I guess I'm painting Emperor's Children now...

Its been a few weeks since I've posted on here. Honestly I've just been pretty lazy and struggled to focus enough to write anything. 

I had fun at the Old World event though. I had three great games and my birthday luck seemed to be with me as I somehow came 6th! I did get some pics, but in the interest of not bogging down this post, I won't upload them here. You can check out the blog's Facebook page if you want to see!

I thought I'd be having a bit of a rest hobby-wise after the marathon of getting nearly 2000pts of Dark Elves ready, but it turns out I've been pushed in a direction I wasn't expecting in a pretty major way.

A friend of mine wanted a game of 4th edition 40k the week after the event. It's no secret I highly dislike 10th ed, so seemed a fun change of pace. Also, like most Chaos players of a certain age, I absolutely loved the 3.5 codex, so I relished the opportunity to break that out and have some fun with it.

We had a blast playing and immediately scheduled another one a few weeks later. That sent me into a frenzy of painting Emperor's Children, a project which I hadn't touched since getting burned out playing them in the local club league a few months after their codex launched last year.

I'd converted up some Havocs a while back, so I finished those up. Havocs with Sonic Weapons haven't been an option since the 3.5 codex, so it was a great opportunity to actually use them for their intended purpose instead of needing to do 'counts as'!

These were a joy to paint up, even if a bit slow with all the freehand and patterning I like to layer onto every model. My attitude is that if your eyes don't hurt just from looking at them, they're not really Emperor's Children!

It feels so good to be working on the army again. They're my favourite legion and have been my main army in both Heresy and 40k for so long. I really need to get them finished. Finally finding a way to play 40k which I actually enjoy has definitely turbo-charged my enthusiasm for them again!

I even made some new models for my 3rd Legion. After our first game I converted a new Champion for one of my units.

May I present Dio Kyrios, 'The Denied'

He's actually got an illegal loadout for 10th, so he's exclusively for my 4th edition games. It feels weird to be building a new model for a ruleset which hasn't been current for about 20 years now!

He got the title of the 'The Denied' after he spent the entirety of his first game fruitlessly trying to get himself and his unit into combat with an enemy Tactical Squad, who very unsportingly kept backing away, before watching him get gunned down in a hail of Plasma Cannon fire!

All good fun though and I'm looking forward to him having his revenge next time!

On top of that, I've also got a pair of Rhinos on my hobby desk right now.

They're looking distinctly un-Slaaneshi at the moment, but that will change soon enough. I'm going to be going for the classic black and pink look for them, something which I haven't used a whole lot in my army, but it should be pretty quick to do and adds some variety across the army.

Obviously all this is helping my backlog clearance massively too, but really I'm just enjoying this massive outpouring of creativity and productivity. I'm hoping to get these done in the next few days, then I've got a few Necromunda Weirdos to do for the club campaign. After that I'll turn my attention back to my EC's. I won't go as far as to say I'm going to get the whole army done this year, but I'm fully intending to roll with it for however long my fickle attention span lasts!

I'll let you know how I get on. Until next time though, happy hobbying!

More Elves!

I've spent the last few days finishing up the Dragon and Dark Pegasus I need for this weekend’s Old World event. 

It actually ended up being a lot easier than I expected, finishing them both over the course of three long-ish painting sessions. I think the rider actually took more effort to do than the Dragon itself!

I really like the conversion I made for the Sorceress on Peg. I had originally planned for it to be simply a case of sticking the second rider from the Dragon kit on a kitbashed mount, but it it didn’t fit the saddle very well, so the project evolved massively until I’d basically cut up, filed, trimmed and rebuilt every part of the model!

It was a hell of a lot of  work and honestly I’d have probably been better off just giving in and buying an old metal Morathi model from ebay, but at least I’ve gotten a fun and unique model out of it!

While both models are far from perfect, I think they look decent enough and fit nicely with the rest of the army. Honestly, I actually don’t think the Dragon could have ever lived up to the image I had in my head for it. It’s been sitting on my hobby desk half finished for so long, I’ve had plenty of time to imagine how it’s going to end up. Done is better than perfect in this case!

That’s the bulk of my Dark Elves done now, or at least everything I want to be getting finished in the near future. I’ve still got a couple of units and characters I need get round to, but my hobby ADHD is definitely nudging me looking for something else to do, so it's time to switch things up for a while.

 I think I’m going to try and get some good pictures of the army as a whole at the event this weekend, then call this chunk of my backlog finished. The army is looking better than it ever has and I’m really proud of what I’ve managed to get done in just a few short months. I’ve even managed to break into positive painting figures in the process!

I’m not sure where my backlog-busting journey is going to take me next, but I’m feeling super energised right now. I’m on holiday this week too, so hopefully I’ll be able to launch myself into something fun. You’ll have to check back later to see what that might be though.

Until then though, happy hobbying!

Back to the Elves

I'm a little proud of this one. Not the models themselves, more the fact that I've managed to actually swing my attention back to an ongoing army project.

It's normally something I really struggle with. Once I’ve gotten the dopamine hit from completing a few units, my Hobby ADHD and actual Neurospicy distraction usually kicks in and I don't return to it for months, if at all. It's most of the reason I have so few painted, playable armies, despite having been in the hobby for over 20 years now!

The fact that I've got another event coming up has definitely helped, but I'm still taking it as a win!

So yeah, I've managed to get another unit of Dark Riders done across the last couple of evenings:

I also started on the Dragon I mentioned last time. Not too shabby a start, although still a way to go on it:

I'm hoping to harness my current streak of productivity and get him done by early next week, to avoid the usual last minute rush to sort stuff out, but we'll see what happens there. I'll keep you updated!

Another bunch of weirdos

I've really gotten into the groove with these random Inquisition dudes. I managed to finish up a few more over the last week or so, including the Inquisitor conversion I built in 2015!

It's so nice to be able to finally get these finished in a way which does justice to my original vision of them. It really shows me how far my standard of painting has come over the years. There's no way I would have managed this back in the day!

That said, I just realised as I'm writing that I forgot to finish off the coils on the Plasma Pistol and the lenses on the Servo Skull. Oops! I'll have to fix that at some point!

Just a quick update for today. I wanted to post this before I move into prep for my next Old World event in two weeks. Should be less of a slog this time, with just a Dragon rider and a few horses to do. I'm quite looking forward to it though, especially as the Dragon was a present from a friend the Christmas before last. 

Anyway, happy hobbying and I'll catch you next post!

A bunch of weirdos

After the slog of getting my Dark Elves finished, I wanted to paint something quick and simple before diving into my next big project, but wasn't sure what. I always have a bunch of random unpainted or part-painted models scattered round my desk, so I literally grabbed the first one I saw and spent an afternoon finishing it up.

It was a Servitor from my old Inquisition army, which naturally led to me digging out a bunch of my other old Henchmen models and getting them up to scratch.

Not bad for a day or so worth of work! I kind of got myself into a groove after that, so I kept grabbed a few more random bits and pieces and knocked them out too. 

That's a fresh Wyld Runner and a few Phelynxes for my Eschers, swiftly followed by a pair of Dead Marsh Spectres for Middle Earth.

It's felt pretty good just going with the flow and tackling little micro projects like this. I think I'm going to stick with it for a week or two. Every model done is another out my backlog and it's great to have some variety. I do need to turn my attention back to Elves soon though for another event, but that can wait a little bit.

So yeah, a quick but fun one today. I'll hopefully be back soon with more!

Pretty awesome moment!

I've been so busy getting my Dark Elves sorted for the event I mentioned in my new year post, I haven't had time to post updates on here!

Well I managed to finish up what I needed to, even though it was a bit of a scramble at the end. Obviously it's brilliant that I got the event list done in time,  but what's even better is that it led into a pretty big moment for me:

I can finally say that for the first time since i started the army 16 years ago, I have a fully painted 3000pt Dark Elf army!

I've still got loads to do and add to it, but I'm so happy right now. I bought some of these models when I was 18! Dark Elves have always been my favourite fantasy army and I've always had a very strong idea of what I wanted the force to be like. Long time readers of this blog will know that the army has been reworked, stripped and redone a few times over the years in pursuit of that vision. This is the first time it's all come together painted up together at once, to a standard I'm really happy with. It only took nearly two decades, three editions, the death of the setting and subsequent resurrection to achieve!

Honestly it's stuff like this which really cuts to the core of what my backlog busting is about: finishing up projects I keep getting wildly distracted from. Hopefully I can have a few more moments like this in tbe next few months!

The event itself was really good fun. I walked away with a single win out of three games, which is pretty much what I was hoping for. I met sonevgreat people and had a great time, so a win all round.

Not sure what what I'm going to work on next. I need a bit of a break after the slog of my Elves, so I'll probably do something small as a pallete cleanser. I'll see where the mood takes me.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

Goodbye 2025. Hello 2026!

I’ve not been in a very productive mood recently. I don’t know what the issue has been, but I’ve been struggling to sit down and focus on getting anything done for more than about ten minutes at a time. So after a few weeks of chipping away at them, I finally managed to get some Dark Riders done for my Dark Elves just before Christmas. I was really hoping to get the post about them up before now, but it seems that my low executive function decided to be a bastard again, so I’m going to have to roll them into this end of year post.

So yeah, these are my newest Dark Riders. They weren’t planned to be my next thing, but they were in my backlog anyway and I’ve signed up for an Old World event in January, so they got bumped up my list of priorities.

I reckon they turned out alright. Certainly not my best work, but they look decent enough as a unit and help to fill out my Core units. I’ve got a bunch of other bits to get done too. I’ll cover that later though, as that’ll be in my plans for early 2026.

So those are my last models of 2025, which means it’s time for my traditional end of year group photo!

As you can no doubt see, I actually got a fair amount done this year, raking up a respectable 278 points. It's certainly my lowest total since 2018, but when it's laid out like that, it actually turned out to be a lot more than I thought! I think it’s because I painted a ton of infantry, which means lots of models, but lower points totals. I’m pretty happy with that. Its a huge chunk moved out of my backlog, even with my hefty purchases of Emperor Children and Ork stuff earlier in the year and I managed to paint for four different game systems across the year!

It's been a pretty good year of gaming too. I’ve dipped back into 40k in a big way, soend 6 months playing in my local club’s league and following summer tournament. It was good fun and somehow I ended up finishing in 4^th place. Unfortunately it also reminded me of absolutely everything I hate about the current edition of the game, so I’m probably not touching it again at least until 11^th Edition comes out. Hopefully itll refresh the game enough to draw me back in. If not, I've got plenty of other systems to grab my attention. On a much more positive note, I’ve become part of the committee running the club and been hosting a bunch of ‘niche games’ nights, which is basically anything that’s not 40k. The main one has been Necromunda campaign and it’s turning out to be really fun. Everyone seems to be having a blast and everything seems to be kicking off, so I consider that to be a roaring success!

So that was a brief look back on my hobby year. It’s not the most exhaustive, but I’ve been typing for quite a while now and I only wanted to do a fairly short post anyway. 

I really don’t have many solid plans going forward into 2026, beyond continuing to chip away on my backlog and getting about 700 more points of Dark Elves ready for the event in January. After that, it’s just a matter of going where the inspiration takes me in terms of what I work on and what I do.

 I’ve been really enjoying being in ‘Backlog Busting’ mode, so I might see how long I can stay in that groove, even beyond my +300 point goal.  I can’t see myself being able to refrain from model purchases all year, but it’ll certainly be fun trying!

So yeah, that’s my end of year rundown. Feels nice to put one out after skipping it last year. Even nicer is the fact that I actually managed to get it out before the New Year for once! Hopefully I’ll be back soon with more lovely progress to show you all soon, but until then, I hope you all have a fantastic New Year!

What are your hobby plans for 2026?

 Whatever they are, happy hobbying and I’ll catch you next year!

A whole bunch of 'Munda

I haven't posted for a few weeks, but don't worry. I haven't fallen off the blogging wagon already, I've just not had a whole lot of energy to paint, so I've had nothing to show off.

Then I hit a huge productive streak in the last couple of days, so I suddenly have enough to show off out of basically nowhere. It's weird how the hobby motivation ebbs and flows sometimes!

As I predicted last time, after the slog of finishing up my Orks, I turned my attention to Necromunda for some low effort wins.

I got the set of Malstrain Genestealers from my Secundus box done over a couple of evenings, despite not having any particular use for them in my immediate future:

I think they turned out brilliantly tbh, far beyond my wildest expectations! So much so that I'm actually tempted to get some more of them, as I'm a little sad the project is over already!

They were mostly done using watered down washes, then picking out a few few interest points like eyes and blisters, then adding some Tesseract Glow to their bases. I probably spent longer waiting for washes to dry than actually painting them!

I was on a bit of a roll after those, with my creative juices flowing nicely. I decided to use that to finally get my Orrus Spyrers from the same box knocked out too, meaning that I can cross off everything from a boxed set from my backlog. A bit of a rarity!

Anyway, I got those done pretty quickly too. Here's the results:

I don't think they turned out quite as well as the 'Stealers, but i think that's more an issue with the models having no clear focal point than anything else.

I went for a metallic scheme with them, based loosely on Iron Man's colours. I've had the idea knocking about since I bought them to have each Spyrer type be based on a different Marvel super hero, so this is the start of that. I'll buy the others later, but I think this makes a pretty good start to that plan.

So that's a good chunk knocked off my backlog, netting me 21 points towards my total. I'm not sure where I'm going to turn my attention next, but I should actually get some decent free time over the next few weeks, so I'm expecting to getting a good chunk of hobby done. We'll see if that actually happens though.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

Off to a decent start

The great de-backlogging is off to a pretty good start. I managed to get the last of my Speed Freaks units for my Orks done over the last week, with a Shokkjump Dragster and trio of Deffkoptas ticked off my To Do list!

The Shokkjump in particular I'm really glad turned out well. I converted it basically from scratch using a kids toy i found in a charity shop as as base. It fits in pretty well I reckon.

The Boomdakka I showed off in my last post, but decided to photograph it again, as I love it so much.

The Koptas are the last of a batch of 15 I've been painting recently for the summer tournament at my local club. I ended in 4th Place, which really wasn't bad considering I'd hardly played 40k for the better part of two years! I originally joined as a way to boost numbers and have an excuse to paint some Orks, but it turns out there's a lot of armies out there which can't cope with massed whirly death machines being slammed down the field turn 1!

As I said, these are the last of my 'Need to do' Ork stuff. There's still plenty of Ork stuff in my backlog, but they're less of a priority. Im going to take a break from painting green for a while and probably turn my attention towards some Necromunda stuff. There's a few bits I want to get done for the local campaign I've started running and most of it should be relatively low effort pallete cleansers. 

I'm definitely finding it easier to focus now i have a goal to aim for and a place to document it all here on the blog, so I'm hoping my productive streak continues.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

Back from the dead!

I haven't posted on here for over a year. Most of the reason for that was the dwindling or non existent interactions on my posts over the last few years. Compared to how active and vibrant the hobby blogosphere was 10-15 years ago, it just felt like i was shouting into the void. As you can imagine, it kind of killed my enthusiasm for posting.

But now in a fitting move for Halloween, I'm bringing it lurching back to life!

I'm still under no illusions as to how dead a medium blogs are in this age of social media, but I figure that posting on here regularly again is the best way to document the big self-imposed hobby challenge I'm about to embark on. If there's anyone here reading this, then you can come along for the ride. Say hi if you are!

 I mentioned a hobby challenge, so you might be wondering what I'm up to? Well, if you've read this blog over the years, you'll know that I've been locked in a never-ending war with my massive pile of shame, tracked using my points system.

Well that backlog's gotten a bit out of hand again and it's driving me completely insane, especially after finding a ton of half-finished projects when clearing out the shed the other week. As a result, I've put myself on another model purchase ban for a little while, but with a bit of a twist this time. Rather than just doing damage control and barely pulling my head above water like I normally do, I want to build up a bit of headroom with it this time and make a meaningful dent in my ridiculous pile of unfinished stuff.

With that in mind, I've set an end goal to work towards, rather than just stopping once I'm in positive figures. I want to reach +300 painting points by next summer, from my current total of -115. Its a bit of arbitrary goal, but my thinking is that it should put a hell of a dent in my 'to do' list, whilst not being so impossible to reach that i get discouraged.

Next summer as an end date is a good and (in my mind at least!) well-reasoned goal though. All rumours and logic place 11th edition 40k as coming out then. I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that I'm not going to buy anything when that drops, so that seems a good point to have a healthy, much-reduced backlog ready for!

I'm also not going full cold turkey on my hobby purchases. I'm going to treat myself every now and then, again mostly so I don't get discouraged. I've been cataloguing everything I need to paint, dividing it by army and game system, then further sub-dividing it, listing the stuff which I most want or need to get done. Once everything on one of those sub-lists is finished, I'm going to treat myself to something I want, with the caveat that it's got to match that category. 

For example, for my Necromunda stuff, I've got the following on my 'Need to do' list:

- Secundus Genestealers

- Spyrers

- Necromunda Weirdos 

- Arbites 

- Escher cats

Once those are done, I can treat myself to a Forgeworld character pack I've had my eye on for a while. Likewise, once I've cleared my Saturnine box from my list, I can can buy something for my Thousand Sons.

This might seem like I'm making this far too complicated, but ive learned over the years that my Autistic brain needs structure to stuff like this to keep me focused. This is basically a very long-winded way for saying I'm going to hopefully have a very productive 9 months or so of hobby ahead of me!

To start me off, I've been working on my Orks the past few weeks. They're by far the shortest category on my list and the ones I've been lost engaged with, having been playing a summer league and tourney at my local club. I've painted most of a Speed Freaks army over that time, with just a few things left to finish up.

Most recently I've gotten a Boomdakka Snazzwagon, converted from a Taurox done:

That's been sitting unfinished in various forms since 2017, so its good to get it finished at last! It was originally bought for my Inquisition, but I haven't done anything with that army since 8th Edition, so it got a new home my Deathskulls. Reckon it turned out pretty well. It was hard to get a good photo as it doesnt fit in my light box, but hopefully it looks good anyway!

The other thing I finished was some Rogue Trader Boyz i bought off a mate on a whim a few months back:

I didn't really have a use for them, I just have a fondness for old sculpts and poor impulse control. That probably goes a way to explaining my need to do this backlog-busting challenge! These were great fun to work on though and will probably end up finding a home in my Kommandos, which need a few extra bodies.

Next up will probably be a converted Shokkjump Dragster and some Deffkoptas to finish off the Ork part of my 'Need to do' list. I'll keep you updated on how I do.

Its good to be back!

Happy Hobbying!

A short break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trolls!

Despite being busy at work and the frankly ridiculous heat in the last couple of days, I've managed to get a little bit of hobby done.

I now have a solid goal to be working towards, which has really helped my focus. I signed up for a local Old World event at the start of October, so I need a fully painted army done by then. Deadlines focus my hobby ADD brilliantly, which is why I've got so many fully painted Middle Earth armies!

I decided to cheat on this one a little though and run Troll Horde. I only need to paint about 20 models for that! On the other hand, I get to paint a bunch of cool Trolls, so it's all good.

Forgive the cluttered hobby desk in the background. I didn't have the time to set up my light box for them:

They turned put alright I reckon. The poor light doesn't show them off as well as it could, but I'll get a better picture when I've got this full batch of 13 done.

I even managed to sneak in a little freehand to taint one of our local dwarf players, in the form of a pilfered banner!

Not bad I'd say, although I could definitely do better. It's been a while since I attempted anything like that.

Just another 8 Trolls to go and then I've got the Hag and Wyvern Boss to do. I'm chugging along nicely I'd say!

That's all for today though. I'll bring you more soon.

It's time to beat my backlog!

It's a bit of a grandiose title, but I'm determined to finally do something about the massive backlog of projects I've got building up.

It's probably no exaggeration to say that if I never bought another model again, I could go my entire life without running out of things to paint!

 

Honestly it's a bit ridiculous. Problem is, I get massive hobby ADD far more often than I see projects through to the end. Made worse by the fact I play so many game systems.

 

So I've decided to put in a bit more effort over the next few months to try and clear out some of the hobby clutter.

It's not really going to be a hobby purchase ban like I've done in the past, more like just being a bit more conscious about what I'm spending and trying not buy stuff I want for my armies until I've finished a chunk of stuff related to them first.

A good example are the Trolls I got done this week:

Not the best of pictures I'm afraid. Still working on how to get the best from my new phone camera. My point is though that I've got another 7 of these to get finished. I want to get a Troll Hag to go with them, but I'm not going to do that until all 12 are finished.

Sounds pretty simple and obvious when I put it like that, but I'm hoping it's a good way to try and tame the chaos and poor impulse control which tends to prevail in my hobby decisions.

I'm also going to try and post on here again more often as I've let this go to hell a bit recently. I've reached the stage where I'm pretty sure I'm the only seeing it on here, but it is nice to have a hobby log like this. I've been running this blog for 15 years, I can't stop now!

Anyway there's the update of what I'm up to. Apologies for the big gap between posts and I'll hopefully be back soon.

 Happy hobbying!

I'm back!! (hopefully)

So as usual, I've been utterly terrible at keeping up with this blog. I've been in a bit of a hobby funk recently that I've just gotten over, so hopefully I'll be getting a bit more to show you guys soon.

I did manage to get these guys done for my AoS Slaanesh though:

These Blissbarb Archers have been sitting unfinished on my desk for about a year now. There was so much detail on them that i was a little daunted so i kept putting off painting them.

I recently saw a YouTube video though that made them look a lot simpler than I thought, so i decided to give it a go. It certainly wasn't as easy as they made it look! I'm glad i gave it a try though, as in my opinion they're some of the nicest results I've achieved on anything for ages!

Posting them up here has actually made me realise I could probably do with going over the base trims with another layer, but that's easily fixed. 

I particularly love the skin tone I achieved for them. It really gives a nice, unnaturally pale look to the whole unit which I'll definitely be transferring to other projects.

All in all these guys have really given my hobby mojo the kick up the arse it needed and I'm pretty psyched to get working on other bits. I definitely want to see if i can get more of my Hedonites churned out whilst I'm in the right mood for it, but I've also got some Old World bits to be working on too. I'll post more once ive decided what it'll be.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

Savage things

So after my last post I was raring to go with hobby and get a load done. My body had other ideas though and I spent the next week and a half feeling extremely ill. Bloody typical!

Now I'm in the mend though, I've not only been able to get a couple more games of Old World in, but I've managed to sit down and do some hobby for the first time in a couple of weeks. 

Despite their absolutely abysmal performance in the game last night, I decided that my Boar Boyz were next up on my hobby desk. 

I'm actually really quite happy with how they turned out, considering it was just a few hours work.

 Weirdly, despite appearances, the Boars took longer than the Boys to do, needing several layers of drybrushing and washes, whereas the riders were mostly Contrast, with a few strategic highlights. I'm clearly starting to get get the method locked down for the army scheme, as it was a breeze to work through.

I think the purple really does make the whole thing pop. I'll definitely be integrating it more into the rest of the army as I go along.

That's it for today though. Hopefully this burst of progress will propel me forward and I'll be have more to show soon. I'm definitely riding this Old World kick right now, so no doubt it'll be something of that ilk, but only time will tell what specifically that might be. 

Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Old World Shenanigans

Despite my best of intentions, I've been pretty lazy with posting so far this year. 

January is usually quite a productive month for me, as I normally work a bit less as things calm down from the Christmas rush, but it turned out to be an unexpectedly busy month this time round, between work and Pokemon Regionals. Then in February I just haven't found the time to sit down and post anything.

Luckily I actually got a ton of stuff done, albeit more at the start of January than past couple of week. I got the entire core of my Orcs and Goblins done for Old World.

 Turns out that a looming game release after three years of procrastinating was a fantastic motivator to get shit done!

I still need to finish up the Squigs, Chariot and a few extra dudes, but I still got a huge chunk done. It was mostly done using Contrast and speed painting techniques, but they look pretty great when ranked up, so I'm pretty happy with them. 

I'm actually really proud of how my Great Shaman/Wurrzag came out. It was only about three hours work, but I absolutely loved the result!

I wasn't originally planning to use a big Orc Shaman, preferring Gobbos when it comes to magic. He was just part of the big lot I bought ages ago, but I like the paint job on him so much I'm definitely going to try to squeeze him into a few lists.

On top of my Orcs, I also dug out my old Dark Elves and gave them some fancy new spaced movement trays to get them compatible with the new edition:

They still need a lot of work to bring them up to a good standard, plus I built/rebuilt a load of monsters to go with them, but I'll cover that in a later post. This is already getting pretty long already and I also wanted to show off a few pics from the games I've had already. 

I've been having an absolutely fantastic time in just the three games I've played so far. It's not just the nostalgia talking, there's just something about it which revs me up far more than anything has recently, especially compared to the latest incarnation of 40k.

Heresy and Middle Earth have come close, but honestly I can see this becoming the main game I'll be playing for a while, even more so than it did back in the day. It's incredibly good fun.

Anyway I'm going end this post here and try and be back soon with another, now I've gotten caught up. I'm actually off work this week, so hopefully I'll be able to get some stuff done which I can show off. It is nice to finally get a post out though. I do enjoy posting here, it's just not as easy to keep up as it used to be. 

Anyway, until next time, happy hobbyingl

Goodbye 2023, hello 2024

Happy New Year to you all!

Im a little later than usual with my end of year hobby review post, but at least I'm here now. Welcome to my annual hobby ramble! 

I actually had a really good hobby year in 2023. I joined a new gaming group at the start of the year, so I've been gaming a lot more than I normally do.

They're a great bunch of guys and I've had some really fun games, including participating in a 40k League and trying to introduce them to smaller games like Middle Earth and Heresy. 

On the whole it's been pretty successful and I've had a blast. It's also given me a huge boost to my mental health and a good excuse to get out and be more sociable, so I consider that a win all round. 

I'm honestly little shocked at just how much I've been playing. I've always been far more of a hobbyist than a gamer, but it's been rather excellent getting out and getting some serious gaming in. In previous years I was able to get one game a month if I was lucky. 2023 saw me play 55 games. That's an average of more than one a week! 

It did feel like I'd gotten less stuff painted as a result though, as I've been playing instead of painting on my main night off every week. Turns out though that when I gathered everything together for a photo, I was very wrong:

That's a pretty massive chunk of hobby progress!

 I still thought it was a bit less than previous years, but it turns out I'd pulled out 454 points of hobby progress, which was actually a few points up on last year. I guess I'm just really crap at judging these things! 

I guess I was a little fooled by the fact I've been working on a lot of points-heavy big things, but I certainly won't complain. All hobby progress is good progress! 

It has helped that I've been trying to only game with fully painted models whenever possible. There's nothing like wanting to try something new to give me the push to crank out some fresh models! 

So moving on, where am I going in 2024? Well I've decided to keep it simple this year. At least to begin with I want to get a few existing projects finished, like my 30k Emperor's Children and Imperial Fists, as well as keep working on my Old World armies. 

That latter one is likely to occupy most of my immediate attention, especially with pre orders having been announced. I'm just so excited to have Warhammer Fantasy back! 

I reckon most of January will be consumed with mass production of Orcs and Gobbos. I've got a good method down for them now, so I should be able to zoom through a ton of them, it's just a matter of putting in the time. 

I'm kicking myself a little at having let my Old World projects slip so much, even though I've known the game is coming for four years. I was hoping to have a couple fully playable armies ready to go for launch, but now I'm running out of time, especially as I know a lot of the local players are chomping at the bit to dive in with it. 

I've just got to try and play catch up as best I can. At least it'll keep me busy and motivated! 

Apart from that, i just want to generally focus on getting stuff done for a while. I'm quite comfortably in positive painting points now, but my backlog is still pretty ridiculous, so a bit of a pause on model buying outside of Old World makes a lot of sense for a few months. Quite honestly, I could probably not buy a single model for the next few years and still not run out of stuff to be working on! 

The first few months of the year is normally a good time for me to focus on my backlog anyway, as the hours at work go way down, so I don't have a huge amount of disposable income. It also gives me more free time for hobby, so it just makes sense to focus that for a little while. 

Whatever I end up doing, I do want to try and post on here more regularly. I'm fully aware that in 2024, hobby blogs are a pretty dead form of media. Social media is definitely where it's at for online hobby. There's something very satisfying about maintaining this blog though, so I want to keep it going as long as I can, even if noone's really paying attention to it.

So that's it for this year's round up. It's a little less structured and wandering than usual, but you don't come here for concise thoughts anyway, so it's all good.

Have a fantastic 2024 and I'll catch you all soon! 

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!