Solutions and Dabblings

After several months of my Hobby Pledges sidebar being frozen uselessly in place due to Google screwing up the edit function, I've finally found a workaround for it. The sidebar is pretty much useless to me without learning html, so the entire section has been moved to a page of its own. 

It's not ideal, as i liked having it on the main page, but at least it's live on the blog again rather than just on the notepad app of my phone!

It also makes the front page of the blog look at little neater, so i suppose thats a silver lining.

Other than that, I've been taking things quite easy hobby wise. I got somewhat distracted by the release of the new Pokemon game! I did keep my eye in though by completing a couple of Nurgle bits for a mate:

We realised that after a few years of working on bits and pieces for him on and off that he nearly had a full 1500 points fully painted, so I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and get those done for him, if not before the New Year, then at least in early January.

It's not much, but at least I'm still moving forward. I've got a few projects bubbling away which I'll probably go into more detail about in the next post. Of course, I've got my traditional end of year post to pull together as well. Plenty to keep me busy as we roll inexorably towards Christmas. Wish me luck! 

More Pootling

As I predicted, I decided to take things pretty easy over the last week or so. All I did hobby-wise last week was finally spray up my Titanicus accessories:

Only took me three years! Seems a little thing, but it feels so good to have finally gotten it done. I was getting sick of not being able to see my pips properly whilst I was playing, so I chose the bright, most lurid colour I could to spray them with!

Then this week I've been back on holiday, but I've just been pootling along with hobby stuff. After one of my Xestobiax Titans took a cat-related tumble from a shelf, it got moved up the queue for sprucing up, so I spent Monday working on that with some YouTube videos on in the background.

It was surprisingly relaxing. There was something quite zen about sitting there and just neatening up a three year-old paint job. There's still a lot to do with it, but I think it's going to become my go to thing to return to when I want to chill between bigger projects. Talking of which... 

I finally returned to the backlog train hard today and got these guys finished up. They were really loose ends from the Mordor stuff I finished a few weeks ago, but pretty important for the Minas Morgul force I'm looking at doing.

I'm really happy with how they look, although to be fair I think the lightbox does them a lot of favours. Every time I've pointed this out to people though, I've been told to shut up and look at my two recent best painted awards! *grumbles*

At least they're done though and finally off my painting desk, leaving me free to work on some 40k and Titanicus stuff. Expect to see an update on that very soon!

Until then, stay safe and happy hobbying! 

Big Squig Energy

I really need to stop doubting my painting abilities so much. I only went and nabbed another Best Painted! 

I was pretty shocked tbh. I really didn't think my Cirith Ungol were anywhere near as good as my Hobbits, but clearly they impressed people, so I can't argue with that! 

It was a really fun event too. Was great to see a lot of people I haven't seen for ages and play some excellent games. It really brought home to me how much I love gaming in Middle Earth and I left with a lot of ideas for future projects. 

 

As for results, me and my mate didn't do overly well, but it was still a great day and it was a good laugh. Really looking forward to the next one! 

Not one to rest on my laurels, I went right back to my hobby desk! I finished up some Orks on Sunday night.

It's nice to actually finish up some models from the Beast Snaggas box. Apart from the Squighog Nob,  the box has  e, been laying forgotten in a dark corner of my hobby pile for the past few months while I've been distracted with other stuff. Of course it would have been better I'd finished something which was actually in my crusade roster, but oh well. With our Requisition Points expanding as we move into phase 2, they might end up in there anyway!

As for the models themselves, I'm far happier with how the riders turned out than the Bomb Squigs did. On the other hand, they're essentially glorified tokens so it makes sense that I focused more on the riders themselves. They're all good though and it's another thing off my slowly shrinking backlog!

I'm probably going to take things easy hobby-wise for the rest of this week. I'm back at work for a few days before going back on another week's holiday, so I don't expect to really do much at least until I'm off again. Rest assured though that I've got plenty of hobby ideas bubbling away, so I'll be back soon to share them with you.

 Until then, happy hobbying! 

A week of actual gaming!

I've had a pretty good week in the hobby. After being ridiculously busy for the last few months, I've finally gotten a week's holiday so I've actually had a chance to grab some long-overdue games. 

On Monday I managed to fit in the latest episode in our local Crusade campaign:

I faced some Daemons using Bel'akor's Legion and got a drubbing! I suppose I was overdue one, having easily won my previous two games. It was a good laugh though and tbh it was great just to get out and be sociable. 

Whilst I was there and under some decent natural lighting, I managed to nab a group pic of a bunch of my fully painted Orks. It's not quite everything I've gotten painted, just what was in my Crusade roster. Looking pretty good though, even if I do say so myself! 

My original plan was to use this campaign to get everything in my list painted before the Power Level goes up. We've reached the end of Phase 1 though and it turns out that my progress has been pretty lacking. I guess I'm going to have to try and catch up as we go forward. Fun fun!

Anyway, I also managed to get a game of Titanicus in with another friend today. When we arranged things the other day, it was just going to be a standard game. Then the rules for Corrupted Titans leaked last night, so we decided to have some fun to test them out.

In a running theme for this week, my Mortis lost horribly, but it was immense fun. Talking with Chris, I've come away with load of fun ideas on how to combine and use the new rules and my enthusiasm for the game is really bubbling away, so expect more gribbly Titans from me in the next few weeks!

As much fun as gaming has been, I've also managed to get my Mordor Orcs finished for Saturday's event:

They're not going to winning any awards, but they turned out decently enough and it's nice to finally get these done and put the way - they've been sitting half finished on my painting desk for nearly two years now! 

I managed to get a few extras done on top of those too:

The Captains are needed, but the Shaman and Kardush are going to part of my wider Mordor army. I managed to pick up the new plastic Witch King to go with them over the weekend, so that will probably be one of my next projects. I'm really starting to amass a good amount of stuff for my Mordor now, despite not actually meaning to collect too much of it. Bits and pieces just seem to have kept accumulating! 

Moving forward, I'm not actually sure what I want to work on next, beyond a few bits and pieces (*cough*Titans*cough*). I'll just have to see where my whim takes me. 

 Until next time folks, happy hobbying! 

A splurge of progress

It's that time again where I make excuses for why I haven't posted for a while. I'll be honest, I've just been incredibly lazy when it comes to keeping the blog updated. I've been pretty busy hobby-wise though.

For a start, I finally finished Bozrog!

I actually got him painted up pretty quickly once I turned my attention to it. It was mostly just building up layers of drybrushing, then picking out some details.

I might go back later and add a few transfers and a bit more weather, but I reckon he's pretty decent as he is.

Beyond that I've mostly been working on some Mordor Uruks for a doubles tournament I'm doing with a mate in a few weeks time:

They're not going to be be winning any best painted awards any time soon, but I'm happy with them. We're taking the Cirith Ungol legendary legion, so I've got to sit down this week and paint the command models, plus the Orc half, but that won't take too long.

The event should be great fun. Me and my mate aren't taking it seriously at all. We're just using it as an excuse to hang out for the first time in ages and have a laugh.

As if those weren't enough, I've also been sprucing up my Reaver Titans for Adeptus Titanicus:

With news of the Traitor Legios book on its way, I'm a lot more excited for the game than I've been for a while. The arrival of Corrupted Titans also gives me the perfect excuse to add some Nurgle-y details to them, so I've been having a lot of fun with technical paints! 

I've tried to keep things subtle, so a casual observer is likely to miss the chaotic influence at first, but the closer you look, the more you see. Finding the right balance has been an interesting exercise in self restraint. 

I am pretty happy with them though and I can't wait to carry on with the rest of the Maniple, as well as adding to it with a few more obviously corrupt Engines. That's in a few weeks time though, once this latest Middle Earth event is done with. 

So yeah, that's what's been keeping me busy. Shame I'm so terrible at blogging about it in a timely manner! I'd promise that's going to change, but we both know that's unlikely. You'll have to endure my occasional splurge catchup instead! Hopefully you've enjoyed it though. I'll post more again soon.

Until next time, happy hobbying! 

Pootling along

I've been taking things pretty easy this week. I didn't get a chance to paint up Bozrog like I wanted to, but still got something done:

Da Blue Baron! The first what's likely to be be fair number of Buggies going into my Ork list and a real pleasure to paint.

 The Speed Freaks models have so much character to them that I didn't even feel the need to do my usual conversions to it. That's right, I'm actually using something straight from the box. It feels so unnatural!

It's nice to be making progress on painting up my Crusade army, even if it's not the unit I intended to do. I'll have to weave Bozrog and the other bits I'm plinking away at around my next army though, as I've got another Middle Earth event coming up soon.

More on that next time though. Stay safe and happy gaming! 

What I've been up to

I've been taking a bit more of a relaxed approach to my hobby since the event the other week. After the intensity to mass painting Hobbits to a deadline, it's nice to just pootle along and flit between whatever takes my fancy.

As a result, I've gone back to my pile of unpainted Harry Potter stuff and plucked out a pair of House Elves to work on:

One day I'll actually get a game with all this Potter stuff, but for now it's fun to paint and a great little pallet cleanser.

I'm pretty happy with them, but they are looking a little blank-eyed atm, so I'll have to go in with a tiny brush and a very steady hand before I can call them done. I was hoping to avoid that, but it can't be helped.

Moving on from that, I also built something which I find pretty damn cool:

He started out as a conversion turning a Necromunda Ambot into a Big Mek in Mega Armour and he kind of grew out of all control until he became the mechanised monstrosity you see above! 

Thus Bozrog da Skraplord was born. A deranged Big Mek with Tellyporta Blasta and Ded Shiny Shoota who leads my Ork Crusade army. He's already laid low two opposing Warlords with a frankly ridiculous amount of Dakka and he doesn't show much sign of slowing down. 

I do still need to do some clean up work before I paint him, but that should come about reasonably quickly. I'm pretty excited to get him finished, so he might be all I work on for the next week or so. We'll see though. I am somewhat infamous for getting distracted! 

I'll leave it there for now though. Stay safe and happy wargaming! 

Hobbits done!

It's been a crazy few weeks. August Bank Holiday followed by a rather nasty bout of illness completely derailed my hobby plans, but I'm back now and I've even got a completed army to show for it!

It's a very strange feeling, having a fully painted army. I dont actually finish army projects very often, despite painting a hell of a lot. I have a tendency to ping pong between armies and game systems, so my progress tends to be very scattershot. 

The fact that this needed to be ready for the 11th September definitely helped me stay focused though. It's not a rush job either. I'm really quite happy with the quality of painting I've achieved, despite the tight deadline and the time out from hobby i had whilst I was ill.

 My hard work was rewarded richly too, with me netting best painted at the event!

That'll do quite nicely, I'd say. It feels pretty good. I've put a lot of effort into improving my painting over the past few years, so it's great to see some kind of tangible proof of that growth.

I can't rest on my laurels though, my backlog is still looming, so I've spent Sunday finishing up these:

 

That's a Hasharin for my Corsairs and the first model I've gotten done from the Beast Snaggas box I bought nearly two months ago! It might seem a bit of a random pairing, but they share a recipe on the blue and they were laying in front of me on my desk, so it went from there!

That'll do for today though. I need to sit down and have a think about what I want to do next, but I'm sure I'll be back soon. Until then, happy hobbying! 

Rambling and finding my mojo

It's funny the things which can throw you off of your hobby mojo. This time it was Blogger and their ongoing quest to make the user experience as difficult and frustrating as possible. You see that sidebar to the left hand side of this blog? The one I've been meticulously updating for the past three years with my back and forth progress on my hobby challenges and my backlog? Well thanks to Google's removal of the quick edit button, I now can't edit that without navigating half a dozen menus and grappling with HTML!

It's really frustrating, especially as I've been both really productive and overly keen with my purchases over the last month or so. Being able to visibly track my hobby progress like that was a massive motivator for me. All I can do for now is hope it returns and track my progress offline. 

Nonetheless I have been trying to crack on with some hobby stuff. I kind of had, considering how much I've been buying recently. I splurged on the Beast Snaggas box a few weeks back, bought the Hobbits I need for the upcoming Middle Earth event, then splurged even more by buying some cheap Savage Orcs from a mate, ready for Old World shenanigans. Needless to say, my painting points aren't exactly looking healthy right now!

I did manage to get in some games though. One of Middle Earth with a close friend who I hadn't seen since last year, then another one of Titanicus. It's been great catching up with people now that things are opening up again, as well as acting as a great motivator to get the ball rolling again with my painting. 

It's definitely helped me decide what I need to focus on and get done. It's just a matter of finding the energy to sit down and get it done. Work's so ridiculously busy this summer that it's hard to muster the energy to do anything when  at home. Hopefully that'll start to ease up a little once Bank Holiday's out the way, especially as I've got a crap ton of Hobbits to get finished by September 11th!

Anyway, I'll leave this here for now. Its good to just have a ramble rather than just spamming painting posts at you guys. Hopefully I'll be back to my usual productive self soon. 

Happy hobbying! 

A Slight Distraction

My productive streak is ticking along nicely, with me getting a load more done over the course of this week. 

I may need rethink my new hobby setup though, thanks the arrival of this little guy:

His name is Magnus, he's 9 weeks old, adorable and that's my lightbox he's sitting in! Note the pile of models and paints he's pushed aside to get there. I'm definitely going to have to find a solution! 

I did get a few bits done though, despite the cat-shaped distraction. I finished up Dernhelm on Monday night:

It was more a spruce up than a full paint on her, but it was a good little primer to get me back into the groove of painting Middle Earth. I've got a lot of Hobbits to do in my near future! 

Another great thing which happened was that my bits order finally arrived! That means I could finally finish my Captain /Chapter Master for my Golden Knights and the Intercessor Squad from my last post. 

The squad is done but I need to do a bit more on the Captain. I want to get them both knocked out by the weekend so I can focus fully on my event armies when I have some more free time in the next few weeks. 

Here's how the captain stands atm. Looking pretty decent I reckon. There's still a few bits to do on him, as well obviously adding a head! I'm really liking how he's shaping up. It's the first time I've ever made a glowing power sword look half way decent, so there's that too! 

That'll do for today I think. It's nice to have a regular flow of posts going on here. It really helps keep thing flowing on the hobby desk too. It's just a matter of finding the energy to type something up!

Anyway, stay safe and happy hobbying. I'll see you next time. 

Rambling Progress

After trying kickstart my productivity in my last post, it actually seems to have worked! Not in the way I'd hoped, but at least I'm painting. You see, I've been out buying stuff again.

I know I said i wouldn't be buying anything until I'd caught up on my painting points, but lets face it, that ship already sailed when I started my Orks! Besides, I'd had a crap week at work, so I fancied treating myself with a trip to the secondhand gaming shop in Great Yarmouth.

To be fair, it was all stuff I kind of needed for various projects, but it's still a big hit to my points. 

But weirdly that's actually spurred me on to start cranking stuff out. I got all this done, or made serious progress on them at least, last weekend:

Plus this:

And I finished these for a mate:

Pretty good going I reckon!

I think part of it was at least inspired by the fact that I bought myself a tablet, which allows me to run YouTube at my desk as I paint, which prompted me to do a tidy and reorganise of my hobby space. 

It looks quite cluttered, but all my paints and non-current projects are out the way, with space to work, so it's done the job. I always find that having a tidy desk helps me get on with projects. Hopefully I can keep that energy going, as I've got a lot of bits which I need to get done. 

I'm at the weird point of having several projects ticking along nicely, but very little actually in a usable state for games. I need to try and be more focused in what I work on so I can get some games played with my new stuff now that things are opening up.

Add that to the fact that my local gaming shop has just announced their first Middle Earth event since last January and it looks like it could be a very interesting summer of hobby for me. I'm hoping to get both my Cirith Ungol and Hobbits up to 600 points by early September. Out of those, the Hobbits will take the most work to get ready due to sheer numbers. I'm really looking forward to both projects. I've been wanting to get them finished for a while, but this should be the push I really need to crack on with it!

I'll post more soon. Wish me luck! 

Pinging off Points

Between messing about with my Orks and a personal project I'm doing for a friend, I've had a distinct lack of finished models to show off in the past couple of weeks. Not only is that bad news for my backlog, it's also terrible news for my motivation to attack said backlog. I've always got to feel like I'm making progress or my hobby mojo has a tendency to dry up on me. 

My solution was pretty simple: carve a chunk off my negative painting points by going for an easy target. 

That's how I ended up painting 32 Poxwalkers over the course of two evenings:

They were pretty easy to do. I mostly used washes and Contrast to go for a quick and dirty style, then using Blood for the Blood God to give them a little 'pop'. They've been on my To Do list for a couple of years though, so it feels pretty good to get them done.

After these, positive painting figures seems actually within pretty easy reach, despite my recent purchases, so I might take aim for a few more easy targets before I do anything else.

I'll decide on that later though. I also got my first couple of Orks done:

These took longer to do than I thought they would, which is a little worrying for the project as whole. I suppose these were test models though, so maybe I probably shouldn't worry too much. Obviously I'll get quicker the more of them I do!

I tell you what though, if I can maintain this level of painting across the whole army, I'll be really happy. Certainly an improvement on what I could manage ten years ago!

Going Green

I've been pretty busy recently. The build up to May Bank Holiday in a tourist town is not good for my supply of free time. Doubly so this year, what with one thing and another. Nonetheless I've been trying to get in an hour to hobby time each night in a vain attempt to cling on to my sanity. As a result, I've actually been surprisingly productive.

What have I been doing? Well, I've started a new project:

That's right, I've returned to my Orks!

I've been ridiculously excited by the previews of their new book and model range, so I figured there's no better time to get stuck into them again. Plus I'm giving up smoking atm, so they're also a bit of a reward to myself for sticking with it. 

I know to more recent readers of this blog, it might seem a bit of an abrupt swerve in direction, but I've got quite a bit of history with Greenskins. Deathskulls were actually one of my first armies and the subject of my first ever post on this blog. Unfortunately though I sold off the army years ago, which means I'm starting again from scratch now. 

Not that I mind too much. In hindsight, my old Orks were painted absolutely terribly. I see this as a chance to do justice to them at last! 

Anyway, enough rambling. I've got that Battlewagon and these to be getting on with:

Most importantly of all, I needed to decide on a recipe for the skin. There's a ridiculous amount of different ideas out there, with each Ork player seemingly having their own. I went with something fairly simple though.

That's just Ork Flesh and Warp Lightning Contrast paints over Corax White, with a Skarsnik Green drybrush. Quick and simple, yet effective. It'll look a little darker once I've finished, but I think it should still pop nicely.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to. Hopefully I'll have some finished Orks to show you before too much longer. I've just got to keep doing what I can when I can.

Hopefully I'll be able to get some actual games in too now things are opening up again, but I'll have to see what happens. Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Unexpected Fabius

I certainly didn't intend to go in this direction when I said I needed a bit of a pallet cleanser, but I seem to have painted Fabius Bile and his Vatborn minion in the space of about a day.

I'm not going to question it tbh. The ways of Chaos are best not understood. 

I like how he's turned out though and it's nice to have him done. I bought him way back when War of the Spider released last year and he's been gathering dust on a shelf ever since. I'd done a little bit of work on him, but not really anything beyond a few base colours. 

Then I finished work early last night, sat down at my hobby desk and just started messing around with him as the nearest model I had to hand. Next thing I knew, it was five hours later and he was sitting finished in front of me!

It's very odd how things like that happen sometimes. Let's hope I haven't used all my hobby mojo in one go though! 

Monster Progress!

I think I need to stop making hobby plans for when I'm holidays. After everything going spectacularly wrong when I was off in February, then not getting much of a chance to do much in March, I was looking forward to using my 12 days off last month to get some seriously hobby done.

Fate on the other hand, had a different ideas. My glasses broke the day before I was due to be off, leaving me with a two week wait for a new pair and being unable to work on anything. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm cursed!

Anyway, after that delay, I'm starting to get back on track and actually got a substantial amount finished:

My first Keeper, Shys'ell the Magnificent, is finally complete. She's taken me far longer than I even want to think about tbh, but I'm ridiculously proud of how it's turned out. The insane amount of layers really paid off. 

There's also a magnetised shield for her that I need to paint up, but that can come later. I'm at the stage where I'm just happy not to be working on her any more!

Not that I didn't enjoy painting her, it's just possibly the longest I've ever spent working on a single model and I'm definitely ready to move onto other stuff. Luckily, I also managed to get my other big piece finished around the same time:

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I've been painting Morty for a friend alongside my Slaanesh stuff and to be honest I was a little surprised at how long it took me to get through him. I thought the Keepers would take me longer, but there's an insane amount of detail squeezed in there. 

I also really do love how he turned out though, to the point where I consider it one of the best pieces I've ever painted! My friend loves him too, which is even more important. I'm looking forward to having him stomp my poor Slaaneshi force into the ground with him in the near future!

I am feeling a little burned out on big monsters though, so I'm going to leave painting my second Keeper for a little while before coming back to it. Instead I'm going to focus on something completely different.  I have something in mind, but you'll have to watch this space to find out what it is. 

I'm also doing a non-wargaming painting commission for another friend, which I may or may not show on here. That will influence what I work on though. Whatever I choose will be reasonably small scale until that's finished. 

Quick Update

I've had a pretty productive week. The thought of Covid restrictions possibly lifting in the UK soon has really driven me on to try and get my Slaanesh stuff done. It'll be nice to finally be able to get a game with someone outside my support bubble! 

As a result, I've put in a fair amount of hours painting over the past few days and nearly completed my first Keeper:

I'm quite proud of how it's shaping up, even though it took absolutely ages to get the layers down on it. It's times like this when I can understand the attraction of buying an airbrush!

I just need to finish up the hair and paint up the cape and it'll be ready to go. I'm hoping to get it done this weekend. Then I've got the fun of doing the second one!

That's it for today though. I'll post more soon.

 Stay safe and happy hobbying! 

Monster Mash

Remember I mentioned in my last post about how I've had a really crap couple of months? Well things got even worse from there. Without going into too many details, I really needed to cheer myself up and had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to break my self-imposed rules on hobby purchases and treat myself to some models.

Just a few 'little' bits. To be fair, it's stuff I've been wanting for ages and I needed the dopamine hit which comes with a plastic crack delivery! 

The Keeper of Secrets is a model I've been after ever since it came out. It's such a gorgeous sculpt, but I've just never gotten around to picking it up until now. I just hope that I can do it justice with my painting skills.

I got it assembled pretty quickly. I even started painting it:

I don't thinking I've done too badly for a couple of evening's worth of work. Still a long, long way to go though. 

I'm actually quite proud of how the layering on the back of the skirt is shaping up. It's looking a little rough atm, but it's heading in the right direction and it's not normally something I do well on a large scale. Even as I write this though, I'm coming to the horrible realisation that most of my hard work isn't going to be visible once I attach the outer cloak. Sad times. 

In between layers on that though, I've been working on something a little more... unusual:

I wanted my second Keeper to be a bit different to my first one, plus I wanted to create something which paid homage to the classic 80's Keeper, whilst still working in the modern game. Thus this abomination was born!

If someone had told me I'd be spending part of this lockdown sculpting thigh high boots on a sexy cow Deamon, I'd have laughed. Yet it seems I've reached that particular stage of craziness.

It was actually pretty simple to convert. Working from the AoS Ghorgon kit, most of it was created using my leftover bits from the 'proper' Keeper. I'd say that trimming the Keeper claws to fit over the existing wrist guards were the most complicated part of the process. That was more time intensive than hard to do though. 

The boots themselves were pretty easy to create. I just smoothed off the lower legs, attached a hoop of plasticard to form the top of the boot, then built up layers of Green Stuff and Liquid Green Stuff to form the rest of it. Fairly basic, but I think it looks effective. 

Looking at the photos, I might go back later and add some more bulk around the ankles, but I'll have a think about that. I've got a lot of work to do before I get around to painting it. 

Oh and finally, as if I didn't have enough big models to be working on right now, my mate's also asked me if I could paint Mortarion for him. Like a fool, I agreed!

I'm not entirely sure why I accepted the commission, especially as I've got three big models to work on already sitting on my painting desk. I guess I just wanted a different style of model to work on for when I want a break from painting Slaanesh stuff. The Keepers are going to require me to carefully build up many thin, smooth layers, whereas Morty lets me do something a bit more grimy and 'grimdark', as well as have fun painting a lovely sculpt which I'd never buy for myself. I may regret my madness, but so far it's been fun to do.

I've actually made some decent progress already:

It's not the best of photos. I'm still getting used to photographing big stuff in my light box, but it'll do for now. I'm going for a much grittier and down to earth colour scheme than I normally see him painted in. It's taking bloody ages and there's obviously a long way to go yet, but I'm happy with how he's shaping up so far. 

As you can imagine, pretty much all my hobby time right now is being poured into these three models. It may make for some very repetitive future updates, but at the rate I'm going, I should actually get through them reasonably quickly.

This ended up being a much longer post than expected, but that's not a bad thing. It just goes to show how much I can get done when I get bitten by the hobby bug!

 I'll post more soon. Until then, stay safe and happy hobbying!