Tidying up old ideas

I've taken the opportunity to tidy up the Projects page a little bit and cleared out some projects I've definitely decided not to do.

I'd been picking up bits of Chaos Space Marines and Dark Angels after being bought the Dark Vengeance set, but with my interest in 40K as a whole waning, I've sold off the remaining bits and bobs that would have been those two projects, and cleared the decks for stuff I'm enthused with.

I've held off on getting rid of a few classic Chaos Renegade models, as they'll make an excellent Kill Team, which I am still pretty keen on.

I'd written a little background for them that I salvaged from the Iron Warriors project page before I deleted it:

"The warband still holds a significant disdain for those among their number whose physical bodies have twisted from their time in the Eye. They are shunned even within these outcasts among traitors. On the battlefield, they group together, and referred to as The Unworthy by their commanders. They wear the name as an ironic badge of honour, seeking to outperform their brothers and show their prowess is undiminished."

Now, the only question there is whether or not to stick with the Iron Warriors plan, or pick a different warband for them to be from...

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...

Shopocalypse: Overlords Bring and Buy

I regularly listen to The Overlords Podcast on the way to work, and when I heard they were having a Bring and Buy event, I decided it was time to overcome my recent slackness with ebay-ing off old stuff I'm not using any more and have a bit of a clear out. My wife was also super enthused about the idea of offloading stuff, so also headed over.

As my wife was cycling there, I had the unenviable job of lugging everything else to the venue - a scout hut somewhere between Barking and Dagenham.

My wife and I laid out the stuff we had to sell next to a chap who was selling off some Horus Heresy stuff. My wife only smacked me a few times for looking at it covetously.

I popped into the hut itself to see the "Haven" event which was going on in the main area. You can find more and better pictures of the event itself on the Overlords Facebook page.

Wait. What just happened? I'm going home with more than twice as much stuff as I took. Where has all my money for change gone? And the money I made selling things? I haven't been robbed - I just have poor impulse control (and so does my wife). She managed to pick up some more bits and pieces for her Dark Eldar and her Orks. So, what did I pick up?

One Dark Vengeance set of Dark Angels, less the Librarian, which I swapped for a box of Al Mukhtar's Desert Dogs.

I picked up this Rhino as part of a bulk deal. I'm undecided as yet as to whether to use it for my Dark Angels or my Inquisition. I'm mildly tending towards the Dark Angels at the moment.

A whole bunch of Elysian bits, and one kitbashed heretic using Elysian and Chaos Renegade parts.

Also in the bulk buy were four Servitors - two with Heavy Bolters, two for the fixing of things.

Five metal Squats. These will be going into an Inquisitorial Warband, and make me inordinately happy.

And the final part of my bulk deal - six Rogue Trader era metal Space Marines. I think one has a Heavy Bolter. I was originally planning on using them as Fallen, but plans may change base on my future whims.

This chap wasn't actually bought at the Bring and Buy, but I found him in with a bunch of other bits and pieces I picked up second hand the previous week at a model railway shop. I do have a Skavenblight Scramblers team sitting around, so I'll add him to them - a spare lineman is never a bad thing!

I also spotted a bag of lasgun cartridges which I thought my friends who run a 40K LARP would like for props. They did, the price was right, so they'll be hopefully winging their way up to Scotland shortly.

Two Necromunda gangs from the previous week's shopping were swapped for Xenology. It's a nice source book for ideas and stuff, and generally hard to find these days. Sadly, the Inquisitor Sketchbook went before I got to it!

A lovely gentleman gave this to me for free, as its missing from my RPG book collection. It was definitely appreciated.

You can never have too many dice, right?

I've also picked up three old metal Chaos Dreadnoughts, which I'm going to run as a Mayhem Pack. I'm not planning on running Nurgle Chaos Space Marines, but I decided that the Iron Warriors I am running would be totally cool with keeping some quarantined horrors in a teleport bay ready to drop onto someone as a way of breaking a siege.

Finally, I spotted that the Terminators next to the Helbrutes were old metal Rogue Trader miniatures, which I am a total sucker for. I have no plans for them, but I'm super pleased to have them.

So, now to ebay to try and offload some of the things I failed to sell this weekend...

Painting Review of the Year

So, I took a little time to look at what I've managed to achieve this year from a modelling and painting perspective.

Then I got a little sad...

Models completed this year:

Imperial Beastman

3 Sentinels

Imperial Scribe

Dark Angel

Vindicare Assassin

Swamp Critter

That's it. Seriously, that is all I've managed to finish painting in a year. It gets worse, because the Sentinels need a touch up, and have done since their first game.

I have managed a few other bits and bobs, though:

Buildings finished:

Airfix "Afghan House"

Other stuff done:

10 Corpse Tokens completed
(only 5 shown here)

Collodi Crew - Painted, not based

A year. That's a year's progress, basically. I'm not showing pictures of the 15 models I'd painted last year and threw a quick bit of basing sand on this year. That would be too desperate.

However, an honourable mention does go to Squidzilla Ink, who completed more of my models in a week than I had managed to do in an entire year.

I do, however, end the year more or less where I finished, despite the massive purchases and minimal painting progress. This is because I've been ebaying off my massive cancelled Skaven army project, and not buying a whole army at once to replace it. This did somewhat disguise on my tracking systems how little was actually getting painted.

So, what are my plans for next year?

• Not include models I'm selling in my tracking systems next year
• Take part in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge
• Finish the blasted Collodi crew
• 500 point Warriors of Chaos Army
• All of Salute 2012's purchases painted
• No new systems (Infinity, this means you) until I've fully painted one of my other skirmish games up

So, really, given how much I have to paint, I can really step back on things on my "to buy" list. As far as new models goes, I can really only see me getting:

• Enough models for the Warriors of Chaos army
• Some stuff from the new Imperial Guard releases
• Kits and things for kit bashing
• Some Goblinaid miniatures

Beyond that, I think I just need to finish off the current round of ebaying things, buy more books (and ebooks, to save space) and try and keep spending down a little more this year. I do need to work out what I am going to do for Salute this year, as I do want to get something, but it needs to be more manageable this year - anything I get in the first half of the year needs to be painted in the second half. This year is about, hopefully, getting in control of spending and hoarding habits, and trying to buy less than I'm painting.

Wish me luck!

Progress over the weekend, arbitrators and assassins and Dark Angels, oh my!

This week, an irresponsible moment on ebay resulted in this.

I also went on a bit of a spree through the "Collectors" ranges on the Games Workshop site, as they will sadly shortly no longer be with us, and I didn't want to end up in the sad state I am over not having the Frenzied Mob from Mordheim I've been having acquisitive thoughts over for so long.

So I'm also aware that when they arrive, my "painting score" is going to take another hammering.

This motivated me to get modelling and painting this week, and I'm pleased to say I've finished a bunch of projects. The weekend, in particular, has been super productive.

On Wednesday, I was at the 40K slow grow league at Dark Sphere as usual, when a young gentleman (he said he was 12) came in and asked me lots of questions about games, particularly about which one he should start. As the store staff were busy with people paying for things, I had a chat with him about the different games available, and what they were like.

He bought a Troll Bouncer with the money he had (and a bit of the money his elder brother had, after a bit of arm twisting), and as he was too young to be loaned the shop glue, I agreed to assemble it for him. This resulted in me providing a short and impromptu tutorial on basic rules of assembly. "See how I'm cutting towards my thumb like this? Don't do that when you're doing it."

The model was actually remarkably easy to quickly put together. The mould lines were easy to spot and clean off with a scalpel blade (my preferred means of cleaning). It seems Privateer use a different type of plastic to the one I'm used to, and I will say I'm rather impressed with it.

The young gentleman was able to, on the basis of the completed figure and enthusiasm, persuade his father to allow him to purchase a Hordes two player starter box, and left happy. Fortunately, I then had someone turn up late to the slow grow so I still got a game in and didn't keep anyone waiting.

My friend's Herald of Tzeentch is now undercoated and ready for base coating. The plan is to try and paint it up in standard GW colours, using the techniques GW recommend. I also sorted the flying base - it was a bit loose where it is meant to enter the disk, so I used a small piece of green stuff to make it a tight (and straight) fit. A trick my wife taught me was to oil the flying base with light machine oil so the green stuff stuck to the model, and not to the flying base. Both will work, but this way looks much neater.

With some other blogs getting all nostalgic over Arbitrators, I decided to throw together my test kit bash Arbitrator as well. (You may remember a while ago, I wrote a few thoughts on how to represent Adeptus Arbites in 40K). This one uses Empire Greatsword legs, a Forge World Cadian Veteran body, and a Hellstrider of Slaanesh helmet (which is really the core of the conversion). This particular one only looks good from some angles not others, but I'm happy with the principle. I also need to see if I can acquire the body and arms of a Space Marine scout, as I have a suspicion they may be a viable and cheaper alternative.

I'm also putting him away again now - I'm trying to limit the number of projects I have 'on the go' at once now, and the Herald is my work in progress for non army related projects.

I've also finally finished the Vindicare assassin I've had pottering along in the background for goodness knows how long. Sadly, he won't see the battlefield outside of Apocalypse until I get myself a new Coteaz model and get him painted up - and I have several Grey Knight figures to paint and finish before I'm allowed to buy any new Grey Knight figures. I had better crack on!

And I've also finished my test Dark Angel Marine. Sim is recommending I try out an oil wash technique on him, which, if we find the time to do it, I will undoubtably do some "before" and "after" shots of. In the meantime, I'm mostly happy with the colours I've used working well enough. The green base is Caliban Green, despite an early experiment with Castellan Green, it just didn't provide the colour I wanted. He was then dry brushed with Sybarite Green.

The shoulder pads were edged in another green I now can't find the paint pot of, and the eagle coloured in Zandril Dust, followed by a Screaming Skull drybrush and a sepia wash. The boltgun was originally base coated in Jokaero Orange, but it really didn't work, so Wazdakka Red and a mix of black and red washes brought it back down to a tone I liked.

Sim doesn't particularly like the over-heavy drybrush I tried out on the green, but I do kind of like it, especially on the helmet. I'll have to make a decision when I finally crack out the Dark Vengeance set.

Succeeding by setting low bars - work from the weekend

I'm sure maybe one person who reads the blog will be wondering how productive my weekend went given the bomb site my house was at the start of the weekend.

Sadly, the biggest achievement from a vaguely gaming related standpoint was cutting down all the boxes the wife's WarDesk came in and getting them into the outside recycling bin.

Still, the Dremel was brought home from where it has been loaned to the wife's work, and this kicked me into getting some things done.

The test Dark Angel progresses well. I'm now quite pleased with his armour, and I'm just trying to get the bolter to behave itself.

The Vindicare now has an attached arm, and just needs a bit of touching up and final detail work before he's done.

The Tzeentch Herald has now had his feet pinned for later attachment to the disk. Undercoating is next for him!

And Collodi is now undercoated for painting. That progress definitely feels like I'm defeating some kind of nemesis!

All in all, it's not a huge amount, but it is progress, so I'm quite happy to get a little done every day or two.

Projects around the house

Things have been super busy recently, and that means a lot of projects have just been being lying around the house, or waiting to be picked up again. I decided to take a few shots of the state of the house to give my loyal readers an idea of what I'm working on.

The lounge room is covered in half assembled furniture. This is not actually mine, but Sim's. This is the new KR "WarDesk" which she pre-ordered at Salute. It's the desk that folds out into a 4 x 4 gaming table. Once it's up and finished, expect a celebratory post from me!

More of Sim's projects! These are Martian walkers from Timeline 300. They unfortunately had a few casting issues with these ones, but when Troublemaker Games heard about it, they were very quick to arrange to send us some replacements. Sim is planning on turning the mis-casts into some terrain with wrecked walkers in. All credit to Troublemaker - every manufacturing company will have a glitch or issue somewhere along the line - what marks out the good companies are the ones who fix it.

The first of my projects: Sarissa Silos, with me learning how to airbrush. I'm doing these up as a kind of concrete colour, with rusted metal. At the moment, they're just base coated, but I'm hoping to add in some simple airbrush highlights on the concrete, shade the metal a little, then try out a few weathering techniques on the metal to finish.

On the CD shelf, we have a certain Herald of Tzeentch who mocks me at every turn with my slow progress on him.

... and the wider shot, showing I haven't lost his disc (which is actually undercoated) or his flight stand.

My god, it's full of projects. Also, this is a mess. I really need to sort this out. I mean, the Hydra is a finished model I dropped into a space when I was swapping tanks around in my carry cases to get out to a game. That's just sloppy.

Guardsmen! One is as far as having a head, although his neck will need some Green Stuff work. These are going to be another 20 infantrymen when I'm done, lightly armed with just a flamer for each squad to discourage assaults. My Guard army is seriously lacking in troops choices, so I hope they'll provide me with some more tactical flexibility.

This is the worst of it. My Malifaux crew is all over the place. Collodi needs an undercoat, the others need me to get back into painting. A test figure for a Dark Angels colour scheme lies forlornly on his side, discarded and forgotten.

Vindicare sniper, on the verge of completion. I use paper clips for my pinning wire, and leave arms attached while I paint before trimming it down for the actual assembly.

And here's a Lord Commissar I got out to consider for a bit of a kit bash. I managed to lose his right arm and bolt pistol through idiocy and untidiness, so I've been looking for an alternative right arm. He's pretty much prepped for painting short of undercoating. My local gaming store is talking about a little 40K painting competition, so I'm holding off on starting anything with him until then. Really, I need to find a little bag for him and put him away until then.

Relics models resting on top of my wet palette. Also, a jiffy bag from my last Bitzbox order. Again, pure untidiness that I need to fix.

My wife's painting desk is much more restrained and sensible. She just has one project out.

Here's the work in progress.

And here are the finished ones, waiting for their co-conspirators to join them.

I took all these photos before the start of the weekend, so I could have a nice visual representation of what I managed to get done by the end of it. Soon to come - how did I do with getting back on track?