Reaper Miniatures - BONE's Painting: Narthrax Dragon

Welcome back again my readers.  Today I am giving an update on the painting of my new Reaper BONEs series mini's.

So hopping online I found a number of pictures of the Narthrax Dragon with different paint jobs.  Notably there is this one:

Now I don't have the same array of paints that pro painters have, but I make do with what I got.

Now I am using a junk brush that is really good for dry brushing paint onto mini's.  It holds a decent amount of paint after tapping the excess off.  It takes a few extra coats of paint to get the job done, but this ensures that you can get into all the creases and crevasses.  The only down side is that I do not have a mat-black paint, but rather I have a glossy black paint.

Its not perfect but its what I got.  This paint didn't want to go on smoothly when painting the mini.  It left streaks, but the paint dried fast and allowed for another coat to go on, followed by a final go-over with the brush to get anything left.

Now from here I broke out my good paints, namely the "blood red" I have and figured this will do for a start of the final work up.

With all the parts done I then broke out my "sunburst yellow" and set in on the wings.

Now I'm not that far along in painting with this second color.  I've gotten just the wings done and will work out other spots to paint yellow.  From here I'll use some "skull white" for the horns.  Some "codex grey" for weathering the stone the dragon is on, who I like the black sheen as well.

I haven't set on the color for the mouth, or eyes as of yet.  I do have some gold paint and and I think I might use that somewhere on it.  but I'm far from done with the "blood red" paint and will be going over the other painted spots to ensure things look cleaner.  The final step when all is done is a clear gloss protective spray to seal the paint and ensure the paint doesn't fade.

So far this has been an interesting paint and my wife is eager to see the final result.

I'll take pictures of the other mini's as I get them done, but right now Narthrax Dragon is my focus.


And on a separate note, yes I am working on that other blog entry on crafting a home brew game system.  Its just a lot of writing to do before it can be posted.

Get it before its gone! Tomb Raider on Games with GOLD

Welcome back everyone.  So I have been neglecting my X-Box 360 a lot lately.  I still haven't beaten Dragon Age Inquisition.  But I did come across the fact that X-Box 360 Games with Gold has put out one of their best offerings so far:  Tomb Raider (2013 Edition)

Now I bought the game back when it first came out and when I had money.  It was a fantastic game, and still is though its a shame that the modding community never struck up a lot of mods for this game, (excluding the nude mod you can get).


For those who have not played this game (shame on you for not) the story and game itself is not overtly connected to the original games and serves as a sort of reboot of the franchise.

Lara Croft is a young woman with some decent survival skills but she is still a young woman who has never been on an adventure before - especially one that puts her and her friends in mortal danger.  Throughout the game you see Lara grow from scared young woman to a determined survivor who even at the end has not quite shed her innocence, though that has more or less been smashed to pieces by the end.

Lara also is not perpetually clean, instead as the game progresses she gets dirty, bloodied and looks every bit as if she has gone through hell.

Now I did sell off the game sometime ago but its nice to get it back fro free this way.

So if you still have an X-Box 360 like me then pick the game up while you still can.  I'm not sure if the game rotates out this week or next so get it now.

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Next Time...

So the next time I'm on here I think that I will try and document some attempts at crafting a home brew RPG system.  Now most of the type people will take an existing game system and just craft some home rules to make the system more in line with whatever it is they have envisioned.  But I'm not going to do that persay.  Instead I'm going to sit down and attempt to create an all new game system of my very own and see how that works out.

This of course won't be a simple one day process, this is going to take some time.  Also as I'm going through this process please feel free to comment and give me suggestions on some things.  I'll update my postings to include any changes that have been suggested.

Anyway it is a nice sunny day here in Beaverton, OR and I hope everyone is have a similar day too.

Mr. Bones II - The Miniatures are finally here!!!

FINALLY!!!  THEY ARE HERE!!!

Ok welcome back everyone and some of you are probably wondering what it is I'm talking about, and some of you already know.

Back in 2013 there was a Kickstarter campaign put on by Reaper Miniatures, and this would be the second Bones campaign that they put on.  Now normally miniatures are made out of pewter (or similar substance) but the Bones line of miniatures puts out plastic mini's of high detail/quality.

The campaign was funded October 26th, 2013.  Now the mini's were supposed to have come out last year, but there were holdups and eventually things got pushed out to this year.

Yep a 2 year wait for something I helped fund.  Now considering my current financial troubles I'm glad I did this back when I had some money.  I just kind of wished I got in on the mech campaign they had out last year.  A friend of mine did and he gladly handed out a free mech mini for me to take.

But they are here now and I have pictures of the unboxing!  Now keep in mind I took these pictures on my desk here.  And since my desk is black and the mini's are white it made a good contrast for viewing them.

So I purchased 3 items from those available to help fund.

• Pathfinder Heroes
• Chronoscope Pulp heroes
• Narthrax Dragon

Ok so here are the mini's in their respective packages along with the "Thank You" note from the Reaper staff.  For some reason the picture turned out a bit blurry, but its not too big a deal at this point.

First up are the Chronoscope Heroes.  Eight mini's in total.

1. Gun totting Fat Nun:  Not a bad mini, but not a lot of detail in it.
2. Sword wielding Ninja:  Again, not that bad of a mini, but not as good looking as the Nun in comparison.  The sword is fairly flimsy and I can see it breaking off easy, though it is very flexible.  Paint won't likely stick to it very well.
3. Steampunk Armored Engineer:  This is one of the mini's I really like.  There's alot of detail there, and its just a good looking mini in general.
4. Cloaked Gun wielding Woman:  This is my second favorite of this batch.  There's some good details and its not in a bad pose.
5. Rifle totting Masked Man:  This mini is not bad looking, but not a detail heavy.  Its still a better than the Nun and Ninja.
6. Explorer with a Staff:  Not a bad mini, but again there's not a lot of detail there.
7. Explorer with a Machete:  This mini is very Indiana Jones like.  Its a good looking mini and has decent details.
8. Woman Spy:  This mini is a woman spy, you can only really tell that when you look at the back with her hand bag and the gun she is pulling out.

[My favorites.]

Next up are the Pathfinder Heroes.  There are six mini's in total.

1. Samurai:  So this is a very detailed mini and looks really good.  Lots of weapons poking out on him.
2. Spellcaster:  Next up is a mage.  Lots of good details on this mini which is nice.
3. Monk:  This is a mini that looks like the classic monk found in game book.  It looks good and has nice details to it.
4. Dwarf with an Axe:  Also not a bad mini with lots of details.
5. Woman Archer:  One of my favorite minis in this batch as well.  It has plenty of details.
6. Priestess:  A nice mini with plenty of details, but less than the others.

[More of my favorites.]

Finally we come to the last piece of the set, Narthrax Dragon.  Now I thought that the dragon would be bigger...but it wasn't, though it is still pretty big.

There are a total of 7 pieces that make up the dragon.

Everything fits together decently but glue is very necessary for holding it all together.  One bump with out glue and it falls apart.

This leg was the only issue I saw in that the peg didn't quite want to stay where it was supposed to go.  Super glue will fix that.

If my keyboard is any sort of indication, once put together the miniature is of a decent size.  The dragon will be fun to paint...assuming I can find time to do so with out my kids bugging me.

Now I could fill up the blog with more pictures of each individual mini, but I'm not going to do that.  Instead I'm just going to say that I'm happy I finally got them and as usual I love the sculpting jobs for them.

Would they look better in pewter?  Of course.

Now I can't go into detail on the molding process because I can guess at any number of techniques used in making molds.  And these days with 3D printing, mini's can be made easily using that method.

Pewter is more ridged and can easily be modified and repaired.  Now the same can't be said for plastic.  They can't be modified easily, or repaired in the same way as pewter.  Pewter also holds details better than plastic.

As for painting...well that depends on how your painting something.  I typically use normal acrylic paints you buy in a craft store.  I can then mix what ever colors I want from just having 4-5 different paints present (sometimes 6-7 if I want any metallic paints).  (Also always be sure to use a sealing spray on your mini's, the paint lasts a lot longer if you do.)


So if your interested in checking out not just the regular mini's but the Bones type they have be sure to check out Reaper Miniatures.