That still counts as progress!

Ive been in a bit of a hobby slump over the last week. I was on a roll for a few days, ready to finally finish my Breacher Squad over the weekend, then for some reason I lost all desire to do any hobby.

I think it's because I haven't been able to get out and play a game for a while. My work schedule has been all over the place recently, so it's been over a month since I've been able to get a campaign battle in. I haven't even had time for a quick Necromunda game.

It's annoying that my desire to hobby these days is tied so closely to finding the time to game, but I suppose that's a side effect of being an adult and having responsibilities.

On a plus note I did manage to organise my hobby space a little bit. I bought a box for my vast bits collection and spent a few hours clipping bits from the bag of sprues I've had knocking about for ages and distilling the contents of some of my many bitz boxes into it too.

It's nice to get a better handle on what I've actually got instead of spending ages searching through sprues every time I want to build something. Doing this yielded some interesting discoveries. I have far more Mk3/4 heads and bolters than I'll ever need, but I'm running alarmingly low on the bits I need for my Thousand Sons helmets. I also have more Combi-Plasmas than I thought, so I may do something with those very soon.

So yeah, I'm calling this my hobby progress. I need to shake off my painting funk soon though, as I've ordered a load of stuff from FW, including no less than three Primarchs! If I don't get on with things soon I'll find my painting points shot to hell when they arrive.

There's also the fact that if I don't get the Breachers done this week, I'll be in the Age of Darkness 'Box of Shame'. Noone wants to be there, especially in my first two weeks on the challenge. I've got four days off later this week though, so I'll hopefully kick myself into shape then.

Thousand Sons Demi-Squad

Bouyed up by the generosity of the hobby community, I've decided to plunge into finally getting my Thousand Sons done. It's been nearly five years since I came up with the idea of the army after reading A Thousand Sons, so it's really about time I got it done!

Given the amount of time I've been working on them, it's a little embarassing that I don't even have single squad to show for it. Every time I work on them, I get frustrated that I can't get the shade of red on their armour exactly right and soon abandon them.

Now I finally feel I've got a formula that works, I might actually make some progress. I managed to knock these up over the course of last night:

Still a long way to go on them, but I'm feeling really postive this time. This is going to end up being a fifteen man Tactical Squad with attached Apothecary, so a nice and simple start to the force. After that are going to be some Breachers and Terminators, then a trio of Contemptors, so there'll be plenty to keep me going.

A whole lot of Terminators...

Ok, so I caved. I deviated from my list.

I can never resist a bargain, so I just had to pick up these when I saw them going cheap online...



That's 46 Terminators of various types and 1 Dreadnought. These will be funneled into my various projects I've got going, mainly Deathwing and Scarab Occult, although some will go into my CSM's too

but first need to focus on that list...Focus, Khorneguy, focus!

Quest for a new Hobby Area

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

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

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

1. Obviously I need a surface to work on

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

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

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

5. A decent lighting set up

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

A mighty hobby quest

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

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


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

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

- Finish up my Dark Elf Corsair and Witch Elf units

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

- Finish painting my Hochland Empire force

- Finish building and painting my first Grey Hunter unit

- Finish painting my Soul Drinker Tactical and Assault Squads

- Finish my Thunderwolves, including my Lord

- Finish Bjorn

- Paint my Rune Priest

- Paint Trazyn the Infinite

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here we go then...