Community Spotlight: Aliens, Retro Dungeons & Dragons and Midway Campaigns

Come and join us for another delve into the Projects to find the best of the best from the last week or so. We’ll be getting stuck into lots of great-looking miniature wargaming painting and hobbying this week…

…always let us know what YOU have been working on and share it across the site.

Tyranid Xenomorphs by TrojanTurps

We start off this week with TrojanTurps, who has been working away on more of their sickeningly awesome Tyranids, kitbashed and painted in all sorts of interesting ways. This time around, their Tyranids have become infected by Xenomorphs!

The kitbashing and converting on these looks brilliant and combines, very nicely, the look and feel of the Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000 alongside the terrifying and iconic look of the Xenomorphs from the Alien movies. A lot of time and effort was spent on the heads in order to get them looking just right.

The fact that you have some awesome, weird and very disturbingly twisted bits in the mix for these creatures really makes them. You also have all of the extra effort going into the bases, made using rice, UHU glue, epoxy resin, green stuff worms and various bits of zombie kit from different sets. An awesome mix.

The gloss varnish and the thin washes on the aliens look perfect and work so well to sell the theme that TrojanTurps is going for. I think it works disturbingly well and I could see plenty of other people using this as an idea for their Tyranids. It's not a new thing, mixing Xenomorphs and Tyranids, but it's the first time that I've seen it done this well.

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes by thebelon

Next up, we have some awesome alternative Dungeons & Dragons heroes from thebelon who has been working on some retro-themed heroes that went into their adventure as kids and ended up getting stuck in a Fantasy realm!

thebelon picked up these miniatures from Antediluvian Miniatures and has had some fun painting them up as a nice distraction from the rest of the painting they have been doing. I think they're great, especially as they're older versions of the characters that folks will know from the classic, retro Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. Maybe they got dragged back into this Fantasy realm?

I think the work on the Dungeon Master in particular is brilliant. I think thebelon has done a sterling job, especially on the top of the staff and those crystals. I also think the shading and highlighting here work really nicely. A solid set of miniatures that could be excellent for a dungeon delving adventure or perhaps a Fantasy skirmish game.

This was quite fun and neat to see pop up as a little aside to other bits and bobs as part of the Project system. I like that all of the painting for the various characters is in line with the original designs but with a little bit of a spin on it. I now need to really see what becomes of these heroes and what hijinks they can get embroiled in.

Midway - Blood Red Skies by commodorerob

Last but not least, we're delving into a bit of game design and tinkering as commodorerob explores making use of an aircraft carrier as part of some Midway-based games of Blood Red Skies. One of my favourite World War II aerial dogfighting games.

The idea was to work the carrier into some games and so commodorerob designed a scenario that could use it and actually got to test it recently. You normally see people playing Blood Red Skies with planes up against planes, so including an awesome vessel into the mix, the USS Yorktown (below) , really helps to add to the spectacle.

There was also an attack on the Hiryu (top), which featured US dive bombers going up against the ship to sink it. This then turned into a third scenario where the Japanese and the US ended up clashing over the roaring waves of the Pacific.

This also led to some interesting developments of the campaign. It proves that testing things is great and you can have a lot of fun in the process. One of the big things was that the space needs to be zoned in to make it way easier to get stuck into the action. An awesome way to delve into Blood Red Skies in a different way.

What Are You Painting Right Now?

Every week, we’re absolutely blown away by the incredible topics that are put into the Projects; it’s getting more difficult to choose Community Spotlights! We love your work and we hope to see a lot more of it in the future!

If you fancy getting your hobby fingers out and showing off your newest paint job, terrain piece or even greatest gaming achievement, we want to know about it! We don’t mind if you’re a newcomer to painting or a veteran of the brush; everything you do inspires us to create more and more content together!

What do you think of the entries this week?