Green Christmas

I've spent a lot of the last month being pretty ill. Nothing too serious, but I've been feeling rough as hell.

As you can imagine, that put quite a crimp in my hobby mojo for a while. Luckily in the last week or so I've been able the get some of my momentum back.

I'm definitely on the hype train for the rapidly approaching release of Old World, so I've gone into full mass production mode on my Orcs and Goblin army. 

As you can see I've been pretty productive! 

Although I've still got a long way to go, it's definitely one of those projects where Contrast paint is my best friend. It's ready made for the kind of batch painting. I wish that it had existed back in the day, as I would have faced much fewer hordes of grey plastic!

Anyway, a few days after that pic was taken, I used my last night off before Christmas to get a few units finished, after a lot of playing around with methods and trying a few bits out:

I also popped them in my light box to get some better photos, but I just wanted to get a group pic. Maybe it's the nostalgia kicking in, but there's something very satisfying about seeing even a couple of Fantasy units ranked up together.

Anyway, here's a close up. 

It's a really simple scheme, but I reckon it looks pretty effective. More importantly it can be reproduced over 100+ models without driving me utterly insane!

The Goblins do look a little odd on the new larger bases. Some of that might just be the break in how I'm used to seeing them, but the Skull Pass Gobbos were also tiny in comparison to the multipart kit. I reckon if I mix a few of those in as the horde expands, it should all be good.

The Savages Orcs on the other hand have the opposite problem. 

They were almost too big for 25mm bases even in 8th edition and we haven't been told their new base size yet. I'm guessing they're going to go to 30mm, but I'm not wanting to jump the gun on it. I do however want an army ready to go for release, so I've decided to paint them on their original bases for now, then put them on correctly spaced movement trays later.

That'll do for today. Hopefully I'll get a chance to sort out my usual hobby review post between now and the new year, but for now, I'll just say Merry Christmas to you all and see you soon! 

Catching up

I know I vanished a little after my last post, but don't worry, my hobby mojo hasn't evaporated already! 

I'd love to say that I was just waiting until I finished up some stuff before showing it off, but honesty I'm just really terrible at finding the time and focus to write up blog posts.

As ever, I'll try and get better at posting in sometime resembling a timely manner, but for now have some nice photos of finished models to distract you from my failings:

I'm continuing my push towards the launch of Old World and managed to turn out an entire regiment of Executioners in the space of about two weeks. I'm really impressed with how they turned out and I have to say that the sight of a fully ranked Regiment makes me both nostalgic and excited for the return of Fantasy!

I haven't neglected my other projects, but there's far too much to go through in one post. I'll just show you what I've been working on in the past few days and try to keep things up to date in future:

I actually managed to crank out these three relatively quickly. I've got a Middle Earth event coming up this weekend, but I've been dithering on what to take. I finally decided last week to go with something a bit silly and fun, but I was short a few painted models I needed to make it work. 

I managed to get these done in just a couple of long sessions. They're by no means my best work, but I'm pretty happy with them and they'll do the job.

That's it for today. Like I said, there's a ton of stuff I've gotten finished which I just don't have space to show off. Like I said, I'll try and keep up with things a bit better in future.

For now though, happy hobbying! 

I'm back!

I finally managed to break out of my hobby slump! 

After a few months of doing pretty much nothing, I've actually been able to coax my hobby mojo back into life over the last few weeks. Turns out all I needed to do is jettison 40k from my project pile. 

Despite having a strong start, I've been coming to the conclusion that 10th edition is a bit of a mess and not too fun to play right now, so I've decided to focus on other game systems, such as Heresy and Middle Earth instead. I might wheel back to 40k later once a few more Codexes are out, but honestly I'm having more fun elsewhere atm. 

It did help that I've been able to get quite a few games of 30k in recently. I've even being able to get down to one of the regular Heresy nights at my FLGS, which has got me  super keen to finally sort out my Emperor's Children. 

So yeah, I'm on a real Heresy kick right now. I even found a pretty good deal for a bunch of Heresy Emperor's Children on a FB trade group, which I snapped up pretty quickly:

 There's a lot of work to be done on them, but I was going to be doing some pretty hefty conversion work on them anyway, so it's not too bad. 

It gives me a very solid backbone to build the army around, so I'm going to enjoy working through this lot.

In the meantime though, I decided to work on some Kakophonii to 'get my eye in'.

I really liked how these turned out. They're really a a rebuild/paint of my old 40k Noise Marines, but I think they do the trick and give you an idea of how I want the final army to feel.

They're a bit more '40k' in feel than most 30k EC's you see, but that's kind of the point of the army. It's meant to be a Siege of Terra force. The 3rd Legion fell quicker and faster than most other Legions, so a sprinkling of chaotic nonsense seems fitting. The real trick will be making sure they're still unified enough to pass for a 30k force. 

I'm going to have a lot of fun with this project. I'm very much drawing on 80's/90's Slaanesh models and iconography as an inspiration. So much so I decide to attempt some freehand to jazz them up a bit.

The stripes aren't perfect but not bad for a first attempt I reckon and looks decent enough from a distance. Given the plan for the army, I'll certainly have plenty of chances to practice!

So yeah, just in case you couldn't tell, I'm massively excited to be finally getting this project properly off the ground. Ive actually got a week and a half off work starting today do I'm hoping to really crack on withthis over that time. Wish me luck!

I want to get as much done on this as possible before the new year, as it was confirmed yesterday that Old World will finally be releasing then and I know I'm going to definitely get sucked into that in a big way!

But yeah, I'll post up how I get on this week. It's good to be back on the hobby train again. See you soon! 

I ain't dead!

I've stayed in my hobby funk pretty firmly over over the past few weeks.

I had just been kicking my heels waiting for Epic to release, not really getting anything done. Then the game got delayed, leaving me with nothing to do at all!

I've still been gaming, but not felt too much motivation to actually sit down to build or paint. It's not really that bad. It's good not to force these things. It does feel very weird though considering how productive I normally am. 

I have gotten some really good games in to be fair. I managed to get a 30k game for the first time in ages against a mate a few weeks back. My Fists got a complete kicking from his Night Lords, but it was good to get something other than 40k on the table for once.

I also got a fun game of Age of Sigmar in against another friend at the club yesterday. 

It was looking really scary when his entire Beasts of Chaos force ambushed me turn 1, but I managed to pull it back in the end.

 

I've only played a few games of Sigmar, but it does seem a lot of fun. I don't think it'll ever become my main game, but it's nice to play a game where my Slaaneshi Deamons actually aren't completely terrible!

After that, I actually think I'm starting to feel a few twinges of motivation returning, so I'm hoping that I'll actually be able to bring myself to sit down and do something in the next week or so. I'll have to see how it does. I don't want to move too quickly and spook that elusive motivation away!

Anyway that's all for today. I just wanted to put up a post to show the blog's not dead! Hopefully I'll be back soon, but until next time, happy hobbying! 

In a funk

My hobby seems to be a bit all or nothing atm. After a few weeks of being productive, I've not really touched too much for nearly a month now. I think it's a slight bit of burnout after my blitz of activity in the build up to my last Middle Earth event and the excitement of 10th Edition's release, but also I don't really have anything major to be focusing on right now.

Hopefully the release of Epic in a few weeks will change that, but for now I'm just 'picking' at various projects without actually getting too much done. Real life has kept me pretty busy as well, so I guess that's contributed to it too.

I did finally manage to get some Killa Kans and a Mek done for my Orks this week though.

They're nothing too fancy, but it is nice to call something done. It also keeps up my self-imposed pledge to paint things up before I use them in 10th Edition.

The guns are fully magnetised too, so I'll need to paint up the spares at some point, but for now I'm happy to take the small win and enjoy the feeling of actually getting something finished!

Hopefully I'll break out of my funk more fully soon, but until then happy hobbying! 

Hobby Adventures

It's been a strange couple of weeks for me in the hobby. 

First of all, I'm happy to report that I managed to finish up the last of the Corsairs I needed for my event, embracing the 'good enough' mantra I talked about last post:

They came out pretty well in my opinion. Reasonably high tabletop standard, with a bit of extra effort put into Dalamyr, but nothing too fancy.

I had a really fun time at the event too. I met some great people and it was pretty excellent to be playing some Middle Earth again after several months of mostly 40k. Definitely going to have to find some time to get some more games in at some point!

That time might get a little squeezed though, as I've picked up a new game! After years of grumbling about what GW did to the Old World, a mate of mine down the local club has finally convinced me to give Age of Sigmar a try!

To be fair, I've been oggling the Hedonites range ever since it came out and I've been warming towards the fluff for a few years now, so I figured I'd give it a go using my existing Slaanesh Deamons army for 40k. Turns out it's surprisingly fun! It was actually the most fun I'd had playing with my Deamons for years! 

So I'm an Age of Sigmar player now. It certainly won't become the main game that I play, but it'll definitely scratch my Fantasy itch for a while, at least until Old World eventually comes out.

I needed some Mortals to go with my Deamons, so ended up picking up the Hedonites Vanguard box when when I went to collect the Leviathan box last weekend.

My excited mood was a little soured by just how fiddly and awkward the Blissbarbs were to build. They were *very* CAD designed and took me nearly six hours just to build this lot, but I persevered. 

I'm really looking forward to getting some paint on these. I'll have to hurry things along though, as GW dropped a massive bombshell over the weekend that is likely to suck up a lot of my hobby time and budget.

Epic's back next month!

I knew it was coming, but didn't expect it quite so soon. I'm a massive fan of Titanicus already, so I'm going to be buying into this in a big way! That means I need to definitely clear some space in my backlog.

So yeah, there's been some big swerves in what I'm doing, but I'm pretty psyched for the hobby again and feeling pretty good right now.

Watch this space, I'll be back soon! 

The Art of 'Good Enough'

I've been in a bit of hobby existential crisis this week. 

You see I've been painting up some new Corsairs I've got for a local Middle Earth event next week, which I got from a quite excellent 3rd party company called Medbury Miniatures.

They really are lovely sculpts. They put GW's Corsairs to shame. They're up there with Forge World in terms of quality I'd say and were a dream to paint up. 

The problem came when I went back to start doing a spruce up on my existing Corsair army. GW's models are bad. Not just in comparison, but just objectively. They're an older plastic kit and it shows. The details are lumpy and shallow, with the mold clearly wearing out. 

I consider myself to be a pretty decent painter, but this is the best I could do with them. 

Of course my pedantic, autism-driven brain went into overdrive. The difference just seem too much to reconcile and I immediately set to work trying to apply more highlights in an attempt to bridge the gap between the two sets of models.

Then I stopped, put my paintbrush down and started thinking. Why did I need to do that? Not every model needs to be a work of art.

If it looks decent enough on the table, why worry too much about it? Seems a bit obvious when I write it down like this, but I am guilty of going overboard with my painting projects.

Of course it's good to be trying to improve my skills, but it doesn't need to be done with everything I do. I can probably get away with not going in to that third or fourth highlight on trooper 5 of a 30-strong force. It's still going to look decent on the gaming table. 

You're probably thinking "Congratulations, you've just discovered Tabletop Standard painting", but I've always had a perfectionist streak when it comes to painting, so it's good to think about it every now and then. 

Moving forward, I'm going be trying to not worry so much about achieving the perfect result on each individual figure and focus more on how units appear as a whole. That lets me save the more involved stuff for characters and other centrepiece models.

I'll see how I get on with that. It might even have a positive effect on my endless backlog!

On a side note, I also had my first game of 10th Edition 40k this week. It's hard to judge too much from just a single game, but it seems pretty fun and plays much smoother than 9th ever did, even though I need to shake up what I'm running with my Orks quite a bit. 

I've got another game scheduled for Monday, so I'll be able to get a better idea of things then, but if I can play the game without the rules bloat and mental fatigue which plagued 9th, it'll be excellent and keep me far more excited for the game than I've been for a long while. 

Oh and I'm picking up my Leviathan box in the morning, so that's fun too!

Until next time, Happy Hobbying! 

I did it!

I've reached quite a cool moment on my hobby.. For the first time in the 20ish years I've been playing, I've actually got a fully painted 2000 point army for 40k!

I've collected a lot of armies over the years, but I've never been all that disciplined in getting them painted. I've always gotten distracted by other projects.

Having taken part in a 40k league at the local club for the last six months though, it's helped me focus quite considerably.

It helped that Orks are quite fun to paint and I chose quite a simple paint scheme. It still took me the better part of two years since restarting the army to get there though. 

Just in time for 10th Edition to screw with the points!

It's fine though, it gives me a solid pool of finished models to draw on to keep to my goal of only playing with painted models in 10th, with a fair few more that could be finished quite quickly if I want to use something different, so it's onwards and upwards from here!

Next up is getting some Corsairs ready for a Middle Earth event at the end of the month, then tackling the Leviathan box, so that should be a lot of fun. 

Until next time, happy hobbying! 

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! 

Year of the Backlog (So far at least!)

I'm quite proud of myself right now. So far I haven't bought a single model in 2023. It may not sound like much of an achievement, but I'm normally terrible for picking up random things on a whim. That might go some way to explaining why I've struggled so much with my backlog until recently! 

Honestly though, I feel I've reached a point where I don't need to be actively buying models. I've got pretty much everything I want for my current armies and projects. Sure there's stuff I'd like to get at some point (especially that Vashtorr, it's very nice!), but I've got plenty to be getting on with for now.

Talking of which, this is what I managed to get painted in January:

Not the most productive January I've ever had, but not bad going considering I've had Pokemon Regionals followed by a bout of illness. Every little counts when it comes to model painting anyway!

Apologies that I haven't shown them off on here as I've finished them. I've just been ridiculously busy. I'll try and be a bit more diligent with that kind of thing in future though. For now, here's the Nobz I finished tonight:

I'm almost achingly close to having a fully painted Ork army. There's only got 5 more Nobz and 10 Beast Snaggas to go and I'll have my 1500 point League list fully painted! I'm hoping to get them done before that kicks off in a month or so.

Before that though, I need to spend some time with Middle Earth, getting some Orc spears done before an event at the end of the month. That's the other thing I've been working on this evening:

They shouldn't take me too long tbh, but I've got to get them done by the 25th, along with Halbarad for my Grey Company. Luckily event deadlines tend to do wonders for my productivity. I might even get time to do some Rangers I've been meaning to get done for ages too!

That's all for today though, so I'll leave it at that and hopefully post some more soon. 

 How's your 2023 hobbying going so far? 

Starting 2023 right.

I've had a pretty solid start to 2023. Carrying on the momentum from the end of last year, my motivation for painting has been sky high. Its not been the most focused, with me doing a little bit on a lot of different stuff, but enthusiasm counts for a lot!

I did manage to get my first models of the year finished though, Its not much, just five Kommandos, but I'm pretty happy with them.

They look pretty decent I reckon. Obviously they're converted rather than using the actual kit, but they do the job nicely. I've been trying to focus on just getting models ready for the table with my Orks, rather than fussing too much over the details. I did toy with doing some freehand camo patterns on some of them, but tbh they look decent enough as is.

Beyond that, I've also been prepping a bunch of stuff for painting using the 'Slapchop' method - aka drybrushing some zenithal preshading onto a load more Orks! 

Slapchop certainly makes army painting a lot easier. I tend to go over the contrast afterwards with a few highlights and extra layers, but it makes my life so much easier by cutting out several stages of initial work, which has a tendency to sap my enthusiasm for a project. I far prefer doing the finishing stages and details! 

Tbh I may not get all those finished at once, but at least I'm going to be able to dip in and out whenever I feel like getting something ready for a game, which should lend itself to getting more finished overall. 

This flurry of hobby activity just goes to show how much of a motivator it can be to simply get some games in. As I mentioned in my last post, the local gaming club has moved their meeting nights from Thursdays to Mondays, which has meant that I've gotten more 40k games in the first two weeks of this year than in the entirety of 2022! A pretty good achievement I reckon. I'm also looking at taking part in the league that's starting soon, so there'll be plenty more to come!

So yeah I've started the year with a pretty good hobby mojo. Hopefully I can keep it up as the year goes on. Only time will tell though. Until next time, happy hobbying!