Getting to grips with my backlog

I've slowed down my pace of work a little this week. I've just been chipping away at my backlog. This time I finished up my mounted Knight of Umbar for Corsairs and some Morgul Knights for my Mordor force:

They didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but they're decent enough. Quite frankly I was sick of looking at them on my painting desk, so it's nice to be able to move onto something else. 

I'm coming to the conclusion that my Pile of Shame is getting a little ridiculous again. Being stuck inside most of the year has given me far too much free time to scroll through ebay and pick up various bits and pieces which I probably didn't need. A quick glance at my running total of painting points shows just how much all that has added up, despite how much I've been painting recently! 

I need to get back into positive figures on my painting points. I haven't been nearly as disciplined with it as I really should have been. With that in mind, I've decided that I'm going to force myself to be strict and not buy any new models until I hit that magic number of zero!

If I manage that, I'll treat myself to a set of Balin's Tomb terrain and some lovely Hobbit characters from Forge World. A nice little incentive I reckon. 

Luckily I've got loads of metal Middle Earth characters knocking around which I can knock out reasonably quickly, plus my Indomitus sets which should take massive chunk off that total too. Wish me luck!

Productivity

I've had a really productive few days. With a lack of anything else to do right now, I've really been cranking through projects at an excellent pace. Yes, that's right. I'm actually making a dent in my backlog! Wonders will never cease.

First of all, following on from last post, I painted up Shelob:

She was a lot easier to paint up than it was to build her. Getting a decent angle to for a photograph was a pain though, due to her pose. This was the best I could manage, sorry. 

Because I was so worried about how fragile the model was, I focused more on doing a relatively simple paint job, then varnishing the hell out of her, rather than attempting anything too fancy. If you look closely at the first photo though, you'll see I did manage to freehand some patterned markings down her back, just to add some interest. 

I'm pretty happy with how she turned out and I'm looking forward to the world being a little less mad so I can get her on the table, especially as she got a big boost from the new Cirith Ungol Legendary Legion! 

Alongside Shelob, I also managed to finish up Gaffer Gamgee for my Hobbits, along with his flower tokens:

He was less fun to work on than I was expecting. I'm not sure what it was, but he was a slog to get through. Perhaps because of the relative lack of detail on him compared to the other FW Shire characters. It's a shame really, as I was saving him till last out of my initial purchase as a treat, but he didn't live up to expectations.

Still, I'm happy with him and he's another character for my army done. Only 50 more Hobbits to go!

Finally this week I finished up my second Mounted Aragorn:

I accidentally snapped the leg of the one I painted about a year ago. Being a wholly metal model and the break being at the ankle, I figured it was easier to buy and paint a new one, rather than mess about trying to pin such a thin area!

Tbh I think on the whole he turned out than the original. Obviously I've gotten better at painting than I was back then, but I think a few subtle changes in colour choices made all the difference too. It all seems to tie together much better.

The only thing I'm not entirely happy with is his cloak. 

It didn't come out as smoothly as I'd hope. I can't have everything though and it looks decent enough. 

He marks the start of a repaint project I want to do for my Rangers/Grey Company force, so I'll be working on that alongside the rest of my backlog. I'm really just drifting where inspiration takes me atm though, so anything could happen. I'm just happy to be getting stuff finished. 

I'll post more soon, but until then, stay safe and happy hobbying! 

The Road goes on and on...

With the UK being back in Lockdown right now, you'd think I'd have plenty of time to get some projects finished. You'd be wrong unfortunately. Somehow I'm busier than ever. I have managed to find a little time to plug away at my backlog though, mostly Middle Earth stuff.

My Hobbits are coming along nicely. I've only got a few bits to finish up and I'll have the entirety of my initial purchase painted up. I figured the occasion called for a nice group shot:

Quite a sizable force is starting to come together, even if it's barely a third of my final army plan! I'm really taking my time though to make sure each one is the best it can be. That might sound like insanity when selling with a horde army like this, but the models are so nice I want to do them justice.

Of course finishing this batch meant that it was time to order the next one.

I honestly think I'm going to start seeing Hobbits in my dreams before this is done!

I want to take a little break before I start on the second batch though, so I turned my attention to other bits and pieces which I had laying around.

I figured I'd work on the Shelob model I've had for ages. A quick, relaxing build and a refreshing change of pace from Hobbits. Perfect, right? Wrong. After four hours of swearing, snapped limbs and endless bending and repositioning, I finally managed to wrangle the bloody thing into something resembling a model:

If anything would have benefited from transitioning to Finecast, it would have been this. It was a complete nightmare! At least it's built now and (should) be relatively simple to paint up. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm in a productive mood right now, so expect a flurry of posts over the next few weeks.

Until next time, stay safe and happy hobbying!

The tiny horde grows!

My bout of productivity after my last post was killed somewhat by being rather ill for a week. Rather annoying, but at least I'm feeling better and back at the painting table now. 

Luckily I've been productive enough this week to make up for lost time. For the most part I've been plugging away at m horde of Hobbits.

That's 13 out of my 75-strong army list done now. Still a long way to go, but it's steady progress. I've finished just over half of the mass of models I bought at the end of August. Not bad going. 

 I'm finding them to be a lot of fun to paint up, especially the Forge World characters, so it's not as gruelling as I thought it would be. Breaking them down into batches of 3-4 at a time, plus a character seems to be the way to go. It keeps things interesting enough that I don't get distracted.

I've also found time to do a supply run into town to get the bits and pieces I need to make a start on building my terrain project. 

I've got some big plans for all this. Hopefully I'll get the time to start cracking on with that in the next week or two. 

I'll keep you posted on how I get on. 

Books and Hobbits

It's not often I cover news on here. Quite frankly, my erratic posting schedule would make that a bit of an exercise in futility. The latest release from GW has gotten me ridiculously excited though. 

Quest of the Ringbearer is up for preorder this weekend. Its the latest sourcebook for Middle Earth and as well as giving us some pretty cool new Legendary Legions, it also focuses on narrative play.

As much as I like Matched Play in my GW games, Narrative is where my heart is at. I've been wanting to dive into the narrative side of things for a while.

You might remember me saying I wanted to dive into some solo narrative scenarios during lockdown. That never really materialised due to various reasons, but my attention has been firmly swung back in that direction now. 

I've got to wait for the book to be in my hands before I decide for sure what I'm doing, but at the very least I'm using it as an excuse to build some terrain. 

Whilst I work out what I'm doing with that though, here's some Hobbits to look at:

They're the first completed batch from the group which I showed you last time. I'm really happy with how they turned out, considering that it only took two evenings to get them done. That was helped immensely by the fact that I deliberately kept the scheme very simple. I didn't want to do anything too complicated, considering I've got another 68 of the buggers to paint for my final force!

If I can work to this standard across the army though, I'll be very happy. 

The only thing I'm not 100% on is Baldo's face, (he's the one on the far left for those uninitiated into the dark rabbit hole which is SBG.) which I can't decide whether it's an issue with the sculpt or my painting skills. Probably a little of both Hobbit faces are even harder to do than even normal ones.

Either way I'm happy to call these done and move on. I'm feeling my momentum return on the painting front, so I'm just going to roll with it.

Hopefully I'll be back with more finished models soon. 

Indomitus stuff

Considering how excited I was about 9th Edition 40k and the Indomitus box, you may be wondering why I haven't posted about anything since release.

Well the recent heatwave was part of it. For a while it was just way too hot to even think about sitting down to hobby. I'd imagine a lot of people in the UK were in the same boat. It's really been ridiculous.

The other reason for my lack of posting was that I really didn't want to post about it until I actually had something substantial to share. I've really been taking my time with these models, trying to do justice to these gorgeous models. 

I'm happy to say now though that I can show you what I've been up to.

May I present the first three finished models for my Golden Knights chapter: Sir Auron Malakai of the Red Blades (Judiciar) and three Knights of the Black Griffin Brotherhood, warriors of the Bladeguard Veteran Cadre. 

These have taken far longer to do than I imagined. What I predicted would be a week or two's worth of work turned into a month and a half! Granted the heatwave slow things down, but that's still a pretty substantial misprediction! 

I'm not entirely happy with how certain parts turned out. In particular, I need to have a think about how to improve my recipe for swords in the future. Overall though I really love them. They were lots of fun to paint and (not to blow my own trumpet too much) I feel like they're some of the best models I've produced to date. 

The heraldry was a lot of fun to do too. 

Every squad in the army is going to have its own unique heraldry. I'm terrible at freehand so it's mostly going to be produced by combining parts from my vast collection of transfers. 

The Black Griffins were made mostly from the extras on the Indomitus sheet, but also by stealing the House Coldshroud symbol from my spare Titanicus transfer sheets. 

Custom transfers from Fallout Hobbies really helped the whole process as well. The crossed sword Chapter symbol was really important to me to incorporate in there. I always said it was the Chapter's symbol when I played them years ago, but I never felt brave enough to attempt to paint it onto my models. Luckily the wealth of third party companies producing 40k gubbins these days means that I don't have to!

The sheets were really nicely made and gave me enough symbols to do the entire army. They were pretty cheap too considering I had to pay for shipping from America. Only £25 delivered. I'd definitely recommend them! 

So now I've finished this squad, it'd probably make sense for me to finish the rest of my Indomitus stuff, wouldn't it? 

Well yes, but also no. 

I think I need a break before I paint my second squad. I want to do something a little simpler as a palate cleanser. Each of these was basically a character model in their own right in terms of detail. I think I'd go mad if I jumped straight into another squad of them right away. 

Luckily I have plenty to keep me busy. Because I'm terrible at keeping to hobby pledges, I've got a bunch of Hobbits to work on, some of which are probably going to be next on my agenda. 

Just a few! I blame the Green Dragon Podcast and their Shire episode. 

I also bought the new plastic Eomer, so I definitely need to crack on with that at some point. I also fancy working on my EC's again now that I know how I want to run them in 9th Edition. 

Whatever I work on, I shouldn't be too long in doing it. Finally getting these models finished has put me in a productive mood. Considering how precariously large my backlog is getting, I hope it carries on! 

Making Progress

I recently found myself with five days off with nothing to do. That in itself was a shock tbh, as I've been working way too much over the course of Lockdown.

'Great!' I said to myself 'I can get loads of hobby done.'

I should have known better. It turned out to be way too warm and muggy for me to focus on painting at all. I ended up spending most of that time replaying Final Fantasy 10! 

Oddly enough though, my motivation to hobby has returned now I'm back at work. Maybe it's because I can settle back into my routine of sitting down to paint for an hour or two when I get home. Whatever the reason, I've actually started making progress on things again, which is always a good thing. 

9th edition 40k has gotten me pretty excited. Partly because both my Emperor's Children and Slaaneshi Deamons have gotten a boost through the rules changes, but also because it shakes up the game drastically in general. I got really quite sick of how stale things got in 8th and ended up playing far more Middle Earth than 40k, so a change is long overdue in my book. 

As a result of this newfound excitement, I've been working quite steadily through the 40k stuff on my Table of Shame, trying to clear some or most of it before the 9th Ed launch somewhat ruins the whole idea behind it. 

There's also the fact that not all of the stuff on there is my own. There's also my mate's Death Guard which I've been working on for a while now. Luckily he doesn't mind me taking my time. He knows how I am at actually completing projects!

 I did say to him I'd try and get a good chunk of it done before the edition launches though, so I focused on those first. I've already managed to crank out a Rhino and some more Plague Marines for him over the course of the past couple of days.

Not my best work, but they look decent enough and my friend loves them, which is the important thing.

 Every time I sit down to paint Death Guard for him, I seem to forget just how ridiculously overdetailed those kits are. I can't believe they're just starter box models!

The Rhino didn't turn out too bad either:

I'm pretty proud of the Plague Marine I converted into the hatch instead of the standard gunner though. It's a little detail, but it ties the whole thing into the overall look of the army rather nicely. 

Anyway, with a few more Death Guard models done and out the way, I was able to focus on my own stuff for a little while. 

With two Indomitus boxes on the way, I've been thinking about how I'm going to paint them. I had thought about doing Red Hunters to go alongside my Inquisition, as I've started painting my existing Primaris Marines in that scheme. However, the more I look at the knightly aesthetic of the new models, the more I was inspired to revive my old homebrew chapter, the Golden Knights.

There's only one problem: in the 12 years since I last played them or painted a model for them, Forge World has stolen their colour scheme for the Minotaurs!

Cheeky gits! 

I don't really mind though. It gives me the perfect excuse to update their colours to something a bit more interesting. My original Golden Knights fell to Chaos, so it would actually make sense that a Primaris-ised version of them wouldn't have the same scheme. 

Fluff-wise, it'll also be interesting to come up with a justification on why they're back as a loyalist force. Right now, the background I'm writing for their rebirth talks about how there was a loyalist survivor who was in tbe Deathwatch at the time of their fall. He's been petitioning to be allowed to refund the chapter, but it wasn't until Gulliman returned to life and the launch of the Indomitus Crusade that he was allowed to do so. 

Something like that anyway. On a cool note, I've actually had said loyalist, Alrik Wulfenhein, as the Watch Captain in my Deathwatch army for years. It'll be quite nice to develop his background further and decide what the future holds for him! 

Anyway, back to painting. I want something recognisable as the original chapter, but with a twist. After a bit of playing around, this is what I came up with:

It's a fairly simple update to the scheme, but I quite like it. I'm thinking about possibly changing the Bolter casing to black though, just to make it stand out a little more. The final version of the scheme will incorporate a load of heraldry and squad markings too, really playing up the Knight aspect, so those will be fun to develop too.

It's quite a simple scheme to paint, which is always a bonus. My plan this weekend or early next week is to sit down with my Indomitus boxes and a can of Retributor Armour spray and crank through as much as I can in one go. The quicker I can get them done, the lesser the long term impact on my painting points! 

I'm also hoping to finish up a few more bits this later week too, including the rest if this test squad. I've got to really take advantage of this hobby mojo while I have it!

Anyway that's all for today, stay safe and happy hobbying! 

Building a Board

I really should know better by now than to say I'll blog more. I've been pretty busy hobby-wise over the past couple of weeks, but I've had very little energy to put a post together. Better late than never, I suppose! 

Last time I talked about how I was thinking about doing some solo narrative games of Middle Earth to keep myself entertained during Lockdown. With things starting to be eased here in the UK, this might not be an issue for much longer. I still figure it's a fun project to work on though.

I've decided to start simply and find something which I already have most of the models for. One scenario which I've had my eye on for a while is the Orc brawl at Cirith Ungol. I've been thinking about doing it ever since I started working on a set of Mordor terrain last year, but as ever with me, I never really got around it.

Doing a bit of research, there's actually surprisingly few existing scenarios which cover this scene. The main one which I could find was in the old Return of the King rulebook from about 15 years ago. The ruleset has come a long way since then, but I'm sure it won't be too difficult to negotiate around that.

It also has the added benefit of me already having most of the models and terrain I need to play it. The only things I need to do is paint a few Uruk Hai and build a board for it!

I know that's a pretty big 'only'. To be honest though, I've been meaning to build a gaming board for years. I just haven't really found the time to do it and used mats to play on instead. I've even got all the materials I need for it. I found these 2 foot by 2 foot art boards in a charity shop years ago:

It was a brilliant find, I must say. The only issue was that there were only three of them.

Luckily I had an old Armies on Parade display board knocking about which i could use to complete the set and make a 4x4 board. All they really needed was a bit of a clean up and a few coats of spray paint, but as I said, I never actually got around to it until now. I've been using them to support a gaming mat instead. 

With some government-mandated free time on my hands, I figured now's the perfect time to get it done.

A quick sand down and ten minutes with a spray can and they looked like this:

Not too bad, but they stood out horribly alongside the Armies on Parade board, particularly as they lacked the same kind of texture, so I started stippling on some slightly watered down Nuln Oil to try to both darken them down and add some visual interest at the same time.

It took a few more layers than I thought it would. The wood really sucked up the wash! That added to the ridiculously hot weather that week meant that the layers kept drying in some weird ways. 

This is how one of the boards ended up looking after a couple of layers:

Not ideal, but I soon had it sorted after a few more layers. 

Eventually I ended with something looking like this:

Nothing too flashy, but very passable and generic enough to cover many different gaming systems. A bit small for 40k, but perfect for pretty much everything else I play. 

A few rocks and it becomes Mordor. A few buildings on top of that and it works for Cirith Ungol or other Mordor fortresses:

Alternatively, it looks pretty good for Titanicus too:

There's plenty of flexibility in there. Not bad for a few days work!

It's also quite handy as a backdrop for photographing models on, especially with a large window nearby for natural light. Here's some Plagueburst Crawlers from my Table of Shame which I finished up, so there's progress there too!

I'm pretty happy with the work I've been putting in over the past few weeks. It's felt good to accomplish something I've been wanted to do for ages. Hopefully I can keep this hobby enthusiasm going, especially with 9th edition 40k on the way. I'm hoping to finish up my Table of Shame before then, especially as I broke my own rule and ordered the Indomitus box, but we'll see how I get on with that. Fingers crossed! 

Getting a grip

I've been bouncing between projects so much recently, I'm surprised I don't have whiplash!

Lockdown really hasn't been good for my focus at all. I've just been flitting between projects almost at random, not completing any of them, whilst also buying way too many models. 

It's hardly surprising tbh. I tend to build and paint stuff with playability in mind and I'm always at my most productive when I've got a game or event to get things finished for.

So whilst I'm stuck at home, I've decided to give myself something specific to work towards, which should hopefully help me get things rolling again. 

I'm setting myself two goals:

1. Paint everything on my 'Table of Shame'.

2. Work towards getting everything sorted so I can play some solo games.

Nice and simple I reckon, but it'll keep me busy for a while and give me the kick up the arse I need to be productive again.

My Table of Shame is a pretty simple idea:

I just put all the projects which I've been putting off for ages on a table and took a photo. Those will be the only things which I'll be working on. I'm not buying any more models until they're all done.

Pretty simple, eh? I'm aware I could be setting myself up to fail here, but at least it gives me a clear sense of what I'm working towards.

I've even already made a start on it and finished up the Emperor's Children Veteran Squad which I showed you guys a few weeks back:

Barring the lack of transfers right now (waiting to get paid so I can do a FW order now they've reopened), I'm pretty happy with how they turned out in the end. An entire 30k army done like this is going to be pretty eye-catching! 

I've got the bits standing by to do another squad, plus a really fun Fulgrim conversion, but they aren't on the Table of Shame, so they can wait. 

Moving onto my other point, I've decided to finally scratch the gaming itch I've been having. Obviously with social distancing rules being what they are in the UK atm, I'm not likely to be able to get a game against a real opponent any time soon. That means I'm going to have to be a little creative. 

I've had the idea of playing some games against myself, taking control of both forces. Whilst I doubt this could work well with large scale games like 40k, it might work reasonably well with games which veer towards the skirmish-y end of the spectrum, like Middle Earth. 

I quickly realised a big drawback to this idea: playing both sides would mean there won't really be any back and forth between me and my opponent. I'd know exactly what they were thinking, making it harder to play an interesting game. 

This got me thinking even further. I've been wanting to play some narrative scenarios ever since I started the game. Maybe I could play through some of those by myself? It would certainly encourage me to play in a more interesting and narrative way. 

I figure it's certainly worth a try. The worst that could happen is that it doesn't work as well as I hoped. At the very least, it'll keep me entertained for a few more days of lockdown, which can't be a bad thing. 

I'll cover my adventures in making this plan a reality in a later post. I just wanted to put a post out covering where my mind is right now, hobby-wise. 

I'm going to be trying to blog a bit more often too, as that should also help me get into some kind of hobby routine. I don't know how successful all this will be, but it'll at least be interesting to find out. Hopefully I'll be back with more soon! 

Blam!

That's the sound of my painting points being shattered into a thousand pieces!

To cut a long story short, whilst everyone's been getting excited about the reveal of 9th Ed 40k, I've veered off in a completely different direction.

My hobby motivation has very much come in fits and starts over the past few weeks. I think being stuck inside has been starting to get to me a little. It pretty much killed my will to work anything. When I did, I found myself unable to focus on any one project for very long. 

A friend of mine managed to really stoke up my hobby inspiration again a few weeks ago though, which led to a completely unexpected purchase:

I've always been a massive potter nerd and loved the look of the Harry Potter Miniatures Adventure Game from Knight Models ever since they started previewing it a few years ago. I never had anyone to play with though so I never actually picked it up until now.

 If that sounds like a familiar story, that's because it's exactly what happened with Middle Earth last year! It was even the same friend who convinced me to take the plunge on both occasions. 

That friend added me to a Facebook group he runs for the game and let the beautiful models splashed across my FB feed slowly erode my self control. Clearly he's a bad influence on me! 

The models were a dream to paint up. I enjoyed working on them so much I managed to finish all of them over a single weekend. The small size the game is played at and the scale of the models themselves also really encouraged me to treat each one like a character piece in their own right, so they were great fun to do. 

I'm really proud of how the they turned out. I feel like these are some of my best painting to date! Normally I'm really self critical of my painting skills so that's saying a lot. 

After finishing the Order, everything kind of snowballed. My mate pointed me in the direction of an ebay shop selling other models for the game at ridiculously cheap prices and just like that, I was hooked. Three weeks after buying my first models for this game, my collection looks like this:

. 

I regret nothing! 

Yes my painting points are totally ruined when I already have a massive backlog of other stuff to work through, but at least it gives me something to occupy my ever dwindling attention span with whilst I'm still stuck inside. Even if I never actually play the game, they'll make excellent display pieces. 

That's all for today. Hopefully I'll have some more to show you soon as I get my hobby mojo back and try to dig my way back out of backlog hell. I've even had a fun idea to try and actually get some games ayed of some description, but I'll tell you more when I get there. 

For now, stay safe and I'll catch you next time.