Projects between projects

Carrying on from my last post, I'm really starting to get back into the swing of things. I'm still plugging away at my Emperor's Children, but I've got some other bits to show you.

I actually did these over the course of the past few weeks but I forgot to talk about them last time. 

First up, I unearthed my old Dark Elves when I was cleaning the other week. 

I was planning to have a go at getting these back into some kind of usable condition this year anyway, but I hadn't made any specific plans yet. Finding them really sparked the urge to work on them though, so I'm going to be weaving them in between other projects I'm working on.

So far I've managed to spruce up ten Corsairs:

These old metal models are a dream to work with compared to the newer plastic ones. Plus they have so much character to them. Unfortunately they're really expensive to source these days, but I got a fantastic deal on a bunch of them a few years ago. It's almost shameful that it's taken so long for me to paint them up! 

These first ten turned out great I reckon. If I can keep this kind of quality across the army, I'll be exceedingly happy. There's really no rush to get them done though, so I can really take my time with them.

I've got another ten half-finished on top of these, plus another twenty waiting on my to do pile, but I got a little distracted by my Emperor's Children. I'll probably return and finish them up after I do a couple of squads of those. There really is no structure to what I'm working on atm, I'm just drifting wherever my mood takes me, hobby wise. 

Another thing I forgot to mention before is that I built a bunch of terrain. 

I did this mostly to give myself something simple to do whilst I was trying to get my hobby motivation back. I had loads of it laying around from my Conquest subscription, so it felt good to finally be doing something with it.

After a spray of black followed by silver, it's going to be super simple to finish up, so I'm going to be working on that between other projects too. 

I'm finding that having a constant level of low key hobby to do in some form is helping me to stay sane during the lockdown. I think if I had nothing like this to keep me busy, I'd be finding things really difficult right now. Luckily GW reopened their website last week, so I'm no longer in danger of running out of paint! 

Stay safe guys, I'll catch you next time. 

A little bit of craziness.

I started lockdown in a really productive mood. I was posting on here more or less daily and I churned out a ridiculous amount of progress in a short space of time. I think I might have burned myself out a little though, as

I've entered a bit of a slump for the last few weeks

So I've spent a bit of time focusing on other, non hobby-related things and now I've made a return.

Inspired by the GW online preview revealing Saul Tarvitz, I've started working on something I've wanted to do for a while now: 30k Emperor’s Children! 

I've always loved the IIIrd Legion, both before and after the Heresy. I've got a massive 40k force of them and I've always meant to do a 30k version to accompany them.one thing that's always bothered me though is how 'normal' most 30k EC forces end up looking. They went off the rails really, really quickly and were well on their way to resembling their 40k counterparts by even the mid point of the Heresy!

I get that part of the appeal of Horus Heresy gaming is representing Legions before their decline, but that wasn't for me. I've always said that if/when I did my 30k Emperor’s Children force, it would represent them in their full blown crazy phase. I've just never really gotten around to making it a reality until now. 

Well now I've got a lot of free time to kill, I figured I should really give it a go. 

After a couple of hours rummaging through bits boxes, I had my first squad built:

I had so many odds and ends laying about that it was pretty easy to knock something together. The trick was balancing the 30k and 40k elements so they wouldn't look totally out of place on an Age of Darkness battlefield

The main rule which I set myself was No Mutations. I wanted them to look horrific, but mutations really belong in the Scouring and beyond, after they've spent some time in the Eye of Terror. 

After that it was time to get some paint on them. I picked three to do as test models:

These took absolutely ages to finish, but I've got the process down now so the rest should be a bit quicker to do. I'm really happy with how they turned out though and I can't wait to crack on with the rest of the army. I reckon it'll look fantastic and really striking when it's done.

The only thing that's bugging me right now is that I can't get hold of the transfers I want I order to finish them off, due to the Forge World website still being closed. I'll just have to be patient, which tbh isn't my strong point. 

Oh and in case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten about my Inquisition project, I'm just waiting for some hobby supplies to arrive before I get on with it. I'll post it up when those arrive!

Clearing the Decks.

After my last post, I'm looking seriously at how to organise and carry out my Inquisition project. Before I do that though I figured I should start clearing my desk of my current work in progress.

Naturally for me that includes a load of Middle Earth stuff, so I set to getting those done. 

I surprised even myself a little with how much I got done in a night though. Clearly all this government-mandated hobby time is making me more productive! 

Theoden and Merry here are just a couple of dismounts for my all-mounted Rohan force, hence why they've been unfinished for so long. They turned out pretty great considering they were only sprayed white when I started! 

 I'd say it took about 2-3 hours to get them polished off, not including basing, which is bloody good. Normally character pieces take me a week or so. 

Part of the reason I churned them out so quick is that I made a conscious decision to skip the normal blending and finicky details I normally pour into characters. Being dismounts, they won't even hit the board in most games I play with them, so I didn't want to overcomplicate the painting on them. Theoden will see use in my Helm's Deep list, but tbh he looks good enough to pass even then. 

The only thing that's bugging me is that I can't find Theoden's shield anywhere, so he'll have to make do without it until it turns up!

Next up was finishing off a few Elves which I had leftover from my event army a few months ago:

I started painting them back in December, but then my event list changed so they weren't needed and fell by the wayside. It's good to finally have them done. 

The mounted Ranger was a conversion I did for Battle Companies. Obviously that campaign has been delayed for a few months now, but it's a fun model which I'm looking forward to using at some point. It's just a shame I can't use it in regular games outside of a counts-as Mirkwood Cavalry model.

Finally I magnetised a trio of Blight Haulers for my Nurgle-loving friend:

It was a surprisingly lengthy process, as I had to use green stuff to line up the prongs of the guns with the sponson mounts. I didn't trust my ability to cut precise grooves to house the magnets, so I went for the GS route instead.

 It also had the advantage of breaking up the uniformity of the gun mounts by adding fleshy growths to hide the magnets. The lack of customisation on the newer chaos vehicles really bothers me, so that alleviated it a bit. 

I won't be painting these myself. My mate is going a little crazy in strict lockdown atm, so I said I'd run them over to him when I get a chance.

 It might be a while before he gets them, but he's in the vulnerable group, so he's most likely going to be cooped up far longer than I will. It'll give him something to take his mind off it for a while at least.

Now those bits are done and off my desk, I've just got a few more bits to do, then I'm fully ready to go hard on Inquisition. It's annoying having to do it this way, but general progress is being made at least, which can't be a bad thing! 

Stay safe guys. 

A Brace of Aragorns and a Gun Girl

That sounds like the setup to a bad joke, but it pretty accurately sums up my hobby progress over the last few days.

With GW and most other hobby outlets battening down the hatches for the time being, there's no better time to be making some headway on my pile of shame.

I've had two different versions of Aragorn sitting on my desk for ages. That might seem strange, but he's one of my favourite LOTR characters, plus I want to use him with different setups for different army lists I field him in. 

I'm not entirely happy with how the one on the right turned out, with the varnish killing the effect of the fine shading work I did on his hair. It'll do for now. Finishing these off gives me an appropriate Aragorn model for both my Helms Deep and Rangers lists.

I also painted up Haldir, again for my Helms Deep list:

He's probably going to sit unused for a while, as the Made to Order for his accompanying Elves has been delayed, but it was still fun to paint him up. 

And now for the Gun Girl:

This one surprised me a little. I was working on other stuff and happened to spot her on my desk. I bought her ages ago for use in Necromunda, but I never got around to finishing the model.

It's such a nice sculpt though that it seemed a shame not be using her in game, so I decided to give her a punky edge and make her part of my Inquisitor's Warband. 

It's certainly not the best paint job I've ever done, but I love how it turned out. 

Having finished her, I realised that I've really been neglecting my Inquisition forces. You might remember how psyched I was for them in the run up to the release of 8th edition, but the hack job which was done on their rules in the transition between editions really killed my enthusiasm for them. 

Being in lockdown though gives me the time to tackle long-neglected projects, so I'm thinking I might dig them out and try to get them repainted and ready to go for the current edition. 

 I've got so many other projects on the go though, I'll have to see what happens. It'll certainly be nice if I can. I'll have a look over the next few days and decide what I'm doing. 

That's all for today though, stay safe, wash your hands and see you next time! 

Hobby Season

I'm starting to get the sense that this whole Social Distancing thing is going to push my posting schedule through the roof. If nothing else, it'll encourage me back into the habit of writing my blog regularly again, which isn't a bad thing. At the rate I'm going though, I'm going to end up with a near-daily posting routine! 

I finished work early last night, so I finished the Plague Marines from the other day. It seemed a shame to cover up all that hard work with pus and goo, but needs must:

I went with the 'less is more' approach when it came to applying the technical paints. It's very easy to overdo it with Nurgle and ruin the model by covering up the details which provide points of visual interest. I feel I struck a good balance here, but I kept having to tell myself to take it easy and not go too crazy.

My mate seemed pretty pleased with the result so I moved on and churned out some Poxwalkers too:

These were a really quick 'Contrast and Technical' job but I'm happy with how they turned out. I could have quite easily spent ages building up the layers and picking out every detail, but quite frankly there's way too much details on these and I've got another 20-30 to do. I'd drive myself crazy if I started down that path!

That's all for today. Stay safe and wash your hands and I'll see you next post. 

Nurgle-y goodness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Battle Companies and Fell Beast

"I should be back to posting regularly soon".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elves and Event.

It's the start of February and I finally have some finished models for 2020 to show you. It's certainly been a slower pace than 2019 but I like to think it as quality over quantity.

I managed to get my Wood Elves finished for my event last weekend. I didn't get a chance to post them up until now due to how ridiculously busy I've been, but I'm excited to show them off, as I'm quite proud of how they turned out in the end:

With only 333 points of a very elite army to paint, I was able to really lavish attention on each and every one of them, going into far more detailing and highlighting than I normally would. I feel it really shines through in the final result. 

They're going to be forming the core of my much larger future Mirkwood force, so I really hope I'll be able to keep up this level of quality across the whole army. I should be able to. The rest of the force isn't intended for any particular event or deadline, so I can really take my time with them. 

As I got the event army done in plenty of time though, I was also able to spend a week working on the display board to go with them:

This was great fun to work on and surprisingly easy to do. The base was an old placemat covered in sand, the trees were plastic toys I found in a charity shop and the foliage came from some model railway supplies I found buried in the back of a cupboard. Never have I felt more justified about my habit of never throwing anything away. It all comes in useful in the end! 

It came together really nicely in the end though, despite the hodgepodge beginnings. Really once the base colours were down, it was just a matter of adding flock and foliage until I was happy with it. The most nerve-wracking part was actually transporting it to the event on the bus!

The event itself was excellent fun. The small points format and 100pt cap on individual models meant that some really interesting and seldom-seen themed armies came to the fore. 

I wish I'd taken a few more pictures of the other armies and games, but tbh it slipped my mind on the day. I did manage to get a few nice pics of my own games though:

Tauriel proved to be something of a beast in low points games. She killed more across the day than the rest of my army combined. She even singlehandedly broke an Angmar army in game three! 

Despite that though, I lost all five games in the end and narrowly missed out on best painted army. I don't mind too much. Fun has always mattered more to me than results. I don't know when the next one of these events is going to be, but I'm already looking forward to it! 

Now the event is out the way I can focus on my other projects. Next on my painting table are my mate's Nurgle/Death Guard stuff, alongside whatever personal project I decide to do next. I should have some time to blog more too now I'm not crazy busy, so the next post shouldn't be too long in coming.

So until next time, happy gaming! 

Elf Things

It's the third week of January and I've yet to complete a model this year. After being so massively productive last year, this feels very unnatural to me.

Luckily this state of affairs shouldn't last much longer. I'm in the final stages of preparing my Mirkwood army for my mate's event at the end of next week. I've got a dozen Elves in various stages of near-completion including a couple of conversions which I'm quite proud of:

I made my own version of the Mirkwood Cavalry model to better tie in with the Ranger theme which I'm going for with this army. I know it's not the best of pics, but I'll show them off more once I've got everything finished. 

They were really simple to make. All I did was splice together the plastic Ranger models with some Riders of Rohan. Simple but effective I think!

I've also started working on something which I've never done before: a display board.

As I've never really played in many gaming events before I started SBG, there's never been much call for me to make one before. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to do that though. The small size of the army means it doesn't have to be particularly big. In fact to give you an idea of scale, I used an old placemat as a baseboard for it!

This is also my slightly sneaky way to try and get a shoe-in for best painted. I'm really proud of how well I've painted the army, but it's very small. Hopefully this way it'll stand out more!

Regardless I'm really looking forward to finishing this up. It's a very different project to the army painting I normally focus on, so I'll be a fun little break. 

Slow start to the year. Plus Ghosts.

It's been a ridiculously busy start of the year for me. Prep for Pokemon Regionals has consumed so much of my free time, I've hardly done any hobby since the new year. What little I've done has just been adding layers and washes to a couple of Mirkwood Elves. Nothing too interesting.

I did have a moment of weakness though and bought a copy of the new Mortal Realms magazine. I have zero interest in starting Age of Sigmar, but I can see great potential for mounting them on square bases to create a Spirit-themed Vampire Counts army for Fantasy.

Thirty minutes locating my stash of square bases and assembling the ghosts later and I had this:

That works pretty well I reckon. Even though the models were made for Sigmar, they rank up rather neatly. I had to jiggle them a little for the more flamboyant poses, but it works. 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went back and cleared out my local newsagents! 

Yes it smashes apart my painting progress, but at £2.99 a pop, I couldn't really say no. That's two big units of 'counts as' Skeletons for about £25, more than enough to fill out my Core. 

Luckily these should be fairly quick to knock out. The Contrast paints were literally made for this kind of project. I've a few ideas knocking about to make use of the Sigmarines as well, but I'll get back to you on that when I've had a proper think. 

That's really it for now. I should get a bit more done soon, now Regionals aren't looming and work's gone quiet again. Until next time, happy gaming!