Wot I did on my holidays

We got back last night from a short holiday with my lovely wife, which included a few bits of gaming related stuff which I thought my readers might be interested in.

We dropped into Warhammer World a couple of times. Bugmans remains a reliable place to meet up with other nerds and chat nonsense. As is the way of things, various people we know from Twitter were present and we all only worked this out after we'd all left.

While I don't have any blog suitable photos, we also went to Cave Escape Nottingham with some friends to do their new Monuments escape room. We've previously done their other room, Carfax, and both are excellent. Monuments is a tough one, though - we were only the third team to ever escape, while it's been open two weeks.

Meanwhile, back at Warhammer World, Sim and I gave the 8th edition of Warhammer 40,000 a go. I've got a separate blog post coming up about my experiences with it. We decided to sort out the learning experience in two stages. The first was simply running a unit of Wychs into an unfortunate Guard infantry squad so Sim could get the differences from the last edition in terms of charges, attacks and so on. This, unsurprisingly, did not take long.

We then had a quick 25 power level game with Sim picking one of each of units she likes and me lining up some Guard to shoot back and be shot. It meant Sim got an idea of how a few different units performed in comparison to each other.

We avoided Command Points, Strategems and so on, and I didn't bother using Guard orders or anything like that. Sadly, as we were doing it in the evening at Warhammer World, we didn't quite get as far as we liked as they needed to close so their staff could sleep.

We also gave Warcry a quick demo on the other day we were in the store. I absolutely fell in love with it, but it didn't grab Sim sufficiently to justify her taking it up. I've definitely added a Warcry warband to my "to buy" list.

We popped into Chillcon on the Sunday for about twenty minutes before it closed. Didn't manage to do much other than buy a blister of Bones Black to see what it's like, and say hello to Annie from Bad Squiddo.

I've now got a week at home on holiday. I mostly plan on clearing down more of the massive eBay pile we've developed during the unpacking at the new flat. Lots of old abandoned projects need to move on to stop cluttering up the flat.

I'll also be aiming to get some painting done - I want to finish off my half finished bits and bobs and crack on with the next things in my painting pile. I'll report back next week!

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day: Staff Displays

Remember that New Year's Open Day I went to? There was a ton of cool staff hobby there, and I haven't posted the photos yet.

This is Andy Hoare's Space Slann army, which is rather obscure and pretty darned cool.

I think this is an early Confrontation / Necromunda playtest figure.

Some models from Jervis' collection, I believe.

Annoyingly, I didn't make a note of whose figure this was at the time, and now don't remember. It's a nice conversion I still wanted to share, tho!

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day - Painting Table

One of the things on offer at the Open Day was an opportunity to paint an already assembled Chaos Warrior and take them away with you afterwards. Having managed to paint nothing but scenery all last year, I was a bit nervous of getting back to painting, but I managed to get a bunch done and I was pretty pleased with how he turned out.

He's not quite finished yet, so I'm not ticking a figure off on the "figures painted this year" list, but it definitely enthused me to get more done - and reminded me what an hour or so of concentration and painting can actually achieve!

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day - All The Gossip

Without further ado, I'm going straight into the assorted pictures and nonsense I managed to pick up at the Open Day. There's no real revelations here - there's prettier pictures over at the Warhammer Community site - this is more about what I saw and what I thought about it.

Lets start off with Blood Bowl. The new stuff here was some additional Goblin Secret Weapons, including one with wings, one with a pogo stick, and an 'Ooligan with a bunch of noise making gizmos. These are the sort of thing I expect my darling wife may pick up at some point...

There's also an alternative troll sculpt if that's your thing. This one seems to be wielding someone's leg, which is pretty cool. Some extra variety is really nice to see.

Helmut Wulf and Karla von Kill had already been announced (and can in fact be ordered from Forge World now) but it was great to see them in the flesh. Karla is a bad-ass female character whose background is simply that she's a great Blood Bowl player. That she's sensibly dressed is a relief. Meanwhile, Helmut Wulf is a lunatic with a chainsaw. What could possibly go wrong?

On to Necromunda. If this figure looks familiar, that's because it was formerly available for the now discontinued Forge World Renegades range. The discontinuation inconveniently made it a little harder to get a Rogue Wyrd for your campaign, so he's getting a repackage and rerelease into Necromunda. Which is kind of sweet.

The Am-bot is a robot designed to look like an Ambull that any gang can hire. It looks like either there's more than one way to build the kit or more than one version going to be available. I love these to death, they're great.

Wait a second. A Blackstone Fortress expansion . . . called "The Dreaded Ambull". Surely not?

Apparently so! The Ambull is back in 40K as a monster in Blackstone Fortress. I cannot foresee a circumstance where I won't be buying this. It's amazing!

They also had an early copy of "Urban Conquest", a new campaign system for 40K. I really like this, it looks well thought through and rather clever.

You make a "map" of the city by dealing cards into a five by five grid in a wallet. It's designed for four players, with different starting map layout options. Each "campaign" turn can be after any number of games, including none if you've missed a round! You rank the players depending on how they did, then they do stuff like capture territory, select strategies for the next round of games, and accumulate their victory points.

This would be a lot of book keeping if there weren't reusable stickers supplied with the back so you can just fold the map up and get it out next time, with all the player positions and stratagems all neatly laid out. The designer also said it should work quite well for Kill Team. I'm not sure if it's designed for it or if it would need a little modding.

The pack is designed to handle the usual campaign woes of people missing weeks, or getting a drubbing and ending up near the bottom - it's intended to be quite forgiving of that and give people who are significantly behind ways to catch up. It's not just a case of winning the most games - if you outmanoeuvre the other players on the campaign board, you might win the campaign without having won as many games as them.
 

There were a bundle of other releases - this was a Mechanicus who'll be in a Kill Team expansion box. I'm assuming there will be 40K rules for them as well. There was also a ton of Genestealer Cult stuff, an announcement of a Ghoul vs Skaven box, and various other things I didn't have time to find and photograph.

The goblins, or "Gloomspite" were also out in force. Jes Bickham has been making an all troll / Troggoth army. I'm resisting things one for now - I had a few good talks about what I'm looking to get out of Age of Sigmar and I'm getting slightly more concrete thoughts about what I want to collect. I'm going to keep those to myself for now.

I'm pleased to say that a weekend away seeing amazing hobby stuff, and hanging out with awesome people has really ignited my hobby keen. I can't wait to get underway with various projects, and then tell you about them on here.

Fomori Witch finished!

Pottered through some hobby this weekend. I finished up this Fomori Witch. I've probably mentioned that it's done by Krakon Games before. You can also get it from Bad Squiddo Games. It was part of a "clearing the decks" exercise I did over the weekend, for . . . reasons.

This little Starship Generator from the Reaper Bones line got a basic tabletop job for a bit more scatter terrain when I need it.

Remember I was working on a Chaos Spawn? This one now has all it's limbs attached. I just need to add its back tentacles, and then it will be ready for undercoating. I'm feeling really good about the number of things I'm getting ready for undercoat and thus off the painting desk.

Random back-lit photo because I forgot to take a proper one! The other "Made to Order" Inquisitor got based and undercoated. In order to stop the base toppling over, there's a lot of fisherman's shot weighting down the the bottom of the stairs... I also totally forgot to take a photo of a Jokaero I assembled and undercoated, but given that's a stock model, there's nothing interesting or different to see there.

 So, why the effort to clear the desk? Well, it seems Mike Marshall is running another Malifaux event. It's called Spring Showdown III and it's on 7 May. I haven't got a ticket yet, but I'm "moderately tempted" to go...

I'm not confirming yet, as I'm setting myself some targets to do so.

1. Not being completely dead from all the other stuff I'm doing.

2. At least one new Malifaux model assembled and painted for the event.

3. Having actually played some Malifaux this year in a practice game so I remember how these rules things play.

I will keep my loyal readers (both of you) up to date this progresses!

A busy weekend - Forsaken and lots of figure prep

Well, after aiming to get them done in August, I've finally got five Forsaken painted and table ready in January! This is another unit for my challenge with James at Gonzo History Gaming. These are my first finished models of the year, and it's left me feeling really positive and cheery.

I've also pottered along with assembling one of the Chaos Spawn - it's an astonishingly versatile kit for it's time. I'm looking forward to getting this one fully assembled and painted. It will be serving double duty in both Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K.

Here's some old "never released by Citadel" figures that Wargames Foundry have now put out under their Warmonger Miniatures line. They'll be joining a squad of "not GW" Inquisitorial retinue of various figures I've picked up over time of stuff I thought was cool.

The space suited miniature had a bump on his backpack that I recognised as being intended for a Space Marine style backpack. I dug out a Forge World piece from the bitz box (I think it may be from a Legion Recon Squad? I don't know) so he could have one. I thought it was a fun mix of old and new.

I also finished basing up the EM4 Miniatures scavengers I'd started on last weekend. As those around the UK will be aware, it's not exactly been undercoating weather, so there's a big build up of bits and pieces awaiting undercoating.

Well, this takes the biscuit for rubbish progress pics, doesn't it? At least there's some other, real progress above it. This is a Forge World Renegade psyker and an Antenocitis Workshop "egg car" I got as a freebie when I attended the Infinity Winter Challenge down in Exeter.

I washed the resin, as you should, and cleaned up the (minimal) mould lines on both. I'm planning on doing a "cracked earth" style base for the psyker, so I'm keeping him separate to his base until both are painted. This is a bit of a new thing for me. To get the base ready for undercoating, I filled in the little hole the GW bases have with a bit of polyfilla.

So, there you go - 12 figures made ready for undercoating, and the last 2 figures of a set of 5 painted. I'm not sure if we'll keep up the pace, but I'm pleased to be managing to get some time at the hobby desk and not getting distracted and wandering off.

Painting review of 2016

2016 hasn't been too bad for me from a painting point of view. I've got a reasonable amount of stuff done.

What doesn't show up on the blog so much is that I've managed to get a whole ton of models assembled and undercoated ready for paint on top of painting about as many models as last year. I was aiming to do that at the start of the year, so that's pretty reassuring.

I didn't set myself strict goals this year, and that's gone pretty well. Some projects, I perhaps thought I'd get further along this year, but these things happen.

I was particularly pleased with how all three of my familiars from Heresy Miniatures came out. They're tabletop quality, but I feel a pretty good one.

Of course, I've not managed to get to a tournament with them all painted before Malifaux managed to release the proper models for the Changelings I was using them as proxies for...

I also won this adorable renegade Inquisitor from Whiskey Priest. The plan was to debut him in a game at Warhammer World against my wife, but then I forgot to pack him, because I'm a moron.

He doesn't really count as a model I finished, as all I did was base him, but I seem to have forgotten to photograph a random mutie I'm going to be using in Inquisitorial Warbands I finished off, so he's here as a much prettier and better painted stand in.

I got my D&D hero Myth painted up.

The last of the Heresy familiars. That robe blending!

Ajjatahr, from the Circle of Chaos Kickstarter.

My first painted goblins. Only a hundred or so to go.

The John Pickford barbarians are the only models I've finished so far for the Tale of Gamers challenge I was doing with Gonzo History Gaming. It was meant to finish today... Still, I've got 30 infantry assembled, and 5 Forsaken are nearly done (they will probably be done today, if not photographed and posted).

And finally, my Oldhammer Forum model for the Chaos Villager challenge project. This is a project where everyone paints a model and then there's a draw held for who wins all the figures. This year - I won! The box arrived today, so another future post will be me going through the assorted miscreants and oddball figures I've received...

Visiting Bad Squiddo Games

So, a little while ago, my wife and I took a little trip to Cardiff to celebrate my wife's birthday. There were many typically birthday like things such as staying in a nice hotel and delicious food and so on. But this is not what this blog is about.

No, this blog is about miniatures. And Cardiff is the home of Bad Squiddo Games, run by Annie, who originally was the Dice Bag Lady. As Sim and I are friends with Annie, we offered to help clear out some of her backlog of menial labour, while she got on with Important CEO Type Business.

My first job was putting a whole bunch of miniatures into blisters. Some of these were new sculpts - Annie has been commissioning all sorts of awesome historical and fantasy female miniatures in realistic and sensible clothing and armour. They've all been announced now, so no searching around for Secrets!

Photo by Annie of Bad Squiddo Games

Here is proof of me doing something constructive, cutting out the backing panels for the blister packs.

Annie is awesome people, and she's doing a great job of filling a massive gap in the wargaming market.

Whether you want awesome female orcs, women of the Red Army, or a swarm of guinea pigs, you should totally check out Bad Squiddo's range. Annie is a friend, but I don't think you'll be let down by the quality of what she's doing. I've been super impressed with everything I've bought from her so far.

Obviously, after a hard day's labour, we were able to get back to proper holiday activities.