Category Archives: Miniatures

Forced March Update: Galacteers!

Forced March is drawing to a close, and I’ve finally finished a unit of miniatures! These are Galacteers, from Hydra Miniatures, and I’ve had them for about fifteen years. In fact, my first posts on this site were some War Rocket ships, Galacteers and Imperials, and I’ve previously painted some Galacteer characters (you can see them at the end). These guys are just the rank-and-file scrubs, complete with a heavy weapon.

Started out by priming them white, figuring I’d paint all the other colors around the white uniforms and just highlight up. Easy, right? Well, yeah. Maybe once upon a time. But these took much longer to paint because I kept fucking up and getting paint on the white parts, so, by the time I got to the white, I had a lot to fix. Damn these eyes!

Still, not too shabby when they’re all painted up, and completing them after all this time means I have no more Hydra miniatures outstanding in the pile of shame. This gives me a feeling of accomplishment I haven’t felt since finishing off my Pulp Figures years ago.

Here’s an image of the squad with all the Hydra characters in the front row. Done!

But of course, I am not the only one taking part in Forced March! Below find the other participants and their awesome submissions. As usual, if I forgot someone or something, let me know and I will certainly correct it. Like any “real life” forced march, I expect some stragglers over the next few days (I might even be one of them!). Be sure to drop by these blogs/accounts and lend your support!

  • Simon, from Fantorical, completed a unit of Uruk-Hai crossbowmen (crossboworcs?), some Alien Legionnaires and is working on some Beastmen, both of these from Crooked Dice (a company I wish I could patronize more)
  • Dave, from Wargames Terrain Workshop has been busy indeed, with a squad of Star Wars Imperial Scout Troopers, some old-school metal Space Marine Scouts, a squadron of Space Marine Speeders, and some Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers! Add in some Wookies and a few more Space Marines and a unit of Raptors, and you’ve got a typical month of painting for Dave. The man is a machine!
  • Roger, from Rantings From Under the Wargames Table, painted a unit of Forge Fathers (Mantic Squats), and then did a unit of Plague Zombies! Awesome, Roger!
  • Azazel, from Azazel’s Bitz Box, paints so much stuff all the time that I’m not even sure he painted anything for Forced March! If so, I can’t find it, so LMK if I’m wrong, Azazel!
  • Tom, from Good Ground, painted a squad of Iron Warriors Space Marines!

And the Instagram crowd:

  • James, @spoontasticminis has been painting Emperor’s Children Space Marines all month, which more than qualify for Forced March.
  • Sabrina, @Uthwulfsminis is working on a squad of Space Marine Beakies that she has dubbed the “Pumpkin Spice” marines. Whether that’s an official chapter name or blasphemous heresy is for the Emperor to decide.
  • A newcomer this year, @horridperson, is a hobbyist close to my heart, as they have been working on tons of Star Trek miniatures lately! And even though they said they forgot about Forced March, they painted enough miniatures to make a unit: the Commune, a TOS-era reimagining of the Borg. Very cool! (I need to play some Star Trek miniatures games again).
  • @groddsnods did what he does best, converted and painted some Heroclix into a unit of Steve Ditko’s Madmen! This could have easily been an entry for Forgotten Heroes, too…but I’m sure we’ll see more awesome stuff in June!

And that’s another challenge sorted. I was hoping to get at least one more unit done, but that doesn’t seem likely. They might show up a few days into April, though, so check back soon! Monster May(hem) will be here before you know it!

Forced March Update 2 (and Honeyacre Militia)

We’re in the thick of it now, folks! Forced March continues with some lovely submissions from seemingly everyone but me, but rest assured I am working on my first infantry unit and should have it posted soon. For now, a quick recap of the participants and their submissions thus far. As always, please let me know if I’ve missed anyone!

  • Simon, from Fantorical, is working on a unit of Uruk-Hai crossbowmen (crossboworcs?)
  • Dave, from Wargames Terrain Workshop has been busy indeed, with a squad of Star Wars Imperial Scout Troopers, some old-school metal Space Marine Scouts, a squadron of Space Marine Speeders, and some Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers, to boot! Dave always brings his A game to every challenge and this one is no exception!
  • Roger, from Rantings From Under the Wargames Table, has completed a unit of Forge Fathers (Mantic Squats). I love those miniatures!
  • Azazel, from Azazel’s Bitz Box
  • Tom, from Good Ground, painted a squad of Iron Warriors Space Marines

And on Instagram:

  • James, @spoontasticminis is working on some Emperor’s Children Space Marines
  • Sabrina, @Uthwulfsminis is working on a squad of Space Marines, too, and best of all, they’re MK VI Beakies!!!! (As they SHOULD BE!!)
  • A newcomer this year, whose name I do not know, @horridperson
  • And finally, @groddsnods

Be sure to check out these very creative folks and their impressive efforts!

I’ve been late with my submissions because I’ve been bogged down in a project since December that was originally supposed to be completed by the end of the year. I knew if I paused mid-way to work on Forced March, I would likely never return to it, so I made myself finish before doing anything else. I present The Honeyacre Militia!

These are Halflings from Wargames Atlantic. They do NOT count for Forced March, because I started them in December. Particularly attentive visitors to this site may recognize five of these fellows from a couple of years ago, when I painted up a sprue that came free with my copy of Miniature Wargames magazine. I always liked the way they looked, they paint up nicely, and so I bought a box of them last year, figuring I’d throw them together and use them in my never-to-be-completed-or-played Empire army. Instead, I made a militia based on a settlement of Halflings in my current AD&D campaign.

It is a failure of my character that I often do things against my best interests, knowing myself as I do. For example, I have posted that I have no patience for plastic, and yet I bought and assembled 40 plastic halflings on a whim that soon became a millstone around my neck. (Yes, I still have 20 more of these motherfuckers to paint. Not happening soon.) My lack of patience has not changed, but I still really like the look of these models when assembled and painted, so hopefully this will be worth it in the end.

You can arm your halflings with spears/halberds, slings or bows, and there are individual bits available for character models. The spears are long and look great, but they’re also quite fragile with a tendency to break, which is a bummer. Between the militia and the other, unpainted unit of halflings I used up all my spears, only to have 2 of them break about halfway down the shaft, so I guess now I have two (unpainted) halflings armed with quarterstaffs.

These halflings armed with slings are pretty cool. They made me realize I have very few miniatures armed with slings.

I used the bows the least, although I like the look of the archers very much. The hero with the horn was painted a few years ago, part of the original five (the other four were spearmen).

I guess the spears are long enough to double as standards if you wanted to add a banner, but it would have been nice to have a dedicated banner pole in the box. There is a little bit that looks like a chicken that may be intended to replace the spear tip for this purpose, but I didn’t use it.

I gave my hero an old GW shield, because the shields that come on the sprue are laughably tiny.

Honeyacre is known for its mead, hence the shield device. Painting a bee freehand on a shield the size of a dime is a skill I no longer possess, if ever I had it.

A closeup of the heroes.

Like I said, these don’t count towards my challenge this month, but now that I’m free of these halflings at last, I’m available to start on my first infantry unit for Forced March: some miniatures that harken back to the earliest days of Dead Dick’s Tavern!

Forced March: First Update

Nothing from me yet, although work continues apace on that long-delayed project from December. I have primed, based and readied two small units for eventual painting this month. Meanwhile, have a look at some of the other participants, because stuff is already rolling in! Drop by their sites and lend some support and encouragement!

These are all the participants thus far, along with any Forced March submissions I am aware of. If I missed anything (or anyone), let me know!

Meanwhile, over on Instagram:

  • James, @spoontasticminis
  • possibly Sabrina, @Uthwulfsminis
  • A newcomer this year, whose name I do not know, but who has thus far not lived up to their namesake, @horridperson
  • And a latecomer to the challenge (it’s never too late), @groddsnods, who I just bet will be joining us for Forgotten Heroes in June, too!

Whatever these folks do, whether for Forced March or not, is worth a look. You won’t find a more supportive and inspiring group of hobbyists out there. Check them out.

Forced March begins in two days!

This week began with a blizzard here in Massachusetts that dumped a ridiculous amount of snow on us in roughly 24 hours. Although we knew it was coming, the actual snowfall far exceeded projections. We are a state that doesn’t tremble at the thought of snow. It’s hardly our first (or even our hundredth) rodeo.

Still, this was a cast-iron bitch of a storm, and although it ended on Monday evening, it will take weeks to clean up. My town got close to 40″ of snow, but the drifts in my yard were well above five feet. It took me a full day to snow blow and shovel my driveway and property, and at 53 years of age, let me tell you it sure sucked. There’s no parking anywhere in the city where I work (it got more snow than I did), so I stayed home most of the week. So did everyone else.

You would think that would give me plenty of time to focus on my hobbies, but not really. I was so exhausted and sore that I just wanted to sit there and not move. After gripping a snowblower all day, it’s not like I could hold a paintbrush steady, either.

But that’s over, and March approaches. Time to get the units ready for painting. “Forced March” is upon us!

Here is a list of all those who have confirmed they are participating in my new challenge, which, as a reminder, is to paint a unit of infantry or cavalry in the month of March. Any scale, any genre…but I define a unit as “more than one model belonging to a group designed to deploy and function together in combat.” While technically units can be a single model (such as a vehicle, artillery piece or a monster), I’m hoping for at least three models.

But of course, there aren’t any miniature painting police here, so do what you want.

Anyway, the participants thus far are:

And from Intstagram:

If I missed anyone, or if anyone else wants to take part, you need only let me know in the comments below, or drop me an an email at angrypiper@angrypiper.com, or PM me on Instagram @angrypiper. I will add your name and website/IG account (if applicable) to the blogroll forthwith! If you don’t have either of those and still want to take part, no problem! I’ll host your images here on this very site.

Let’s get priming (if you haven’t done so already)!

“Forced March” is Coming!

I’m still working on a project I started in December with the intent of finishing by the end of 2025. As you can see, that hasn’t happened. I just can’t seem to paint for long periods of time, and this project contains 20 miniatures. (That’s half of what was originally planned, by the way.)

Painting such a large number of miniatures is something I haven’t done in a long time, and it got me thinking about starting a new challenge for March, entitled, appropriately enough, “Forced March”. What are the rules?

Paint an infantry or cavalry unit in March. This can be any size unit, although I feel like it should be more than a one-model unit (like a giant, for example). Vehicles are allowed, but again, preferably more than one. So, a squad of Eldar jet bikes is fine, but a Leman Russ is just being lazy. This can be for any game and in any scale.

So these Dwarfs would work.

Ditto for these Klingons.

Or these Colonial Marines.

Or even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They’re a unit, too, right?

Let me know if you want to participate and as usual, I’ll link your blog/site/Instagram account when the challenge commences! At the rate I’m painting, I likely won’t be doing anything too ambitious, myself. I’m hoping another challenge might kick me in the pants and jazz me up, because Monster May(hem) will be here before you know it!

Gotham City: Under Siege!

A while back, I said I wanted to paint the miniatures from the Gotham City: Under Siege game shown here, and I did, although it should surprise no one that I haven’t played the game. Apparently, it’s a cooperative boardgame where the players take the roles of Gotham’s heroes and you work together over the course of four acts to thwart the evil schemes of Batman’s villains.

The game comes with fold-up paper buildings, which I guess function as the board. They look nice, anyway.

I have the expansion to the game, Masterminds & Mayhem, which contains new rules, schemes and villains, but sadly no new miniatures.

Speaking of the miniatures, here they are: Catwoman, Batgirl, Robin, Batman, and Commissioner Gordon and Officer Montoya, representing the GCPD. All are done in the signature Bruce Timm style from the Animated Series, which I love.

First: Catwoman. The easiest one to paint by far. Not that the others were difficult, but she came together in about half an hour.

Meow. The mold lines on these miniatures were a bit obnoxious and tough to spot. I removed more than one after painting and had to paint over it again.

Next: Batgirl. I like this miniature a lot.

My iPhone misses nothing. Not even that stray paintbrush bristle clinging to her cape. Ugh.

Gordon and Montoya. Very cool figure, but a pain in the ass to paint. Since they’re both on the same base, it’s tricky to paint one without accidentally getting paint on the other, especially because they have the annoying habit of leaning together.

Montoya’s shotgun barrel is bent, too. Not much I can do about that.

Robin, the Boy Wonder. The Batmobile is not included with this game. Neither is the cop car above.

Yellow remains a painting bugbear for me. You’d think after 40+ years of painting I would have figured it out by now.

And finally, the Caped Crusader himself.

Painting this miniature put me in the mood to repaint some Heroclix, something I did a lot of, but has since fallen by the wayside. I still have a freezer bin full of Heroclix I plan on repainting, much to the annoyance of Mrs. Angry Piper, who would like to have the freezer space back. Why do I keep Heroclix in the freezer, you ask? Because they snap right off the dials easier when frozen, with little risk of breakage. If you want my extensive thoughts and advice about repainting and rebasing Clix, check out this post here that I did all the way back in 2016.

Board Game Blues: The Miniatures

I promised a closer look at some of the miniatures featured in my (mostly unplayed) board games, and here they are.

First, the eight heroes from Touch of Evil. These are some nice miniatures, roughly 28mm scale, suitable for any gaslight setting. The definition is much better than my blurry photography would suggest.

I like these a lot, and it wouldn’t be an overwhelming project to get them painted if I could just park my ass at my painting desk for more than five minutes at a stretch. Up next, the miniatures from Batman: Gotham City Under Siege:

L-R: Catwoman, Batgirl, Robin, Batman, and Commissioner Gordon and Officer Montoya. This game is based on The Animated Series, in case that’s not obvious from the sculpts. Painting these will be fun, and I’m definitely going to do it soon. I really like the Gordon/Montoya miniature. Too bad there’s no Detective Bullock.

Marvel: United! is a game that got a lot of hype when it released, mainly for the cute miniatures:

L-R: Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Storm (with mohawk!)…

L-R: Venom (odd choice), Ant Man and the Villains: Red Skull, Taskmaster and Ultron. This game was a Cool Mini Or Not Kickstarter, and it funded quickly and with a ton of stretch goals, which were additional miniature sets that you could not purchase anywhere else. As a result, there are additional miniatures for this game that sell for ridiculous amounts of money on the secondary market. I picked up this core box at Wal-Mart for $15, IIRC, and that’s about as much as I want to spend on this game. Do I really need a cute Fantastic Four expansion? Not for $140 I don’t.

Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons has some awesome miniatures, well worth the $10 I paid for this game at Ollie’s. Like the Batman game above, this is on my short list of projects to paint (for whatever that’s worth nowadays).

Look at this sculpt of Diana. Freakin’ sweet, right?

Mansions of Madness has some amazing miniatures, all scaled at 32mm. Here’s a shot of some of the investigators and a couple of monsters, but the big Eldritch Horrors contained in this box aren’t featured on the box itself, which is a shame because my box remains sealed at the moment. This would be a big project to paint, and TBH I don’t know if I have it in me. I played the game before and it’s a lot of fun, but I think this may languish forever in the unpainted pile of shame, much like Space Hulk.

And now we reach game expansions for games I do not own (and never will), purchased solely for the miniatures contained inside. These were deeply discounted clearance items at Miniature Market (I paid $6 for the Solomon Kane expansion, a game that I’d actually purchase if the core set wasn’t prohibitively expensive).

First, some expansions for The Others, a game I know nothing about but one that has some cool futuristic/horror/pulp figures, as seen below.

Next: the aforementioned Solomon Kane expansion: Castle of the Devil. I’d say $2 a miniature is about right, especially when one of them is whatever the hell that thing is supposed to be. It almost made it into Monster May(hem) this year.

Finally, a couple of expansions for Yashima, an Asian fantasy-themed game. I like the miniatures, and I have a long -stalled Legend of the Five Rings/Samurai project that I will likely never get to, so I bought these because they’re cool. I think I paid $2 apiece for these expansions during one of Miniature Market’s “up to 90% off” clearance sales.

A couple more games bought solely for the miniatures, although both of these seem very playable: Journey: Wrath of Demons and Age of Thieves.

These are the heroes from Journey. I think this makes the third or fourth Sun WuKong miniature that I own.

These are the bad guys. IIRC, some of the demons are anatomically correct, which may offend some folks who don’t like dicks on their miniatures.

Above are the miniatures from Age of Thieves. You get 24 of the blue guards, which are quite serviceable for town guards (because that’s what they are). The other four are the thief characters you play in the game. Some cool character concepts here.

And that about rounds out my board game pile of shame. Hoping to get back into painting soon, but for whatever reason I’ve lost my mojo again. I seem to be incapable of choosing colors anymore, or for painting more than five minutes at a stretch. It’s not worth the time to set everything up. Any of you ever have this problem?

Forgotten Heroes 2025: The Escapist

For my last submission to Forgotten Heroes this year, I present: The Escapist!

The Escapist first appeared in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, Michael Chabon’s fantastic novel published in 2000. He’s the fictional character created by a couple of Jewish cousins working in the comics industry back in the 1930’s, the Golden Age of Comics. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Kavalier and Klay are an homage to the creators of Superman, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, only Siegel and Shuster weren’t cousins and Siegel (to my knowledge) wasn’t gay.

If you haven’t read this book, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a novel about persecution, fear, Jewish identity, family, love, perseverance and heroes, both real and created. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Chabon won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 2001. Three years later, Dark Horse Comics published a series of comics, Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist, which featured stories about the character written and drawn by different comic creators. I don’t have any, but I wish I did.

But what about The Escapist himself? Because it’s early and I have to go to work, I’ll cut and paste Wikipedia for the benefit of all.

The character’s modus operandi is part of a recurring theme of escapism in the novel, representing the imaginative and positive effects of escapism in superhero comics as well as Kavalier and Clay’s attempts to escape from the troubles of their past. Joe Kavalier has fled to America from Nazi-occupied Prague in Europe, leaving the rest of his family behind. Unable to help them, he starts fleeing from himself and everyone trying to get close to him. Sam Clay also wants to escape from himself – both his polio-stricken body and repressed homosexuality.

The Escapist’s true identity is Tom Mayflower. He is the crippled nephew of escape artist Max Mayflower (who performs under the stage name of Misterioso). When Max is fatally shot while performing onstage, he reveals that he isn’t his real uncle, having rescued him from a cruel orphanage as a baby. He gives Tom a golden key and a costume, explaining that he was recruited long ago by a mysterious organization called the League of the Golden Key to fight tyranny and free the oppressed. With his dying breath, Max commissions Tom to carry on his work. As long as Tom is wearing the costume and the key, he finds that he is no longer lame of leg and can perform amazing feats of escapology. Tom uses his powers to fight crime under the guise of the Escapist, especially against the evil forces of the mysterious criminal network, the Iron Chain.

To make The Escapist, I used this Animal Man Heroclix as a base miniature. He’s pretty much perfect.

From there, it was an easy paint job, as The Escapist’s costume is a black/grey skintight leotard and a TMNT-style bandanna domino. Not hard.

Although I was happy with the result, he looked somewhat blah, so I added the chains. It’s an actual necklace (worthless, of course) that I clipped and superglued into a pile at his feet. One quick metallic drybrush later, and voila! The Escapist has escaped!

That’s it for Forgotten Heroes 2025. Thanks as always to Jeremy for hosting it. I’ll be making the rounds to everyone’s blog to see their contributions and heap well-deserved praise upon them!

Forgotten Heroes 2025: Chemistro

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Heroes for Hire (especially Power Man), so I have a near-complete run of Luke Cage, Power Man and Power Man and Iron Fist. Power Man and Iron Fist have (or at least had) very few recurring villains, but Chemistro was an exception. No less than three guys have called themselves Chemistro. Luke Cage fought the first two on his own before partnering up with Iron Fist for the third.

The first Chemistro, Curtis Carr, was a chemist who invented an “alchemy gun”, with which he could turn stuff into other stuff. His bosses claimed it as company property, so he stole it back and used it to get revenge. He blew his own foot off with it in the process, and Power Man sent him to the slammer.

While in there, he was cellmates with a guy named Archibald Morton, who forced Carr to reveal the secret of the alchemy gun. Morton tried to build one himself, but since he’s a dummy and not a scientist, it exploded in his hand. This gave him the powers of the alchemy gun without the gun. He also ran afoul of Luke Cage and lost.

The third Chemistro is Curtis’s younger brother Calvin, who stole a new gun and tried his hand at being a criminal until Power Man and Iron Fist shut him down with the help of Curtis, who didn’t want his younger brother doing crimes. As far as Chemistro’s history goes, that’s as much as I know, but he’s apparently still around. Check Wikipedia for updates if so inclined.

To make Chemistro, I used this Thunderball Heroclix as a base model. I mean, you can’t do better than this. He’s not even carrying his wrecking ball, so I don’t have to remove it.

I slapped on a retro raygun bit I had in the bitz box, and voila! One repaint and rebase later, and here’s Chemistro!

I’m hoping to get my last one done over the weekend for posting on the 30th. There’s a little more work involved with that one, but the costume is easy to paint. Fingers crossed!

Forgotten Heroes 2025: The Ghost Who Walks

For my first submission to Forgotten Heroes 2025, I present The Man Who Cannot Die, The Phantom!

One of the first costumed superheroes, the Phantom debuted in 1936 and is still in syndication in newspaper strips today. He was the first hero to wear a skintight suit, and the first to have eyes with no visible pupils. There was a movie that came out in 1996 starring Billy Zane that I know I’ve seen but can’t remember anything about, and a Scifi channel miniseries that I know I haven’t seen.

The Phantom is actually a title, not a name: twenty-one generations of the Walker family have worn the suit. Since it’s passed down from generation to generation, the myth developed that the Phantom is immortal. From Wikipedia:

The Phantom was 21st in a line of crime-fighters which began in 1536, when the father of British sailor Christopher Walker was killed during a pirate attack. Swearing an oath on the skull of his father’s murderer to fight evil, Christopher began a legacy of the Phantom which would pass from father to son. Nicknames for the Phantom include “The Ghost Who Walks”, “Guardian of the Eastern Dark” and “The Man Who Cannot Die”.[6]

Unlike many other superheroes, the Phantom has no superpowers; he relies on his strength, intelligence, skill at arms (he carries two holstered handguns, a revolver and a 1911 .45 autopistol, one on each hip, and is an expert marksman with both), and the myth of his immortality to take action against the forces of evil. The 21st Phantom is married to Diana Palmer; they met while he studied in the United States and they have two children, Kit and Heloise. He has a trained wolf named Devil and a horse named Hero, and like the 20 previous Phantoms he lives in the ancient Skull Cave.

To make the Phantom, I used this Daredevil Heroclix. I cut off the billy clubs and up-gunned him by giving him twin machine pistols. The bottom parts of the clubs now look like ammo clips.

Pretty much all that was left to do was repaint him, although I removed a good part of his billy holster and filed down his horns first. (I didn’t care enough to give him a second holster, though). Looks like I missed a spot on his left toe. I’ll fix it, but I’m not taking the pictures again.

There’s quite a bit of variation in his costume colors. A quick Google search shows his signature purple suit varies between royal purple to pastel lavender, and the stripes on his briefs have been blue, red or yellow. I stuck with the blue.

The Phantom was created by Lee Falk, who died in 1999. Fun story: In 1993, I was 21 years old and working in a comic shop. I had occasion to spend a fair bit of time with a woman 17 years my senior who worked for a major advertising firm in New York. Once, while we were not doing what we usually did when we saw each other, she mentioned that I should meet her friend Lee sometime, since I was into comics. She described him as a lovely old guy. She met him while doing marketing work for King Features Syndicate, who owned, among other things, The Phantom. Yes, she meant that Lee, and no, I never met him.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when, researching this hero, I discovered that there has been a recent video game released featuring the character that looks awesome but has been described as an “experience in frustration” and a “barely functional mess”. Yikes.

One down, one more to go (possibly two)!