A short break

I decided to take the a little break from painting Trolls this week. I may be on a deadline but I'm chugging along nicely with the army as a whole and I needed a bit of a pallete cleanser.

I'm also waiting on a few more models to arrive before my final push on the army, so it's all good.

Anyway I finally managed to get my Masque painted. I've had the model knocking around for a few years now and she was the only model I had unpainted in.my AoS 4 test game the other week, so it made sense to get her done.

She turned put very nicely I think. A lovely change of pace. I'm still getting used to the fact that my new phone camera picks up more than my eye can when I'm painting. Some of the highlights and layers are looking a little rough when I post the pics on here, but I have to keep reminding myself that it'll look fine when on the table!

If nothing else it's a nice little push for me to improve my skills!

The other thing I've been doing is cracking on with the terrain I've been meaning to do for my local club for a few months now, but kept getting distracted from:

It's a much simpler paint job than the Masque. I've just been drybrushing whilst watch stuff on YouTube. Strangely relaxing in an almost zen way.

It turned out pretty nice considering how simple the scheme is. Just Skavenblight Dinge over a white spray, then drybrushed up with white.

Got a few more bits I need to get done too, but it won't take too long now I've started.

All in all it's been a pretty productive week. My next batch of Trolls should arrive in the next few days, then it'll be back to the ground ready for October. It's been nice taking a little break though, plus having my hobby mojo properly returning has been wonderful. I'm going to ride it while I still can!

Hitting the ground running in 2021

Happy New Year! 

I was going to write a really long end of year review post for 2020, but quite frankly last year is one which noone wants to look back on, much less relive in any detail. Instead I'm going to hit the ground running on the new year and hope things look up in 2021. Oh wait, we're back in Lockdown here in the UK. Never mind...

On a more positive note I've got a week off work and suddenly finding myself with nothing better to do, so I've spent it being pretty productive with attacking my backlog. It's gone pretty well so far:

I've managed to knock out four characters over the course of the first three days of the year. Really not a bad start at all. They've turned out pretty well, even if I say so myself. Mounted Legolas in particular was a joy to paint up. I've wanted that sculpt ever since I got into the game, so I was super happy when it cropped up on Made to Order at the end of last year. 

Lots of progress also means I had a chance to test out the lightbox which a friend very kindly bought me for Christmas, so you may see an uptick in the quality of photography on here once I've had a bit of a play around on with it.

Naturally the first photo I took was of something that didn't fit in the box:

That's everything I painted last year. I originally took the photo for the scrapped review post, but I still wanted to show it off.  That's 498 painting points across twelve months. Quite impressive I'm sure you'll agree. What's even more impressive though is the fact that I'm still in negative figures! Covid really hasn't been good for my self restraint on starting new projects. 

That's why the first part of this year is going to be spent trying to clear through my mighty backlog. If you saw my last post, you'll know that I've got plenty to keep me busy for a while.

Luckily I'm feeling really productive right now, so I'm going to channel that productivity into producing tangible results before that feeling fades again.

Currently on my work bench are this:

And these:

That's the Mirkwood Terrain I've been working on for my home board for a while now, then a couple of Harry Potter characters which I bought in my frenzy of impulse buying back in the summer. They should keep me busy for a while, whilst scratching my hobby itch in two very different ways.

I'll keep you updated on how I get on. 

Projects between projects

Carrying on from my last post, I'm really starting to get back into the swing of things. I'm still plugging away at my Emperor's Children, but I've got some other bits to show you.

I actually did these over the course of the past few weeks but I forgot to talk about them last time. 

First up, I unearthed my old Dark Elves when I was cleaning the other week. 

I was planning to have a go at getting these back into some kind of usable condition this year anyway, but I hadn't made any specific plans yet. Finding them really sparked the urge to work on them though, so I'm going to be weaving them in between other projects I'm working on.

So far I've managed to spruce up ten Corsairs:

These old metal models are a dream to work with compared to the newer plastic ones. Plus they have so much character to them. Unfortunately they're really expensive to source these days, but I got a fantastic deal on a bunch of them a few years ago. It's almost shameful that it's taken so long for me to paint them up! 

These first ten turned out great I reckon. If I can keep this kind of quality across the army, I'll be exceedingly happy. There's really no rush to get them done though, so I can really take my time with them.

I've got another ten half-finished on top of these, plus another twenty waiting on my to do pile, but I got a little distracted by my Emperor's Children. I'll probably return and finish them up after I do a couple of squads of those. There really is no structure to what I'm working on atm, I'm just drifting wherever my mood takes me, hobby wise. 

Another thing I forgot to mention before is that I built a bunch of terrain. 

I did this mostly to give myself something simple to do whilst I was trying to get my hobby motivation back. I had loads of it laying around from my Conquest subscription, so it felt good to finally be doing something with it.

After a spray of black followed by silver, it's going to be super simple to finish up, so I'm going to be working on that between other projects too. 

I'm finding that having a constant level of low key hobby to do in some form is helping me to stay sane during the lockdown. I think if I had nothing like this to keep me busy, I'd be finding things really difficult right now. Luckily GW reopened their website last week, so I'm no longer in danger of running out of paint! 

Stay safe guys, I'll catch you next time. 

"Build me a board worthy of Mordor"

I've been away from this blog again for a while. Summer at work and rapid fire Pokemon Regionals  in September have basically meant that I've had to choose between blogging and actually getting hobby done. I'm sure you'll forgive me for choosing the latter!

What have I been working on, I hear you ask? Well, considering the fuss I've been making recently about being organised and getting stuff done, you'd think that I'd not be buying anything new for a while.

So did I. Then a deal came along which I couldn't really say no to.

You see, GW released Warcry recently and it looks pretty snazzy:

Don't worry, I haven't gone out and bought yet another game (Well, technically I have, but hear me out...). What I was really interested in from the set was the terrain:

The moment I saw that photo, I thought "that looks like it would make a great Mordor Fortress". I've been playing a LOT of Middle Earth recently, but I don't actually own a whole lot of terrain suitable for playing it on at home, so this seemed like a solid place to start building up my collection.

What really sealed the deal though was the fact that I had two seperate friends who wanted the Warbands but not the rest of the box, making buying the box just for the terrain a very affordable proposition.

So I dived in and got to work. After a few hours of clipping and building, I ended up with this:

Not a bad start I think. The trick was working out how I could make it look good, but also making it easy to play on, especially as LOTR involves a lot of fiddly positioning.

In the end I decided to make several smaller pieces rather than making one or two large buildings, so I have maximum flexibility to change things up between games. This ran into the slight problem of there not being a whole lot of height to them though. I think I can solve this later, when I start adding extra elements beyond Warcry stuff. For now I feel it's a fairly solid core of buildings to work from.

Next came painting. I didn't want to go to nuts with the paint scheme, but I had a pretty clear idea for what I wanted. Most of GW's Middle Earth ruin terrain is painted to look like white stone, obviously going for the look of Osgliliath, or a recently captured settlement. I wanted mine to have been occupied for longer, so I wanted it to look like the filth and darkness of Mordor has really taken hold.

I decided that Cirith Ungol from Return of the King would be my best reference point, as that was built by the men of Gondor, then corrupted by Orcs.

With that in mind I started to experiment with various sprays:

This was done with Chaos Black as a base, a fairly heavy layer of Mechanicum Standard Grey sprayed on the top, followed by a light Corax White, a Nuln Oil Wash, then a light drybrush with Mechancium Grey again.

Not a bad result I reckon and it was pretty quick to do too, only taking about three hours from start to finish, including building the rest of the set at the same time. The only change I made from my first piece to my second was swapping the drybrush colour from Mechicum Standard Grey to Dawnstone:

I think that simple swap just makes the whole thing 'pop' a little more, whilst keeping the dark and dingy feel I was after.

I want to go back later to add some more browns and blacks to the deepest crevasses to get some real filth in there, but I think it looks good enough for now.

The wood was just several layers of Seraphim Sepia over Corax White. It's a ridiculously simple method, even if building up the layers takes a little while. Definitely one I need to remember in future projects.

So that's mostly what I've been working away at. Nothing too massive, but now that things have quietened down elsewhere in my life, it'll hopefully mean that I can find the time to get some projects finished.

I've currently got the next couple of terrain pieces, some Corsairs, plus a few other characters on my painting desk, so I should be able to get those done pretty soon. Hopefully you can expect slightly more regular updates coming up. Hopefully.

Quick and easy terrain pt2

My terrain building kick continues and really shows no sign of letting up.

This time I've built a larger terrain piece for Necromunda:

 Built mostly from a couple of baby milk tubs and some drinking straws, I actually made this with a more practical purpose in mind rather than just simply going 'what can I build?'. I'm getting sick of being shot off the board every single game by my mate's Goliaths, so a large chunk of line of sight blocking terrain seemed like a solid investment. It also adds a bit of height to the board, making for some more interesting matchups.

This will be added to the pile of terrain to go over with washes and get finished up over bank holiday weekend. I'm actually getting quite a decent collection now for not a huge amount of time and effort. I'd almost forgotten how much fun it is to make your own terrain and I'll certainly be doing some more as time goes on.

Next step though is to buy some 28mm ladders when I get paid. As it is atm, very little of this terrain is actually accessible by models withoutg specialist equipment and I don't fancy my skills at making my own ladders. A trip to my local scale modelling shop should hopefully do the trick though,. If not, I'll be scouring Ebay to see what I can get.

After that I suppose I'd best actually get some Necromunda models finished to go with all this!

Quick and easy terrain

It's funny what can be inspiring sometimes. For most people (myself included), seeing a well painted or converted model can inspire them to make something similar, or perhaps a particularly nice piece of terrain might spark off an idea for a project. This time though, something mediocre has inspired me to make something better.

If you've been around any Facebook hobby groups over the weekend, you'll have probably seen the pictures coming from the London Grand Tournament. If you haven't then I won't go over it in detail here, but the main take from the weekend was that the terrain was really bad. Like, really terrible.

Watching the uproar about the whole thing got me thinking. Terrain building has become something of a lost art. Between the GW terrain kits and the sheer volume of smaller terrain makers that are out there, we're a little spoilt for choice these days when it comes to pre-made kits, but when I got into the hobby in the early 2000's if you wanted terrain at all, you had build it yourself!

The problem is that a lot of people don't even consider the option of making their own terrain these day. Most people either buy the premade stuff or don't bother at all, just focussing on their armies. I'm pretty much guilty of the same thing. I've got at least 5 large armies for various systems knocking about my flat, but very little terrain.

So I decided to spend an evening upgrading my terrain collection.

Being something of a magpie, I've got a box full of interesting and useful bits which I've saved with the intention to turn it into terrain. This includes everything from coffee tubs to coasters, along with various scraps from kits I've built and other junk. I'm sorry to say that until now I've hardly touched it, but hope that'll change over the next few weeks.

After diving in and a few minutes messing about and I had myself a couple of basic silos made:

They were literally made by gluing a couple of tubs to some coasters and basing them like I would any other model.

They were looking a little scrappy, but a quick spray of paint later and they were shaping up pretty nicely:

Whilst I was there I also sprayed up some bits and pieces I built last year and forgot to come back to:

Not a bad collection for perhaps an hour's work at most. Obviously I need to jazz them up a bit, but even at this stage they're certainly passable. I'm going to probably spend a day or two over the weekend going over them with washes and adding some details.

I think I've proved my point though. Making terrain needn't be difficult or expensive. You just have to be a little creative with junk and you can have a workable terrain set very easily.

I'm probably also going to make some more this week if I get time. Me and a mate want to play some more Necromunda soon, so upping my terrain count seems like a good idea.

Detour into Necromunda

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to do some Necromunda side-projects, so I figured I'd tell you a bit about those.

I really need a little break from painting endless power armour, so I sat down and got a bit of painting done on my Slaaneshi cultists. The rules for them in White Dwarf seem pretty interesting, so I might end up using them instead of my Eschers if my local club ever gets their Necromunda campaign rolling.

In order to use them though, they need to be finished. luckily I've made some good progress on them:

I'm just waiting for some Sector Imperialis bases to arrive for them and I can finish them off. I started out just basing them normally so I could use them in 40k too, but then I realised that as they gain upgrades in the campaign they'll be straying too far from WYSIWYG for my liking, so I'm better off keeping them as a purely Necromunda thing.

I also found this in a charity shop the other day for a quid:

It's a rather nice toy train which happens to be the perfect scale for Necromunda/40k terrain. The moment I saw it I was imagining the possibilities for fun narrative games this could provide. Me and my mate who plays Goliaths are defintiely going to have to play a heist scenario at some point with this as the objective!

It somewhat harkens back to 'Operation Homehammer', which was my plan last year to build a table's worth of terrain for home gaming. That idea kind of fell by the wayside for a while, mostly due to my lack of time to pull everything together, but this has given me the kick up the arse I needed in the motivation department to crack on with making that a reality.

It'll also help me practice a few weathering techniques I've been wanting to try, but haven't had an appropriate model to test them out on.

Anyway, that's enough gushing from me about junk from a charity shop. I'll post more when I've done something with it!

Operation Homehammer continues

My run of hobby productivity continues and I've been cracking on with my project to create my home gaming setup. As I mentioned yesterday, I found some really good bits in my local Poundland to use as a basis for some terrain:

They're really cheap and rubbish, as you might expect considering the source, but they're pretty much the perfect scale for 40k terrain and don't look so crap that a dab of superglue in the moving parts and a quick spray of silver can't make them look passable as civilian vehicles.

They'll be getting a liberal wash of Nuln Oil and a good rusting up at some point, but for now I think they're surprisingly passable. Not bad at all for ten minutes work!

My nexy step will be digging around in my box of old half-finished terrain pieces to see what I can salvage. Should be interesting.

Operation Homehammer

Something I've always said I'd do when I had my own place is to set up a decent gaming board for myself at home.

I made an attempt at this last year and bought myself a really nice gaming mat from Deep Cut Studios, then started gathering the materials to scratch build some terrain to go with it. 

Unfortunately starting a new job last year meant the project got shelved due to lack of free time. What little hobby time I could snatch went on painting models rather than terrain building. Any games I've played at home since then have been played using books, paint pots and whatever else could be improvised on the fly for terrain.

With 8th edition 40k on the near horizon though, several friends of mine have showed interest in getting back into 40k, giving me a damn good reason to revisit the idea of sorting out a good board to play on. With this in mind, I've decided to try and build myself a decent terrain set.

First on the agenda is a good sized table. So far I've made do with hodgepodging together several smaller tables to lay the boards down for the mat to go on. Ideally I want to find a 6x4 folding table to work from. With a bit of luck I can find one in a local charity shop, but I might end up buying a new one for simplicity's sake.

What I can do in the meantime though is get my old-school hobby hat on and scratch build myself some terrain. Luckily I have a massive tub of bits and pieces to work from, so I quickly knocked this together yesterday to start me off:

Nice and simple, built from an old coaster and some Paracetamol tubs. A little sand and dry brushing later and I'd gotten myself a passable set of barrels. A quick wash and a little freehand/transfers for markings and it should do the trick quite nicely.

When it's this easy to knock out some terrain, I can't help but wonder why I haven't gotten around to doing this sooner!

Painted 'Pacters!

I finally got some painting done!

Like the Manticore yesterday, these still need some fine details and final coats of washes

These ones are Veteran and Death Brigade troopers




Vash Etogaur and the notorious Psyker Milkel Valkronia



Oh and i build a bit of terrain too, ready for the opening mission of the campaign, which will see me defending in a Planetfall mission