Getting into the painting headspace

I managed to get back to some painting and got some things finished! First up, I got these Anvil Industry Female Zombies done. They're not currently available, but I picked them up when they first came out. I then messed up the paint job on them and put them away for ages because I hated them.

A quick bit of finishing up base coating, some washes and dry brushing and they're table ready and good to go!

I also painted up this Frostgrave Hyena. It was a quick paint job and I tried out some new basing things which I will talk about separately in their own post.

Salute: Cool Companies

First thing I noticed was that TT Combat has a new Infinity range of scenery. They were doing a fantastic full table scenery deal on the day prior to the full release, but I am trying to go mostly pre-painted these days and already have most of a table. The new flat definitely can't fit a second table worth of terrain!

Bad Squiddo had a bunch of new releases - some jesters, a new orc berserker, and a bunch of ATS, their new scenery line, a retail release for some of their post apocalyptic figures and a bunch of other small bits and bobs. A whole ton of this is now available either for sale or pre-order on their site, so if you missed Salute, you can still go and pick it up now.

Anvil Industry had a few of their new Commissars available, along with a bunch of "miscast bags" where you could get a ton of random product for a knock down price as a few bits of it were miscast. They're doing a lot of cool stuff these days and are well worth a look.

I mentioned the game Briskars by French company TGCM in a previous post, and I managed to take a whole bunch of photos of their figures.

You apparently need only four or five models to play (I suspect it's a little more than that, but not by much). And there's a wide range of stuff.

As far as I understand it, there's no real factions as such so you don't have to take the models from the same faction if you don't want to. Not sure how much of a big deal this is if you don't. I'll look into it when I get a little time.

There's a massive range of different animals and figures in the range. I'm hoping that means those of my friends who are interested will all find different figures of interest.

That said, we may have some problems. I utterly love these penguins (they're what tipped me over into buying the book).

Fortunately, the amazing dodo models are used for objectives and stuff, so it doesn't matter if we all end up with dodos.

No models bought yet, but I suspect it's really only a matter of time. I want to see a squid sword fight a panda...

Daughters of the Burning Rose - Anvil Industry Kickstarter

As I mentioned in last week's Salute post, Anvil Industry are currently running a Kickstarter for their "Daughters of the Burning Rose" miniatures.

So firstly, having seen the miniatures in person, I can definitely recommend them. They are wonderfully detailed, well cast, and have a nice consistent theme across the range.

Obviously, one of the most common uses for heavily armoured sci fi warrior women will be as Sisters of Battle in Warhammer 40,000. Many people will have seen the announcement by Games Workshop that they'll be releasing Sisters in 2019, with an open development process. So why buy these now?

Well, if you only play in your local Games Workshop, then no, you won't be able to get to use them there. But otherwise? You'll still be able to use both these and the new Games Workshop plastics. These aren't a direct rip off - there's clear tips of the hat, sure, but they are their own thing and I don't feel bad about buying them. They're also sensibly proportioned and armoured, with no over-sexualised nonsense that I've seen so far.

In short - these are the sort of figures that there's been a bit of a shortage of up until now, and it should be encouraged. If you can spare even a token amount for a single figure or squad, I'd recommend throwing it into the pot now to show that there is a market for this sort of thing and it's worth doing.

To finish, this magnificent figure - it's a "10 up" figure that Anvil basically put together because they could. Pretty awesome, right?

Disclaimer: I am friends with the owners of Anvil Industry. However, I've not received any free product from them and this isn't a paid advertisement. I'm promoting something I think there should be more of in this hobby, because I think it's awesome and you'll like it to.

Pottering about doing a little hobby

I've spent the week pottering about doing some bits and pieces of hobby. A couple of my Infinity figures have picked up some dings. Mostly, it's the loss of the brass etch fire arc markers, particularly when they were the first ones I ever put on.

I also took the opportunity to assemble all those zombies I ordered from Anvil. I made sure everything got thoroughly washed and laid out to dry. I've even bought myself a new bowl to do this in so I don't get (rightfully) told off for using baking bowls for cleaning resin.

The Anvil stuff goes together super easily. Most of the joins don't need any pinning at all, but there's a few points where I get a bit nervy and decide to do a little re-inforcement.

I was also using Anvil's Hypercity base toppers. They're pretty darned awesome, but do sometimes leave a little of the base showing, so I used my favouritest thing in the world - the Vallejo red basing paste - to add a little texture there.

It seemed like no time at all before all five women zombies were assembled ready for undercoating.

I took advantage of the clear weather to get other undercoating done as well - a bunch of Infinity figures also got a quick Corax White undercoat spray as well.

You'll notice one zombie is missing here - sadly I managed to break one before undercoating, and ended up having to pin several components together to fix my ham fistedness. The glue on her is still drying, but she should be ready for undercoating by tomorrow - though I'm betting the weather is going to be terrible for weeks now...

Product Review: Anvil Industry Female Zombies

Having had excellent fun the other week painting zombies for Anvil Industry, I decided to pre-order the female zombies I'd been grumpy about not being ready for the speed painting night.

This is a mini-review of sorts, so as a disclaimer - I paid for these miniatures with my own money, but I am friends with the lovely people who run Anvil Industry, as well as a fan.

My original plan was to paint these on Sunday, but a reschedule meant that my plans for my day off on Friday got moved to the Sunday, and they hadn't arrived on the Friday for me to paint... (This paragraph specially for everyone who says that they miss my painting excuses!)

The detail on the new sculpts is excellent, and well up to Anvil's usual standard. There's a mix of military and civilian women zombies to give some variation. As you can see from the photo, bodies, arms and heads are separate so if you want an all female zombie horde, you should be able to get a reasonable amount of variation before you start seeing duplicates.

Because I pre-ordered, they also threw in a free Rock Zombie. He's pretty darned cool, and definitely a character of sorts.

Part 2 of this mini review will follow once I've assembled and painted them! So, erm, don't hold your breath? We don't need any more zombies...

Zombie Night at Anvil

Last Thursday night, I went down to Anvil Industry for Zombie Night. It was the night before Friday the 13th, and Anvil were planning on releasing their new zombie regiments the following day. Sadly, the female zombies, were still in the mould at the time I arrived, so I didn't get to paint those.

Between us, we were aiming to get fifty zombies painted in an evening, and play a game with them. In the end, we "only" managed to get 46 done, but we were close!

With it having been so long since I was last painting, it took me a little while to get back into the swing of things. I also made a few mistakes, like leaving a spot of white on this one's arm!

Still, it was nice to play around with different painting techniques and colours, if in a rather hurried way. For the first four, I base coated, then did a light bone drybrush over the entire model for highlights, before adding ink washes for detailing.

Of the first four, I'm especially proud of the effect I managed on the visor on this one, although the coat and goggles on the first one I showed are also pretty darned excellent.

For my second batch of three, I tried something different again - doing a light Nuln Oil wash over the entire model before brushing on the colours. I quite liked this technique and I'd like to experiment with it a bit more in the future.

This zombie was all fashionable with his white shoes and yellow jacket before he got bitten.

The spot where the blue has bled into the yellow is incredibly annoying, but I was working really quickly and often not waiting for paints to dry...

And here's the final zombie of the seven I painted in the evening. I then handed them over to someone else to mass paint the bases and get them on to the game.

The zombie hordes assemble...

One of the other painters had managed to get ten military zombies done in the same time I'd done seven!

We then added the horde to one of Anvil's lovely demo boards, where they were also showing off their police car that they'd wired to have flashing lights.

As the game started, heroes rallied around the police car to try and hold off the zombie horde before they could escape.

And here we leave our brave zombies, watching as the murderous "survivors" flee in the distance, slaughtering any innocent undead they come across...

Playing with paint

So, with a Chaos Villager to do for a painting challenge on the Oldhammer Forum, and the deadline looming, I dug out the assembled and undercoated model to do something with it. I pinned it to the miniature holder I'd picked up from Hobbyzone, because I wanted to do the base separately anyway (I had no wish of trying to paint the lower half of the model with the anvil in the way).

 I was a bit stuck for ideas, so decided to play around with a few things. I went with Darkstar's Tarnished Steel. I was a little disappointed so moved on to other bits, in particular, basing the leather with XV-88, as I couldn't find my beloved Steel Legion Drab. Like, seriously, I can't find it and it's really bugging me.

I then tried a bit of a wash with a P3 Chestnut Ink I originally got to experiment with water effects and hadn't used since. It ended up with a really nice rich colour, but with too much of a gloss finish for what I was trying to do - there are totally leathers that would suit that, but I wanted this to be a more dull flat colour, so I'll need to bring that back again.

I then put a Nuln Oil Gloss wash over the leg plates, and some sort of dark wizardry occurred. They suddenly looked amazing. I need to tidy up the bits where I got brown ink on them now, because otherwise they're pretty much perfect.

The anvil had been based with the Forge World Iron Hands Steel paint, though it seems to froth up into bubbles whenever I shake it. I don't think that's meant to happen.

OK, I'm back from mailing Forge World to ask them if that's meant to happen. I drybrushed the anvil with the Tarnished Steel, then did a Nuln Oil Gloss wash. Still want to play with it more, but liking it so far.

The metal bit of the base, I did the same as the anvil. I'm wanting to play around with colours a bit more, so I'm planning on really playing around with the cobblestones once the matte Nuln Oil wash is dry on that.

Oh, if you want this miniature, you can totally get it from Anvil Industry.

The Infinity Problem

Some of you will remember that this time last year, I got all excited about Infinity. I played (and did rather well) in a slow grow league. I attended Wartrader's Winter Challenge. I also went to the first Totally Crit Open. And then . . . silence. What went wrong?

Well, lets be honest - the first big problem is model assembly. It is an absolute pain and while I can slowly but surely put one or two together over a bunch of time while doing something else, getting a full force together has proved painful!

So, first decision - I still want to paint my Nomads, but they can go off to someone else to assemble. I'm shopping around for quotes at the moment and it looks quite reasonable.


I also keep looking thoughtfully at other armies. I am liking how Nomads play, but it does feel like a lot of people play Nomads and as most of us got into Nomads through Icestorm, there's a lot of similarities between forces.

Still, I could keep them and keep growing the force. There's plenty of models I've not tried yet, and ways I could expand the force. I kind of feel paralysed a bit by the incoming Human Sphere as part of me would like to do a Sectorial, but with potential rules changes and a bunch of figures already bought that cross all the potential Sectorials, I have put work and money into stuff I then wouldn't be using. Jumping between vanilla and sectorial is still a valid option, though!

Then, because I bought Icestorm, I do still have PanOceania models. They don't seem as popular as Nomads, and despite being the 'generic' faction, don't seem to get much love. I certainly wouldn't pick them as a first faction, as they are not my usual play style at all, but I am rather interested in giving them a run at some point to try and understand them better.

The other problem is that I'm a contrary person who likes playing factions no-one else is playing. When Corvus Belli published the 2015 ITS statistics about who plays what, among other things, I started looking at the forces that hardly anyone plays. I ignored the lack of USAriadna as they're a new faction, and steered clear of the massively in need of a re-write Shasvastii, but started browsing the Imperial Service, Acontecimento and Haqqislam in particular. I even had a glance at the Merovingians!

I am definitely not going to dive into a new faction now, but it occurred to me that this could be a good use for the Anvil Industry Afterlife figures I picked up in their Kickstarter. A few proxy games will let me work out if I love to death one of these factions more than the Nomads, without investing years of my life in collecting and assembling!

Monthly Targets: April - Well, we knew it was a write off, didn't we?

With Salute being in April, we knew it was going to be a write off in terms of purchases. Still, I managed to be moderately productive, and did get two projects finished!

It's been all Oldhammer this month. You've already seen my Chaos Thug, painted for a challenge on the Oldhammer forum.

This is Boatswain Rickard. I previously showed him unpainted, as one of my acquisitions last month. I'm really happy he's been turned around the following month and done. He's not got a base as that's the rules for this Oldhammer forum challenge he's for. He'll be winging his way off shortly to join the rest of the pirate crew - one lucky participant then gets the crew and can base them accordingly.

So, on to May! I'm onto a shaky start already as I seem to have acquired an Execution Force box...

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.