Forge World Exalted Keeper of Secrets: Painted by Golem Painting Studio (NSFW)

Many of you will remember that among my many failings was buying people presents which I was also going to assemble and paint, and not assembling and painting them. This daemon was bought as a birthday present for a good friend many years ago, and I then failed to do anything about it for far too long.

I finally decided that enough was enough, and asked Golem Painting Studio to make my abject failure go away. They have, as I expected, knocked it out of the park...

Photo by Golem Painting Studio
Used with Permission

Photo by Golem Painting Studio
Used with Permission

Photo by Golem Painting Studio
Used with Permission

I'm very pleased to cross this beautiful girl off the "to do" list in such a spectacular way.

Plenty of hobby

So, I decided to start getting back into the swing of the modelling and painting side of the hobby -although mostly, it seems the modelling part.

So, I had a tiny problem with assembling Cypher. It turns out the spot his sword is meant to go is really close to the front of his cloak. I don't know how easy it is to see, but there's a green patch on his cloak right between his legs - that's where the drill bit came through. I green stuffed it all up, and started again, this time at an angle.

There is now a broken drill bit embedded in him that I can't get out. This has been passed to the wife to fix, with a small amount of "I told you so" as she'd told me not to use the hand drill and to use the Dremel instead.

Still, the sword is pinned ready to be added.

And a 32mm base has been built up with cork, had rocks and a skull added, and textured with two different kinds of Vallejo textured paste. I'll be doing a compare and contrast with Cypher on a 25mm and 32mm base when he's fixed, as I'm pretty sure he's going to be 28% more awesome as a result.

I have a new way of working. I have something I'm trying to finish that I want to do, and something that I should do. I also have something I'm prepping that I should do and something I'm prepping that I want to do. This means all the procrastination energy of the thing I should be doing gets put into the thing I want to be doing and more work gets done.

Here is the thing I should be doing. They're two of the four Marionettes for Collodi. They are now pinned to their bases ready for water effects. Only two left to go.

To get me a nice quick win as the thing I want to be doing, here's ten Micro Art Studio bases I'm going to use as scrap markers in Malifaux. They're not finished yet, but close. Sadly, the experiment with Seraphim Sepia to get a rust like effect has resulted in the metal looking just a little yellow. The old sepia washes did a much better rust. I'll re-paint those bits a different colour and see what I can find.

On the preparation side, I've done this fancy base for my Rogue Trader Chaos Dreadnought I'll be using for my Iron Warriors. He's now ready for under-coating.

I've moved on to clearing up these old Chaos Renegades, who'll be The Unworthy in my Iron Warriors.

The first 'test fit' seems to show some of the back packs sit a little high. The advice from the Oldhammer Facebook group seems to be to re-drill the holes for some of the renegades to get the packs to sit a little lower. That should be pretty viable.

What I should be doing is prepping my wife's Valentine's Day present from 2012 so she can paint them. Still, Charlie the Bulldog is ready for undercoating.

 

And here's Ivanka, pins for her feet sorted, and one arm glued in. It's likely when she's done then her and Charlie will get undercoated and passed over, leaving me Malinka and Olga still to do.

Event Report: Totally Crit Open 1

At the end of February, I pottered down to the darkest depths of Kent to attend the Totally Crit Open. I was very excited, and totally forgot to take photos of my first game.

(Totally Crit is an awesome Infinity Podcast. You should listen if that's your thing.)

My first game was Annihilation, facing a Haqqislam force. It was quite an open table and I kept my opponent on the back foot all game, but in the end, his doctor was able to get an awful lot of points back up on the last turn, giving him the win by a small margin.

Second game was against PanO. We had seize the antennae, and the middle antennae was in the middle of the massive TAG Hanger. I had first turn, but it was going to be an uphill struggle to get the middle objective, as the doors were on his side. I helpfully left an invisible dude in hidden deployment right next to the antennae.

By the time the Spektr revealed, there were a couple of chaps pottering around inside, and he wasn't able to take them all out before he was taken down himself.

I got a reasonable number of people up the field to behind the hanger in the middle. In late game I used a combined order to climb them all up opposite a total reaction remote in the hope of getting some of them to the objective. It didn't work!

I lost so many people in the last turn charge for the centre objective that my opponent was able to roll all the way up to my "home" objective and claim that as well, leaving me with a 10-1 loss.

Final game was against a Corregidor sectorial with an awful lot of orders and a link team to contend with. The mission was Supremacy, which involves a lot of tinkering around with boxes. I didn't get to pick deployment for the third game in a row!

In the end, I mauled the other guy's force a lot more than I realised at the time, but I was never anywhere near claiming many of the objectives, or having enough models in the centre quadrants to contest them. I had a couple of points, but he maintained a solid lead through the game.

I was able to neutralise his Intruders pretty effectively with White Noise, but I wasn't really able to use the terrain to play to the mission.

So, while I lost all three games, I didn't come away unhappy. I scored points in every mission, and scored enough points to be several places off the bottom. I'm still making mistakes, but I learn from them. I'm doing OK at calculating how to optimise winning a firefight, but I'm not optimising my orders to achieve the mission objectives and win games. That's a long time coming, I think, but I know to focus on it.

The event itself was well run, the Totally Crit guys were really welcoming and friendly, as was everyone I played at the tournament. Excellent fun, would definitely attend another one!

How my brain works

So, this weekend I was away at No Rest for the Wicked, which is a Rogue Trader style 40K LARP. As such, aside from getting my weapon phys reps done (see above) my hobby has been sparse, as has my time to blog about it.

Until I get caught up, here's a little example of how my brain leaps from idea to idea in very quick succession.

• I saw a post on G+ from someone asking for advice for kit in No Rest.
• My general advice is to focus on costuming the top half of the body, as Sensible Boots are a very reasonable costuming compromise if you're running around in the wet and the cold.
• I then thought about how cool a good pair of LARP pirate boots would look.
• Maybe it would be cool to play a pirate in the 40K LARP.
• I'm reminded of how I think there's a very specific difference between "Renegade Space Marines" and "Chaos Space Marines", and how often, but not always, that line slowly and gradually blurs and Renegades become Chaos worshippers.
• I then start working out how to do a (human, not Space Marine) Renegade captain in the LARP, with Orks, Eldar Corsairs and even a small unit of Renegade Marines as part of his warband.
• Halfway through this, I realise it could be a really, really cool 40K tabletop army.
• I then sit down working out which forces to use for which sections, settling on the Lost and the Damned army list for the human pirates and renegades, with a formation of Ork Freebooters, an Allied Contingent of Eldar Corsairs and Chaos Space Marines as the Renegades.
• Realising this is, mechanically, a Chaos force, I'm reminded of the cool background and ideas I came up with for the Iron Warriors force I already own models for and have been planning on painting for a while.

So, in this particular case, this crazy run of logic (which took a single afternoon) has resulted in a new army idea to be queued up after I finish my existing armies, but has gotten me a little enthused about one of my existing projects.

Health Check: New Year's Resolutions, End of February

As expected, February did not go well in the painting productivity department...

The Main Goal

- Finish painting at least two things a month
FAILED

I got nuthin'.

Like, I haven't picked up a brush.

Still, preparation for the Totally Crit Open went moderately well. All sorts of figures got assembled.

In the end I did need to borrow some figures from a friend to meet the deadline, and three figures got finished the night before the tournament, but I did make it!

The tournament was excellent, and I'll be putting up a review of it later. I've also managed to keep my willpower together and haven't bought any models this month!