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! 

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! 

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! 

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. 

The Road goes on and on...

With the UK being back in Lockdown right now, you'd think I'd have plenty of time to get some projects finished. You'd be wrong unfortunately. Somehow I'm busier than ever. I have managed to find a little time to plug away at my backlog though, mostly Middle Earth stuff.

My Hobbits are coming along nicely. I've only got a few bits to finish up and I'll have the entirety of my initial purchase painted up. I figured the occasion called for a nice group shot:

Quite a sizable force is starting to come together, even if it's barely a third of my final army plan! I'm really taking my time though to make sure each one is the best it can be. That might sound like insanity when selling with a horde army like this, but the models are so nice I want to do them justice.

Of course finishing this batch meant that it was time to order the next one.

I honestly think I'm going to start seeing Hobbits in my dreams before this is done!

I want to take a little break before I start on the second batch though, so I turned my attention to other bits and pieces which I had laying around.

I figured I'd work on the Shelob model I've had for ages. A quick, relaxing build and a refreshing change of pace from Hobbits. Perfect, right? Wrong. After four hours of swearing, snapped limbs and endless bending and repositioning, I finally managed to wrangle the bloody thing into something resembling a model:

If anything would have benefited from transitioning to Finecast, it would have been this. It was a complete nightmare! At least it's built now and (should) be relatively simple to paint up. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm in a productive mood right now, so expect a flurry of posts over the next few weeks.

Until next time, stay safe and happy hobbying!

Making Progress

I recently found myself with five days off with nothing to do. That in itself was a shock tbh, as I've been working way too much over the course of Lockdown.

'Great!' I said to myself 'I can get loads of hobby done.'

I should have known better. It turned out to be way too warm and muggy for me to focus on painting at all. I ended up spending most of that time replaying Final Fantasy 10! 

Oddly enough though, my motivation to hobby has returned now I'm back at work. Maybe it's because I can settle back into my routine of sitting down to paint for an hour or two when I get home. Whatever the reason, I've actually started making progress on things again, which is always a good thing. 

9th edition 40k has gotten me pretty excited. Partly because both my Emperor's Children and Slaaneshi Deamons have gotten a boost through the rules changes, but also because it shakes up the game drastically in general. I got really quite sick of how stale things got in 8th and ended up playing far more Middle Earth than 40k, so a change is long overdue in my book. 

As a result of this newfound excitement, I've been working quite steadily through the 40k stuff on my Table of Shame, trying to clear some or most of it before the 9th Ed launch somewhat ruins the whole idea behind it. 

There's also the fact that not all of the stuff on there is my own. There's also my mate's Death Guard which I've been working on for a while now. Luckily he doesn't mind me taking my time. He knows how I am at actually completing projects!

 I did say to him I'd try and get a good chunk of it done before the edition launches though, so I focused on those first. I've already managed to crank out a Rhino and some more Plague Marines for him over the course of the past couple of days.

Not my best work, but they look decent enough and my friend loves them, which is the important thing.

 Every time I sit down to paint Death Guard for him, I seem to forget just how ridiculously overdetailed those kits are. I can't believe they're just starter box models!

The Rhino didn't turn out too bad either:

I'm pretty proud of the Plague Marine I converted into the hatch instead of the standard gunner though. It's a little detail, but it ties the whole thing into the overall look of the army rather nicely. 

Anyway, with a few more Death Guard models done and out the way, I was able to focus on my own stuff for a little while. 

With two Indomitus boxes on the way, I've been thinking about how I'm going to paint them. I had thought about doing Red Hunters to go alongside my Inquisition, as I've started painting my existing Primaris Marines in that scheme. However, the more I look at the knightly aesthetic of the new models, the more I was inspired to revive my old homebrew chapter, the Golden Knights.

There's only one problem: in the 12 years since I last played them or painted a model for them, Forge World has stolen their colour scheme for the Minotaurs!

Cheeky gits! 

I don't really mind though. It gives me the perfect excuse to update their colours to something a bit more interesting. My original Golden Knights fell to Chaos, so it would actually make sense that a Primaris-ised version of them wouldn't have the same scheme. 

Fluff-wise, it'll also be interesting to come up with a justification on why they're back as a loyalist force. Right now, the background I'm writing for their rebirth talks about how there was a loyalist survivor who was in tbe Deathwatch at the time of their fall. He's been petitioning to be allowed to refund the chapter, but it wasn't until Gulliman returned to life and the launch of the Indomitus Crusade that he was allowed to do so. 

Something like that anyway. On a cool note, I've actually had said loyalist, Alrik Wulfenhein, as the Watch Captain in my Deathwatch army for years. It'll be quite nice to develop his background further and decide what the future holds for him! 

Anyway, back to painting. I want something recognisable as the original chapter, but with a twist. After a bit of playing around, this is what I came up with:

It's a fairly simple update to the scheme, but I quite like it. I'm thinking about possibly changing the Bolter casing to black though, just to make it stand out a little more. The final version of the scheme will incorporate a load of heraldry and squad markings too, really playing up the Knight aspect, so those will be fun to develop too.

It's quite a simple scheme to paint, which is always a bonus. My plan this weekend or early next week is to sit down with my Indomitus boxes and a can of Retributor Armour spray and crank through as much as I can in one go. The quicker I can get them done, the lesser the long term impact on my painting points! 

I'm also hoping to finish up a few more bits this later week too, including the rest if this test squad. I've got to really take advantage of this hobby mojo while I have it!

Anyway that's all for today, stay safe and happy hobbying! 

Getting a grip

I've been bouncing between projects so much recently, I'm surprised I don't have whiplash!

Lockdown really hasn't been good for my focus at all. I've just been flitting between projects almost at random, not completing any of them, whilst also buying way too many models. 

It's hardly surprising tbh. I tend to build and paint stuff with playability in mind and I'm always at my most productive when I've got a game or event to get things finished for.

So whilst I'm stuck at home, I've decided to give myself something specific to work towards, which should hopefully help me get things rolling again. 

I'm setting myself two goals:

1. Paint everything on my 'Table of Shame'.

2. Work towards getting everything sorted so I can play some solo games.

Nice and simple I reckon, but it'll keep me busy for a while and give me the kick up the arse I need to be productive again.

My Table of Shame is a pretty simple idea:

I just put all the projects which I've been putting off for ages on a table and took a photo. Those will be the only things which I'll be working on. I'm not buying any more models until they're all done.

Pretty simple, eh? I'm aware I could be setting myself up to fail here, but at least it gives me a clear sense of what I'm working towards.

I've even already made a start on it and finished up the Emperor's Children Veteran Squad which I showed you guys a few weeks back:

Barring the lack of transfers right now (waiting to get paid so I can do a FW order now they've reopened), I'm pretty happy with how they turned out in the end. An entire 30k army done like this is going to be pretty eye-catching! 

I've got the bits standing by to do another squad, plus a really fun Fulgrim conversion, but they aren't on the Table of Shame, so they can wait. 

Moving onto my other point, I've decided to finally scratch the gaming itch I've been having. Obviously with social distancing rules being what they are in the UK atm, I'm not likely to be able to get a game against a real opponent any time soon. That means I'm going to have to be a little creative. 

I've had the idea of playing some games against myself, taking control of both forces. Whilst I doubt this could work well with large scale games like 40k, it might work reasonably well with games which veer towards the skirmish-y end of the spectrum, like Middle Earth. 

I quickly realised a big drawback to this idea: playing both sides would mean there won't really be any back and forth between me and my opponent. I'd know exactly what they were thinking, making it harder to play an interesting game. 

This got me thinking even further. I've been wanting to play some narrative scenarios ever since I started the game. Maybe I could play through some of those by myself? It would certainly encourage me to play in a more interesting and narrative way. 

I figure it's certainly worth a try. The worst that could happen is that it doesn't work as well as I hoped. At the very least, it'll keep me entertained for a few more days of lockdown, which can't be a bad thing. 

I'll cover my adventures in making this plan a reality in a later post. I just wanted to put a post out covering where my mind is right now, hobby-wise. 

I'm going to be trying to blog a bit more often too, as that should also help me get into some kind of hobby routine. I don't know how successful all this will be, but it'll at least be interesting to find out. Hopefully I'll be back with more soon! 

Nurgle-y goodness

I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about sickness atm, what with everything going on. For me though, living on my own and the lack of external activity going on has given me a chance to get on with hobby projects. I haven't been forced to isolate yet luckily, but I still have far too much free time on my hands atm. 

I've been meaning to paint a mate's Nurgle stuff for him for a while now, but I've been continually getting distracted. This seems the perfect time to crack on with it.

It made sense to start with basic troops, so his first batch of Plague Marines were first on the painting table:

This is before I've had a chance weather and gunk them up, but otherwise they're done. 

It's a fairly basic paint job. The green was done with Contrast and the gold is my standard recipe. They seem pretty good to me, but the magic will come once I crack out the various Technical Paints and I have the opportunity to really go nuts on them.

I normally don't like Nurgle stuff, but these have really been quite fun to work on. I don't think I'll be doing any of it for my own collection any time soon, but it's a nice pallette cleanser between my own projects.

That's all for now. I'll post up the finished models in the next couple of days. After these, I've got another 10 Plague Marines to get through and a horde of Poxwalkers staring at me from the 'To Do' pile. I'm hoping to squeeze in one of my own projects in between those though. I'll see how I go. 

Battle Companies and Fell Beast

"I should be back to posting regularly soon".

Those words always seem to come back to haunt me, To be fair, posting about once a month is more regular than I've been at certain times in the past, but it's not quite what I had in mind.

Part of the reason of the slight lapse in posts has been down to the fact that although I've been managing to sit down and do some hobby fairly regularly, I haven't really been making much progress on anything. I've been 'picking' at projects. A little here, a little there, but nothing solid in any one direction. Minor progress on various stuff really doesn't make for interesting posts.

I've finally managed to get something finished though. Me and a couple of mates are starting a Battle Companies campaign, so I was able to focus my attention on something and get my starting companies ready.

We each had to pick a good and evil company to take, so I chose Minas Morgul and Mirkwood Elves as my two:

The Elves made sense to me for my good force, as I'm already working on a Mirkwood force. It'll also eventually give me the option to convert up some fun stuff which I normally wouldn't be able to take, such as putting my Ranger on a horse or Palace Guard with Glaive.

That'll come later though, for now here's the basic warband, Aleth's Watchers:

I didn't really do anything special modelling-wise with the basic crew, but it gave me a great chance to lavish the kind of care and attention onto them which I gave to my event army a while back. I'm really happy with how they turned out, especially the armoured guys. I'm actually a little relieved tbh, as they looked pretty terrible whilst I was painting them, right up to the final stages. If I can keep up this kind of standard across the entire army though, I'll be very happy indeed.

For my evil company, I chose Minas Morgul. This was mostly down the fact that I wanted to collect a non-human faction, but also because I love the theme which the rules designers put into the Company List. A couple of Black Numenoreans, their Orc minions, plus the option to recruit spirits ands gribbly things later seemed too much fun to pass up. The fact that I want my main Mordor force to also be themed around Minas Morgul was just the icing on the cake!

I've decided to name the company Elandur's Marauders, named for the Black Numenorean Knight who leads them. 

They were great fun to build and paint, even though the plastic Orc sculpts are showing their age a bit now, with a lot of softer details, especially around their shoulders. I managed to disguise this a bit though by sculpting extra cloth wraps onto a lot of them. A lot of people also go for a mishmash of colours on Orcs, but I opted for the more ominous look of having them all in blacks and greys. 

I feel this really helps sell the idea of them hailing from Minas Morgul. I remembered that the Morgul host is described as being 'all in sable' in the books and I think it'll look really great when applied to a larger army, especially when lead by the Witch King.

Talking of the Witch King, I picked up the plastic version of him on a Fell Beast from the Pelennor Fields box. I was going to wait a little while before grabbing him, but I had a Pokemon Regional cancelled on me due to Coronavirus-related reasons and I needed cheering up!

I've never liked the pose of the plastic Fell Beast, so I quickly set about creating something much nicer with the kit:

A fairly simple reposing, but it completely changes the feel of the model in my opinion, perching on a ruined pillar instead of balancing weirdly on a flying stand.

The trickiest part was cut and reposing the legs to sit naturally on the pillar, but it wasn't too hard. I also transplanted the armoured head into the dipping neck and took a hairdryer to the wings to give them a downward curve. All in all, I think the final result looks far more menacing that the original. 

All I have to do now is work out how to paint it (plus the two wraiths on top) and transport it to games! I'll work that out later though.

That's it for today though. I'm having a good go at clearing my backlog ready for some other projects atm, so I'll probably have some Nurgle-y stuff to show you next time. That's assuming I don't get distracted again. I wouldn't actually mind being forced into self-isolation right now, as it'll give me a chance to knock out some of my backlog!

Anyway, until next time, stay safe and happy gaming! 

2019 into 2020: a slightly late New Year post.

 Happy New Year to everyone!

I've been away from blogging for a few months, mostly because of lack of reliable internet. It's been really frustrating, but I'm back now though and I figured I'd do a quick year review post and talk about my plans for 2020. I was hoping to get this out before the new year, but life gets inconveniently busy over the holidays unfortunately, so I'm sure you'll forgive the untimely nature of this post.

Overall I feel it's been a really fantastic year, both personally and hobby-wise. I've travelled around quite a bit this year, met some amazing people (both in and out of the gaming community) and generally had a pretty good time.

In terms of hobby, not only have I played some fantastic games, I've also managed to stick to 90% of the goals I set for myself back in January and achieve an ambition which I've had ever since I was twelve!

I'm referring of course to my adventures in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. Anyone who actualy pays attentions to my 'games played' sidebar will realise that I've been playing an awful lot of it this year. I've always something which I've wanted to do, having been a Tolkien nerd since an early age and been fascinated by the LOTR sections in the back of old White Dwarf magazines. There's never been a group near me who played it though, so I haven't been able to jump into the game.

 That changed back in January when I met Shaun through my local gaming shop. He's been a prominent member of the SBG community for years and it didn't take long for him to draw me in too. A single demo game was all it took!

I've found the LOTR/Hobbit community so friendly and welcoming, I feel I've really found my hobby happy place. That's probably the biggest reason why Middle Earth projects have made up the vast majority of the frankly ridiculous amount of painting which I've done this year. It's almost scary how easy it is to slip into a new army project when playing that system, something which I really should work harder to keep a lid on this year.

To give you an idea, this is a photo of all the Middle Earth miniatures which I've completed since February:

Those were on top of the various 40k and other projects I've completed, making for a grand total of 585 painting points earned across the year!

In fact I've been so productive that for a brief, shining moment, I actually broke into positive painting figures- something which I thought would never happen! The arrival of my Mirkwood army shattered that moment, but it's something that actually happened, abeit briefly and my hobby backlog is certainly a lot more managable now than it's ever been.

The only downside is that between all that painting and real life stuff happening, I've somewhat let blogging fall by the wayside this year. It's a shame because with 2019 being the most productive hobby year I've had for a long time, this should have been reflected in my blogging output, but in fact it was the quietest year on the Wandering Mind since I started it in 2009.

It's a situation which I'm determined to resolve going into 2020. I find blogging about my hobby really rewarding. If nothing else, it's a record of what I've done. I also love sharing my work with the world, even if not many people actually see it. I think part of the reason it's fallen off is that Facebook groups are far easier to post and share my work to these days. Doing that is nowhere near as satisfying though, Hopefully 2020 will be the year I finally get back to a more or less regular posting schedule.

Ok, now I've wittered on a bit, you're probably wondering: What are my plans for the coming year?
Well I'm glad you (hypothetically) asked:

 I don't really have any big new projects lined up got this year. With fully painted armies ready to go for each of the major systems I play, I'm in a pretty good place. I've got nothing huge looming which I need to tackle, but I've got a couple of ideas on where I want to go from here.

I think I'm initially just going to focus one finishing up projects I've already got going but gotten distracted from. The main ones I can think of right now are:

1. Mirkwood Elves

I need 333 points of these done for an event Shaun is holding at the start of February. Luckily I only need 13 models and I have 7 of those finished already, so this should be pretty quick to do.

I'm particularly proud of how my Rangers are shaping up for that force:

They're a bit more vibrant that most Wood Elves you see, something which was very much deliberate. Pretty much every Mirkwood force I've seen painted so far has a very muted pallete, which in turn makes the army look boring as hell to look at on the table. Don't get me wrong, I understand why people have made thos choices, it's just not what I want for my Wood Elves.

After getting the event army done I'll probably expand the force out 700-800pts at some point. I got Thranduil and some Armoured Elves for Christmas so they've gone on my painting list too, but they're not nearly as urgent, so I'll get around to them at some point. 

2. Nurgle Odds and End

I promised a friend of mine last year I'd paint up a load of his Death Guard and Nurgle Deamons, but with one thing and another I kept getting distracted. 

These are going to be tackled in early 2020 as fairly high priority, probably starting with a massive blob of Poxwalkers and Plaguebearers. Wish me luck!

3. Mordor Terrain 

If you've been paying attention to the few posts which I made this year, you'll realise this is another project I got majorly distracted from in 2019. I bought a box of Warcry terrain intending to turn it into a Mordor themed board, but then I had to finish off my Corsairs for an event, then got distracted even further by Mirkwood.

I want to get this done and dusted in the next couple of months so I can have a Middle Earth board to play on at home. Most of my home terrain is 40k-based with lots of city ruins, rubble and industrial gubbins - not exactly evocative of the grandeur of Middle Earth. Considering that SBG is rapidly becoming the main system which I play, this will enhance my play experience immensely!

That should leave me a bit of time to return to a project which I abandoned a couple of years ago:

 4. Fantasy Dark Elves

This is something which isn't really a priority but I'm wanting to weave between my other projects this year. 

The Old World announcement from GW a couple of months back has gotten me pretty excited for the return of square bases in some form. With this in mind, I figure I should get my Druchii finished ready to play with for when it eventually comes. I first bought my Dark Elves back in 2009, so I think it's high time I actually finished them to a good standard. I also have a couple of friends who are keen to dust off their old armies too, so even if these rumblings of the return of the Old World don't amount to much, it'll be good to play a few games of Fantasy again.

On top of that, I've got friend who's hinting at gifting me his old Orcs and Wood Elves, so there's a possibility that there's that to look out for at some point in 2020 too. As if I don't have enough projects to be getting on with!


So there you go, that's my slightly rambling review of 2019 done and dusted, along with a quick look ahead at 2020. With the blog going dark for so long, it felt pretty good to be able to return with quite a chunky post for people to sink their teeth into. Hopefully I can keep up the writing habit this year, but as ever we'll have to see.

Happy New Year once again. I hope you all have a great year both in and out of the hobby!

"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.

A rambling and non-exhaustive experiment with Contrast

I'm going to be setting some time aside to try and actually get some blogging done. I find running this blog really rewarding to do, but the problem is that it becomes too much of a chore when I start falling behind. In theory if I can catch up on things, it should keep the flow of motivation going. That's the idea anyway.

I've actually been up to a fair amount of hobby recently, but to be honest the main project on my painting table atm isn't even my own models. I managed to bring a friend into 40k in the latter half of last year through the Conquest magazine subscription, but he really doesn't have much time to paint anything due to family commitments. So I offered to step in and get some stuff done for him.

 I will admit to a couple of ulterior motives here. Firstly, it's an excellent excuse to have an experiment with the Contrast paint range. It's also a cheeky way to bump up my painting points!

Regardless of my other reasons though, helping a mate get his army painted was my main reason for doing this. Being able to play with two fully painted armies on our gaming nights is really nice thought. Plus it lets me paint something completely different to what I normally work on. I've been feeling the early signs of burnout on my painting recently, so hopefully a chance of pace and style will help me with that.

Anyway, onto the models.

I started with the basics. Poxwalkers are being used in GW stores to demonstrate the new paint range, so I figured was a solid place to start:

These were already half done before Contrast was even announced, using the traditional 'base, wash, highlight' method. It was such a laborious process though that it was taking forever, even for such a basic paint job. With Contrast, all it took was quick blitz with Militarum Green, Gulliman Flesh and Magos purple and I was able to finish them up in a matter of hours. I followed those with a few quick drybrushes, picked out a few details like the boils and guts, then just added a bit of Blood for the Blood God and I think they look pretty good. They're certainly not going to be winning any painting awards, but they're a decent tabletop standard.

Tbh this kind of thing is what I see as the main use I'll be getting out of the new range. I'll probably end up using them to skip the boring and tedious stages in a paint job, but then going over them and finishing them off with more traditional methods. It'll be used to speed up what I was doing already, instead of replacing it.

Next I decided to see what it could do on Marine armour, so I decided to apply Militarum Green over the Waywatcher Green base colour I'd been building up on one of his Plague Marines:

I think you'll agree that it looks pretty effective! Considering the Waywatcher 'preshade' I'd applied, it wasn't really any quicker than my previous method, but it gets a far more consistent result than I was getting with the Colea Greenshade layer I was going to add next.

Here's the whole squad:

The armour, skin and mutations were all picked out in various contrast paints, whilst the gold was done using more traditional methods. They're obviously still a work in progress, but the ability to add awkward colours easily means that I'm actually feeling motivated to push forward with them, rather than seeing those stages as something to be dreaded.

Next I decided to give it a try over existing washes. This was what I was most excited to attempt, as I do a lot of painting with washes over a simple white base coat, so I was interested to see how I could improve on that method:

The shell on Slimex's snail was just Magos Purple over a couple of layers of Druchii Violet, As you can see it's made a really solid and vibrant result. It seems to have just enhanced the colour rather than overpowering it. I might still go over it with a bit of a drybrush, but I'd be happy just to leave it at that stage tbh. I'm probably going to paint the rest of the model using non-Contrast techniques tbh.

So all in all, I'd say Contrast is definitely a useful tool in my painting kit. I don't think I'd ever paint a model just using Contrast as many people are doing, but it's certainly going to improve what I'm already doing.

One thing I definitely want to try next is using it over metallic basecoats to see how that goes. I've seen a lot of people produce some excellent results doing that, so I've got high hopes. That will have to wait though. I've got way too many projects on the go atm to veer off into that particular rabbit hole right now.

That's all for today. It wasn't the most comprehensive of posts, more just some random musings and experimentation. Hopefully I'll find the time to post again soon. Like I said earlier, I want to try and get a regular posting schedule up and running. Fingers crossed that I succeed!

Quantity vs Quality

As I talked about in my New Year post, my goal for this year is to only play games with painted models. That's a great goal to aim for, but it's thrown up an unexpected quandry, which I want to talk about today.

My mantra when painting over the past couple of years has been to 'up my game' wherever I can. I used to be able to churn out entire armies in no time at all, but quite frankly in hindsight, they looked like garbage. I've been making a real effort to change that recently and have been trying to really improve my painting skills.

Without tooting my own horn too much, I think it's been working well for the most part. I'm certainly a lot prouder of what I've produced of late and I've had comments from several people about how much I've improved as well.

The thing is that improving my quality takes more time. Pretty obvious I know, but that's kind of at odds with what I want to achieve this year. To give you an example, my scheme for my Slaanesh Daemons looks like this:

They look great in my opinion and are exactly how I want the entire army to eventually end up looking like. the problem is though, these five models took two or three hours to get to this stage and I need fifty of them just to make my Daemon army playable.

Now compare those previous models to these:

Granted these aren't finished yet, but these took roughly an hour to get to this stage, painting mostly with washe. That's a fraction of the time it took me to do the first five, but they still look pretty decent in my opinion. They still need another layer of wash on their claws, but they're fairly close to being done. They look good as a collective group, but they're nowhere near as high quality. I'd consider them a mid-level tabletop standard.

 

The question I'm finding myself asking is, do I want to compromise on the overall standard of painting to help clear my backlog quickly and be able to play games with my Daemons, or do I take the time to bring them all up to a higher level?

I'm sure it's a question we've all found ourselves asking ourselves from time to time, hence why I decided to make a post about it, so I can hear other people's thoughts on the matter. 

 

I'm going to think this over for the next couple for days, but I'm currently leaning towards mass producing them. I can always return later and 'top them up'. Getting a shift on with my rate of finished models seems a really solid idea, especially with new projects on the horizon calling to me already.

What do you think?

Thing are going to get loud!

After my pretty massive progress post last time, I decided to swap quantity for volume:

It's a terrible pun, but I'm not even sorry!

I picked this guy for my Emperor's Children up just before Christmas. I've tried to include stylisitic elements from the 80's models into my Emperor's Children, so this was the perfect fit.

It's a shame he doesn't come with a unique datasheet, as a model this nice really shouldn't be relegated to being a simple squad leader. As such, he's going to be use in my army as either a Sorceror or Dark Apostle as needed, inspiring the troops with his sick solo skills!

I'm really happy with how he turned out, as I was a little nervous I couldn't do the sculpt justice. Now I just need to settle down and wait for the plastic Noise Marine kit to drop.

Next up I'll be cracking on with the Necromunda stuff which I mentioned last post:

As you can see, there's not really much to do on them. It's mostly just working on their bases, so hopefully they'll be finished up pretty quickly.

With so many projects being finished up atm, I'm really on a hobby roll. Hopefully I can keep this going.

I'm back - with Titans!

My levels of hobby productivity has been a bit erratic recently. As a result, I haven't had a chance to post anything up here for ages. It's hardly surprising, considering how manic this summer has been at work. Now the worst of that is over though, I want to try to get back into my 'one hour a night' routine.

It would be quite helpful to get some regular hobby sessions rolling again, as my pile of plastic needing attention is reaching quite massive levels. On top of the two Grand Master Editions of Titanicus which I've been plugging away at, I also bought a pair of Reaver Titans when they launched last month. I also showed my lack of willpower once again by buying into the hype around the Conquest partwork magazine which just launched:

In my defence, you can't really say no when you can get Primaris Marines for that price! I've never really gotten that excited for Primaris before, but I figure having some for my Deathwatch would be quite useful at some point.

Me and a friend are going to be going halves on a subscription, so expect us to be getting into some Kill Team action at some point soon. As if I don't have enough to be getting on with.

Speaking of which, I've made some pretty decent progress on my first Grand Master box. I've managed to pretty much complete the two Warlord Titans from the box, Metatron Omnissiah of the Legio Xestobiax and Umbra Mortis of the Legio Mortis:

Both are complete barring some decal work, finishing the bases and gluing on some leg panels, but the decals can wait until Forge World get around to releasing transfer sheets or I order some custom ones. I'm really happy with how they've turned out, but I shudder to think how much work went into these. Easily 15-20 hours of hobby time for each one. I certainly think it's worth it though. I'm really thrilled to see how well they've turned out.

You can also see my first batch of House Devine Knights in that shot. I'm planning to do a proper photo shoot of all my Titanicus stuff when I've got the first GM box done, so you can get a closer look at them then.

That's all for now. This was really just a post to get the ball rolling on blogging again. I'll fill you in with more detail on what I've been up to with Titanicus over the next couple of weeks.

Mortis walks!

I think I've managed to blow up both my painting points and hobby budget in the most spectacular way possible!

Adeptus Titanicus launched last weekend and I bought into it hard. As a result, two Grand Master Editions are currently sitting on my hobby desk, ready to be painted.

I've been waiting and watching the development of this for years, so it really was a moment of nerdy bliss being able to finally being able to have the game in my hands, crack it and start working on it. It kind of goes without saying that most of my posts for a while are going to be based around Titanicus

Having booked the weekend off work, I was able to crack on straight away, spending Saturday building my first Warlord, then Sunday painting it.

After nearly 14 hours of hobby time, I had Umbra Mortis of the Legio Mortis almost ready to walk:

This was surprisingly easy to build and paint considering the size and complexity of the model. They really are a joy to work with.

Most of the remaining work to be done is just finishing up the leg armour, applying decals and magnetising the weapons, which I should hopefully get done this week.

Of course the elephant in the room (at least to regular readers of this blog) is how this is going to affect my painting points. Long story short, they've been crushed! Despite not being full-sized models, I'm counting each Titan as a full Lord of War. That's 20 points each. I'm just counting Knights as infantry models, due to their size. Across the two boxes, thats's 92 points in the wrong direction. Needless to say I won't be buying much in the near future (until the Reavers and Warhounds release, that is!).

I've been deliberately quite harsh on myself with this in order to make sure each Warlord gets the care and attention they deserve. My excitement for this game should mean that I quickly win back ground though.

Wish me luck. Hopefully I'll actually remember to post stuff up as I go along, so watch this space!