Where I'm at with different wargames

 

I spent last Sunday having a bit of a re-organise of the hobby room after being unable to find a particular box of Space Marines for a whole month. This got a little out of hand. I ended up getting everything out to organise and repack it. In turn, this got me thinking about what my priorities are right now.

Infinity is still my main game. I've been playing Shasvastii primarily, but I've got a few games in with White Company as well, and am keen to get some more games in with them once I get the next batch of them back from That Mr Shy. Meanwhile, I've just had the latest batch of O-12 arrive, and they're the utility pieces that will mean I have some solid tournament list options.

After my learning game of 9th edition Warhammer 40,000 I'm pretty relaxed about the idea of waiting for 10th edition to drop and playing some learning games of that. I've taken a pass of my existing models for stuff I'll definitely sell off, and everything else has gone into a dedicated Box Of Uncertainty for me to make a decision on when 10th edition drops. I definitely want to do some Boarding Action games, but I'm assuming they'll work just fine in 10th edition as well as 9th.

I will finish the Horus Heresy test paints, then paint the Plasma Gun Support Squad I have for it, but the Audit Of Doom has definitely shown I have plenty to be getting on with without over-committing into another game just yet. Of all the Warhammers, this is the one I think I'd most like to be playing at a mass battle level, but I simply don't have the models for it right now.

Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Underworlds . . . 

I want to be keen for both of these games. I have painted playable forces for both. But I'm just not finding the time to book in a game to try them out. I definitely want to get a game or two in before I make a decision on each, but unless they jump out at me, maybe I need to find something to better focus my time on?

Malifaux is also in a weird place. I'm deeply keen to get some models painted for it and play some games, but I've been focusing on finishing half done stuff "before I get onto my Malifaux Crew" recently. I'm definitely suffering from the "I want to do it well" problem so I don't want to pull them out and slap on a low quality paint job. Currently top of my "do this next" mental list when I finish the half finished stuff lying around.

Battletech is suffering from one thing: mould lines. My goodness, are they terrible. Trying to clean up ten whole mechs has absolutely stalled out. I've split them into smaller groups, and now have three cleaned up, and one undercoated and ready for paint. I could probably arrange a one on one mech duel to learn the rules a bit, but it would be nice to have a full Lance to take if I get through the one on one duel OK.

D&D style RPGs are the other significant thing on my hobby time at the moment. Not needing to have a consistent paint scheme helps stop me panic about how a force should look and fail to paint anything. And outside that, I'm working towards the goal of an in person game with miniatures, which helps give it some structure.

Conversely, I've accepted I'm not getting around to Stargrave any time soon, and I've added most of the models I'd bought specifically for that to the eBay pile. I do intend to play it one day, but I can buy the models when I get close to that point, and not hang onto them forever in the meantime!

Work in Progress Wednesday: New Year Metals

 

Over the New Year, I got a whole pile of metal miniatures assembled. First up is this undead Ogre, which I bought over Facebook years ago. I believe that sadly the sculptor passed on since. His pose is reminiscent of a classic Games Workshop Ogre sculpt from way back when.

Next up is this mystery figure. I got it free in an order with some other models, possibly from Fenris Games? I don't know who or what he's meant to be, but he's got a nice grumpy feel to him. He, and the rest of the miniatures from here on, were undercoated in "PHR Bone" by TT Combat. I'm pretty sure I got it during my pandemic panic buying, and I wanted to use it up on models that weren't needing to match anything else...

This Reaper Human Fighter, Brigette was acquired from the Fenris clearance section, and will be joining the ranks of sensibly armoured women fighters and adventurers I've been amassing.

Miko the Vampire Hunter is a Bad Squiddo figure from the Feudal Japan range (though you may find her under the Horror section on the shop). Unlike many other Bad Squiddo figures, she doesn't have a puddle base, so I pinned her to one of the Archon Studio bases I had stashed away to try those out.

Next up are a couple of North Star miniatures for Frostgrave - an apothecary and Markswoman. I'm pretty sure this was a Bad Squiddo Bargain Bin special. Its worth having a regular nose through, as there's often bits and pieces where Annie has found some end of range bits and pieces, or ex show stock.

More Bad Squiddo miniatures next - this time a pair of Tiefling pirates. They do make me realise that with a bit of prep, characterful models like this can make much more interesting D&D encounters if you stat up monsters or characters to match random models you have. A Tiefling rapier fighter backed up by a second with a glaive and a breastplate isn't necessarily a combat encounter you'd have thought of if not prompted by the miniatures.

A lot of small miniature companies include random samples in with orders. In this case, Fenris Games sent me an urn. I've decided to throw it on a base for stability and paint it up to be a bit of dungeon scatter that might be an empty pot or might contain some loot.

Next up is a Dwarf Watchman by Bears Head Miniatures. Sadly, Bears Head are no longer trading - I believe the sculptor has moved on to producing stuff for other companies full time without having to deal with the general public.

Someone was selling an old Warzone Trencher for peanuts and I decided he'd make an excellent heavy baddy for Stargrave. Are they called pirates? Either way, its a good example of how the miniature agnostic nature of games like Stargrave give you opportunities to do non standard stuff.

Maximillian and Madelaine are sculpts that were made for members of the Rogue Emporium Facebook group some time ago. I think they're likely going to be joining the ranks of Stargrave pirates.

Finally we have the terrain pieces from the Mutant Marches Kickstarter, by WilhelMiniatures. These will be excellent scatter terrain for Terrible Places. Every time you look at them you find new awful things.

Plans for 2023

2022 was a pretty solid year for my hobbies. I got a bunch of stuff painted, I attended some tournaments, and I got back to LARP. I struck out on not buying more models than I painted by a long way, but I have realised how much of the clutter in my flat is stuff I've bought since I got back into the hobby, not my stash from way back when.

So first up, I'll be getting back into selling stuff I'm not using. As well as the stuff I never started, I intend to go through all my painted miniatures and pick out any I'm not using or don't love. I think this will be a good "end of year" tradition to start. Similarly, I'll be checking both the pile of half finished projects I put to one side at the end of 2021 as well as going through anything that's part finished this year.

I am pretty happy with where I'm at with Infinity. I've got White Company, Druze, Ikari and Dahshat commission painted, and I've painted a bunch of Shasvastii myself. I have the rest of the Combined Army, O-12 and Nomads to paint too. For the coming year, I want to get a "teaching force" of O-12 painted that I can run people through a game of Code One if they're interested. I also want to finalise my Nomads paint scheme so I can line up to get started on finally painting my Nomads, the first force I bought for Infinity.

I really need to get some of my Malifaux painted. It's just embarrassing now. I like the game and like the minis, but just haven't managed to get paint to model.

A small, tabletop quality project I'm looking forward to is getting a viable lance or two of Battlemechs painted. I've got the "Game of Armored Combat" box to paint, along with a couple of Urbanmechs. I'm currently tempted by getting an Atlas and King Crab for my Lyran Guards, the Alpha Strike starter box for a good Mech selection, and the new Beginner box for the variant Mech in it. But first, painting what I have!

I've been having fun with the test scheme for my Alpha Legion, although I have learned about not fully assembling models with cloaks the hard way. I'm still faffing about what I want the base scheme to be, but we'll get there. Starting with a small "Zone Mortalis" style force seems to be a sensible way to build up my army. I've not managed to have a force where I build it up a unit at a time rather than buying way too much all at once.

I've really enjoyed painting an assortment of general fantasy miniatures with a general intent on building up a collection to run D&D with, and play games like Frostgrave or Rangers of Shadow Deep. Right now I've got a massive pile of models to paint that I've picked up on a whim, and while I want to paint through those, I want to be in a place at the end of the year where I'm picking up D&D miniatures with a purpose and some kind of structure. I've been kicking around an idea for a world setting for a while, and I'm also keen to find miniatures suitable for Eberron, my favourite among the published settings.

I also really want to put together some solid options for playing Stargrave and other generic sci-fi games. I've heard some good things about Xenos Rampant, but I should probably still start small and work my way up.

With 40K, my real goal for next year is to actually play a game of the current edition. I believe 10th edition is probably coming, but I can still have some fun with the current edition. I'm also deeply excited by the Boarding Action rules, as they seem like a sensible size of game, and would be a good terrain project for home.

The Stormcast Eternals are also ready for a game, though they're lagging a little behind the Deathwatch in my enthusiasm stakes. The problem might just be the army - Stormcast aren't an army I'm excited about, I just had a bunch cheaply from a variety of sources and I thought it best to commission someone to paint what I had rather than buy a whole new army when I had one already lying around.

That's certainly plenty for me to be getting on with. I'm not sure how much of this its possible to get done in a single year, but its worth pausing and taking stock so I can keep an eye on my progress.

Getting going again

 

Huzzah! I'm back from LARP, and had a lovely holiday before that. Not much hobby happened, but a few bits and pieces got done, so lets take stock.

First up, we've got these Novus Landing sci fi aliens I picked up at Salute from Tangent Miniatures. A simple Wraithbone undercoat means they're now ready to get painted in between projects.

More Salute purchases, this time a pair of orcs from Titan Wargames. They're based on resin bases by Cerberus Studios. These will be excellent characters for D&D and skirmish games, and I particularly love the monk, who I'm excited to get some paint on.

Last of the Salute purchases is this hag that Encounter Terrain had printed. It's a lovely sculpt with some interesting textures and should be great fun to get some paint on.

I've also got most of the prep done for my Horus Heresy Alpha Legion test paints. The plan is to use crackle texture on the bases and contrast on the models. There's a few spots the spray didn't catch on the models so I'll need to tidy that up before starting the paint jobs.

And, you know, finish the models I'm currently painting so there's room on the painting table.

Finally, a bunch more models for the Combined Army are ready for their zenithal spray. I really need the bike and the bounty hunter done in time for a tournament the weekend after next, so I need to get a shuffle on with getting those ones painted!

Can I Buy Dungeon Bowl Painting Challenge Update

 

So, it's 20 days into December, a month I've set myself the target of painting 76 models in order to be able to justify buying Dungeon Bowl. Two thirds of the way into the month, we should be rocking along, right?

Another photo of this Stargrave objective marker I made? Wait, that's all I've painted, isn't it? It turns out that coming out of a painting slump, and also having a busy time with both work and stuff around the home has not led to the most productive of painting months so far.

That said, I now have two weeks holiday booked, I'm alone in the flat for Christmas and New Year, and there's nothing in the way of me getting stuff painted now beyond my own brain. So . . . yeah, well, chances aren't great, are they?

You will notice the quality of photos has significantly increased as I finally snapped at my old, broken light box and bought myself a new one. I could have asked for it for Christmas but I was just so over the old one I needed to get it replaced.

This one is much nicer and also has a little hole at the top to do overhead photos. The one thing I need to look into is some matte photo backdrops, as the acrylic shiny ones I have aren't great for miniature photography. Still, the lighting improvement alone is amazing, and I'm super chuffed with it.

Now to go paint a ton of stuff to photo in it!

Work in Progress Wednesday: North Star Stargrave Figures

 

In the interest of a flimsy excuse to paint up random figures and maybe play a game with them at some point, I picked up Stargrave by Joseph McCullough. The book is produced by Osprey Publishing, and North Star Military Figures produce an official line of models. That said, it's deliberately designed that you can use models by any manufacturer.

Rather than doing a Kickstarter, they launch books like this through a "Nickstarter", where they run a pre-order with an assortment of money saving deals. I signed up to this to get all the interesting sci fi figures that will later be out in blisters of two.

The downside of this is that they've all come in a zip lock bag with no labelling or explanation, so I do kind of have to work out myself what they're meant to be in the game. I'm not sure how intentional that's meant to be.

That said, some of them models are more obvious than others. This model, for example, is clearly meant to be one of the "retrieve information loot" type crew members.

There's a good mix of humans and "low budget sci fi TV series" aliens, which gives some interesting options for painting.

I don't have any strong plan for any of these, I'll just play around with whatever colours on my desk when I pick one up.

There's plenty of different looks and back stories you could give these models, which I think is a good strength to have for a model / setting agnostic game. You can spark ideas with the visuals without necessarily dictating who the model is.

I particularly love this toothy boy. He'd work well as a psychic captain or similar, but also a weird NPC in a sci fi setting. Maybe even a fantasy one.

There was also this greebly creature which I suspect can be used in Frostgrave and Stargrave as an NPC monster thingy. Should be a quick paint job with contrast!

And to finish where I began, I had my assembly person stick all three look things to the same base, as I felt that one alone felt a bit sad and small as a piece of loot. This pile of stuff looks a bit more tempting and valuable.