Arnulf's Antics

[Arnulf]

Hello, I'm Arnulf. I've lurked here for a long time, but never made an account. I figured I would need my own thread to post what I'm working on. Slowly getting back into the hobby and hoping to build some gangs for Necromunda. Before I do that I'll paint up some of the minis I've had for a while but never built or painted.

To start with I have finished six skeletons from Reaper Miniatures, these will be enemies in Knights! a game I'm coming up with to introduce my two oldest to wargames.

Skeletons 1/2

• Arnulf
• Apr 29, 2025
• arnulf bones dnd knights reaper miniatures skeleton

Three of six skeletons painted for my kids to fight in the game Knights! Finished 4/28/25

Skeletons 2/2

• Arnulf
• Apr 29, 2025
• arnulf bones knights reaper miniatures skeleton

Three of six skeletons painted for my kids to fight in the game Knights! Finished 4/28/25

For the skeletons I wanted them to look ancient. I started by doing the bones, I only have a limited pallet of paints so what you see is about five different layers. These skeletons are supposed to be reanimated warriors from hundreds of years ago so I tried giving them armor that did not look like steel. I mixed red, raw umber and gold to get the color. To give them some more color I did the clothe with blue, starting with blue mixed with black, and lightening it with white in subsequent highlights. The wood and leather was done with raw umber mixed with white. After all this I did black wash over everything except the bones.

I really enjoyed painting these sculpts, I quite like them. I have two small complaints:

1. The bones plastic is still semi water retardent in places despite priming. This was solved by adding a coat of barely thinned pain.
2. Some of the details get lost when primed black, I will probably prime reaper minis white from now on. A couple spots of armor or cloth was painted incorrectly because it looked to be the other. Whoops

I hope you enjoy.

 

[radulykan]

Not a fan of reaper plastic either, I like their metals though, painted some up for frostgrave.
Waiting to see what knights! Is like lol
If it falls through then frostgrave is pretty easy to learn depending on your kids ages

 

[Arnulf]

Not a fan of reaper plastic either, I like their metals though, painted some up for frostgrave.
Waiting to see what knights! Is like lol
If it falls through then frostgrave is pretty easy to learn depending on your kids ages

Thanks, I could give it a go. Do you think six and five is too young? Also the three year old might insist on rolling dice (or at the very least sitting in my lap). I've never played Frostgrave but it looks like fun.

I'll have more things that go bump in the night soon. I hope the server gets sorted out before the end of the weekend.

 

[radulykan]

I think my daughter was maybe about 8 for her first game? She had played heroquest prior to that. Now she collects necrons and Escher https://yaktribe.games/community/th...es-that-live-only-for-conquest-necrons.10491/

I know people are working on getting the server/forum issues sorted asap so hopefully soon we’ll see more from you

 

[rustedchrome]

Those skeletons look great, I'll have to look those models up. I agree with you on the Bones plastic. My son seems to like it but I vastly prefer the metal.

As far as kids go give it a try. My youngest (7 yo girl) likes to play games but sometimes it's difficult to keep her attention for games of D&D. She does seem to like Heroquest which we just picked up and are midway through painting as we play and all the kids like Buggy Races where we kept the rules light and fast.

I tried to get my oldest (14 now, don't remember how old he was) into 40k during 8th edition but didn't really get into it so we only played a few games. Then something clicked and he was totally gung-ho for 10th edition. We had played a few "made up" kinda miniatures games when he was younger too.

My middle kid? Only interested in the buggy races. Nothing else. Can barely get him to play Sorry!

Give it a try with your kids, they're all different.

 

[Ben_S]

If it falls through then frostgrave is pretty easy to learn depending on your kids ages

The 'basic' rules for FG are fairly simple, but then it does have a lot of 'extras' that complicate things (like all the spells). This is where things get harder.

I don't have kids, but I'd have thought maybe something co-operative rather than competitive. I guess that may also depend on the individual though.

 

[Arnulf]

I can't believe I missed all your replies. Thank you for the compliments.

Knights! will be extremely cooperative with the exception of tourneys. Most scenarios consiste of each player controling at least one knight and marching them into battle with whatever evil is menacing the peasantry. The more you help your fellow knights the more your liege will like you. We will keep it simple at first and add rules as we go along. As the kids "get" things like movement we might add charging or fleeing. I'll treat rules like we treated cards in Uno, I removed all the cards except basic colours and "wild" to begin with and added "reverse", "skip" etc as they understood the game.

But the real reason I am posting is of course to show what I've painted this month. I painted rats, bats and wolves. Everything was pretty simple, dry brushing greys, tans and browns with some flesh and black wash. I picked the wolves eyes out in red and might go back to give them white teeth and red eyes for the bats and rats. For some reason the shades of brown and grey do not show up in the pictures, everything seems like it's washed out in the pictures. The rats where a lot of fun to paint.

Rats

Rats

• Arnulf
• Jun 1, 2025
• arnulf bones knights rat reaper miniatures

Eight rats from Reaper, such fun sculpts. They have a lot of character and are perfect for DnD...

Wolves

Wolves

• Arnulf
• Jun 1, 2025
• arnulf bones dnd knights reaper miniatures wolves

Every village needs someone to steal the sheep. Wolves from Reaper in Bones plastic.

Bats

Giant Bats

• Arnulf
• Jun 1, 2025
• arnulf bats bones dnd knights reaper miniatures

Three giant bats from Reaper in Bones plastic. These sculpts look like they flew out of a Dior...

 

[radulykan]

The red eyed wolves are nightmare fuel! Lol
I recommend giant spiders as an addition to the menagerie, beating them up with models can remove any phobias lol

 

[Arnulf]

The red eyed wolves are nightmare fuel! Lol
I recommend giant spiders as an addition to the menagerie, beating them up with models can remove any phobias lol

Thanks! I've got a set of giant spiders from Reaper plus some cheap creepy crawlies and dinosaurs in a tube that I snagged off Amazon. Once I've worked through all my primed minis I'll get to those. Luckily I only have ghouls, vampires, a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing to paint before I can do up some giant insects and antediluvian monsters!