Gordakka Da Stompy

I had lot of fun this week painting up my Mega Dread.

I had the night off work on Thursday with nothing else to do, so I really managed to get into the flow with it. About 9 hours work in total. I don't think I've ever painted up such a large model so quickly!

It's always a nice feeling when that happens. I wish it was that easy all the time. 

I also had some fun with applying transfers. Normally I don't bother with them with Orks, as I think they look a bit out of place, but with a bit of experimenting I found they worked perfectly for what I had in mind, especially once I did a bit of weathering over the top.

I even managed to get the glyphs on his knee pad to match his name. It's something which literally noone will ever notice unless I point it out, but I know it's there at least and that's what matters.

Next up is the Deff Dread and some Beast Snaggas and my league list is fully painted. If I can get those done before 10th Edition drops I'll be very happy, but I'll have to see how I get on. I've got a busy couple of weeks ahead of me at work, so it'll come down to how much free time I end up getting.

Enjoy the pretty pics for now though. I'll hopefully post more soon! 

Contemplating 10th Edition

OK before I start, I need to confess that I've already gotten distracted from my Dark Elves. Hardly surprising to regular readers of this blog, but I do have a very good reason for it, which will hopefully become apparent over the course of this post. With Old World still a while off, I can weave my Druchii around other stuff I'm working on anyway, so it's not a complete disaster.

Moving on though, the upcoming release of 10th Edition has me a lot more excited about 40k than I've been for a long time. I think it's because I'm actually getting more chances to play than I have done in the last few years, thanks to being able to attend a gaming club more or less every week these days. I think I've played more 40k since the start of this year than the last four years combined!

Regular games have meant that I've been working on my Orks a hell of a lot more than I did previously, to the point where I can easily field a 2000 point fully painted army for the first time in ages.

That got me thinking that I want to carry on that momentum going into the new edition. With that in mind I've decided to give myself a self-imposed rule of only fielding fully painted stuff when I game. That should in theory give me the push to actually get things finished up if I want to use them.

With that in mind, I'm going to loop back to the reason I got distracted:

I kitbashed together a Mega Dread ready for when the points go up in the final few games of the 40k League the club has been running! I've wanted to use one for a while and had an old Redemptor Dreadnought laying about, so my Mek brain got to work. It was a lot of fun to do and I'm pretty psyched to start painting it in the next few days.

I also needed a second Deff Dread so I made one of those too, again from an old Marine Dread I had in a drawer:

I was a little shocked at how quickly and naturally this came together. It was only about an hour's work, including magnetising the arms. Hopefully I should get this done pretty quickly too

So yeah, I've been well and truly distracted, but in a good way. I'll let you know how I get on with them. 

Until next time, happy hobbying! 

Looks like I'm back!

Well I was right, the Old World preview got me fired up. Even if the game's coming a bit later than I'd hoped, it still did the job of getting me painting again. I'm determined to finally get my Dark Elves sorted and ready for the table for when it does launch. 

I got so excited that I actually got an entire unit of Dark Riders done in less than a week, which is pretty damn speedy for me. 

They're certainly not the best paint job I've ever done, but they look good enough for me. I'm not a huge fan of these particular sculpts, but they'll do the job until I can get hold of some of the classic models. I'm holding out hope for a Made to Order for a lot of the 6th Ed metals when the game drops, as ebay prices are looking a little ridiculous right now! 

It actually feels pretty weird to be painting up my first Fantasy regiment in nearly six years, but it's a nice feeling. Fantasy was never my main game, but I still have a lot of nostalgia for it, so it's great to be able to return to an army I thought had been permanently shelved. 

Digging out everything I could find from various boxes, turns out I have a lot of work to do! 

Most of my old Dark Elf army was in the process of being stripped for repainting when it went into storage, so I basically have an entire army to paint up. Should keep me busy! 

In a bit of a rut

I've absolutely no hobby in the last three weeks. Nothing. Ziltch. Nada.

I just haven't had any motivation. What little I had just evaporated. Granted I had Pokemon events to prep for and focus on, but it's still rare for me to do no hobby at all. 

I feel like I'm in a bit of a limbo atm. With 10th Edition 40k on the horizon and possibly Old World coming sooner or later, I feel I don't know what I should be working towards until I get more information to act on.

Hopefully the previews at Warhammer Fest this weekend will get me fired up again, but for now I'm languishing in my demotivated state.

I did manage to get a couple of games in for my local 40k league though. Yesterday's Ork v Ork scrap was particularly fun.

I managed to give the Goffs a good krumping with my Lucky Blue Gits, including having my Beastboss' Squig eat Ghazghull himself! All great fun.

The league is starting to wrap up now, so there'll be more opportunities to play some games other than 40k soon. That might get my creative juices flowing again. If not, I'll have to see what this weekend brings.

Hopefully I'll be back soon with a return to my usual hyper-productive self, but we'll see. Until then though, happy hobbying! 

Low Effort Hobby

I've been feeling a bit burned out on hobby, after nearly three months of being ridiculously productive. I'm not sure if it's just I've been a bit busy with work, or that with Pokemon Internationals coming up my mind's just been elsewhere. Either way, I've not been wanting to do anything too involved on the few occasions recently when my mind's turned to painting.

Luckily I have the perfect project for that:

My Heresy Imperial Fists have an incredibly simple scheme, 90% of which is just blocking in base colours. It's the kind of thing which is perfect for doing mindlessly in small stints, so that's what I've been doing.

It's actually pretty relaxing not having to think too much about what I'm working on, whilst still making progress. 

I'm sure once 10th Edition 40k rolls closer, I'll move back to something a bit more involved, but for now I'm enjoying the slower pace of hobby.

That's all for now. I'll post more as I get more done. 

Terminators Done

Despite grumbling about how long they were taking in my last post, my Terminators actually ended up coming together really quickly over the weekend.

The end result turned out rather excellently I reckon. I was a little concerned when the transfers started to go on though. They just didn't seem to look right to me. Then I found some old Dark Elf and Chaos transfer sheets which I could repurpose some of the designs from to jazz up the armour and it seemed to bring everything together. 

A very lucky find for me, especially as I didn't feel confident enough with my freehand skills to add the sigils and patterns onto the armour which I pictured for them.

It just goes to show that you should never throw away your old transfer sheets!

I definitely need a bit before I paint the rest of the squad though. There's just so much trim and detail work to be done on them that it can be pretty disheartening. I'm thinking I'll go back and do some more Veterans next. Either that or I'll try and crank out a squad or two of Imperial Fists, as I've got a game organised with them next week, so it'd be good to do some more of those. I'll have to see how I feel.

Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Going Purple

It would seem that I can either be really good at getting stuff done or getting posts up in a timely manner, but never both.

As I mentioned a little while back, I recently had a week and half of work and not much to fill it with, so I cracked on with some hobby. I managed to get quite a bit done actually, to the point where I'm finally starting to feel really good about the way my backlog is shrinking. I'm also still managing to keep to my pledge not to buy any new models in for as long as possible in 2023, so there's huge chunks being carved into my 'To Do' pile. There's still a long way to go, but it's definitely heading in the right direction.

Anyway, rather than doing a lengthy catch up post with everything I've been doing, I figured I'd share with you what I'm working on right now, then try to actually keep up with blogging.

So I finally managed go get these guys done:

I started my 30k Emperor's Children back when the Age of Darkness box first launched, then got distracted after moved flat in the summer. Its good to finally go back and get these dudes done. This is one of those projects that I've always wanted to do, but never had the time or drive until now, so it feels excellent to be making a proper start on them.

I've got some Cataphractii Terminators on my desk atm to go with them:

These are starting to take shape nicely, although I'll admit they're taking far longer than I expected. That trim is a killer!

Although I'm looking forward to seeing the end result, its turning into one hell of a slog. I'm thinking of taking a bit of a break once the first five are done before doing the rest of the squad, but I'll have to see. I'm a little concerned though that if I leave it, they'll never get done. 

That's a problem for the future though. For now, I'm just happy I finally got a blog post out!

Until next time happy Hobbying! 

Quick but Satisfying

After sprucing up my Grey Company the other day, it seemed like the natural next step to do the same to the rest of the Fellowship models I owned, so I spent a relaxing afternoon going over them with a few extra highlights and washes. 

Not too bad at all I reckon. It was pretty simple to do and the Fellowship as a whole looks coherent again, so that pleases my autistic sense of order and neatness. 

I had to improvise a bit on the bases though, as the superglue I used for the flock frosted a bit as I applied it, but I reckon I made it work ok. I'll have to try and find a weaker glue to do basing with I think, as that's happened to me a few times recently. 

I'm particularly happy with how Boromir turned out, as he was the most basic of the original paint jobs. I managed to get some really nice shadows and highlights into his tunic, as well as a tiny bit of freehand on the sleeves to really bring the model to life

It really does show how far I've come in terms of painting quality if you compare it to the original paint job I did back in 2019.

It's always nice to revamp old projects like this, but I think next I'm going going to move on to something new. Not sure what yet, but I'll see what catches my attention. 

That's it for today. Just a quick one for now. Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Mordor Glow-up!

It really says a lot about my mindset when I take an army which already won a best painted award, and feel the need to spruce it up!

I have a problem. 

To be fair it was just a couple of hours of work, but I think my point still stands. 

It came about as I was looking at the spears I painted the other day alongside the existing models I had for my Mordor army and the difference in quality stood out in my mind. Not massively, but enough to bug me. 

So onto the painting table they went:

It was only a couple extra highlights on each model, but the difference is pretty drastic. The army should at least look a bit more united now.

That's the problem with going back and adding to an old army project though. Your level of painting will inevitably improve and there's the danger of being locked into an eternal cycling of touching up and improving what you've already done. I just have resist the temptation to to go back again if/when I add more to the army later!

On a similar note, I finished my Grey Company too:

This was just taking the Fellowship models I painted about four years ago and bringing them in line with the Legolas model I did for my Mirkwood Rangers last year, plus a few touch ups on Elladan and Elrohir.

I absolutely love how they look as a group and I'm quite proud of how they turned out. I feel they're some of the best figures I've painted for a while. It was really satisfying to be able to go to town on some individual characters as a break from the massed army painting I've been doing for the last few months.

So yeah, that's both my armies ready for the event next weekend. I don't think I've ever been this prepared so far in advance! I've got a week off work next week so I'll have to see where my painting inspiration takes me. I'll definitely be doing something. My hobby mojo is in overdrive at the moment!

Until next time, happy hobbying! 

Orcs and Banner

Having been slowed down by a nasty bout of Covid, I'm back with a bit of progress. Once I was actually able to sit down at my hobby desk, I actually managed to crank out what I needed for my next Middle Earth event pretty quickly.

The Orcs are nothing special tbh, but I like how they turned out. They also give me a solid chunk of spears to back up my Black Numenoreans. I've played the game for years now, but had shockingly few spear Orcs painted up. This should unlock a huge amount of varients of armies for me to try out, so are a good investment to make. Most of them came from the models a mate handed me just before Christmas which I complained about, so it's good to get them done for that reason too. 

The other thing I finished up was Halbarad with his banner:

One of the main reasons I'm going to be running Grey Company as my Good list at the event was so I had an excuse to get him done! I've had him laying around for about four years now, so it's nice to finish him up. I converted a mounted version of him too, but that can't be used in the Legendary Legion, so that can wait for now. 

Looking at the picture, I don't think the banner photographed too well. I think it looks a lot better in person. I might have a play around with my light box and phone camera to resolve that issue for the future.

Getting these done far quicker than I expected has now left me with a few weeks of not really knowing what to work on. I'll have to have a think about what I'm going to do next. I'm thinking about sticking with the Middle Earth stuff and clearing some more of my backlog, or else sprucing up some more things for the event, but I'll see how I get on.

Until next time, happy hobbying!