Happy New Year! (And a quick look back)

Well, it's begun, let's hope it's a good one! :)

It's only fitting that I start the new year with what I ended the old one with:
Toads!

They are, of course, the new toad sculpts coming out of Toad King Castings "Warts and Wings" Kickstarter. (I didn't get the stirges, nor did I get the largest of the toads, due to budgetary reasons. But looking at how much fun these are to paint, I'll certainly be getting the largest toad once he hits retail!) While I didn't get these as scarily realistic as the previous one (these are after all clearly fantasy creatures, and their extremely warty skins hids my attempt at mottled patterns somewhat), I'm still well chuffed with them.
Especially as they're another one-day paint, and painted while still recovering from New Years Eve, to boot!

Here's looking at you...

Looking back over the past year hobbywise, it's been a pretty good year for me. (real-life wise, 2015 wasn't one worth remembering...)
I've painted 73 miniatures, which, although isn't heyday productivity, it is one of the most productive years since acquiring child and mortgage and such.
It's also been a remarkably focussed year, with all minis painted, bar 13, being for the Fantasy/Dungeoneering project. I've built a few models for other projects in the past year, but none them have actually passed through the painting queue.
I didn't build the dungeon terrain I had planned to build this year, but oh, well, there's always 2016. ;D It'll get built eventually. I'd rather not rush such a big terrain project and there's no deadline for it to be finished.
I've also played several games this year, thanks to Johan/Gunbird and Frostgrave. Which also puts this year far above previous ones, where the average number of games was roughly 0.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased with 2015 as far as gaming goes.

See you next time, and have a nice year!

I almost croaked...

Look who I found, puttering about in the back yard:

Hop to it!

A while ago, I backed the "Warts and Wings" Kickstarter from Toad King Castings. Today a little packet arrived, containing this:

For some reason, I got the boozy stirge instead of Terence the pipe-smoking toad as stretch goal perk, but seeing how it's effectively a free mini, and the stirge is cute as a button (the misses took an instant liking to him), I don't mind at all.

During the kickstarter the greens of the toads already looked impressive, but having the casts in hand now, I'm just blown away! The sculpting is immaculate, not a tool-mark to be seen and the texture on the toads skin is just wonderful. The casting is absolutely top notch as well, not an air bubble or molding mark to be seen anywhere. A quick rinse (and maybe a slight sanding of the bottoms, if one is picky about perfect flatness) should suffice to get these models ready for paint.
I'm genuinely impressed by the quality of these models.
The only thing I regret about this Kickstarter is that I didn't have the spare cash at the time to add some of the barrels, crates and the mimic to my pledge as well.
Hopefully Toad King Castings will get a webstore set up soon, once the Kickstarter is fulfilled, so I and others can get their hands on (more of) these fine figures.

It looks like my painting queue may be reshuffled even further...
I guess I'll be staring at pictures of toads this weekend. :)

See you next time!