Pirates, Vampires & Indians

 I've now fully painted my French-Indian Dinosaur War models and now have done my final Black Scorpion pirate. I can either order more, or start a new project as this 'closes off' two projects. I class these as "suitable painted minis+terrain+rules" - i.e. I can play a game whenever I want.

The bats are based for LotR (Moria goblins needed a bat swarm) so count as LotR #446 for the year. The rest are more Black Scorpion pirates. I love the sculpts but apparently they switched to resin (boo hiss) otherwise I'd definitely get more.

I am doing up Gaslands cars as well, mostly due to my blu-ray box set of Death Race (more entertaining movies than Mad Max, so sue me!). I always found the rules surprisingly gluggy; kinda the thing that would be good at a convention or club game with several players and a simple car each, but definietly slower and denser than you'd expect. It's a set of 'kitbash excuse' rules I reckon you'd spend far more time converting cars than playing. I'm making a race track and digging in my son's sandpit for ruined cars (which I'll further mangle as scatter terrain/burned out wrecks). 

The vamps in the foreground are Westwind Empire of the Dead. A game that kinda appeared then vanished. Does anyone still play it?

EotD vampires will do double duty in my own Carnevale-esque Venice game (I'm using MESBG Legend Of rules and have my own factions and critters such as lizardmen and ghouls) as well as Weird West. I actually have a huge Weird West collection which I seldom use - I really need to dig them out and rebase/tidy up chipped paint etc. 

The Indians I think are Conquest(?) minis sold by Warlord.

 I painted my French Indian War natives with a 50/50 of blue/red accessories, so I can split them into British/French allies OR combine them together into as big war party. I really need to do proper foliage basing but my main aim is to get them painted and back out to the shed where I can tidy them up at my leisure.  Unfortunately in Australia Warlord prices are similar to GW.

These settlers are in town for the shopping, but they actually live in log cabins in the dark forests, to be stalked by velociraptors incited by the French. In Last of the Mohicans, I remember watching the Indians getting ready to ambush the British column and thinking "What if it was velocirators"....    ...as you do. Because adding dinosaurs to any genre improves it automatically. Fact.

Including some hastily painted 1:200 planes for a playtest, that's 53 more minis over two days, which combine with 77 done previous means I've painted 130 non-MESBG for the week, and have now closed off 3 projects (pirates, FIW:dino, and Blood Red Skies).

I've also bought En Garde to give myself another pirate rules option. Thanks to mum - apparently 40+ is not too old for the birthday money. I've just ordered some more 3D print LotR to fill gaps in my collection, but after 445+ painted this year (and 330+ last year) I'm very confident they will not linger long in the unpainted pile. I dislike resin but it makes minis affordable I otherwise would not bother with at all - i..e $1.50 per warg rather than $6ea makes it possible to afford a 'pack.'  $12 for Glorfindel is a reasonable impulse purchase; rather than a $74 investment. It's fair to say 3D printing has re-ignited my LotR enthusiasm and made collecting well-developed factions feasible. 

Multipurpose = Best. I'm also trying to build/buy dual role rules/terrain/minis (such as En Garde) which serve for multiple genres (I.e rules work for pirates or ECW witch hunting). For example, I'm eyeing Fireforge undead peasants which would do duties in a few games. Victrix vikings for SAGA or Ragnarok or MESBG. My pizza box ruined town terrain is used for medieval to muskets. 15mm terrain has to work for mecha and WW2 tanks. Etc etc.