One of these days I’ll get in trouble for one of my article titles but hopefully that day isn’t today! As you could already guess, I’ve been chipping away at Hellboy miniatures and I have painted an alarmingly high number of miniatures this week compared to usual. First up, I got a couple of witches done. These are pretty straightforward to paint with exception of their hair which is hard to pick out from the hood. In the Hellboy comics, the witches basically look identical with really drab robes on. I decided I’d try to make each one a different color to make them easy to tell apart though at the same time, I don’t want them to look like the Power Rangers so I’m going for dull robe colors across the board.
If you recall, when I painted the first witch, I mentioned that there some kind of issue with her face. Here is the defective one in comparison with the two this past week. You can certainly see a difference between them!
That’s three witches down and two to go. I’m trying to get the miniatures from the B.P.R.D. Archives expansion of Hellboy done because it shakes up the game in a number of ways which I’m excited to try out. More on that when I get to that point. I thought that I only needed to finish the witches and the miniatures I’m going to show next but I was wrong it turns out. There’s five more beyond that. Still, it was nice to get these bat swarms done quickly as the miniatures are not too much too write home about.
What I mean by that is that the details in the bats’ face were so soft you couldn’t see any eyes or the nose on most of them. So I didn’t bother trying to paint either. I did use a photo reference as per usual and I was surprised to discover that bats have different colors in their wings than I realized. Here is a photo to give you an idea of what I mean.
There is a pinkish tone around the top of the wings which becomes more of a tan color in the rest of the wing. Who knew!? Growing up in Ohio, I was lucky enough to see some bats at night and I have to admit, that I like and appreciate them. They’re great at catching insects and are a harmless animal, despite people’s superstitions. Only in Dracula and South America do you need to worry about them and even there, I don’t think vampire bats prefer human targets.
Outside of painting, I made a purchase that I’m guardedly optimistic about. I bought another card game to try and I’m hoping this one is the one that finally works out post-Arkham Horror. My track record has not been great though so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll talk more about it next week as I’ll have it in hand by then and might even be able to try it out, if I’m lucky.
I’m also preparing to ship out the board and card games I tried and didn’t end up liking along with the prehistoric miniatures to Noble Knight Games. They would be a pain to sell off individually so I’m relieved to be able to clear up a good amount of room in my closet and make some room for other things whether they be other board and card games or more Fallout terrain. I’ve been doing some hobby spring cleaning on top of that and its liberating to clear out some stuff and get things better organized when you can. It feels like a bit of weight off your shoulders and I can now see my Fallout miniature backlog at a glance for the first time in months which is nice too.
Finally, I’m also trying to work out my next display project in the background. While I’m eager to start something fresh and improve my skills, blowing off some steam on same gaming miniatures has helped this week and so I figure I might as well ride this wave a bit longer and see if I can’t get myself in better shape with Hellboy and Fallout before I jump into another project. In other words, there’s no telling what I’ll be working on over the next week or two.
Kuribo's Painting 
Great work on the miniatures. I have yet to to grasp the need to get rid if things I no longer use. So we’ll done.
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Thank you, mate! Having pretty limited storage room or accumulating too much stuff will teach you a tough lesson sooner or later 🙂
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Great work on the miniatures Jeff, and sounds like your pretty close to having the expansion painted up to add to your games. Depending on the species of bat, there are an amazing amount of different colours, and also some part depends on the amount of light shining through their wings. We have a small colony of bats living in our area, so will often see them in the back garden, very enjoyable to watch.
Sounds like you’ve had a good clearout, and made it easier to see what needs doing, and take your time choosing your next display piece, find the model that screams paint me to you, and don’t worry what others say about the model.
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Thank you, Dave and you’re spot-on as usual. Bats have a wide range of colors and some are easier than others to paint. That is great to hear that you can see some bats at your home. I didn’t see them often when I was younger but I do miss seeing them in the evenings now.
I think I’m going to work on a low stakes bust to try and get myself feeling better about painting busts. That way I can tackle harder and more impressive stuff in 2025. Of course, I might change my mind between now and buying a bust. You never know!
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Nice work on the witches and the bats, Jeff! 🙂 We sometimes see bats when we’re at the caravan around dusk and they sometimes fly quite close – great to see them!
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Thank you, John! Its good to hear that bats are doing well in the UK from you and Dave too 🙂
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A haggle?
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That would also work well! 🙂
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Nice work on these, I think the robe choices work very well Nd the bat swarms look ace.
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Thank you, mate! More witches to come so I’ll be curious to see if you like them when they’re all done.
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Love the bats and the bitches! Or hags!
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Haha, thank you, Mark!
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Nice work on the game pieces and thanks for the reminder that I have stuff to send to Noble Knight.
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Thank you and I probably wouldn’t be sending them something if not for your suggestion a while back.
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Noble Knight isn’t the best price but it is the easiest.
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the HellBoy miniatures look really good. Why would the title get you into trouble?
noble knight is cool bc they’ll take your stuff when you just want to get rid of it, but the price they pay you is really small. 😀
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Thank you, Stew! I reckon very few women would look favorably on being called a hag so that alone makes my title a bit edgy anyway. Maybe I’m wrong!
You’re right on Noble Knight. They are not my go to for getting rid of things. In this case, the stuff I sold with the exception of one thing are all things that aren’t worth selling on their own on eBay. For example, prehistoric miniatures even ones nicely painted do not have a big market. Its hard enough just selling LOTR miniatures on eBay in my experience 😦
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Nice work, I also painted bats this week. Halloween got me right in the mood, did that have anything to do with the decision to paint these or just a coincidence?
I’m curious which card game you picked up. For solo play I really enjoyed the relatively new War of the Ring: The Card Game with the Against the Shadow Expansion, but I did find that once you’ve (finally) beaten the bots in all the different scenarios it becomes less interesting to play again so it didn’t have that lasting appeal for me in terms of solo play. It is also on the longer side, easily taking 1 to 3 hours per session, depending on the scenario.
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That is good to hear and with your Mirkwood campaign, I’m almost positive that those will come in handy! 🙂 I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that Halloween was coming up when I worked on them but you’re right that is the proper season for it.
I’ve heard pretty good things about War of the Ring. For me, I worry about that with solo board games. While nothing lasts forever, some solo games seem like they have a very finite amount of games in them and once that’s exhausted, its hard to justify keeping them. I’m looking forward to revealing the card game this weekend. I got a game in and had a pretty good time 🙂
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Great work on these – and once again I’m quite happy to see you spending the “right” amount oftime/effort on boardgame models. They’ll look fantastic on the table, and small flaws like bad witchfaces won’t even be noticed by anyone except yourself – and even then, only when you pick them up and look closely and think about it. The rest of the time they’ll just enhance the aesthetic – and therefore fun – of the actual boardgame. 🙂
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Cheers, mate. These minis are the lowest quality ones in my collection so I try to prioritize them accordingly. That and I have to paint them more in masse which I don’t especially enjoy. You handle that part of painting much better than I 🙂
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Yeah, it can be painful or tedious – I find the satisfaction of gaming with them is a strong motivator, which is why my painting has skewed towards the things it has over the last few years.
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Your Hellboy board game must look pretty nice when playing by now! Is there much more you need to paint or can you have fully painted games already? I assume it depends on the mission.
Love the variation you’ve put in the witches, they look like different models which is not trivial.
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Thanks, Nic! I basically have the retail base game (which unsurprisingly has a lot less miniatures than the Kickstarter version) painted. Once I finish the witches and the other five mystery miniatures, I’ll have one of the expansions painted as well. There are still four expansions to paint and a bunch of Kickstarter exclusives so I’ve got a lot more to chew through. I can currently play through any of the base game missions which is 5-6, in total. I think there’s 30 or so in the game overall so a lot more to go for better and worse! 🙂
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Wow yes that’s a lot! Must look great all set up though
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I only play with everything painted so that helps 🙂 I don’t know when I’ll do it but I’ll try and sit down and figure exactly how many more Hellboy minis I have to paint and report back in a future post. I’m curious now myself!
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Very nice witches! I always find these monopose boardgame minis funny because it looks like they’re part way through a dance routine with perfect coordination.
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Haha, you’re not wrong! I know why the mono-pose is common but it would be nice if they could mix it up more to prevent them from looking like a dance crew 🙂
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