Quest for a new Hobby Area

OK, before my big plans for a fresh start come the new year (see last post) can flourish, I need a new hobby area.

I figure instead of simply carting my woefully inadequate hobby desk into the new space, it's a great opportunity to revamp my working area.

So I've drawn up a list of everything I've ever wanted or needed from my hobby desk, which I'm going to incorporate into my new area.

1. Obviously I need a surface to work on

2. A place to tidy away my paints, brushes, glues, etc, away from marauding kittens and little hands (my first kid is due in march, so this is especially important)

3. Shelves to display finished projects and store current WIP's

4. Storage for my many bitz boxes (I have nearly ten years worth of these, which number in the dozens), or at least a way to categorise the bitz for easy access

5. A decent lighting set up

6. Noticeboard to store ideas, army lists, sketches and painting recipes

7. Space for my laptop (i need music, videos and access to the blogosphere when i work), but far enough from the working area to avoid splashes and spillages

8. (although optional, due to space restraints) A light box for photographing models

9. Storage for all my old projects that I've thought I'd abandoned but could switch back to at a moments notice


It's fairly basic stuff, but every bit of it's important for me, seeing as i only have about half this list in my current kitten-infested set up and if I'm going to make this change, I'm going to do this properly.

While this seems simple enough, I also only have a small space to work in, so all this also needs to be quite compact.

I'm going shopping tomorrow to see what i can pick up and hopefully by the end of the weekend i should have something that's at least starting to resemble the idea I have in my head.

A mighty hobby quest

I should know better than to venture into GW in the run up to Uni deadlines. I always end up with far too many ideas for projects that i have nowhere near enough time for.

But, in a feat of incredible self-control, I've decided that those can wait until New Year, when i have a six week break and my student loan. In the meantime, I'm going to focus my hobby efforts on getting my current projects done and dusted.


Here's my 'To Do' list to lead me nicely to the 1st of January. You'll notice most of it's stuff that's been featured on The Wandering Mind over the course of 2011 and never seen again.

- Build my new hobby area (more on this next post)

- Finish up my Dark Elf Corsair and Witch Elf units

- Paint my Dark Eldar Kabalite unit that's been sitting on my desk for the last 4 months

- Finish painting my Hochland Empire force

- Finish building and painting my first Grey Hunter unit

- Finish painting my Soul Drinker Tactical and Assault Squads

- Finish my Thunderwolves, including my Lord

- Finish Bjorn

- Paint my Rune Priest

- Paint Trazyn the Infinite

- Finish building and painting my Zombie Dragon Bloodthirster/ Shard of the Void Dragon

- Paint at least 50 (out of 350)of my Zombies

- Strip down my previous failed attempt at Deathwing ready to start anew in the new year

- Build my Throgg the Troll King conversion, ready to lead my Ogre Kingdoms/ Warriors of Chaos monster force

As you can see, it's a fairly substantial list, but one I feel i can manage. The theory is, if i get all this done, I can start the new year without an huge backlog of stuff, allowing me to focus on my new projects.

I'll post the stuff up here as I do them, so you can see how I get on and I'll do a follow-up post in the New Year, where hopefully I can congratulate myself on a job well done. Hopefully.

Here we go then...

Cats and Corsairs

As I mentioned before, my hobby time has been serious cramped by these cute little gits being born underneath my painting desk



However, I am in the process of setting up a temporary paint station in another room, so I can get my army plans back on track very soon, once my uni deadlines are out the way.

I did manage to paint up a test model for my latest unit of Corsairs though



There'll be about 30 of these when I'm done, forming the perfect bunker unit for Master Hyron, who's next on my painting list. He should be done in a very similar scheme to these guys, although minus a Sea Dragon Cloak.

What do people think?

The myth that is Finecast

Ok, so about 6 months ago, Finecast hit the shelves and the internet was instantly awash with complaints about the quality, with air bubbles apparently all over the place and even whole pieces of missing or unsalvagable, to the point where many people are put off buying Finecast because of worries over quality control

Of course, unless you've been a hermit these last 6 months, you probably already know all about this

I would like to make quite a sweeping statement:

The internet has blown this problem out of all proportion.

To date I have bought 4 Finecast models, a female Vampire Lord, two Ogre Kingdoms Gorgers and this guy:




Not one of these models has had so much as a single blemish (the nick in the shoulder pad you can see is down to me not being careful enough with the clippers) and I can honestly say these have been some of the best quality GW models I have ever bought, in terms of quality of sculpts, crispness of detail and ease to paint and build

Also, none of my gaming friends have ever had a problem with a Finecast model either, sharing my views on the quality.

Of course, these ravings on the internet have to come from somewhere, so I've been thinking and all I can suggest is this:

Any model manufacturer, no matter how big or small will occasionally make mistakes, whether it be a missing sprue in a boxed set, or bubbles in the casting, etc. For example, the very first box of GW product I bought, way back when I was eleven, was a box of Chaos Space Marines. They'd been mispacked so I only got half the marines i paid for. The manager of my local GW was quite happy to exchange them for a full box and let me keep the mispackaged box, as they couldn't sell them on for obvious reasons, but not before noting down the details he needed to warn head office of the problem.

The point i'm making is that there will ALWAYS be mistakes that slip through quality control. It's an inevitability. problem is, with the internet being a vital tool in spreading the word about Finecast, the most vocal group will always be the ones who are complaining. Always. It's human nature. People are more inclined to say 'this was terrible!' than 'actually, this model was brilliant, no problems with it at all', so we only end up hearing one side of the story.

As a little final point, I've had more problems with Forge World casts since the release of Finecast (a grand total of one problem, with some armour kits i got) than any GW product.

I suppose what this post is really saying is, don't believe the internet doomsayers and give Finecast a chance.

Allas Hyron

In the flesh at last.

I've finally got round to building a model for my Dark Elf character who I've been using in games and writing stories about for the last two years.



Unfortunately he's also the same model who took a Asur longbow to the chest in my last Mordheim game and died outright

May his WFB career be longer than his Mordheim one.

Too many distractions!

Well it's not called the Wandering Mind for nothing...

So I picked up my copy of the new Necron codex yesterday, along with a plastic Zombie Dragon kit and Trazyn the Infinite.

My hobby time over the next couple of weeks will probably be taken up with crafting a Necron test list based around Trazyn and a Shard of the Void Dragon (the Zombie Dragon).

I'm also in the process of painting up a few test models for my Space Wolves, using a recipe recommended to me by Odinsport and re-booting my Dark Elf Corsair army, so I should hopefully show those soon, however my painting and modelling time has been cut down drastically by uni deadlines and the fact that my cat decided to give birth to a litter of kittens under my hobby desk.

Gaming-wise I actually managed to get a game of Mordheim in the other day. It was good fun. I was up against a High Elf warband, 3 Empire ones and Witch Hunters, with me playing Dark Elves.

My secret mission was to put five of the High Elves out of action, which I failed at spectacularly. My Corsair henchmen got slaughtered as we poured out of a building, hoping to catch the Asur in a pincer movement, then before my heroes could pile in, the High Elf leader raised his longbow and took out my Highborn with a single shot! To add insult to injury, it was the same character my Highborn had been taking pot-shots at all game with his crossbow pistol and the Highborn died outright after the game. Curses!

All in all not the greatest of results, but at least i got a game in and after the post-battle looting I could afford to hire myself a new hero, a Beastmaster this time, with a whip to put the fear into those damnable hounds the Witch Hunter play insists on bringing. Come here little doggies, i want you to meet my Cold One Beast Hound...