A random display at Warhammer World

 

Between the heat, work being busy, and deep unpacking, I've not got much done of late. So here's some photos of a cool army in the Warhammer World display cabinets.

It seems to be an undead / underwater kitbash theme, and I'm not sure what they're meant to be. I couldn't see a thing saying who made it. Please do let me know if you know!

The hermit crab with cannon was what got my attention originally. Maybe the army is "Cities of Sigmar" given there's a handgunner in a crows nest?

The person I was with an I spent ages trying to spot all the parts - I reckon there's an idoneth boat, gobin giant spider, Tyranid claws and an ogre cannon. Am I missing anything?

Wargames Atlantic Dead Animal Bits

 

I was checking my Bluesky account the other day when I noticed I had a notification of being tagged by someone. This is unusual a I'm not super busy on Bluesky, but it turned out that Wargames Atlantic had done a draw of their followers on Bluesky and I'd won a box of their miniatures.

We got to pick which box it was, so I went for "Dead Animal Bits", which is a whole bunch of bones, bits of corpses and so on, which can then be used to decorate bases or terrain.

The box is three copies of the same sprue, with a whole ton of bits on. The detail on them is perfectly fine for what it is, and there's a huge selection of horns, ribcages, hands on hooks, the works. They're all going straight into my basing box for future modelling projects. It's definitely something folk could get plenty of use out of.

I didn't get on very well with the Wargames Atlantic Halflings I got a few years back, but these seem great. My only worry is that I might have too many of them for my purposes! This one box is going to last me years, and I've put off getting several Wargames Atlantic boxes for D&D and such like because I don't quite need that many miniatures! I'm guessing it's how they achieve a lot of their value / economy of scale, but it might be something to club together with friends to share between you, to eBay spare sprues from, or just to pick up a single sprue from eBay unless you're planning a big army project that's going to need a lot of them.

Obviously, as mentioned above, I received this box for free, but have not been asked to review this product, all opinions my own, etc, etc.

Old Warhammer World photos: Converted Vehicles

Back in 2013, I went up to an open day at Warhammer World, and at one point went around taking a bunch of modelling reference photos of some of the various gaming tables they have up there. I've been doing a bit of maintenance on old folders and found these during the clear out, and thought people might be interested.

This set of photos is of a series of abandoned construction vehicle conversions scattered around a dig site. There's also a couple of some of the buildings on the rest of the table. I believe the table they're from is now retired.

 

Plodding along

 I took advantage of the Bank Holiday weekend over here to get a bit of painting and modelling done. I finished prepping and assembling a couple of goblins and got them undercoated, but didn't take a photo of that.

I completely swear by Vallejo Coarse Pumice and Sandy Paste for my basing, but I've noticed James Wappel really likes the Oxid Paste. So, I picked up a small jar of it to give it a go.

I used it around the edge of the base of the radical Inquisitor that Whiskey Priest sent me. Before it dried, it was hard to see what the texture was going to be.

I then painted it up with some Rhinox Hide, then a wash, and finally a light drybrushing of some other mid tone brown I had lying around. XV-88, maybe?

Once the wash was dry, I dropped in the last few details, and ticked the box on having at least finished something this weekend. An easy win, to be sure, but I'll take an easy win over nothing. ;)

Myth, my Tiefling, had his trousers re-coloured and the yellow slashes dropped in on his sleeves. I also added another layer to the yellow fastenings on his coat, as the first coat hadn't really properly covered things.

I also start blocking in colours on my last Malifaux Changeling proxy. (SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE: BUY STUFF FROM HERESY MINIATURES.) When this chap is done, I'll have a full 50 Soulstone list fully painted, and I'll move on to assembling and painting the rest of the models my current crew can use to start give me some flexibility in list building.

Finally, one of the Arco-Flagellants I was given for Christmas has been fully assembled. I fitted the trailing arm first, and pinned it, but the leading arm was then fine to forgo a pin. Happy to get him done, just a couple more to go!

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!

Two very different models

After a few tries at getting the left arm attached on the Infinity CSU, I gave in and pinned it. When I was holding it to dry, I knocked the right arm off. I'll be pinning that, now, too. Along with every component on every Infinity model I assemble from here on in.

I had a pretty slow weekend due to a very busy week - I'm still not recovered from the 40K LARP I was at last weekend, and work was super hectic when I got back there. Still, Sunday evening I sat down and kit bashed a creepy little mutie for 40K while watching TV, even though I didn't manage to get as far as picking up a paint brush.

Getting back into the swing of things

With a couple of weeks going out and buying and trying to sell stuff, I hadn't got much (any) painting or modelling done. As a result, I was having trouble getting back into the painting and so on, so I thought the best thing to do would be to get a couple of easy 'quick wins' in to get back into the swing of things.

First up, I managed to finish off the younger of the two Squat mercenaries. I'd thrown a little base coat onto him, but that was as far as he'd gone.

Like his older colleague, he's painted up in colours to call back to the old Rogue Trader Squat Leagues. Some people have felt that his Storm Bolter is a little disproportionate, but I'll live with his gun being ridiculously over-sized. If I'd had a little more modelling time and effort, I'd have modelled a suspensor field on as a flimsy justification for the massive firearm - but he'll be fine.

With the Squat done, I wanted to get a couple of quick wins lined up for when I was next in the mood, so I had a dig through what I had around. First up was this Chaos Renegade, who is a kit bash of Forge World renegade and Elysian parts. He was part of one of the purchases I got at the Overlords Bring and Buy.

He had a little gap at the back where the larger torso didn't quite fit, so I got his waist filled in with some green stuff. I have some interesting ideas for painting him, so we'll see how he goes.

I also got a goblin painted cleaned and glued to his base. This is one of the GoblinAid goblins - a pirate goblin by Stuart Powley. I've also filled in the base with filler now, and will also texture the base before I get him undercoated.

All in all, I'm feeling like I got some nice quick wins in and I'm motivated again to get things done with my painting. I'm starting to get a system in place for getting things done. I like systems. They make me happy.

Was I Sisyphus in a previous life?

My wife is a wonderful person, and the other week, while I was getting ready for "Dakka on Bakka", she offered to help out with getting stuff done. Full of optimism about the Firestorm Redoubt, I asked if she'd mind doing a little work on my Beastmen...

She did this in a single evening in front of the telly. Well, she did the other one as well, but that will be explained in a moment. She then also ended up fixing my botched attempt at the Firestorm Redoubt in time for the tournament as well.

Here's the ninth chap. Sim's one 'failing' was assuming I'd actually stuck these kitbashes together properly in the first place, and the pick ax this guy is carrying came off while she was painting him. For the sake of doing it properly, I've now drilled through his hand, and into the pick ax, and pinned the blasted thing. I just need to trim the wire and add the bottom end of the haft back on now.

I've also started work on the first of my Squats, who'll be being someone's henchman soon. The apparently odd colour choice is because I'm trying to pay tribute to some of the old Squat League colours - the basing will get washed and highlighted and weathered until it looks a bit more gritty and realistic, but I'm currently pleased it doesn't look terrible - although I need to be careful not to make his gloves look like Marigold Washing Up Gloves!

And it looks like he's getting ready in time, because there appear to be some rivals turning up to oppose him! I found this on my mat when I got in from work this evening - another one of the Kickstarters I backed has delivered! This is by a chap called Jon Lawrence in the US, who runs a little company called Trench 2114 - either that, or that's his game. I'm kind of unclear. Anyhow, it had a modest goal, just made its target, and has delivered within a month of its target date. Perhaps I should be taking the concept of succeeding at modest goals to heart?

Leman Russ Completed, Help Needed, and a Kickstarter Delivers

Firstly, on Saturday morning, I was pleased to receive my pledge from the "Trolls of Trudvang" Kickstarter by JoeK Minis. I'd been keeping an eye on this one and not really planning to pledge (not being a fan of the big troll) but then an option came up for just the little troll, who I kind of liked, so I bit.

My Microsoft Paint skills are
clearly not up to the level
that my hand painting ones are

JoeK Minis are the first Kickstarter I've ever backed to deliver everything I pledged for, and in a double win - they did so on time. I've made the above trophy of awesomeness for JoeK to celebrate this achievement alongside his many others.

This weekend, I also painted a Leman Russ Battle Tank I've had lying around assembled and unpainted for a Very Long Time. This is my third Leman Russ - I now have two normal ones and one Demolisher. I tried out the excellent battle damage tutorial which Games Workshop did, which I've linked to below.



Finally, I have a big problem. I was tinkering around with a Bloodletter to try out a few paint effects. In fact, I was incredibly happy with the ones I did on him - and then I royally stuffed up the base.

As you can see, the Agrellan Earth I was basing with has gotten all over the bottom of his legs (and also has come out horribly - I think I put it on too thick). Has anyone got any ideas for rescuing this - either making it look not terrible or getting the stuff off without ruining the rest of the paint job?

And finally, here's a teaser to what I'm working on next...

Motivation

So, Headologist recently posted asking how people deal with hobby burnout and how they keep motivated.

"So, TRO, why are you posting about motivation? You're absolutely terrible at it."

Harsh, but ultimately fair.

At the time of writing, I currently have in progress some Malifaux Marionettes, 20 Beastmen, a Tzeentch Herald, a Chaos Warrior, Sarissa Silos, a Sarissa Warehouse, Nicolai from Eden, a Mk I Power Armour and a Commissar Lord. When did I start each of those?

Tzeentch Herald: Before July 2012
Marionettes: October 2012
Sarissa Silos: November 2012
Chaos Warrior: August 2013
Sarissa Warehouse: April 2013
Nicolai: January 2014
Beastmen: March 2014
Mk I Power Armour: April 2014
Commissar Lord: April 2014

Oh deary, deary me. That really is quite tragic, isn't it?

I think really, there are two challenges - avoiding getting burnt out and getting out of burn out when it happens.

Avoiding burnout

For me, avoiding burn out means feeling like I'm making progress. Sadly, this means I do sometimes end up falling into the trap of creating overly elaborate plans and never doing any actual work.

Yeah. Like that guy.

I started off using a burn down chart so I could see my progress compared to the stuff I had still to do. Unfortunately, I have so many things to do that this invariably ends up looking like this:

I got stuff done that April, but you simply can't see it. The jump up is Salute.

I tried just counting what was "in progress" that month, which did have some positive effect. But the other problem was it counted all progress, not getting things finished - so things didn't get finished.

But, following some advice from The Independent Characters podcast, I moved over to using Kanban, using free software at Kanban Flow.

I find this works quite well for me. I get to move things across as I get them done, and the Kanban principles are also quite useful.

I would also recommend the super simple system used by my friend James over at Gonzo History: Gaming Edition. It is a very simple equation: [Models Painted This Year] - [Models Bought This Year]. The aim is to keep the number positive. I'm currently on 25 - 40 = -15. It's not terrible, but its on the wrong side of zero, and that needs fixing.

Overcoming burn out

So, recently I've been slowly coming out of some burn out triggered by my Imperial Beastmen being a far, far harder job than I realised. I can kind of distil the principles of this down into a few key rules.

If you're going to procrastinate, do something productive
Cut down on possible distractions

I've combined these into one. This is a picture of my table from mid April. It is an absolute bomb site. It is still quite a lot of a bomb site, but every time I was at my painting desk and a bit fed up of painting, I did some tidying - throwing away old receipts, putting a few boxes away... And if I was really fed up, I went and did some housework. A quite incredible amount of housework has been done during my recent burnout, so it's not a total bust!

Get old projects under control

The age of some of the older projects has been quite a demotivation for me - so I've effectively put all but one of them on hold. That was Collodi, who is now done - now it's half the Beastmen I'm going to try and finish off. When they're done, that blasted Herald is in my sights.

(Admittedly, realising how long I'd had someone else's model also freaked me out a bit into getting that one done. I am a terrible, terrible person, and clearly owe the owner some ice cream.)

Do something you love

I adore my kit bashing, so the Mk I Thunder Armour project for INQ28 has been something that has really got me sitting at my hobby desk again - and when he's been drying, I've turned around and done a little more painting on the Beastmen.

Vary what you're doing

So, as I started painting the Mk I, I started missing the kit bashing - so up pops our Commissar Lord friend (who is also my painting commitment this month for the Hobby Progress Challenge). Switching between prep and painting is another thing to keep some form of progress going while I'm going a little stir crazy from holding a paint brush.

I'm incredibly pleased with the green stuff work on his sword arm - it had a massive void and there was absolutely no detail. I've managed to get the folds of the sleeve and the sculpt of the cuff all fixed smoothly - this is not something I'd have been able to do a few months ago.

The staff head was also replaced, and pinned for strength. There is absolutely no way this is something I would have even tried so much as a month ago.

Set goals

Really, it's become apparent to me that I work a lot better with fewer projects "on the go". 9 projects on the go is insanity and foolishness, and is not actually the case - some stuff is just not getting done.

As such, I think a reasonable "to do" pile is one 'detail' project for display or competition, one 'unit' where I'm churning though a big project for gaming, and one slot free for quick wins which will keep me enthused. I'll probably also have some things in assembly and preparation while things are in the painting pile too, so it stays constant and I've always got something on.

Finally, there is the most important lesson of all. James actually called me on this one a while ago.

Just paint something

I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about painting compared to the amount of time I spend painting. Sometimes, I just need to stop talking about painting and actually do some.

Like now, for example.