Chicago Skirmish Wargames

A couple weeks back the club organized a painting mini-marathon. Inspired by blog accounts of gamers clustering together in game rooms (for mutual support and inspiration) and churning through their collective backlogs over the course of many dedicated hours of painting, we tried to do the same thing.

Five guys showed up, armed with miniatures, paints, lamps and other supplies. We set up a bunch of folding tables in my basement, ordered some pizza and got to work. I think we went at it for about 4 solid hours.

Sadly, my own output wasn't particularly voluminous, but I wanted to share a few photos with you. The first one up top shows four Ratscum warriors from Grenadier Miniatures. I picked them up -- still in blister packs -- at GenCon 2010 and just now got around to painting them up.

They're lovely little miniatures, and I was pleased to see that most of the sculpts are still in production from Mirliton. They're basically Skaven, but they have a little more personality in my opinion. Unless you have some to trade me for cheap, I may be placing an order with Mirliton sometime this year.

The second pic shows 9 skeletons from Mantic Games. These are plastic multi-pose figures, and I was fairly pleased with how they turned out. They had a little bit too much clothing and armor covering their bones, though, and I particularly didn't like the helmeted heads that completely enclosed the skull (back row). In my mind, the ideal skeleton always has his face exposed. What's the point of painting skeletons if you're not going to have fun with the Bleached Bone?

Both the Ratscum and the skeletons were finished using Minwax Polyshades Tudor as a brush-on dip and sealer.

I'm sure my fellow club members will share pics of their marathon minis soon. Until then!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member