A couple of very simple paintjobs to share today as the first 6-month “Tale of Gamers” painting challenge comes to a conclusion at the end of June. Like many of us gamer-types, I have a shedload of random figures from Reaper’s Bones I and II Kickstarter campaigns. I did back the third one, but skipped the base pledge this time round as Reaper delved deeper into add-on territory and offered less “value” with the base pledge. Especially as I’ve got more than a lifetime’s worth of random bendy PVC fantasy models, as Tarmor can attest to as I offloaded a bunch to him awhile back! With Bones III, I picked a much more “curated” set of figures. But this isn’t a discussion of Bones III. It’s showing off some rather bland and generic figures with paint to match!

Reaper Bones 77126: Vermin: Spiders

These three are the 77126: Vermin: Spiders. Not a bad sculpt to be truthful. I painted them in red tones with yellowish markings because Marouda’s far from a fan of realistic, life-size spiders and because they’ll be used in the Undead army, and red/black with a touch of teal/bronze/etc are the army colours. Their fangs are done with Citadels’ new “Gemstone” paint (the blue one) over a dark metallic base. Mostly because I’d only just gotten them and wanted to experiment with them a little on inconsequential figures.

Reaper Bones 77128: Vermin: Spider Swarm

The next three are Reaper’s 77128: Vermin: Spider Swarms. These are what they are, I guess. Much more for generic roleplaying purposes, but they didn’t take much time to paint up and ink. I used a few shades of ruddy red-browns so as to distinguish the spiders a little. It didn’t especially work, but at least the blobs are varied a little. I could have gone through and very carefully painted eyes and markings on each individual spider, but at the end of the day, these Swarm models don’t deserve that much of my – or your – time. As gaming models for what are essentially trash mobs, they’re good enough. I have a bunch more of the larger spiders and beetles and such somewhere from Bones I that I was cleaning up for paint a year or two ago, but they’ve gone missing somewhere.

All six models were based on 30mm bases I got from Impact! Games, as 25mm rounds are too small, they fit them well enough – and quite frankly I’m buggered if I’m going to use my expensive 32mm Citadel rounds on them. I then made up some unit bases for them from 120x40mm cuts of MDF that I purchased for unit trays – somewhat inspired by Grimdork’s unit trays over on Dakka. The trays are for their main use – as “Undead Army Swarms” in Kings of War. Technically, they’re a unit that is part of the Army of Dust (Not-Tomb Kings) and not the more generic Undead (that covers the Vampire Counts stuff), but I’m in favour of fluff over RAW when it comes to army lists for friendly games. When I paint scorpions, they’ll be much more AoD/TK themed. I noticed after taking the photographs that the grass tufts I’ve added to the bases here are a little dull, so I’ve since added a few in a slightly brighter green.