February | 2024 | Azazel's Bitz Box.

Get the Duck out of here – it’s Howard! Truth be told, I know next to nothing about Howard the Duck except for the fact that Lucas made a film about him in the 1980’s, that he used to be drawn very similarly to Donald until Disney threatened Marvel with legal action resulting in a redesign (irony!), aaaand.. that the Lucasfilm film was brought into the MCU (kinda) via a Cameo in The Collector’s Collection in one the Guardians of the Galaxy Films.

From his appearance he seems like a hard-boiled noir-adjacent 1930’s-style detective or reporter. I guess I could watch the film and find out, but I’m not too motivated about it in general. I guess it might be a thing to do just so I have an understanding about using these models I painted. To those in the know – worth watching?

Why would I choose to paint these over so many others, including characters I know about and still have some interest in? The answer is simple: The paintjob is simple, and there’s only(!) two of them to paint. No Crisis Protocol figure as well, no Zombie Version, no alternate version. Just a two-and-done for Howard and now he’s complete for two games.

Nothing too special in the painting. Just trying to keep it reasonably clean and readable on both versions. I tried to give him the slightest impression of pin-stripes on the pants and jackets, but I may have gone a bit subtle. I’m certainly no TIM when it comes to 28/40mm pinstriping. As with the other figures I’ve been showing, these two also qualify for Dave Stone’s Paint Whatchoogot Challenge. Lots of posts lately since I got back to blogging, I know – but I gotta keep pumping out daily posts to get through the backlog in a personal-index-friendly manner (and give me a breather for missing a day or two here and there) before we get too far past the end of February…

And now it’s the second part of the Scouring of the Shire -related figures, with my first batch of Ruffians.

Much like the hobbits, I went for a muted and naturalistic palette, though these are a bit grimier and less rich, with no place for nice green velvet jackets or the like.

I also kept the basing much more sparse with just dry tufts as opposed to the Hobbits’ green tufts, grass and heather. This is to offer a little bit of contrast between the two – the Hobbits defending their verdant lands, as opposed to these Ruffians in the harsh wilds and despoiling the places where they arrive – while still allowing them to fit in on the same table with my standard brown sand as the base.

Aside from the obvious use of Shire-Scouring that these models have, they make pretty decent generic thugs, bandits, or even human militia for other fantasy games and settings. They strike me as particularly approriate for Brettonian Peasants, especally given the descriptions in earlier editions of WHFB amd WHFRP where Brettonia was depicted as decadent and corrupt in the upper classes and squalid and filthy in the lower classes – before they got the 100% polish-up in latter editions.

Once again, I do have a pile more of these to get painted, and while I’d like to get them done I have been distracted by a few other things after completing these, so we’ll have to see how that goes… They are of course yet another little batch for Dave Stone’s current Paint Whatchoogot Challenge for 23-4.

Azazel's Bitz Box.

Painting, Modelling, Miniatures, 1:6, Games… Whatever else I find interesting.

Monthly Archives: February 2024

Marvel Zombies & Marvel United: Howard the Duck

Ruffians Pt.1 – Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth: SBG