs on my miniatures. Since this is a satin finish they come out very shiny, so I then spray them with a Dullcoate sealer to remove the gloss. Well the old standby has always been Testors, which is a little expensive but did a great job. Most of these were done with that combo. Still some shine on them from using the new cans, not sure if it is a new formula or not. So I started looking for a better one Dullcoat. That was when the trouble started.

Ok, when polyshade is dry you can see how glossy they look, and this is with the satin not the gloss.  Well I always leave the minis sit for at least 24 hours between steps, finish painting, wait, add polyshade wash, wait, flock base, wait and then dull coat. Well on a group of four I used Rustoleum Dead Flat finish spray. Much to my horror two of the minis had their paint start crinkling up as you can see below.

What is strange is while all four had some spots that did this, two of them were very bad and it covered a large obvious part of the minis. Well I didn't totally panic, I pressed down on the haunch of the one horse to see how soft it was. It pressed back flat on the minis and the paint seems to be holding. If you look at these two minis you can see the problem I had, but with a little quick work and luck they are fit for the table top.

Below is a pic of the lazy Susan in my paint box, just wood that has untold layers of paint on it. When I did the minis it was a flat smooth surface, after I sprayed the minis it bubbled up and became tar like. Bottom picture is of the knife I ran over part of it to see if it would scrap off. I went and got a drink, of water, to walk off my pissed and when I got back it had hardened into what the first pic shows.

I have no idea why this happened. I use a mix of craft and miniature paints on my miniatures. Have been using the Polyshades and Dullcoate for years with no problem. Have even used the Dead Flat on other projects and was very satisfied with it, it dulled nicely. but some combination on this day almost ruined a part of the army.