Undeniably, it’s autumn. Summer is gone and it’s time to recall a happy memory from July.
After our December visit to the family and our painting session with my nieces, it was beyond question that we would have more of these. Both of them and I enjoyed it a lot and I got the mission to find a decent Gryph.
The main challenges were the same as in last December: since we live abroad and visit our families only twice a year, we usually have a very busy schedule during our stay and I can bring a limited toolkit and paint range because of the baggage allowance on the flights.
Since we had only an afternoon for the whole painting session, I had been looking for minis that didn’t require assembly, but were still impressive. As my nieces are 6 and 8 years old, I excluded the ones that were too fierce or scary. After some research and considering the available options, I decided to buy a griffon and a unicorn from Wizkids.
They were nice and well detailed, without any visible mould-lines and were pre-primed too – exactly what I was looking for!
I prepared the same paints as I did last time (tones of blue for the younger -, and red ones for the older sister) and also some extra colours to have more options.
I was glad to see that they liked the new minis and they were looking forward to the painting session too. Kids at this age can lose interest easily, but it seems that painting with me was a positive experience for both of them last time.
In December we had to assembly the minis and remove the mould-lines, but now we could start painting them right away. My plan was to use a base colour, to apply a wash to add some shades and to drybrush to highlight the details. These are all simple techniques and by then they were familiar with them.
The younger one used the following colours on her unicorn:
Bringing extra paints was a good idea, as the older one decided to paint her griffon the same way as it was on the box:
At the end, she added some tuft and skulls too.
I painted only the eyes and some smaller details like the fangs of the skeleton, but everything else was done by the girls – during one single afternoon! We were having fun, and they were happy with their new minis. A pot of Agrax Earthshade was spilt during the process – but I consider that calculated loss.
In order to provide some protection, both figures got a layer of Lahmian medium. We haven’t used the round bases, because this way the minis can be kept in their boxes, which makes safer to store and transport them.
The next day, while the older one was scrolling through the latest White Dwarf, she looked at me and asked the big question: “How do you play with these figures?”. So I told her about wargaming… It seems that we can take these sessions to the next level: I’m going to show her a simplified skirmish or wargame during our upcoming visit.
She also showed great interest in dragons: GW’s Magmadroth and Maw-krusha. Attagirl!
So now I have my homework: find new figures for our Christmas visit and figure out how to introduce gaming to them. Should I show them a simplified skirmish game, or DM a child-friendly RPG? The Advanced Fighting Fantasy rulebook I bought earlier at FFF3 might be a good starting point… I have a few more months left to answer these difficult questions.
But hey… who said that being the cool uncle is easy? 😊