My painting review of 2014

It looks like I've been a bit more productive this year!

Finished models

Wicked Dolls for Malifaux

Adeptus Arbites Kitbash

20 Guardsmen

Collodi for Malifaux

MkI Thunder Armour

Commissar Lord

Imperial Priest

Leman Russ Tank

Bloodletter

An angry Squat

Codename: Oberon by Mantic

A mildly tipsy Squat

Anvil Industry Werewolf

Bonus: Stuff other people painted for me!

Imperial Beastmen, painted by Simlauren

Imperial Guard Bombard, painted by Golem Painting Studio

How did I do?

Well, that's certainly better than I managed last year. But if you scroll down that post, you'll see I set myself some goals. How well did I do with those?

Not include models I'm selling in my tracking systems next year
Well, that was an easy one.

Take part in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge
Well, I took part - but I sort of intended to complete it! I didn't complete the challenge, but I certainly got a lot more models painted as a result.

Finish the blasted Collodi crew
Oh dear. I got halfway there, but there's still four Marionettes to finish basing.

500 point Warriors of Chaos Army
Not started.

All of Salute 2012's purchases painted
Nope. The Storm Troopers were done last year, but there's still a female Commissar, the show Mayan and all the Sarissa Precision stuff that's not finished yet.

No new systems (Infinity, this means you) until I've fully painted one of my other skirmish games up
Abject failure. You'll notice my posts about lovely Infinity stuff, and you will notice above no skirmish games completed...

Future Plans

I think that trying to plan a full year is a mistake. I have projects I want to progress, but I may get distracted by a different project. Y'all understand that, right? So, I'll separate out "what I'm interested in at the moment" and "what I'm committing to".

I've taken to listing my projects on a project page of the blog. It's not fully written out yet - I do it as and when, as I get inspired by different projects. The eternal project of the Imperial Guard is written up, as is the Cypher project.

My big drive at the moment is Infinity - I've found deadlines are good for me getting things done, so being booked onto two Infinity events (one in January, one in February) will help me get my Infinity stuff sorted.

Otherwise, I'd like to get some Guard stuff done, enough Inquisition done to field a small allied contingent, and get some Malifaux in.

Commitments

So, important things with commitments is to be realistic, so lets start by setting some realistic ground rules. Any Kickstarter projects, either arriving or backing, don't count to the wider restrictions, because, well, I just get sad otherwise. Presents (Christmas, Birthday, etc) don't count. Salute most definitely doesn't count.

I have just over 16 years of painting mountain if I keep painting and modelling at the rate I did last year. It'd be probably be better if I got it down to around a decade.

That really means that as a base minimum, I should be finishing two projects a month - 24 a year. That's going to be the basic rule. There's some "stretch goals" to work for too.

- Finish more than two projects in a month, and limit purchases the following month to however much I beat the target by

- Finish "Operation: Complete Other People's Stuff". (only 3 items left!)

- Clear the Hall of Shame of anything started before 2014. (5 items)

- Finish anything I started before the start of 2015. (20 items)

These ones are all aspirational - which means that unlike "finish 2 things in a month", I can aim for them if I'm doing well, but don't feel so bad if I miss them. I'm also very keen to focus a lot of effort on things I've been given as presents, because, you know, it's not cool to have things people gave you sitting in boxes. I don't just want to be resting on my mint plastic/resin/metal treasure like a geek Smaug. It's not comfy, for starters.

What I got done while I was away

I took some modelling stuff away while I was visiting my family, and I did get some of it done.

Here's some creepy mutants for INQ28 and the like.

Here's a better lit photo of one of them. They were my quick and easy things to do in between the harder jobs.

And finally, the CSU is assembled and done! I've also gotten to work on Cypher, one of my Christmas presents, but he isn't quite finished yet. I'm doing him properly with lots of pinning, and some of that is proving a little challenging!

Overlords Christmas Battle Report 3: Astra Militarum and Space Marines against Adepta Sororitas and Space Marines

With everything at a dead tie, we went into the final round. This was a pretty standard mission with strategy cards, and deploying in table quarters. The only complication was that it was the one where you draw mission cards equal to the number of objectives you're controlling. I was paired with a Space Marine bike list run by one of the gentlemen from HATE. We were paired against the tactical genius of Jason and Inquisitor Steve from the Overlords.

Due to some interestingly placed objectives, we ended up with the odd strange placement, like these Guardsmen holding a ruin while also running a line of guys back to claim the objective.

Jason hadn't been expecting to play, so borrowed some models from the club Imperial Fists army, and kept it super simple - Terminators, Tactical Marines and a Captain. Steve had a Battle Sister Squad in a Rhino, then a Canoness, an Inquisitor, and a bunch of henchmen in a second Rhino.

The Chimera full of Veterans raced out to the right flank to deal with the Rhino full of Sisters. It managed to get into the ruins without getting immobilised, which was a first for me!

Meanwhile, we managed to luckily immobilise the other Rhino, forcing the Henchmen and characters to walk.

The monowheel bikes allied to me get into a scrap with the Terminators, then Hit and Run out to let them hit someone else next turn.

Unfortunately, we underestimate quite how tough henchmen squads are, and we take a bit of a kicking from them!

The Chimera gets immobilised trying to get out of the ruins. I should have known! Meanwhile, my Scout Sentinel turns up somewhere useful from Outflank to shoot some people in the back.

The henchmen are causing us real problems!

The demo charge fails me, and the revenge fire blasts many of the Veterans to death.

The Hellhound thanks the Imperial Fists for getting into such a convenient straight line for him.

And the Imperial Fists kindly offer to return the generosity with as many krak grenades as they can manage.

The sole survivor of the Terminators bears down on the guardsmen in the ruins, but it's not going to be enough...

The Inquisitor and Canoness fall back to hold an objective.

Argh! Get them off, get them off! The Hellhound has definitely attracted a lot of affection for its shenanigans with Torrent.

The Sisters take out the Veterans, but with their Rhino destroyed, it's too late for them to affect another part of the battlefield.

At this point, the battle ended, with a close game - we managed to hold onto victory with a single victory point, with a Linebreaker swaying it. It turned out that the Naughty forces had managed to be victorious in the day's campaign, making things even less comfortable for the surviving Imperial inhabitants of the Pakeshi sector...

Mobile hobby

In between watching Avengers Assemble and making a serious dent in the Christmas leftovers, I managed to get the mobile hobby area set up yesterday.

Because I'm working on metal models, it's easier to have a tray to catch all the bits from drilling and scraping mould lines - especially as my darling wife is allergic to nickel, and I don't want to get in trouble.

The cutting mat fits nicely into the tray, and means I don't mark up one of my parents' trays. Other than that, I just use the clippers, pin vice and scalpel - I have spare scalpel blades and drill bits in case of emergency, and about 3 metres of pinning wire. I very much doubt I'll be able to get through all of that in under a week!

I'm going to be trying, in the coming year, to deal with new purchases as I buy them, rather than buying to add to an ever increasing pile. As such, I've immediately got out Cypher, one of my Christmas presents, to start working on him.

My other gaming related Christmas present was Be'lakor, and I didn't bring a case that would be particularly forgiving of me assembling him before I get home - so he's going to have to wait until I make my way home.

It amuses me a little that the models two of last year's Advent Data Slates are now this year's Christmas presents...

Overlords Christmas Battle Report 2: Astra Militarum and Dark Eldar vs Eldar and Blood Angels

I have not forgotten the remaining battle reports from the Overlords Christmas event! After the first games were totted up, it seemed that the Nice forces had earned an early lead, seizing key objectives, and now looking to put the Naughty forces on the back foot. Many pockets of Naughty forces found themselves cut off and surrounded as the Nice Forces went in for the kill.

This game I was assigned some Dark Eldar allies, and the mission deployment was that we were deployed in the centre, with the Nice forces surrounding us from all sides. We had both Kill Points and the random card draws for victory points.

With the Blood Angels down one end of the battlefield, the Dark Eldar player grabbed me for a quick huddle and we agreed to run over and beat up the Eldar, hopefully before the Blood Angels got to us. We needed to do it that way around as the Eldar were much quicker and would have been on us before we'd finished off the Blood Angels.

The plan started off reasonably well, although in the first turn, we didn't manage to kill quite as many of the Eldar as we'd have liked.

The Nice team rolled up the "Governor's Daughter" objective, where they had to rescue the civilian from a randomly determined objective. They were unlucky enough to have it turn up at the objective at the centre of the board!

With the Blood Angels bearing down on us, and the Eldar down but not out, the Astra Militarum tanks raced back to hold up the Blood Angels.

The Eldar were still taking fire from the foot squad in the ruins.

The Sentinel finished off the Eldar Psyker, after the Hellhound had taken out the Dire Avengers he'd been leading.

A second Eldar Hornet arrived and the Ravager suddenly had some problematic company.

The Blood Angels were all over the Guard, and had reached the VIP. We were definitely in trouble!

The Guard managed to gun down the Assault Marines and the VIP, but the Hellhound was done for. The demolition veterans bailed out of the Chimera before it got taken out, so they had a chance of getting into assault.

The Librarian Dreadnought charged the demolition vets, and paid for it, being brought down by Melta Bombs.

Overall, while the Guard had taken some casualties and the odd Dark Eldar skimmer had gone down, we had a clear lead in victory points. The "divide and conquer" plan had paid off, and Naughty was back in the game...

Dark Sphere Kitbash Secret Santa

Some of the guys at Dark Sphere decided to have a Secret Santa Kitbash this year. The way this worked was that everyone who signed up was randomly allocated another participant, and instructed to make a kitbash for them. We all had to list out our armies so we got something of use. I mentioned I was doing Guard, Inquisition and Chaos stuff.

This morning, I unwrapped my parcel, and got this.

The big pile of dead Grey Knight heads at the mutant's feet is a nice touch. I'll be looking at getting this chap painted up in the New Year.

Merry Christmas!

First Christmas hobby project

I had been planning on showing off my awesome travelling hobby set up today, but I forgot that I'm supposed to demonstrate some basic human decency and social contact this season. So today's hobby project was a Christmas Tree.

It's very pretty, and one of the few 1:1 scale pieces I've done...

Battle Report: Overlords Christmas Party 1: Astra Militarum and Lost and the Damned vs Space Marines and Space Marines

For the first battle of the Christmas party, we had to make "Squigfall" - landing our forces on the giant squig and winning objectives from a custom deck the Overlords had prepared for the event. To keep my life "interesting" I decided not to read any of the cards until I drew them.

I was a bit nervous about the first game - I didn't have much in the way of AP3 weapons, and only the Hellhound could ignore cover, and we were up against two bike army lists - one using a Gorgon Chain.

My somewhat ropey allies were a bunch of renegades and cultists using the Lost and the Damned army list. Their BS2 means they're much cheaper, so there were a few more troops on the table, filling me with reassurance.

I was impressed by both the terrain quality the Renegades. I didn't get much of a chance to take a close look at the bikes we were facing, though, which is a shame!

We spent our first turn trying to blast the bike command squad to bits, but with the apothecary, Gorgon Chain and other equipment, it proved really hard. In the end, getting units around the flank and shooting the other guys really helped. The Apothecary had a couple of "Look Out, Sir" rolls, but refused to roll over.

With the Captain having shrugged off the demo charge, the return fire blew most of my demolition veterans to pieces. It wasn't looking good!

The meagre survivors were charged by the bikes, and it wasn't looking good for our heroes! The Commissar Lord issued a challenge to the Apothecary, as the Captain was off punching a tank to pieces, but sadly, the high toughness and Feel No Pain kept him up.

Remarkably, the Commissar Lord stayed on his feet. Unfortunately, this meant that we couldn't shoot the command squad as much as we wanted - a lot of units ended up effectively unable to shoot as a result!

Meanwhile the Blood Angels poured into the trench network to dislodge the other Veteran Squad.

This assault, similarly, did not go well for me.

The Commissar Lord did his best, but eventually, he was run down.

And now the renegade militia would come into their own and quickly dispatch the Space Marines, right? Right?

Sadly, it seems that gene-enhanced super soldiers outmatch a ragged mob of renegades, heretics and cultists, and our remaining fire was shrugged off, leaving the field in the hands of the "Nice" team, represented by the Space Marine bike teams!

At the end of the first round, the "Naughty" list were on the back foot, with the forces of "Nice" moving in for the kill. Were we luring them into a false sense of security and a trap? Tune in again soon for another instalment of "The Battle for the Pakeshi Squig"!