101. It's Been A While, Hasn't It?

Hello.  Let's skip the usual rig-a-ma-role and get straight to the pictures.  I've painted some things and haven't shown them here yet.  So here we go.

I feel like this post will be very disjointed.  I'm going to veer from Cultists to half-naked women to Cowboys to spacemen.  I told you it's been a while, and while I haven't really painted all that much in that long of a time, I've still painted some and here it is.  Unless otherwise noted, everything is 28mm-30mm scale.  If you click on the pictures, they should enlarge.

First, let's finish off the Cultists from a previous posting.

These are the last of the Pulp Figures cultists that I own.  The left half of the pictures is their Evil Hooded Minion Master (PWM 06) and the right half is, well, my records show it as the same, but the website now only shows the first four, so I don't know.  Maybe they're being refurbished?

More corrupted business suits worshipping Yet Another Evil Entity, but at least these guys have a sense of humor, even if their book is written in blood.  Maybe he's a nice Evil Entity....

Next, we'll titillate with some cheesecake.  My wife didn't much care for these but I had fun painting them.  They were definitely a nice diversion from painting Cultists and Cowboys.  There is no cohesion among them, they are not part of any larger set; they're all single miniatures that only share the trait of being mostly undressed.  More or less.  They were fun to paint, as I got to try different skin tones, for variety.

All 10 of these were found in a big mixed box and purchased at GenCon 2017, then they sat in my closet until October 2024.  As best I can tell, they're all (except for one) old Ral Partha figures.  I'm pretty sure they're all still available from Iron Wind Metals.  From left to right they are:  

Female Warrior with Sword & Shield 10-310I; Warrior with Sabre & Shield 10-312B; Captive DF-545; Captive Andromeda DF-548; Executioners (2), Prisoner & Chopping Block 01-025 (but only one of the four); Female Beast Master Warrior II with Sword and Spear DF-574; Winsome Maiden 10-313G; Female Vampire DS-017; 03-712 Amazon Queen (note the link is to RalParthaEurope.co.uk); and the last one is...unknown.  I was unable to find her anywhere.  If you know, please leave a comment with a link!

Finally, we'll round out the round-up with a return to the Cowboys.  Here I present the Linguine Henchmen from Gunfighter's Ball by Knuckleduster Miniatures.

My previous post featured my painting of the Linguine Western Faction by the same company.

Several of the henchmen are immediately recognizable from "For a Few Dollars More," while the rest are, to me at least, more generic-looking.  But considering Knuckleduster seems to pride themselves on making miniatures that look like the characters from the movies or TV shows, I'm probably just not recognizing them.  And good luck getting any kind of a list telling you which miniatures are which characters!  That's a closely guarded secret.  <grump>

One thing I'd like to point out about the two figures to the left in the group photo (and the two singled out in their own photo) is that they were painted with The Army Painter Speedpaint 2.0 as opposed to my usual Reaper Miniatures Master Series paints.  I had been swayed by the joyfully sung praises of several Youtube videos and other blog posts, and I did do my due diligence to determine if the investment was worth the cost versus how much time it would save me.  I tried, I really did.

TL;DR version:  I hate them.  I might find isolated instances where I will use them, but IMO they're awful.  YMMV.  Don't bother wasting your breath in the comments about how I'm wrong simply because you like them; that's fine, please like and use them all you want.  I won't.  (But see below....)

I thought about repainting the two misfits but decided against it, in case I ever waver in the future as memory fades.  Now I can pull these two heinous monstrosities out and remember.  (But see below....)

Here are the photo references I used to help me paint the figures I was able to recognize.  Makes me want to go watch the movie again.

...And then I relented (regarding the Speedpaints).  I already had a box of plastic Cowboys from Great Escape Games for their Dead Man's Hand Redux game that I Kickstarted, plus more coming when that game arrived, so I felt justified in wasting ten figures on Speedpaints.  Here they are:

They were quick, I will admit.  Very quick.  It took me longer to prep them and pick the colors I wanted than to paint them, and all 10 were less than 3 hours (for me, that's fast).  But they look like trash.  Absolute Garbage with a capital G.  I even went back and tried to lighten them up.  I did everything the way the vlogs and blogs said to do.  It's just not for me.  Maybe you're O.K. with them, so more power to you.  Have fun.  I'm done with Speedpaints.  I DO want to get more figures painted, to get on the tabletop, but the truth is I ENJOY painting too much to use these any longer.

Anyone want to buy some lightly used Speedpaints?

Hang in there, we're almost done.  This is a huge blog dump simply because I want to get it all off my hard drive.

Finally, the most recent figures are some Blue Moon Manufacturing BMM-204 Box 4 Four Musketeers (plus Planchet and horses).  These seem to be mostly mirroring the 1974 movie "The Four Musketeers" and I originally intended to paint them as such, but the movie costumes are actually dreadfully dull and didn't quite seem to match well enough for me to follow through with that idea.  So instead I just went with some nice bright colors to show who-was-who on the tabletop.

I also finally invested in a nicer photo "studio" from MacroMats using their Photography Full Backdrop Set (I caught it on sale).

And of course they need opponents, in the form of the Cardinal's Guard (also by Blue Moon, BMM-205).

Obligatory fight scene:

And FINALLY, I realized I completely forgot these.  They're 15mm scale, so they're easy to overlook.  Just some Rebel Minis Earth Force Marines Infantry.  The packs come with 21; I think these 7 came gratis from a convention somewhere, perhaps GenCon.

Whew!  I think that's everything I wanted to show.

Thank you so much for looking, especially if you made it all the way down here.

100. The Big One-Zero-Zero!

Hello, thrill-seekers and conversationalists.  Or should I say, "Howdy," since this is going to be a Western-centered post.  And I do say, "Howdy," quite a bit in real life, what with being a Native-born Texan who routinely wears cowboy boots to work.

This is also my post #100.  Yippee!  Yippee-ki-yay!  Others have surely reached this milestone many times over by now but  I don't post very often, since Life©® tends to get in the way, and it also seems like Blogging has diminished compared to it's heyday.  Now everyone vlogs or does the Tube-o-You's.  But back when I posted my first placeholder message on August 11, 2009, I didn't really even know what I was going to do with this little corner of the Web.  (My third post, wherein I attempted to solve that age-old problem of painting more really works, but ask me if I live it.  Physician, heal thyself, right?)

Anyhow, on to this post's subject:  the Old West.  I've fallen in love, for the first time, all over again, with the Old West.  I've been watching lots of old movies, many that I've never seen before, thanks to the streaming service Tubi.  They've got lots of really good stuff on there, and not just Westerns, but Westerns are what I've been watching.

And painting.  What really got me started was when Too Fat Lardies debuted their new game "What a Cowboy!"  I watched their videos and thought that looked like it captured the feel of a Western gunfight pretty well.  I already owned Great Escape Games' "Dead Man's Hand" rules, but for some reason they never captured my interest.  Then shortly after "WaC!" arrived, GEG Kickstarted a new version of DMH, which I backed and that got me keen to play their game too.

In between, I had purchased six buildings from GEG to make a small main street and spent several fun hours putting those together.  That was a new experience for me, working with laser-cut, pre-painted MDF wood.  Somewhere in there I "discovered" the rules called "Gunfighter's Ball," from Knuckleduster Miniatures, and more importantly, their own line of miniatures.  I still don't have a copy of the rules (yet!) but I absolutely love their miniatures; they are some of the finest sculpted figures I've ever seen, ESPECIALLY since they're made to look like famous actors from the movies.

So I went deep in on several sets of Knuckleduster's miniatures, buildings from GEG, GEG's Kickstarter (which included 3 new plastic buildings, among other things), *AND* I bought some more Western laser-cut, pre-painted MDF buildings from Black Site Studio, from their Tomb Canyon range.

I'm set for a while.  I've played a few games of WaC! with my son and we enjoyed it, and now I'm ready to try DMH Redux.  One of the nicest things about Old West gaming is that you don't need a lot of figures to play.  The buildings are the most expensive and time-consuming part, but once they're done then you've got all you need.  (Mostly.  What miniatures gamer can ever truly say they have all they need?  AmIRight?)

And now, on to the pictures, which is enlarge if you click on them.  These are all from Knuckleduster, unless it says otherwise.

Fresh off watching "Tombstone," I painted these Earp brothers.  L to R:  Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Doc Holliday.

Lots of dark colors, those Earps (and friend).  Black can actually be a very difficult color to get right.

This is the image from the movie I used as reference.

These are two Cowboys who end up helping the Earps, Turkey Creek Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion.

The real history of the West is just as fascinating as the movie versions, if you ever get the chance to read some of it.

It was very difficult to find good still images of these guys, so I made do with what I could.

These are the Cowboys.  L to R:  Curly Bill Broscious, Johnny Ringo, Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton and Ike Clanton.  The McLaury's and the Clantons were the ones at the O.K. Corral.

A slightly different angle.

I tried to copy the correct colors as much as possible.

That finished off Tombstone.  These were enough for me to play a few games of WaC!

Next up, The Man With No Name; and "Once Upon a Time in the West."

On the left is Harmonica; and Frank.

I'm pretty happy with how Harmonica's jacket turned out.  However, it was after taking this picture I discovered that I had missed painting his hair!  So I went back and fixed it.  (Something about not seeing the forest for the trees....)

Here we have the Spaghetti Western icons:  L to R:  The Man With No Name (although sometimes called Blondie, etc, he never GIVES his name) as seen in all three of his films but here he is primarily "The Good"; Angel Eyes "The Bad"; and Tuco "The Ugly."  Rounding out the foursome is Ramón from "A Fistful of Dollars."

I always found it interesting that the same actors were in the two of the three movies, in different order, but playing different characters; only Clint was in all three and he played the same character.  In other words, Angel Eyes was in #2 & #3, Ramón was in #1 & #2, but Tuco was only in #3.  What's more, film #3 was meant to be the first in the story order, but was filmed last.  That's why Blondie only wears his classic look at the very end of the movie, when he takes the items off a dead soldier.

I think this is enough for now.  I do have more painted figures that I was waiting to finish to add to this post, but now I think I'll wait.  Which means I could have posted #100 a long time ago.  Oh well.  I want to end on a high note here, and the next set of painted figures...well, you'll see.

But for now, THANK YOU for reading, pardner!