Epaka

Here’s some quick pics from my Nordheim Expansion... The usual disclaimers apply: just painting for the game table, not a display case. 😉

Making some progress on the Khitai box set now... I have to say, as with Stygia, the hero sculpt is the least engaging sculpt in the set! The baddies are fantastic, while the hero is.... just ok. 🤔

@rhogg27184, well, with all my minis I’ve been mostly following the color schemes of the game art. Of course, some interpretation is always needed. As I am still learning how best to paint minis I have realized that anything which is mostly black needs some kind of highlight colors just to make it pop. Gotta say though, you definitely improved on my efforts. 

I just had a chance to look over the Conan Board Game Crossover Book that is being produced by Modiphius, in conjunction with their Conan RPG. It was written by none other than our own Dog Brother Matt John! S!!!

It has a series of scenarios that can be played as a campaign, as well as rules for a solo/co-op campaign, tips on writing scenarios, and guides for balancing gameplay and swapping out heroes.  The folks at Modiphius did a great job laying out the book with lots of art and graphical flourishes and, as I understand it, they added a fair bit of content as well. It makes use of the small tile sets that Modiphius produced, as well as content from the Core Conan game (and lots of stuff from the King Pledge set)... If you kicked into the Modiphius Conan RPG KickStarter, as I did, you can preview the book now. I’m not sure if it’ll be available for retail purchase from Modiphius, but it looks great. So I can definitely give it a big recommendation. 

@Matt John SI’m curious what you think of the preview/editing/layout, and the additional content that Modiphius added?

No doubt @garbetsp.... Hell, I’ve been tempted to just wire 8 bucks to the whining malcontents who are accusing Monolith of outright fraud, just to get them to stop polluting the KS comment sections. 

Finished up Stygia. Just have Khitai to wrap up and I’ll be all done with painting Conan!.... until the next campaign hits...

As always, kinda moving fast and sloppy, not making art, and generally following the game art for these minis.

Fantastic work @rhogg27184! Makes me want to re-do mine... ☹️

Anecdotally, I can concur with the OP’s article. Certainly I originally felt the rush and excitement of stretch goals during the original Conan KS. I was new to KS, and as a huge Conan fanatic I got swept along with the campaign. However, I’m now no longer in the same frame of mind. I’d rather just know upfront what I’m getting, and will gladly accept a campaign model that completely does away with stretch goals in favor of overall value. 

As a side note; stretch goals clearly have a negative impact on a game that hopes to have a long life post-KS campaign. Just look at Conan! So many stretch goal minis exist that it somewhat complicates the game’s continued success and confounds new gamers, collectors, as well as designers of scenarios (both official and fan-made)... Oh, and yeah, my household is fairly saturated with games now, so I’m passing over tons of KS games in favor of targeted acquisitions. I also have too much to paint, and so when I did pledge for Nemesis, I was frankly happy that they didn’t have too many goddamn stretch goals!!🤓

Hmmm... It’ll be interesting to see what kind of response they get from their KS campaign.

I think Conan KS fatigue might have contributed to the multiple failures that Pulposaurus encountered trying to fund their C.R.O.M. (Conan: Rise of Monsters... ugh, really?) skirmish game with pre-painted minis. That, or the fact that the game was obviously not designed as a ‘Conan’ game with any fidelity to the original mythos. They were clearly trying to cram their existing  idea for a game into a popular license that they had managed to acquire.  

As a collector I’ll be very open to whatever Shinobi7 brings to the table, but I have my doubts. Without question I’m ALL-IN for whatever Monolith offers, ‘nuff said!

@Footballzs, indeed I do! It’s in very good condition too. I lucked out on eBay. A third party seller was liquidating someone’s extensive comic and memorabilia collection and I’m thinking they didn’t know it’s real value, so I got a pretty damn good deal I think. I think I paid more to get ahold of some of the more hard-to-find Marvel Conan graphic novels TBH. 

Gotta chime in here; I own a copy of every single English language Conan comic in existence. That means Conan the Barbarian, Savage Tales, Savage Sword, and all the mini-series, one-off’s, Giant Sized, Annuals, and Graphic Novels)... I love the Marvel work (barring the quasi D&D stuff from the end of the color comic’s run). I also love the Dark Horse run, and I agree with @Matt John S that the recent King Conan stuff is among the best Conan comicbooks ever created. I’m very curious to see what Marvel will do now that they reaccuired the license. I’m also hoping that the new French language Glénat books might get translated to English and brought to these shores (but not holding my breath). 

Huh??? Hmmm... what the hell does this mean for Monolith’s Conan game and their plans for a 2019 KickStarter? Are they partnering? Was Conan Properties upset about the failure of this Conan game to succeed in retail? Any insight @Matt John S?????

I do not believe that this is an ‘official’ product. Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Monolith wanted nothing more to do with printing or promoting fan made scenarios. After the last effort, they received a LOT of backlash from a select few fans who paid a small shipping fee to receive the last printed version of fan made scenarios, but never received them due to shipping issues. 

I thought it was an awesome gesture on the part of Monolith, and I got mine in the mail with no issues. But blurring the lines of ‘official product’ has definitely led to at least a few disgruntled people accusing Monolith of cheating them out of shipping fees.  

Here they are! I had a lot of fun doing the boulder and ornate rock walls. These were possibly the first minis I ever painted properly (wither primer and everything!)  after doing a very rough job on the small minis that come with the Age of Conan Strategy Game. I think for these I was still using Min-Wax Polyurethane for shading and sealing. 

Fun project! Nice work...  I have a copy of Temple of Chac and Pyramid of Horus. Both games of the Adventurers series. They seem similar, but they are both rather simplistic in terms of gameplay. Probably lesser games in comparison to Escape... I love the theme though. And I did paint all the minis and rocks, etc. that the games came with. I’ll dig them out and take some pics to share. 

These guys were fun. I try to follow the game art with my Conan minis, but the art of these Witch Hunters is so dark and suggestive that there is a lot of room for interpretation. I let Red, Green, and Gold be my only theme... 🙂

I finished these months ago, and as I recall I got them all done in just a couple sittings. As usual, I’m sorta speed-painting for the tabletop, not making art like some of you mini maestros out there. 

Cthulhu Wars Minis:

On 6/26/2018 at 1:17 PM, garbetsp said:

Love it! Great work. Excellent basing too. 

On 7/1/2018 at 10:36 AM, garbetsp said:

 

Well the face really didn't take much effort. It's mostly just inks and thinned flesh paint treated the same as the rest of his exposed body. The only thing that was difficult was the eyes. I think they're the best I've done yet. I have a 10/0 brush, that's old and missing half the bristles so it's really a 20/0. I've been looking at eyes in photo stills and realized they've never dead white, but really a light shade of grey. So I used my lightest grey to put horizontal strokes across the eyes. Then for the blacks of the eye. I was incredibly steady and tried to hit the top middle of the whites with black and bend down slightly with the brush. I have poor depth perception so most of the attempts I completely missed getting the brush all the way to the miniature. Eventually I realized just keep going till I see the brush bend (which appeared as if I'd shoved the paintbrush through his face to my skewed vision).

 

I used Smoky Ink (Vallejo) for the eyebrows as well and messed up, realized it looked like a Slavic eyebrow and then did the other side to match. The only real disappointment I have is the primer went on grainy, and the end model is kinda grainy. It was a 100 degrees that day. Apparently, you should never primer in the heat of summer.

 

What colors did you use for that brown flesh on the right? It's coming up soon in my painting efforts, and I really like those tones.

Well great work all around man, he looks awesome. Looks like he’s ready to chop down a crucified Barbarian!

I don’t do eyes yet. At least not human eyes (monsters are another matter), I’ve tried a couple on some of the ladies, but... I’m working up to it. I heard that a good trick for making tiny pupils is to use a fresh sharp toothpick instead of a brush. But I haven’t tried it yet. 

I had a big batch of Conan minis that had a bad prime job. Very, very rough. It was too cold when I sprayed. I decided to remove the prime, it was THAT bad. After a lot of time trying to make it come off with some of the tips I read on BGG, with no luck, I just went for it and tried soaking them in engine degreaser. Had them back to bare plastic after a 10-15 +/- min soak and then a bit of scrubbing with an old toothbrush (wearing chemical grade gloves)... I made sure to clean them well after that and re-primed. Haven’t seen any side effects or damage at all.  I don’t recall if I had to strip any of the larger minis that aren’t one piece of plastic, but are instead glued to a more rigid type base. I doubt the degreaser would negatively affect that plastic or the attach point glue, but I don’t know for sure. 

I’ve been using Vallejo paints for a little while now and I love them. I only have the base set of colors and I mix any other colors I need, just like I did with the Army Painter set I used up before finding Vallejo. I think that N’Gora’s skin was just some of the ochre (?) with a small amount of the brown. The shader I used was probably the Army Painter Strong Tone.

This is the only pic I have handy, an old work in progress... sadly, I did not go on to give him a bushy unibrow. 😕 He’s going to look depressingly incomplete until I do... lol. 

@garbetsp: Nice work! He’s definitely got a lot of character in his face. I really haven’t developed the skill (or patience) yet to work in such minute details with my mini painting efforts. 

Here’s a few random pictures I have in the phone, but I am totally up for making a gallery of painted minis according to specific scenarios. I also need to do a massive group picture soon, with everything I’ve done for the game. I figure I’ll do that when I have the Big Box Expansions wrapped up. 

@garbetsp:

i did not go about it in nearly as scientific a method as you did, but, I did begin painting all my Conan minis grouped in specific clusters in order to unlock scenarios. I started with the core game heroes, Picts, Hyenas, giant snake, and Zogar in order to get the first scenario on the table, and then I just went about picking a scenario that looked interesting and painting what I’d need. I went all in on everything during the KS, so I’ve been pretty damn busy with all Conan all the time (kinda looking forward to painting something from a different genre eventually, like when my Nemesis game arrives). Too late for me to follow your awesome Conan data now, as I have painted everything except the 3 big box Expansions. I’m working on those now, and I have more than half of Nordheim painted. I think I’ll get on with Stygia next and then tackle Khitai. Oh yeah, and the MB Corinthia will figure in there somewhere too... 

I’d be down with that. I’ve got Cthulhu Wars painted, as well as a ton of Zombicide stuff... Other than that, I’ve just been painting Conan, Conan, and more Conan... Eventually I’ll get going on Mythic Battles: Pantheon, and when it arrives, Nemesis. I wish there was a bigger community here on the English version of The Overlord, but it would be cool to share non-Monolith painted minis with everyone. 

Well. Found the Cap. Just a work-in-progress shot. One of the first minis from Conan that I painted... always learning. I figure I’m getting better since I see things I’d do differently on this one.