Olympus October 6- Kryptes and Paris

The finale for 2021's Olympus October finds a painted Trojan hero,  Paris, and a Spartan Kryptes.

I don't plan on ever playing a Spartan warband but the Kryptes (an assassin) was a nice sculpt and I figured he could fit in as a Cretan Pirate so the warband can take a Minotaur). To the naked eye the few bits of basing material around his loincloth were not visible- I got a few bits off the cloak but these have now been dealt with- pay no attention to them (stupid human eyes).

And here's the fancy boy from Troy, Paris. I knew roughly how I wanted to paint him when I first saw the figure. He turned out pretty close to how I painted him in my imagination. I thought it would be fun to put Paris next to the excellent Helen figure too.

And here's a look at everything that I managed to finish over the month. Not bad sadly but no Amazons. I've got a plan for that. Plus the big Hydra needs to go a long way too...

Olympus October Update 5- Trojan Seer and Guards

Yet again some great sculpts that I probably won't use in a warband, but they're so good and were a pleasure to paint (although there were several minor bits of flash or tiny mold lines I somehow missed when I prepped them). The Seer and her Guardians are my latest favorite Olympus miniatures. 

This first Guard looks really young and innocent. I don't usually go for a uniform look for minis even if they're in the same unit, but it felt right for the Guardians to mirror the Seer. I think the colors for all three will affect any Trojan units I possibly paint in the future.

This more grizzled Guardian has some red face paint because I thought it would look cool and give them both more character. One thing I dread on many Olympus miniatures are the sandal straps. Don't pay any attention to the straps on her left leg. It was a struggle because it was almost done when I found a tiny bit of debris under the paint in a corner. I couldn't let it stay and it removed paint all the way to the metal. Don't look at it, focus on her face paint instead!

And finally, the Seer herself. I wanted her to look pale so to help with that I gave the Guardians darker skin. I also wanted to give her some red face paint to shock a little next to her near white skin (amd she's got weird red dots on both hands!). I think it was her colors I chose first and then figured out how to translate them onto the Guardians.  I think all three turned out nicely. I'm sure I can find something to use them as on the tabletop...

Olympus October Update 4- Demigods of Poseidon and Athena

There are so many options for warbands in both Olympus and Aegyptus that it never hurts to have a few extra Harbingers or Demigods lying around. This time I painted up Demigods of Poseidon and Athena because I've had rough ideas in the back of my painting brain for some time about each of these. 

The Demigoddess of Athena is another great sculpt. Most of the painted versions I've seen have been pretty light colors so I wanted to go a little dark on her. The light blue trim was originally planned as an attempt at the Ancient Greek border design (I had to look it up- a meander) but I chickened out and just went with the trim. 

The base has a broken floor look because I thought it would be cool and it turned out well.

The Demigod of Poseidon is, once again, a great sculpt.  This is the coolest-looking Demigod that I will probably never use to lead a warband-- but he's so damned cool. From the moment I saw the greens of him I was plotting paint schemes. I wanted to do something nobody else would do and finally came up with a wavy sort of tie dye for his cloak. 

He's been called 'the surfer dude' since I started painting him and that led to him getting blonde hair. The scales on his armor (I love to paint the scale armor on many of the WarGods minis) got mix of a dark gold with some color-shifting metallic blue/purple to help it look a little bit like fish. 

Much like with the Bronze Minotaur earlier in the month,  I wanted to protect the trident from damage as much as possible. So the trident got magnets. I had to build up a little 'bumper' of sorts with uv resin and mod podge on both the hand and wrist sides so the connection would be more stable. 

To continue the surfer dude theme I HAD to do a water base. A mix of blues and greens on the base and then added varying layers of UV resin to get some waves on the base. I think it turned out pretty good. 

Olympus October Update 3- Priestess of Eris

A shadowy cabal of painters made a pact signed in blood(-red paint) at the beginning of this Olympus October to complete a miniature so rare that it was only ever given out to participants of the GenCon 2019 Crocodile Games event. They would paint these event miniatures and show them off on the same day (the 20th of October) to to complete some unfathomable ritual. This pact was broken almost immediately, but it was the mini's fault since she is the Priestess of Eris- spreading discord and chaos amongst the members of the cabal. Now the agreed upon day has come and here's my version of this wonderful mini.

I wanted to do something a little different from what the rest of the cabal was doing. I searched for symbols of Eris or chaos in ancient Greek culture but mostly just came across symbols for the dwarf planet of the same name. Eventually I went with a vaguely chaos star sort of design for the bottom of her dress.

I was tempted to make the whole dress red with a sheer effect but decided to do just the chaos symbol area with red. I think that works best. As for the sheer effect, it didn't come out as well as I've done it on past figures but the subtleness of it growing on me. For her base, I went with my favorite ruined temple theme because she's about discord and that seems pretty discordant.

Here's the Priestess of Eris offering her golden apple to a group of hoplites. Soon they'll be at each others throats as the Priestess moves along with a smile on her face... And below is the Priestess of Eris with another limited edition Crocodile Games mini, Helen of Troy.

Olympus October Update 2- Corinthian Hoplites

 

These three are the first of a Corinthian Hoplite unit- because I liked the sculpts and thought they'd look cool. I've got a ton of Amazons for WarGods of Olympus with several options that just need to be painted up. For any non-Amazon warband I might someday field I don't have much and I haven't really planned for anything. I need to plan a bit more, but these Corinthians are the start of a non-Amazon warband, maybe.

First up is the chain-shield guy. I wanted a plain background with a red chain for his shield. Him and the other two have given me the painting conventions for the rest of the unit and any other Corinthians I may eventually get. They'll have the black colorshifting armour and brown leather bits. Each will have their own helmet crest and cape colors, at least that's the current plan.

Next is the plain-shield guy, the shield for him had 3 asterisks on it that I just didn't like so thy were removed and I gave the shield a sort of beaten metal look. This guy's crest is the fanciest with the white and red parts.

Finally we've got the octopus-shield guy. I really like this shield design and need to get more of them because I just need more. I like the way his red cape turned out too.

Olympus October Update 1- Tragic Hero, Bronze Minotaur, and More

As discussed all the way back in April, instead of one big extended WarGods Minis Month 2021 is getting THREE whole months with narrower focus. Thus October is for Olympus miniatures. And the folks at Crocodile Games have made an official thing of it that is really cool.

I'm keeping my Olympus focus to Crocodile Games stuff because I have so many Greeks from both the Olympus Kickstarter and previous GenCons and online orders that are unpainted I'd like to make a dent in before the month is up. This first batch has a metal monster, a couple of normal folks and a little terrain feature.

These Sphinx statues are resin pieces I picked up from the Croc booth at GenCon 2019 just because I thought they looked so good. I didn't want them separated so I found a 60mm base to mount them on with room enough for a 25mm square base to easily squeeze through, anything bigger will have a bit of trouble. I've done marble-ish floors before and tried to do it for this base- not sure if it turned out okay or horrible. My thoughts are this can be used as a minor terrain feature or even an objective marker (go to the sphinxes and recite the incantation for a whizz-bang to go off).

Next is the beautiful Amazon Musician. I don't know how I always forget how much I love these sculpts. Only dozens more Amazons to paint!

And then we've got another great sculpt, the Tragic Hero. This guy should be on the cover of a trashy novel, his fate is sealed but he will meet it looking so good. I love the blowing cape and hair. The ribbon on his spear is green because I figured it was given to him by a fancy lady who wears green, so that's why it's not a blue to match his cape and such.

Finally we come to the gigantic Bronze Minotaur Automaton. He comes with two weapon options but the stats are the same- I didn't let that stop me from using some tiny magnets so he could swap out the axe for the hook-thing if he's feeling like a hook-thing sort of day. 

Here we've got the Bronze Minotaur with the hook thing and below you can see where the magnets were inserted into the wrists (there was no need to drill holes because holes were already there to accept the cast pins on the weapon- the magnets I used fit perfectly into the existing holes).