Getting back on the horse, and a surprise guest

So, threatening myself with a complete lack of potential content, I finally knuckled down this weekend and broke the painting block, finishing off the second Heresy familiar I'm using as a Changeling in Malifaux. Sure, there's things I'd touch up, but he's a gaming piece, he's finished, and I have more to do!

There is pretty constant assembly going on at the moment - but scraping mould lines and pinning to bases and assembling multi-part plastic kits isn't hugely good blog reading. Hopefully now the pace will pick up and I'll retain some consistency.

I am glad I can't see the future. I got home today to this gorgeous chap waiting for me on the mat. He's an Inquisitor kitbash by Whiskey Priest from The Leadpile. I won a competition a while ago, and, as a fellow sufferer of hobby block, there was a bit of a delay before I got him. Solidarity!

This wretched fellow just needs a little basing love, and then he'll be ready for the table. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get a game, but if I can get him done soon, I'm tempted to try and sort out a game of some sort down at the Overlords in May some time and get some nice photos for a battle report on the blog. I've had a few commissions come back that haven't fired a shot in anger yet, so they'll need their bad luck draining off from their paint.

Still, positivity abounds, and you all have two nicely painted miniatures to see on my blog. Onwards!

When you've gone to Salute and run out of puns on the word 'loot'...

Once more, I have been to Salute, and once more, I have bought a ton of stuff. Here it all is, piled up in the restaurant after the show. But you can't really see all of it there (just get an idea of the scale of it) so here's a bit of a breakdown.

First up, with have the Salute free miniature. This is one of my favourites so far!
 

Meanwhile, the people behind Maelstrom's Edge had included a free sprue of infantry in the Salute bags.

The guys from Siege Studios, the painting studio, were giving away some free paint brushes. Not tried them yet, but we'll see how they do.

If you said "G'day" to Eureka Miniatures, you got a free kangaroo.

 While Ground Zero Games had their usual "take a couple of figures" box, which I grabbed for my mate Reb who plays in these weird scales that aren't 28mm...

While if you had pre-ordered things with Bad Squiddo Games, you got "Baggy Credits" to spend - I chose to spend mine on this lovely notebook. That sort of neatly brings me on to pre-orders...

Oathsworn were letting people pick up their "Heroines in Sensible Shoes" Kickstarter models at the show, so I picked that up.

Obviously, I had pre-ordered some stuff from Annie (who runs Bad Squiddo). She doesn't have everything Reaper stock on her site, but if you want specific things, she can put in an order for you. In this case, there are a couple of weird Reaper Bones gribblies I'd wanted, and a few useful bits of scenery that was pretty affordable in Bones.

I also ordered the Bad Squiddo Orcs, because I have a Plan for them. I also picked out a few nice miniatures I liked from ranges like Bombshell, CP Models and Reaper that she stocks normally. That was everything I'd bought before the show, so lets move on to what I got while I was there...

My first stop was . . . Bad Squiddo Games. I knew Annie had a few new miniatures out that were being released at the show and hadn't been pre-order-able. It turned out it was these Ogresses, which I fell in love with and bought immediately.

"Oh no, he hasn't started a new system, has he?" I hear you say. In this case, fear not! My insides are not about to become my outsides. Some good friends of mine up in the wilds of Scotland have really gotten into Dropzone Commander, and really wanted the new releases and the show only models. They currently owe me one (1) soul for the queue I endured to get this lot. (That's a discounted mates rate - don't ask me how many souls it is for people I don't like!)

Mike McVey had pottered along to show off Studio McVey's latest project. These are some resin sculpts of things from The Others boardgame, which came up on Kickstarter last year. Sadly, we didn't back this one, as we were probably suffering from Kickstarter fatigue at the time. I loved some of the heralds of the apocalypse and picked them up for painting projects, demonic heralds, and maybe the odd Malifaux proxy.

I rambled on at length about how much I love Northumbrian Tin Soldier's work. I was more restrained this year, avoiding goblin related Nightfolk on the grounds of not having painted last year's yet. I picked up this little chap because he's an adorable little beastman thing.

Eureka Miniatures had sadly sold out of the new Chaos Warriors I wanted, but I consoled myself with a weird critter called Big Nose and some smaller scale Chaos Knights that I will probably make weird mutated things in my chaos army anyway.

I wandered over to say hello to Anvil Industry. I needed some of their Blacksmith 5th Anniversary model for an evil scheme, and decided to grab an Instigator while I was there.

I popped back to say hi to Annie while she wasn't so busy and picked up these crates for my goblins' baggage train.

I've followed Mr Lee's blog for a while, and watched with interest as he partnered with Broken Toad miniatures to put out some really interesting miniatures. I can't remember what this one is called, but it looked very 40K and I had to grab one.

Broken Toad also sold me some new paints I've not tried before, because I'm a great believer in buying something you've not seen before and seeing what it does.

I popped by the Maelstrom's Edge stall and grabbed one of their scenery sprues - they're intended to cheaply allow scratch builders to detail things up, but I plan on using them to updetail MDF scenery.

This little chap is for a dwarf related project. I found him for a couple of pounds at Lesley's Bits Box.

Which is also where I picked up this classic middle era Imperial Psyker with ridiculous clothes. I seem to remember Andy Chambers running him in some linked scenarios as a deranged planetary governor...

Studio Miniatures do zombie games, but they did one set in a medieval theme park, and this cosplayer figure appealed to me on a deep personal level.

I then hit one of the big purchases of the weekend. I've been really enjoying my Infinity, and Right Arm Labs do some excellent pre-painted terrain (and a lot of it is pre-assembled too). This lot came out at a very reasonable price. Unassembled is an 'objective room' which is a standard sized scenario room for Infinity.

 I'd introduced Sim to Dark Star Miniatures because of their metal paint range. She got very excited about it (its very clever from a technical stand point) and bought a whole set, then got excited about their inks (they dry matte) and bought a full set of them. I realised I would invariably borrow these, forget to put them back, and get violenced, so used my last money to grab a few paints, an ink, and some weathering dust to try out.

 

This Warmill terrain was, however, my last acquisition, as Sim was so exhausted by this point she somehow agreed to buy me some more terrain. I suspect I owe her for this, and I'll probably have to pay her back at WarhammerFest...

Dilemmas and difficult questions

Noble readers, I come to you with a number of dilemmas and quandaries which vex me greatly this day.

Firstly, I backed the Modiphius Kickstarter for the Infinity RPG. I popped by their offices last week to pick up my miniatures. The PDFs are still a little way out. I went for the miniatures to use as HVTs, but inconveniently, Corvus Belli have now released HVT models, which are similar to the Kickstarter ones. I like some of the HVT ones over the RPG ones, and vice versa...

I also got my Kickstarter maths wrong and ended up with a few spare quid backing it, which was put towards a second Nomad RPG miniature. So, the dilemma here is - do I keep them all and get them painted up, and what do I use them for? My initial thought is to get them assembled and painted up to be used as HVTs but also as legal proxies for miniatures which haven't yet come out. But do they all suit that? Do I need all of them - especially duplicates? I am a little stuck.

Here's a familiar little Heresy miniature I'm using as a proxy for a Changeling in my Malifaux Neverborn. He's done up to a basic tabletop standard, but the question remains - what still needs doing? I think the cushion needs a bit of tidying up, the knife handle needs love, and his horns and eyes have a way to go. Am I missing anything else?

 Myth, my Tiefling D&D character, is causing me no end of woes. I now want to change his trousers, the detailing of his top, the slashes on his sleeves, his lute, his gloves, his horns and his skin. What does need changing? What's fine? Am I missing something obvious? Should I not worry so much about some other bits?

So, definitely full of existential self doubt this week. I'll clearly have to cure it through ridiculous retail therapy at Salute this coming weekend.