This picture is my latest Lead Painters League entry, and features five gangsters I painted for my Spirit of the Century campaign. SoC is a pulp role playing game, ideal for these one off adventures when someone can't make it, or between campaigns. Pulp is a genre of adventure gaming based on the trashy stories that came out in the twenties, thirties and forties, featuring heroic adventures, dastardly villains, evil Nazi scientists, rocket men and so forth. I have included it because, while not strictly speaking Four Colour, many of the heroes of pulp stories were kind of proto-superheroes, like the Shadow, and the Phantom. It's easy to see their influence on the older heroes, especially the likes of Batman. Others influenced well known movies like Indian Jones, The Mummy, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

The male figures are by Copplestone Castings, and the lady is from Pulp Figures. I painted them in a sort of sepia pallet in homage to my favorite gangster film, Last Man Standing. I love the way that film is shot in colour, but feels like it is sepia.

Next weeks LPL will be five crewmen from a pan-galactic trading vessel, then it will be back to four colour with a London-based team of Superheroes.

This is Hallow Eve, a self styled witch. She claims to be the reincarnation of a witch Red Toothed Gin, supposedly executed my Mathew Hopkins, Witchfinder General. She even tries to reinforce this image by spouting pseudo-Shakespearean English all the time. No evidence has been found of the existence of Red Toothed Gin as a historical figure, and experts speculate that Hallow Eve is in fact a mutant with some degree of telepathic and telekinetic powers.

I painted this one for my Lead Painters League entry- Supernatural Super Villains. It is a Superfigs mini- and I have to say, not one of my favorites. The sculpt on the face is poor, and it took a lot of time and effort just to get it looking half decent. That said, I am happy with the colour scheme of Halloween orange and black- I think it looks nice and four colour comic book, and not at all Gothic.

It's the 1st of April, and today it is my birthday. Thirty seven years old! So here is just a quick blog to let you know what I'm up too, because this is my first proper day off for some time, and i an acutely aware that I haven't been able to blog for some time.

Firstly, let me say thanks to my mate Leon, who sent me a very cool moonpig card featuring a picture of Hellsmith, from Pulp City, that he painted himself- and the Kick-Ass graphic novel. I have read a few pages of the novel already, and I am very impressed- very funny. We're all off to see the movie next Thursday, instead of our usual fix of Conan RPG (can't go out tonight- I'm off to the theatre with my wife to see the Hobbit- a birthday treat).

Leon and I got together last week for a couple of games of the excellent Pulp City, and this time I remembered to take my camera to record the event for my Blog. I am supposed to be posting them on Lead Adventure Forum, but I have been having problems with Photobucket's Bulk Uploader, which means I have to upload each image one at a time, which takes ages, but he's a few pics to wet your appetite.

The Bad Guys -Sister Bedlam and a couple of sentry 'bots, Mourn, Hellsmith and Nuke.

The Good Guys, Howler, Nuclear Jones, Six Feet Under and Harrier.

All the figures and scenery are Leon's (check out his Pulp Citizen Blog)

I was going to write a battle report for one of the games, but sadly I have lost the scrap of paper I wrote it on, so I will have to just write a summary from memory- I will post it in a few days (hopefully).

I also what to add a big Hi to James, who is my new follower- hope you like what you see here, and please feel free to comment etc- this makes me feel that there is more than just me and Leon reading the Blog.

As a new outbreak of the Zombie Contagion breaks out in the center of the city, the local police are forced to call on superheros to contain the spread of the terrible disease. Experts are still speculating about the cause of the outbreak, but they have not ruled out involvement with the mysterious Doctor Otto, or perhaps a casually discarded barrel of radioactive biological waste from an experimental laboratory.

Baggy jeans and Cons trainers mark this poor soul out as a skater boy.

A Scottish football fan who fell foul of the Contagion.
An old guy in carpet slippers, carrying a severed human leg!

An old-time Rock fan. Complete with pony-tail.

This one has lost his shirt, but he has still got his best cap!

I converted these guys from Citadel (Games Workshop) zombies for the Lead Painters League. I used green stuff to sculpt on belt loops, hats, wrist watches and kilts, and then painted them in the same way Charlie and I devised for his zombies. I though they came out rather well.

I know that zombies are not, strictly speaking, four colour super villain stuff, but our current Basic Role Playing Super Hero campaign features enough zombies to make it worth while converting some. I plan to make some more,a s it was fun, and I think they look rather cool.

The flesh painting scheme was as follows; Undercoat in black, then GW Foundation paint Gretchin Green, highlighted by gradually mixing in more bleached bone into the mix, all the way up to an almost pure bleached bone.

A helpful tip when using the Foundation paints to highlight is to remember to thin the paint down well with water. The foundation paints have a lot of pigmentation in and they need to be quite thin to highlight.

Once the first highlights were finished I washed the whole mini with a couple of coats of thinned down GW Ogryn Flesh wash, and when that was dry I added more highlights using bleached bone and a little bit of GW Tallarn flash and GW Bleached bone.

This is Balefire, also known variously as Lord Azguy, Tormentor of the Seventh Plane of Hades, Flayer of Souls, Wielder of the Balefire. He was a former associate and sometimes lover of the Red Queen, but the two have parted on some what less than cordial terms. The details are sketchy, but it had something to do with the misappropriation of souls. Balefire lacks the Red Queens careful and sly ways, and is known to prefer a more direct, brutal rout to get what he wants.

This lovely miniature is another Heresy model. I painted it for the Lead Painters League. It was a lot of fun to paint.

Lady Sanguina, as she is often known, has bean dead for some five centuries, but that has never stopped here causing trouble. One of the few remaining vampire elders, she has spend decades fostering a network of followers, steeped in conspiracy and intrigue. Her nefarious plans often bring her into conflict with superheros, and sometimes even super villains, something Lady Sanguina relishes.

Again I am indebted to my good friend Leon for supplying this mini for the Lead Painters League. It is Blood Rose, from Pulp City, but I thought it would be fun to paint her as a vampire.

Doctor Otto's insane experiments to create a supersoldier continue a pace. this is a photograph of his latest creation, another monstrous 'Fiend'. This one seems to feature advanced cranial cybernetics, presumably to overcome the the shortfalls of the earlier model. Smarter, but no less brutishly powerful. Is this the future of Doctor Otto's dreadful supersoldier program?
This figure was entered part of my Lead Painters League team of 'Supernatural Supervillains', but in actual fact I painted it to be part of Doctor Otto's growing army of failed experiments. It is a Monster from West Winds range of Gothic Horror, but I can no longer find it on their website, so I suspect it might be out of production. When manufacturing metal miniatures the molds can sometimes wear out, and the manufacturers have to decide if a range of figures are selling enough to make it worth while for them to make more molds. I imagine that was the case here, but I hope not, as I really like the cartoon feel to these minis.

This is Gargoyle, a fiendishly evil creature said to haunt the rooftops and ruins of the older parts of the city, preying on the homeless and vulnerable. Many claim that it does not exist, that it is an urban myth or the product of minds clouded by cheap liquor and drugs. Others speculate that it is a mutant, or a vigilante trying to instill some righteous fear into the 'cowardly and superstitious' criminal underclass. To those who the Gargoyle chooses to feed on, however, it is a horror without equal.

I am delighted with the way this figure came out, although it was a bugger to photograph! It is actually a vampire, made by Heresy, but I chose to paint it for the Lead Painters League as a gargoyle, using Games Workshops Granite Foundation as a base colour to suggest it was stone. This was because I already had a vampire in the 'team' and I didn't really want things getting too samey.

On another note, let me extend a warm welcome to my two new followers, Lee and Slobberblood. I hope you like what you see. I will be posting more supervillains soon, so keep checking back.

Lead Painter's League is now in the second week, but alas this week I am not doing quite as well as in the last round. Each week two sets of figures are paired off at random, for the members of the Lead Adventure Forum (LAF) to vote on their favorites. Here are my guys, a cowboy posse from Deadhorse (click for a bigger image). I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out. If you are a member of the LAF, and haven't voted yet, you can do so here. If your are not a member of the LAF, then why the hell not! If you like what you see here then check it out- you wont be disappointed.

These figures are from Artizan Designs. They represent some of my cowboy posse for Legends of the Old West, a cowboy skirmish game. I tried to keep the pallet quite limited so it will be quite apparent which posse each figure belongs to in the heat of battle, hence the red and blue colour scheme.

For those out there who think this blog has featured too many none-superhero related minis of late (i.e. Leon), then fear not, as next weeks entry is finished, and features note one, but FIVE brand new super villains- keep checking, and you wont be disappointed!

As I mostly paint for pleasure, or to use the minis in role playing games. I don't spend much of my time making scenery, but scenery is an important part of any war game or skirmish game. I thought I would share one or two ideas I have had on the topic.



The game of Pulp City I recently played with Leon demonstrated how good looking scenery can really enhance a game. Leon did not scratch build much of his scenery, other that the excellent urban boards, but rather bought it, assembled and painted it himself. This method, while being expensive, is relatively quick (unless you include the hundreds of hours Leon spent trawling the net for suitable models- he could have built a real-scale city in that time!). I am kicking myself I never took my camera, but I promise I will next time we play. The pleasure of playing a war game or skirmish battle on a good board can not be overstated!



I continue to work on my cowboy scenery, which is a combination of scratch built and bought scenery. I have finished my third building now, and have bought some crates and barrels cast in resin. It's a time consuming activity, but very rewarding. It's also a bit cheaper too, which is important to me on my limited budgets- the joys of having kids and a mortgage! Hopefully soon I will have enough buildings to play a few games of Legends of the Old West.



I have also found a few bloggers who make scratch built scenery, and I have to say, they look amazing. Take a look at these for inspiration!

Wargaming Buildings, this one is a new find- fill a beautiful wild west buildings- be sure to look at the older posts!

Here's another wild west one, called The Beaver Examiner (it's work safe, I promise). This scenery is so detailed that I think you would be hard pressed to use it for war-gaming, but it is inspiring none the less.

Then these Reme Bostal, who is in a league of his own when it comes to scenery for gaming. This crazy Frenchman makes scenery for Heroclix, Horror Clix and Starwars CMG. He's a master, in my opinion. his sites in french, but his pictures are so fine that I will let him off with that!