A productive weekend not painting

I should really go and paint some models this weekend . . . oh dear lord!

The dining room table, on which I paint, clearly needed a bit of a purge. Possibly with fire.

There we go, that's much better.

This is, quite terrifyingly, all the miniatures that were lying around under other things on the table. At my darling wife's request, the plan is now to get out all the stuff I own which isn't painted to get a bit of a visual idea of how much of it there is.

There is probably an awful lot. I've already decided to try and cut down on the hoarding by getting rid of an assortment of bits and pieces I'm not really going to use in the foreseeable future.

My wife and I also went to a Magic Beginner's Night at Dark Sphere, and inevitably, a couple of small purchases happened. There is, however, going to be a "no boosters" rule. Casual Magic is actually really quite good fun, and I loved the mental challenge of working out how some of the decks were supposed to work.

Also, I don't have to paint anything.

Learning Malifaux: A first game with Collodi

As I've finally finished painting the Collodi starter box, I thought it was time to give Malifaux 2e a try. I arranged to pop down to Dark Sphere on a Tuesday night, where there's a thriving Malifaux community. It's also where you might be able to find some of the AbnorMALifaux crew, should you know the fell arts necessary to summon them.

So, I can scrap together a 30 soul stone crew with every model I have painted and assembled. We draw Squatter's Rights (capture at least two of five markers for a number of turns) as the Strategy. You get to pick two Schemes from a randomly generated list of five. I choose "Frame for Murder" and "Assassinate". This means I've sewn someone important up inside the Wicked Doll on the far right flank so if the Gremlins kill it, the Guild will come down hard on the green scum - and meanwhile, I'm trying to put a bunch of holes in Somer Tooth Jones. Clearly he made a nasty comment that shows he didn't appreciate the culture of puppet shows...

NOTE: Assassinate was a terrible decision from a tactical point of view. I should totally have picked a different option.

The coloured tokens you see are to keep track of which model is which, kindly loaned to me by my opponent. Here is my force of Wicked Dolls on the left flank.

A learning point: My opponent had some old metals too, and he'd taped replacement pictures over the relevant cards for his models. I may have to follow his lead...

I start off running the Wicked Doll for "Frame for Murder" off on his own, making it look like he's aiming to take control of a Strategy marker on the weak side of the board.

Meanwhile the Wicked Dolls potter up the left flank. Malifaux has you take it in turns to move a model (with a few exceptions, written on the cards themselves). There are beautifully painted Gremlins moving in response to these moves, but I didn't take enough photos...

While Collodi and his Marionettes head up the centre. I'm already realising that Collodi has all sorts of clever "activate stuff in this order" nonsense which I don't yet understand. My hope of victory in this game is pretty slim.

A giant mosquito buzzes over to cause trouble - I need to kill it because it has a nasty trick that turns off "triggers" - a type of power that you get with a really good card draw, that Collodi and his crew seem to have a lot of.

One of the Wicked Dolls claims one of the Squatter's Rights scheme markers.

Mosquito dead, objective claimed in the centre, and Wicked Doll swung right out to the left to claim me some more markers.

A Gremlin helpfully shoots the Wicked Doll into a pile of scrap, is Framed For Murder, but claims the Squatter's Rights Scheme Marker back.

If yo look closely up towards the top you'll see a Gremlin in a fight with a Marionette, while I claim the two left hand Scheme markers.

A Mosquito kills my puppet, and activates a trigger to make a new giant Mosquito. Nooo!!!

In revenge, I take the scrap pieces from the dead Marionette, and sew them up into a Wicked Doll.

A piglet charges into a Wicked Doll on the left and reduces it to Scrap. Collodi is shot up by Gremlin shotguns and is running out of puppets to toss in the way.

Eventually, I'm left cowering in the corner and a shotgun blast takes out everyone in a final shot.

Interestingly, the game doesn't finish at this point! You keep playing, and I'd scored quite a few points. My opponent was successful in scoring more than me to win the game, but it's interesting that you can lose all your models and still have a convincing win, as long as you have the right Schemes and Strategies.

Inquisition: Progress with Pawns

An Inquisitorial Warband is growing, slowly. Here stands one of the inner circle of the band, a Lexmechanic - perhaps now a little isolated from his machine cult brethren, and more loyal to his master, who bears an ancient seal of authority.

I tried the new Balthasar Gold paint on his scroll case, and was very impressed. It was easy to use with good coverage - much better than previous Games Workshop gold paints.

Meanwhile, here is a work in progress - two mutants - called "twists" by some low born. These expendable unfortunates have been drawn to the Inquisitor's service. It is unlikely they will live long, but perhaps they will gain some solace from their service.

It is unlikely that they will.

More work by other people: Leman Russ Executioner

Here's the latest completed model I have to show off. Once again, it wasn't me who painted it. This time it's a friend of my wife's, who she commissioned to paint a case worth of my stuff to help get my unmanageable painting backlog under control.

I will say, it is working! There's now a queue for stuff to go out for commissions, a queue of stuff for me to paint, and I'm a lot happier and feeling less pressured by it all.

And the winner is...

The winner of the competition to win one of my old kit bashes is:

Chico Danks!

Be sure to check out his blog at Oldhammer on a Budget.

See, Chico - I said I'd look into a post about how awesome you were...

Marionettes Painted - Collodi Crew Complete!

I've finally finished painting the metal Marionettes from the Collodi starter box that my wife bought me for my birthday in 2012!

Here they are in all their glory - the combination of tricky metal assembly and over-ambitious use of water effects has meant that the progress on this crew has been glacial!

Here they are with their master, Collodi - I played a couple of games with them unpainted in the last edition of Malifaux, but I'm looking forward to trying out the new edition.

Here's the whole crew. I'd be looking to try them out this week, but the tube strikes have me nervous about getting home from the FLGS sensibly, so I'm deferring that until next week.

Astra Militarum Basilisk: Commission

I was delighted the other day to get some pictures of an Astra Militarum Basilisk I'd sent to The Rogue Painter to paint for me. He's knocked it out of the park.

Here's a few shots of my lovely new artillery piece. I clearly need to get a game in soon to try it out!

Many Milestones: Fabulous prize to be won!

In quick succession, I've hit a series of milestones on the blog:

• 100,000 views
• 100 followers
• 300 posts

(This is the 300th post.)

I started this blog way back on 1 April 2012. I like to think that the quality of posts has improved since those dark days, if only because I now take pictures, and sometimes even take some half decent ones.

Many things have happened since I started this blog...

My wife decided that she wasn't just a painter, but was willing to play 40K sometimes...

I've gotten better at modelling and done some kit bashes I'm really proud of.

I've started tracking my painting and modelling much better, and am starting to get to the point where I'm happy with how I'm doing.

My painting has really improved, and I can now put out miniatures I'm happy with and match the picture in my head (at least sometimes).

I've played some awesome games, and sometimes even won some. (Not pictured: a game where I actually won.)

Model painted and photograph by
Golem Painting Studio

I've accepted I can't paint all my stuff and employed some awesome commission painters to get my backlog into some sort of manageable state.

Have I mentioned how pleased I am with how my painting is improving?

Competition

Given the number of milestones, I thought I'd run a small competition and give something away - especially as I've won two prizes on blogs I follow recently!

I had a bit of a think about what I could offer as a prize, and decided that I could part with a painted model. The other blogs offered to paint or even kitbash and paint a model for the winner - but I'd like the prize to go to someone this year...

The prize is my Arbitrator kit bash test build, which I have decided doesn't look Arbites enough. I'll be trying alternative builds in the future, but while I've used him a few times as a proxy in Infinity, he can make his way on to a good home.

To enter:

Be a follower of this blog, and comment in this post! Say what you like about the blog, what you'd like to see more of, or what you usually skip over. I'm afraid each person only gets one entry, even if you make multiple posts.

The closing date is midnight, 23 August 2015. I'll select a winner from the eligible entries with some random number generator or other.

Getting things done in July

Well, I got over myself and finished up the priest. I seem to have forgotten how to get colour balance right in photos, though.

I've had a bit of review of how things are going and realised I have a whole ton of things that are started but not finished - particularly stuff that's assembled but not yet painted. I shouldn't have more than three years of stuff at varying stages of "in progress". That is foolishness itself!

So, rules! Which I have not broken since they were introduced!

• Finish two projects, can start a new one
• Start two projects, can buy one new one

Bigger projects need enough slots to fill - so if I want the new Age of Sigmar box, that's 13 units, which means having started 26 projects and completed 52 of them.

I've also split my "to do" pile into two categories - stuff I want to paint, and stuff I want to game with. If I have hobby budget left over at the end of the month because I've not finished enough stuff, then it gets ploughed into hiring commission painters to get stuff done for me.

The combination of these two things has actually seen me get pretty motivated. I'm no longer trying to slog through projects because I want to game with them, and am focussing on painting models I want to paint.

Stay tuned, because next week's blog post is something particularly special.