So it happened again...

Remember yesterday when I posted about me being excited to be back into positive painting figures? Well I should have learned my lesson by now.

It started simply enough. I was up Athena Games in Norwich yesterday for a day of gaming, so I bought myself an Ork character as a reward for breaking even:

I've loved this model since it was revealed last year, figured I deserved a treat and had the painting points spare that I was still in the positive. So far so good.

Then a mate of mine turned up with a box of Mordor Orcs for me. I'd mentioned to him I needed some more spear dudes for one of my armies and was expecting him to turn up a few spares.

I was not expecting a full 24!

So yeah I'm in negative figures again, after less than 24 hours!

Luckily I've hit the week off work and in a bit of a painting groove, so I had a pretty productive day today finishing off some of the Ork repaints I've been cracking on with recently. I reckon I've done pretty well:

I'm still in negative figures, but I'm not too far off breaking even again for the second time in a week.

It's all good. I might even get some more done over the weekend. Depends how distracted I get with new Pokemon stuff. 

Happy Hobbying! 

Positive Figures!

I've had a pretty good time in my hobby the past couple of weeks. Just through working through my backlog, I've managed back into positive figures on my painting points again, after I blew them on the Heresy starter box over the summer.

Admittedly very little of the progress came from paint that box, but I still reckon I've done pretty well. 

First up, I managed to finish up the quintet of Thranduil sculpts I was working on last time:

I'm really quite proud of how they turned out. Thranduil is one of my favourite characters from the Hobbit trilogy, so I'm glad I could do him justice. I just need to actually bring myself to paint the Army around him now! 

I also finished up that Sicarian from last time too:

I'm less happy with how it turned out. There's plenty I'd do differently if I painted again, but it looks decent enough and I'm glad it's done so I can move on to other, more exciting stuff.

I've also started repaining my Orks. I know I only did them last year, but tbh they were a bit rough and ready. I've now found a better basing scheme for them and it's given me an opportunity to bring them up to a standard I'm more happy with.

They're not going to be my main focus, but something nice to plug away at when I fancy a break from other projects. Given the state of 40k atm, it's about as close to interacting with the game as I'm going to get, but it'll be nice to hopefully have a fully painted army ready to go when 10th edition rolls around and I can start enjoying it again!

That's all for today, but I'm hoping to try and get some more up soon, if I'm not distracted too much by the new Pokemon games. Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

A Division of Labour

For the first time in a long time I'm actually in a position where I don't feel the need to be actively buying models. Beyond my 30k Imperial Fists, which I'm expanding as the campaign goes along, I have pretty much everything I want/need right now.

That makes the next few months the perfect opportunity to try and make some progress on my backlog. It's quite a nice position to be in tbh. It gives me a chance to focus on some stuff that's fallen to the wayside as I've gotten distracted by the constant stream of shiny new releases. 

On the other hand there's the issue of that backlog. It's getting a little bit ridiculous. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'm too much of a perfectionist to have several army projects on the go at once, especially when one of those armies are Orks. Luckily I have a secret weapon - I'm going to cheat! 

Well not exactly. A mate of mine has been having a lot of fun using the 'Slapchop' method to churn out a load of models recent, particularly his Leagues of Votann army box:

I'm sure you'll agree that they really are lovely. Even more impressive is that he got the entire box done in just a few weeks! 

I was looking at the scheme he'd used and realised that it's actually really close to how I want my Deathskulls to be, so I asked if he wouldn't taking some of my bikes and vehicles to paint. 

Considering I've painted a ton of Death Guard stuff for him over the last few years, he was happy to return the favour. 

So yeah, a bunch of my Orks have gone off to be painted elsewhere, which frees me up to work within my hobby comfort zone: smaller, more detailed projects.

I've had the week off work, so I've had a bit of time of get some painting done. I finished these last night:

I seem to have amassed quite a few different sculpts of Thranduil over the last few years and somehow I've failed to get any of them painted, so it made sense to work on them all at the same time. I've got another two still to finish up after these! 

It's very strange to be essentially batch painting my centrepiece model, but it's also nice to get consistency between them all. I really like how they've turned out. I think the purple really makes the darker colour scheme pop.

I've also got a Sicarian half-done on my hobby desk, but I seem to have lost a bit of momentum on painting it:

Hopefully I can kick my hobby mojo back towards finishing it soon. I think my current pallete cleanser of Middle Earth stuff should do the trick, but we'll see. 

At least I'm staying productive, but it would be nice if I could stay a little more focused. You'd have thought I'd be used to me being a hobby by now!

Oh well, I'll keep you updated on how I get on. Until next time, happy hobbying! 

Keeping up to date and moving forward

In my last post I talked about my hobby mojo coming back and said I'd post again soon. Don't worry, it hasn't abandoned me already, I just wanted to have something completed to show you guys before I put anything up. Work had other ideas though. I've been ridiculously busy! 

At least I'm here now. I had actually written a much longer post, but the Blogger app seems to have eaten the draft, so this will be a much quicker one than I intended. I want to get back to blogging again on a regular basis, as even if I don't get as much response from here as I used to, it does help me organise my thoughts and stay on the right track.

Anyway, enough about that, I have some excellent news - I won another Best Painted award!

It goes rather nicely alongside the other two which I've won in the past year!

I'm rather happy with that, considering the amount of work I put into the display board.

It was actually quite a close run thing, only winning by a single vote. It's good to see other people stepping up their painting game. High quality models benefit everyone!

Moving on from that though, I've been working on my Imperial Fists campaign army, starting with the Phalanx Warders which I started nearly four months ago, before I even moved:

It feels so good to finally get these finished. Like I said, I started these when I first got the Age of Darkness box, way back in July, so they've been on my to do list for quite a while now. I even managed to get another five done pretty quickly after that, along with Castellan Holt, my commander for the campaign, plus a Contemptor Dreadnought done as well. Clearly I was on a roll! 

Hopefully the rest of the army won't be too far behind. I've managed to work out a relatively quick and easy recipe that gives pretty nice looking results, so the progress should just keep on rolling, in theory. 

I've got a bit of time off work next week, so hopefully I'll have plenty of time to crack on and get some hobby done.

That's all for today though. Until next time, happy hobbying! 

And now for something a little different...

It's been a little while since my last post. I really haven't had much of a drive for hobby since I moved into my new flat until the last couple weeks. Part of that has been. How busy I've been, but also being in an entirely new space made it hard to settle down into my normal hobby routines.

As usual, it's been an approaching Middle Earth event that's drawn me out of my funk. Rather than painting an army this time though, I decided to do something a little different and make a display board for my Hobbits.

I'll admit it's partially a shameless bid for another Best Army trophy, but it's mainly just a way to get my hobby juices flowing again. It seems to be working so far, though running out of static grass is an annoying stumbling block I've hit. Luckily Amazon should be coming to my rescue tomorrow morning!

It's been pretty fun doing something so different to what I normally work, although it's been a lot more involved a project than I originally anticipated. I expected to have it finished nearly a week ago!

Hopefully all this effort will pay off at the event, although it's already having the main intended effect of getting me raring to go on hobby projects. Next up after this I want to crack on with my Imperial Fists campaign army, which has been sitting in just an undercoated state for way longer than I intended! 

Wish me luck. Hopefully now I've jolted some life back into my hobby mojo, I'll be posting regularly again. Knowing me though, it's about 50/50 which way it'll fall! I'll definitely post up the finished board when it's done though. 

Heresy progress

It's been a few weeks since the Heresy box launched. I'm still in the process of moving, so haven't had a chance to go as crazy with it as if hoped. I've managed to make a start though, so I figured I'd show you guys what I've been up to:

After a ridiculous amount of experimentation, I finally managed to find a colour I liked for my Emperor's Children, so I've been able to launch into working on my 3rd Legion in earnest. Perhaps experimenting on the boxed set models wasn't the best of plans, but it at least helped me visualise how it would look on the final army. Now I'm happy with the basic purple, the next step is adding the crazy, clashing colours to turn them into a proper Siege of Terra force!

Flipping it over to the Loyalists, I also made a start on my Imperial Fists. They're going to be my army for the campaign I'm putting together in my local area and an interesting change of pace.

They're the first Loyalist army I've ever done for Heresy, so it's been interesting trying not to got too wild and make them look very 'clean' and reasonably regimented. I'm also discovering why so many people hate painting yellow. It's taken forever just to get a smooth yellow as the base layer for these five!

I'm also starting to remember just how detailed the FW upgrade kits are. I may simplify things and use more of the base Mk6 kits for the second squad or I might go loopy painting all that detail! 

Despite all the 'fun' of batch painting yellow which lies ahead, I'm really looking forward to pulling this army together. I'm wanting to link them in with the history of my Golden Knights Primaris army. I've got the idea that the Commander, Gideon Holt will be the founder of the future Chapter, so I need to work out a good way to incorporate the colours and heraldry of the Knights into the army whilst still having them look like 'proper' Imperial Fists. 

For me, this kind of pseudo-historical tie in is what makes the Heresy so fun. It gives me an excellent opportunity to indulge in my nerdy side writing the background, so hopefully I'll have a chance to share that soon.

I'll post progress on these as it happens. Hopefully I'll be able to get more done once I'm in my new place and have my new hobby desk set up. Until then though, happy hobbying! 

I did it!!!

I actually did it!!

I reached positive painting figures!

For the first time since I started tracking it in late 2017, I've painted more models than I've bought!

I got thinking after my last post. With how quickly my Savage Orcs paint up using Contrast, surely I could get a few more done before the Horus Heresy box arrived on Saturday?

Turns out I was right:

Tools about three hours of work in total, including drying time on the varnish. Piece of cake!

 Contrast really does seem the way to go on horde armies like this. I'm often guilty of overcomplicating my schemes, so it's refreshing to find something quick and easy and stick to it. 

With this kind of momentum, I think it'll be pretty easy for me to work on them a few at a time alongside my other projects until the Army is done. 

It feels very strange to finally be looking at the positive side of my progress tracker. Strange, but good though. I've been painting an absolute ton of stuff over the last few years and there's been times when I've felt it would never reach this point.

And just as I was sitting back and savouring my victory, this arrived a day early...

Nooooo!!!

It still counts, right?

Right? 

Back and ready for Heresy

I've been absent from the online hobby sphere for a few weeks. Unfortunately real life has been kicking my arse a bit. I've had to unexpectedly find somewhere new to live, killing my hobby mojo.

Luckily that's been resolved just in time for me to go back to getting very excited for the launch of the new Heresy box. It does mean that my plans to get into positive figures on my painting points before it arrived have fallen to the wayside. I missed it by a single point!

I'm a little gutted, but I suppose it can't be helped with everything that's been going on. I'll just have to try and get the boxed set done quickly to try and offset it.

So what have I been painting to reach this point? Well first up I stripped some Thousand Sons Land Speeders and drafted them into my Emperor's Children:

I was really using them as a test piece for my 30k EC scheme and I think it turned out pretty well. It was just a base of Xereus Purple, a drybrush of Genestealer, then a pin wash of Druchii Violet. Really quick and easy, plus I think it looks pretty striking on the table. Hopefully the scheme will let me whizz through the box in record time! I'll also be starting my Imperial Fists at the same time, but I've found a good recipe for those too which I'm looking forward to trying out in the very near future!

As for the other thing I've been working on, this came completely out of left field.

When I was starting to pack to move I found a load of unbuilt Savage Orcs I had in a box, having bought them for cheap off a mate a few months back. I was saving them for when The Old World eventually drops, but I fancied doing something a little different as a pallet cleanser. I was shocked at just how quickly and nicely they painted up using Contrast colours and a few light drybrushes. I'm definitely going have to make point of getting the other 60 done once I've got my new hobby desk set up!

That's all for today, although expect a lot of posts very soon as I tear into the box when it arrives. I also get to plan out my new hobby space, so that should be a lot of fun too.

Until then, happy hobbying! 

In Midnight Clad

I appear to be well and truly on a Heresy kick. The more news and leaks I see for the upcoming 2.0 release, the more excited I'm getting. I've got some quite extensive plans for my EC's once the big boxed game releases, but I'm in the slightly annoying position of not being able to do much until the new plastics launch.

For now  I'm funneling my energy into helping my mate get his Night Lords spruced up and ready for the new edition.

He painted them a few years ago, but he felt they needed a bit of a refresh and he likes my painting style, so he asked me to help. I was happy to step in, as it lets me scratch my heresy itch while I wait for my own plans to become available. 

I've always loved Night Lords, but I'm unlikely ever to do an army of my own, so it was quite nice to be able to work on them without committing to yet another army. It was also nice to have a bit of change of style from the various stuff I've been working on recently. 

I couldn't resist adding one of my own ideas into the mix though. I loved the idea behind Nakrid Thole the moment I read his profile in book 9 and instantly had the idea for combining Sevatar's body with the Escher whip to represent him, but I haven't had the opportunity to turn it into a reality until now. My mate admits he's unlikely to ever use him on the table, as he uses Sevatar as his Warlord, but loves the model and reckons he'll be able find a use some form or another, so let me just get on with it. 

I've been cracking through these at a pretty good pace, finishing three squads in as many weeks. Tbh it's a fairly easy recipe to follow, but I've also been given the freedom to add my own flair wherever I want to. I've been raiding my bits box and making use of pieces which I thought I'd never find a use for, like that half-mask from the Primaris Reiver kit which I thought couldn't be used at all without it looking ridiculous, but it actually works pretty well I reckon!

I just need to wait for some Volkite Chargers to arrive for them, then it's just some Raptors and a Dread to go. Not bad at all for a mini project between projects. The downside now of course is that I'm wanting to do an army of my own. I'm going to have to try and resist that particular urge though. I have quite enough on my plate at the moment!

I'll post more when I have it. Happy hobbying! 

Catching up part 2

I've had a pretty busy few weeks, but now that Pokemon Regionals have come and gone (I bombed, in case you were wondering), I finally have a chance to sit down and write the promised part two of my previous post.

 This will serve as a sort of bookend to the mass of progress I've been making on my backlog in the first part of 2022. I had planned to keep on chipping away at it across the entire year, but various Adepticon announcements mean that my hobby plans may well be veering wildly off into the weeds very soon. Unfortunate, but at least I'll be doing it with a massively reduced backlog!

Enough waffling though, here's the rest of what I've been up to recently:

That's a pair of mounted and fully magnetised Warbosses to lead my Deathskulls. The one on the looted Vyper is Mognutz, but I still need to come up with a name for the other one.

They started out when I bought the Wartrike a few months back, but as I was building it I quickly realised I also wanted a Warboss on Bike to lead my Kult of Speed. I didn't really want to buy the Forge World one, due to my self imposed hobby embargo, so my Orky mind went to work. A few hours and a rummage in my hobby cupboard later and I'd come up with the idea for a 'counts as' Biker Boss, an ambitious Flyboy with a Vyper he'd 'nicked off da pointy ears'. 

Mognutz was an Ork of simple ambition: ever since he was a Yoof, all he wanted to do was fly. Unfortunately his enthusiasm far outweighed his abilities and after several rambunctious test flights, the last of which ended up in the demolition of Warboss Gazza's hut, he was unceremoniously exiled from his tribe.

After a few years of kicking around the Ash Wastes of Tinus Minoris, Mognutz fell in with a mob of local Speed Freeks, where he continued his attempts to get and, more importantly, stay airborne, steadily climbing the hierarchy of the mob until after another unfortunate series of Deffkopta accidents, he decided to stick to firmer ground for a while, leading a group of Warbikers. 

Then one day his fortunes took a distinct uptick. Tearing ahead of the main Speed Mob, his bikes were suddenly ambushed by a trio of Eldar skimmers. Seizing the initiative, Mognutz threw himself from the saddle of his bike onto the lead vehicle as it flew overhead, headbutting the gunner unconscious and tearing the driver clear out his seat and flinging him aside. Cackling maniacally even as the skimmer started dipping towards the ground, Mognutz slewed the strange looking weapon on the back around and shot the other two vehicles clean out the sky. The whoops of his fellow Speed Freeks filled his ears even as the Vyper crunched into the dust of the desert.

After cracking a few heads to silence the derision which followed, Mognutz ordered his mob to drag the wrecked speeder back to the nearest settlement, where he paid every toof he had, plus a few more unwillingly donated, to Big Mek Bozrog to rebuild it into what he called 'Da Ded Shiny Speeda'. Wisely he decided to delegate actually piloting the thing to a succession of Grot 'volunteers'. 

Since that day, Mognutz' star has been on the rise. He struck out on his own across the Wastes with his lads, slowly gathering a great Speed Mob of his own around him and hiring himself out to the highest bidder. Usually this took the form of ambitious Meks who wanted some protection against their rivals, whilst not having to worry about being replaced in leadership by their supposed hired muscle. All Mognutz cared about by then was speed. The ladz who chose to follow him just made it easier to go wherever he liked. 

That is how most recently Mognutz has ended up in the employ of Big Mek Bozrog, whom Mognutz has a curious fondness for, having been the builder of his mechanical steed. Mognutz is content to take orders from the upstart Mek Boss, so long his bikes and wagons keep getting repaired, he has plenty of gits to krump and he can keep going fast to get to them. 

As if that wasn't a mad enough idea, I then decided to squeeze the maximum amount of flexibility I could out of him and magnetised him to be usable on foot too. Then my real Orky mind kicked in and decided not to stop there. Why not make him able to swap mounts whenever I want? A bit of tweaking and careful application of some magnets and it was done! 

There's no real use to doing so, apart from cosmetic appearances, but I wouldn't be a proper Greenskin player if I didn't use the biggest and meanest Ork as my Warlord at all times! 

It was pretty fun to paint them up too, but I'm also glad they're done, as it took a lot of work to get them up to the standard I wanted. You wouldn't think it'd be that difficult to paint things which are mostly made of scrap, but I actually would argue to takes even longer to do well that painting things cleanly! 

So that's me caught up. Next on my plate for my Orks will probably be a bunch of bikes. I'll have to fit them in around something else which has suddenly appeared slap bang in the middle of my hobby goals though. As I mentioned briefly earlier, the Heresy announcement at Adepticon has gotten me ridiculously excited for 30k again, so I've got a funny feeling that's where my hobby output will be firmly aimed in the near future. I've already started sprucing up my mate's Night Lords for him:

In theory, this shouldnt take me too long to do. It's just cleaning up his work from a few years back and adding a few more shades. The real fun will be when the plastic MK6 launches and I'm up to my ears in Emperor’s Children again! 

There's fun times ahead though. Its great to be excited for Heresy again. We'll just have to see what the new edition brings.

That's all for today though. Until next time, happy hobbying!