Project Log

Well as it seems some blogs of note (of which this is not one of them) seem to have a review of their year I thought I would do the same. Ok here goes;

Well this year I have posted (prior to this one) seventeen blog entries. Mostly about figures I have painted, a couple of Batreps and my ongoing affair with ebay. I think I have painted up about 30 models which is pretty shite really, my only defense is I can't be bothered a lot of the time. Coupled with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Facebook my spare time is unequally shared. The choice between hauling my arse up a ladder into my oftentimes icy cold loft or scamper joyfully to a warm room with a pc is generally an easy decision. In fact, its amazing I ever bother going up there to be honest. Call it dedication!

I started about four pieces of scenery, a Comms Tower, a Drinking Hole and two hills. None have been finished but I have some time at Christmas so hopefully I can get a good bit of work done. Incidentally I have a project that has been ongoing (some might say for the last 17 or 18 years) in my head, and that is Athel Loren the home of the Wood Elves.I have grand images in my head , of tower like trees, huge rooty ramparts and bridge of vines. A bit ambitious I know but aim high, thats what I sometimes say.


Something I have put on my resolutions list is painting. Both the quality and the quantity I want to increase. If I can improve my photography skills as well I will be well on the way to putting pictures up that I'm proud of. My collection of mutants will also have to be finished early in 2012.Looking back I also promised to finish the following ;

5 Attillan Roughriders
5 Marine Scouts
a 10 man Space Marine squad
5 Necromundan Pit Slaves  Done!
Fabius Bile.
Of these only the Pit Slaves got finished so I'm already behind last years quota so it doesn't look good for my ability to formulate then stick to a rigid painting plan. Oh well.

Of course the main ambition for next year is to play more games. I want to introduce Boy to Warhammer as my large Skaven and Wood Elf armies haven't had a ruck since the previous summer! This is quite puzzling as Warhammer is the game (other than Necromunda possibly) that I have played the most and have the most figures painted.

And Warhammer Quest, I really love that game and would like to run a few dungeons for Boy and his buddies. I used to roleplay a lot and WQ was one of those don't-have-to-think Hack n' Slash dungeon crawls. Considering I have hundreds of painted skaven to run whole soap operas of series's of campaigns of games, it should be relatively easy to acheive.

So really if I am to make an attempt to progress in my hobby I have to set myself realistic goals. Well goals anyway. They are play more, paint more and build more so my 2012 targets are;
Play at least three games with Batreps (should be easy)
Paint up and finish at least 31 figures (doable)
Complete the four scenery items I started (definately acheivable).
So there is my plan for 2012, lets hope my inherant laziness can be defeated BY THE POWER OF  GREYSKULL!!!

How crap am I?

Well there is a well (?) known figure painting site called Cool Mini Or Not (or CMON to be really cool) where you rate the painting abilities of fellow figure painting nerds. A long time ago I decided it would be a great ego boost for me to put some of my best stuff up on there to make me feel great and let others see how good I am. Unfortunately after clicking through half a dozen pictures of other peoples efforts I came to the conclusion that my stuff was pretty crap!

Five years on from my initial input I have decided to put a few more up on display, partly because I am an eternal optimist but more so because of the 3 main forums I frequent that allow me to put up a gallery, after a combined total of over 30,000 views, no one has rated a single figure.

Undetered I have decided to post like buggery on there to bring up my average rating. The way I will do this -obviously- is by improving my standard of painting, and photography. Well I have 9 pictures up and by adding them all together and dividing them by 9, I get an average rating of 4.95 per figure. This in itself seems an easy task to improve my average. I mean one decent paint job and I should get into an average rating of 6! Well that is my target to achieve a better than shit average rating for all my CMON piccys.

So in an attempt to understand why the people of CMON don't like my painting I will analyse each of my poorly scoring pictures.

Warpfire Thrower team 4.0

First up is my beloved Warpfire Thrower team. The paintjob is (I think) sound, based with static grass and dirt coloured sand. Ok so gloss varnish was used, that was before I learnt that that was soooo unfashionable! The background is equally uninspiring so I have to agree this should have a low score, but 4.0? That's not fair!

Barbarian #1 4.7

Next is one of my Ginger Barbarian. By this time I had discovered the curved-piece-of-paper-that-hides-the-shadows-at-the-back trick. Nice leather loincloth, static grass reasonable, if somewhat bland skin tones. Me likee. Unfortunately most CMONers don't. Score 4.7

Heartbreaker Ratman Warlord 4.7

This one slightly baffles me. When I finished this Ratman Warlord from Heartbreaker (not a heartbreaker of a model, in case you thought it had in fact; broken my heart) I was made up. The unusual colour of armour was acheived by many different ink washes applied one after another a lovely pallid flesh tone and to top it of a border around the picture. Admittedly it was glossy again with that god awful background, but hey! Nobodies perfect. 4.7 for fuck's sake!

Warzone Demon 4.8

Scoring slightly higher was my Warzone demon. Matt finish, minimal shadows and an attempt at a sculpted base. It only got 4.8 so back to the painting table I guess.

Barbarian #2 4.8

I really liked the way this one came out, the figure is from Black Tree Designs and a real pleasure to paint. He has a nice eyebrow ring which isn't quite pictured and a big bloody sword. Still for all his beauty he still only got a 4.8. Sheeesh!

Barbarian #3 5.0

Woop woop! This is the first figure has has a better that shit rating of, wait for it-5.0. It is also the only one that got a comment (nice leopard skin markings). Perhaps the wood on the axe and shield could have been highlighted more, or his nipples darkened to get that extra 0.2 of a score to make it loved, I just don't know.

Barbarian #4 5.1

of all the Black Tree Barbarians this is by far my favourite, he is quite litterally dripping with axes! Big meaty hands and a bald head, who couldn't love him? I suppose giving him pink nail varnish and a bland skin tone helped to lower his score. Sorry old buddy. 5.1.

Imperial Psyker 5.5

My imperial Psyker scored 5.5 with a gloss finish and shit background, but then he did get a frame so it's swings and roundabouts really. Does it matter that it is ever so slightly blurry?  5.5? Really?

Genestealer Hybrid 6.0

My highest scoring model! Also the most recently painted and photographed. A big lumpy base probably helped too! 6.0, yeah baby! Who knows what he would've gotten with a frame? The sky could've been the limit!

I'm not really sure what conclusions to conclude from this rather patchy data, what I probably should do though is to paint a bit better and stop whining about overly critical peers. Frames will defo help though! Best if I don't paint them as Gingers either.

Whom Let The Dogs Out?

After buying (and losing, then finding again) a new camera I decided to post some more pics up. Its a snazzy IXUS 115 and has a variety of functions that my old camera didn't so I will be experimenting over the next few weeks to see how to make my figures look better than they really are.

Elven Hunting Dogs

First up are my Elven Hunting Dogs (hence the ever-so-funny blog title). I intend using these for a farming world campaign where the yokels have to protect their crops from another band of raiders/yokels/mutants. My main reason to paint these in such a quick and drab colour scheme is to just get them off my painting pile and into my finished cupboard. Job done.

The People's Revolutionary Armed Team

 Staying with my agricultural world denizens are members of the People's Revolutionary Armed Team which is a faction on the planet, as you may have guessed a farming commune that actively enforce their political views on the masses whether required or not. The two on the right and middle are Frateris Militia and the girlie on the left is an old guards(wo)man. These figures (and the rather bland paint scheme) can be used as factory workers, spaceship crew or any other citizens that live in the crushing monotony of the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millenium!

Barsulsnart

 This is Barsulsnart. An independant daemon who made several appearances during my forays into the World Of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade), a great roleplaying game I used to play. Now he is a daemon who trawls the ether waiting for unprotected psykers to let him into their minds and fuck things up for them. His favourite stomping grounds are the underhives of Necromunda where he likes nothing more than to posess a wyrd and then take out half a gang before reality reasserts itself and sends him back to the warp. For those interested it is an old Black Tree Design demon which I believe is still available. Again a rather simple (some might say lazy) paint job that is only enhanced by the gobbets of flesh, entrails, bones and flayed face that I have lovingly embellished the base with. as the whole Daemon posession thing goes, I imagine the poor unfortunate vessel that the Daemon enters is literally blown apart by the otherworld powers of chaos, hence the offal at his feet.

Sludge Jellies

In keeping with the Necromunda theme I have nearly finished two Sludge Jellies for the game. They are pieces of greenstuff fashioned to look similar to octopus/jellyfish hybrids and in this attempt I seem to be fairly sucessful. Still trying tp figure out a way to half submerge them in varnish without it slopping out over the side. It will come to me.

Tox bomb markers

Using a bit of greenstuff and broken sea shells I made some Tox-Bomb markers for my Scavvy gang. I intend to make some Rad Counters and Blight Grenade markers too for my 40K games.

Blood Flies

Very much still in the construction phase are my Necromundan Blood Flies. Inspired by the Underhive Bestiary articles. Not a truly gang killing critter they should be able to put the fear of Bejasus in a flesh wounded juve. For those interested they are greenstuff rolls placed in ever decreasing lumps with wings of greenstuff squeezed into wing-shaped loops. Not sure if I'm going to put a second set of wings on them, or just leave them be.

So this is what I have been up to lately, and hopefully I will shortly figure out how to work through all the whistles and bells on my camera to take much better shots. Until next time then...........

My trip to Lala Land.

Well I have finally figured out why I have so much trouble maintaining focus on any single project, well not finally, I've just decided to articulate it, in the hope that it might be a kick up the arse for me. Put in simple terms, my painting speed can't keep up with my painting wishlist. That is, I start painting, for example Genestealer Hybrids, my mind races off down a huge lengthy campaign where the final battle is a glorious (or doomed) defence of the Imperial Governors palace by beleaguered household troops in a desperate attempt to save the planet. Therein lies the problem, I start painting one thing only to go down this yellow brick road of insanity and find I want to finish 50 figures all from different armies, games systems, and even sexual orientation!

The current campaign I am flirting with is a chaos cult rebellion on a semi industrial world with temperate climate and a pale green sheen. I have many Necromunda and Confrontation (the old GW type) figures to use as rebels, with a fairly strong contingent of beastmen as added muscle. Opposing them I have a pretty big Imperial Guard army with plenty of big nasty tanks. So now I realise I have to scratch build some armour for the army of debauchery otherwise they will get Iron Fisted! So within 5 minutes of devising a campaign I have given myself weeks of graft hand building some trucks that will very likely be blown off the table in the first turn.

My scratchbuilt painting table.

My painting table covered in  shit I want to paint.

Another reason is my beautifully crafted painting table. Well no, not really, it was built by me to paint my little heart out at and it was to be custom built higher than all the other tables (dining, computer coffee etc) so my painting ability will increase exponentially and I will become The God of Paint otherewise known as Potbig the Eternally Ideal Consistancy. Unfortunately not being an expert (or even a novice) in Ergonomics I made it too high and I don like to spend more than an hour at a time at it! Also for the last 4 years I have been going through a seies of table lamps that I don't like and therefore can't achieve what I want to with them. My greatest lamp was a simple 50W metal table lamp that my niece sat on and broke much to my dismay. then I found out that all these energy saving flurescent or LED lamps and whatnot don't even illuminate a fraction of what my beloved energy guzzling spotlight used to do. 

My Soon-To-Be-Painted table is also a problem. As I have a huge loft, leaving a figure on a surface half finished is not a big problem, so when I'm in a 40K mood all my currently on the go Warhammer stuff gets dumped on my F.T.F.N (fuck that for now) table until I go back to it or I start with Warhammer Quest and dump my 40K stuff on the F.T.F.N table. The cycle is perpetually replenished as I go through different fads with different armies and games systems.
Well there is a few reasons why I can't ever finish anything. I'm certainly not blaming my own laziness!

On the plus side I've gotten a follower. Cheers Krug!

Mutated tits out for the lads!

Well as I've been spamming these buggers all over the forums I've decided to pimp them on here. These are some of the figures swelling the ranks of The New Mutant Army. I took the pictures with my phone and as it turns out, its a lot better than my camera!

Stunty, Taily, Hairy, Skully and Spikey.

Well first picture contains three skaven (a slave, a clanrat and a plague monk) an old Rat Ogre and a plastic gretchen from the 2nd Edition 40K boxed set. All have had major amputation, heads mainly and a  couple of arms. The Gretchin has an old Light Wizard Acolyte head (and the remains will become a redemptionist crazy). The Rat Ogre has been given a necklace of ears (an earlace?) and is probably going to get an Ogre head. The Skaven Slave has been given the top half of a Delaque gangers head (part of an eBay bits bag) and a shotgun has replaced his wanky spear. The other two are going to be getting a couple of decrepit weapons but I feel that the plague monk should get a placard saying something like 'Mutant Rights Now' as he looks like he needs one and it will make an interesting model (especially if the placard has plenty of spikes in it).

My fat mutant, Big armed mutant, feathered mutant and scrawny tailed mutant.

The next group shot is of my incredibly fat mutant, my big armed-extra mouthed mutant, my feathery-bird footed mutant and my small long-tailed mutant. The first two were sort of my first forays into the world of milliput and it was a learning experience! Fatty's legs are an old Bloodbowl Orcs as is the club bearing arm,the other hand is a Goliath autopistol. Next to him is a Goliath body with I think an old Stone Troll club hand and a Catachan Lieutenant arm. Next to him is my old Harpy with a Goliath autogun, and some milliput feathers on the back as I used the wings previously for a Scavvy with wings. Lastly is an plastic Skink with an orlock head.

Beastman, Enormous Head-and-Body mutant and Cyclopic-Hairy-Horny mutant.

My last group of muties are a pretty straightforward Beastman I bought from ebay with no arms, a highly improbable huge headed mutant and my cyclopic hairy and horny mutant. The beastman is one from the Realm Of Chaos era, it is a Slaanesh Beastman with one tit and a unicorn horn, he/she (one can never tell with Slaanesh) has been given a Witch Elf sword and the plan is to equip the other hand with something shooty. The big guy in the middle was supposed to look a bit like the large robot thing in Rob Zombie's Dragula video but in a more organic way and I suppose if you squint really hard, it does a bit. The last one is another Bloodbowl Orc with some extensive renovation (mainly Goliath arms and green stuff fur).

The Retrieval.

We had another game of Rogue 40Kamunda (which is what I've decided to call the hybrid of games that fall into the catagory of Sci Fi skirmishing) which turned out pretty good fun. There were 4 players, myself, Boy, Arch and Eeee (henceforth refered to as just E!). The forces were Imperial Guard Vs Chaos cultists and general scum. The plot was a routine patrol had been waylaid by bandits and killed . What wasn't known by the bandits was there was a decoder on board that could be of vital importance to anyone wishing to know the patrol plans, troop postions and ammunition guards within a 300km radius. Unable to remove the decoder with the available manpower the bandits go and get reinforcements. Just as they return two hastily deployed Imperial Guard forces arrive to retreive the decoder. The ensuing fight was to determine the fate of that quite bulky piece of equipment.
Boy and E! took 15 guardsmen each, Arch took approximately 15 Redemptionists (with a warzone heavy machine gunner that counted as a heavy stubber) with a couple of underhive low lifes to make the group up to a fun sized raider group. I took about 12 Scavvys plus a beastman with an autogun and Idolatror Jobes an old citadel model that looks quite a lot like Indianna Jones.The forces weren't exactly even but I used the rule that if a model is holding two guns he is assumed to be a gunfighter.I rather foolishly used Scavvy stats so my entire force had a BS of 2, except for the beastman and Idolatror whom I considered to be just an average gang leader (who keeps some very unsavoury companions).We used an 8'x4' table with plenty of scenery and each force deployed in a seperate corner.

The centre of the battlefield.

E! started first and split his forces into 3 groups, one to head off the Redemptionists, one to advance on the objective and the third to keep an eye on the other Imperial Guard force despite the declared alliance.
Arch was next and split his force into two, one to grab the objective and the other to engage E!'s guardsmen.
I similarly split my forces and Boy did likewise.

The first few turns went well for the IG and their lasguns picked off Redemptionists and Scavvys alike, whereas my scabrous raiding party failed to hit anything (damn my stupid keep it fluffy notions) and the intolerant robe wearers were similarly ineffective. At one point in the game my Scavvy heavy stubber (another Warzone figure) spent 5 turns trying to hit two lazy Cadian guardsmen in plain view only to be wasted in the 6th exchange.
Towards the latter stages of the game when close combat occurred both Scavvy's and the dress wearers started to rip through the guardsmen. The result of the game was victory for the forces of non humanity as they picked up the decoder and scarpered. All in all a fun game that we didn't bog down with too many additional rules.

Idolatror Jobes oversees the raid.

I suppose the end result is a win for the bad guys, Idolatror Jobes isn't exactly a full blown chaos cultist, more of a callous and cynical chancer who will do anything for money. Now that the decoder is his, he will sell it to the highest bidder regardless of the consequences.
The next photos I take will be better honest!

Some Underhive Denizens.

Well I have gotten round to finishing some more models which is quite an unusual thing for me some its time for some unveiling.
Fistly I finished 5 of my Pit Slave gangers. I tried a new way of basing with a sort of milliput base with some stones embedded into it, to make them look all minery. I have two more Pit Slave figures to finish off then I will give them a run out.

Pit Slave Gang

Skinner.

Next up is my penal guardsman. I put ork Gorkamorka arms on him to make him very brawny looking. Inked up with some crappy tattoos (one on his arm says 'ARM') and a sad face badge i think he looks pretty good. I will be using him as a all round general scumbag who will beef up undermuscled gangs. The knife he is armed with looks like some sort of filleting knife so I will refer to him as Skinner, but under no circumstances will I paint it on his base. I'm over that now. I also painted up an old Citadel confrontation figure that came out ok but the picture didn't come out well so I won't post that yet.



My mutant army has been expanded by two this week. One is an Esher juve bought from ebay without a head and her bosom filed off (must've been from a puritanical household that just couldn't handle the shame anymore). The other is an old Bloodbowl Chaos cheerleader. The Esher got what I hoped would be a sack over her head and bulging eyes (choice of mutation, Bulging Eyes or Hideous Appearance) whereas the cheerleader just got a boltgun, (she has 3 tits and a tail so her mutation could be Strangely Attractive, Big Tail or Bitty). Regardless of what they are, the normals will shortly be made to pay!

Ugly Hettie and Jugs McMonagle

I finished two more Delaques for my Men in White gang. A long time ago in a White Dwarf there was an article about using Necromunda figures in 40K games and one was the use of Delaques as scientists. Consequently I painted their trenchcoats to look like lab coats and voila! A not particularly menacing looking gang. All I have to do now is paint up a couple of heavies and they're done.

Some boffins.

Lastly, I finally finished two Catachan Guardsmen that I started over 10 years ago! There is absolutely no valid reason for this other than everytime I picked them up, I suddenly lost interest. Well they completed a squad so yay(!) to that. The annoying thing about them is I painted them black and I really liked the skin tones but unfortunately I have forgotten the paint mix to acheive it again so the next black miniatures I do probably won't look as nice. I gave one a Papa Shangoesque ghost face and painted a swastika tattoo on the other (the way I think, after 38000 years it probably doesn't have a racist meaning, more a xenophobic one), but its my model and I'll paint it how I want.

Troopers Ghost and Nazi.

Now that I have them done I have gotten out some more started-10-or-more-years-ago figures to try to get some closure  on my traumatic painting problems. amongst those on my ever expanding awaiting painting table are two Frateris Militaria an old Rogue Trader Assasin and an old female guardsmen (?). I have also started making some Necromunda gribblys for some nasty treacherous fauna games and some Tox Bomb markers for my Scavvys. There just aren't enough hours in the day!

Scenery W.I.P.

As I'm shortly off to Spain for a week my overiding urge is to finish some scenery I'm working on for my Sci-fi games. I want to put some pics up but due to my rather ill timed pc reformatting urge i may not be able to acheive this. Both of these projects  are based on scenario ideas that might just look good to boot.

Scenario Idea 1!
Imperial Communications Tower. well the idea for this is most campaigns are started in small skirmishes then build up. the idea behind it is if any rebellion has a wish to succeed it must cripple the authorities ability to form a co-ordinated defense. To make things easier for the insurgents I decided to build a conveniently placed communications tower that will cripple defenders attempts to call for reinforcements or any of that  jazz. The tower itself is made of Muller Rice tubs glued together with various gubbins stuck to it to make it communcationsy.

Comms Tower.

Side view.

Scenario Idea 2!
Szylakz Tavern. This is a Bar/Drinking Hole that can be found on many Imperial planets where dodgy deals are done and unsavoury characters congregate. The main reason I wanted to build one was that in the many games of Necromunda I've played it seemed to be one of the more common types of territory and therefore a common place for gangs to be hanging out. The design for this was foamcard cut into shapes with a Necromunda bulkhead all plastered with watered down polyfiller. I didn't give it a compleatly even covering to give it the look of a place that isn't averse to letting drunken punters kick hell out of each other in or just  outside it. I have also put a few boltholes in case the Arbitrators raid the place and it has a seperate guns storage area to stop the place getting shot up Wild West style. I'm even thinking about sculpting an old gunshed guard in a rocking chair called Sleepin' Pete who lazes around with a shotgun on his lap. I'm going to put a few advertising hoardings on the roof to give plenty of cover for patrons and staff alike, with hopefully some amusing adverts on them too.

The Bar.

Aerial view.

A Cunning Plan

Well my blog page views have hit a hundred And after reaching this somewhat pathetic milestone I wonder what it takes to make a successful blog. Well I suppose content has a lot to do with it, so by actually writing a passage about getting more page views could possible get me more page views, thus the cycle is perpetuated by unwitting readers. So in an attempt to entrap other viewers I will put some interesting labels in this post to see if it becomes any more popular.
Battle Report This entry doesn't contain any.
Adult Themes Again sorry none of that.
Scenes of a Sexual Nature Nope not really.
Brightly Coloured Headings Hell yeah!
Underlined and Bold Headings Of course.
Another of my ploys to get this read is by putting a link in my signature to here in all the forums I frequent and then spam the shit out of them, so far Eastern Fringe users show me love and Frothers Unite sometimes look too, unfortunately two of the bigger forums, warseer and Dakka Dakka are so far ignoring me. There are quite a lot of other wargamy sites to start annoting as well like Dice Troll, Bell Of Lost Souls, and Terragenesis.
Of course I could also send out begging letters as well but they probably wouldn't be very cost effective when you consider the cost of stamps.
I suppose I could always bit the bullet and write something worth reading, but that just smacks of real effort.

The mutants are coming!

Well for a while now I've been converting figures like mad with milliput, and (sort of) honing my sculpting skills. Coupled with my current Necromunda/40K slant at present, I have been creating muties. The old Rogue Trader rulebook had some real beauties of mutations so I have been trying to create some of these with my limited sculpting skills. I also wrote up a few dozen mutations for use in both games and I think some that I came up with were the nuts. Some were impossible (or very nearly) to convert but most mutations affected the appearance of said freaks so were fairly easy to do. So far I have the following in various states of constuction:
Obese
Birds Feet
Eyestalks
Hopper
Prehensile Tail
Hideous Appearance
Cyclops
Massive Arm.
There are quite a few other ideas that I'm working on so I would expect  to see more of them come into being, so to speak. I already have a winged mutant and a Horse headed mutant. The main gaming purpose is for a chaos incursion campaign that I've started with Boy. Plus I'm working on an all mutant gang for Necromunda, so between the two I will get plenty of chances to playtest the rules. I'll post some pics up shortly.

Some more paint.

Well I've finally gotten round to photographing some recently (and some not so recently) painted figures.

Dobbin McBludgeon

Here is my first offering, a Goliath horse-headed mutant. I loved making this one and will be a stalwart in my mutant army. All I did really was removed his angry Goliath head and give him an equine equivalent. I have about a dozen other mutant conversions on the go which I'll post when the mood takes me. For now I'll name him Dobbin McBludgeon.



Phaelps



My second figure is my Redeptionist Leader for Necromunda. It was originally intended to be entered into a painting competition over on Eastern Fringe Forums about 2 years ago, but then I always seem to drift in and out of enthusiasm for figures. Still it came out nice so I'm pretty pleased with it. I think I'll name him Phaelps in honour of the incredibly mental pastor in the Westboro Baptist Church and his equally offensive flock.



Whitescar

Next is my beastman conversion. It is a Black Tree Design crossbow armed beastman that I removed part of his right arm and replaced it with an Orlock plastic autogun and some milliput to tidy it all up.I painted a white scar down his face but it looks a bit like a chalk mark. oh well back to the drawing board.

Ay Psighker

Here's an old imperial sanctioned psyker that i particularly like. He has a variety of roles in 40K games Imperial Psyker, Genestealer Magus, Chaos Magos, or even Tefal-headed mutant with a gun and backscratcher type implement.

Boss Gitbag

Although I have never painted enough Orks to form an army I have a few painted up as they are just fantastically fun to paint. Here is Boss Gitbag a Blood Axe warboss with a currently very small warband that I hope to expand soon(ish).

Doc Badchop

Lastly Doc Badchop is an Ork Painboy that came out not too bad and I loved painting. the trousers were a bit of a mistake but i then decided that they looked a bit tye-dyed and so I left them.

Well thats all I'm putting up today. I have some Pit Slaves very nearly complete so hopefully I'll get them up soon. Apologies for my crap names especially the ones actually painted on the bases, that was a phase that I went through, that I seem to be well over now. Also sorry for the rather arbitrary nature of the capitalisation on the names of fictional things from the warhammer universe.

Minted!

Well no not really. I managed to make about €220 on old figures I'm never going to paint, but now with all that disposable cash in my paypal account, I am trying really hard not to buy more figures. And failing. I bought 3 Catachan mortar teams as I really love the old metal figures. What I'm really after is one of those hot wire cutters that attach to the mains as I had a battery one that was quite simply crap.
I actually finished a few figures last week, a Black Tree Design beastman conversion with autogun, a horse headed mutant and a Redemptionist leader for my Westboro Baptist Church Affiliate gang. I'll photo them and put them on my next blog. I have been converting a lot lately and I have another half dozen miniatures chopped up to shit and made into freaky deaky muties, again pics to follow.
So hopefully my next entry will be hobby related!

My Del Boy Attempt.

Well I have a love/hate relationship with ebay and at the moment its more love than hate. I love to buy rare and unusual miniatures for ridiculously low prices (but generally pay too much) and also to sell stuff for way over their worth. Sadly neither really come true, more a watered down version of both. So far this year I have sold 12 figures and bought 36. Admittedly the figures I have bought were mainly grunts for my ever increasing collection of badly led troops.
What I've done this week is mainly due to ebays free listing weekend is put 48 seperate auctions on there. All were old minatures that I bought nearly 20 years ago which now are very rare (I always put rare or OOP in my listings, whether it makes a difference I don't know) and now sadly unwanted. I say sadly as I go through phases of selling stuff with the intention of streamlining my figure collection, and sadly because I nearly always buy more stuff to replace it with.
But this time is differant! I have a plan, when I make €75+ on ebay I will buy myself some proper polystyrene sculpting tools so I can build the scenery of my dreams. Mainly interesting rock formations, an underground fighting pit, and even some terrain boards. So hopefully this time next week I'll be a millionaire!

Progressive thoughts and consequent brain shutdown.

Well I played a game of 40k 2 weeks ago and as is customary for me, once I play a game I want to paint a few new items for the next game to jazz things up a little. I'm sure lots of people do, but unfortunately this leads to my common failing with my hobby. My overactive (and quite unrealistic) painting schedule. I played chaos cult vs IG and that was fun. So then I think to myself, I had better paint a few more 'culty' figures for the next battle to make it bigger and better. Then I also think to myself I had better paint some IG to even it up, even though Boy wants me to paint up some Space Marines. Then my ever ambitious brain thinks it would love the idea of the Eldar make an appearance in the game ( jetbikes to be precise) as I love the whole Chaos VS Eldar Eternal Battle sort of thing.
 So after a bit of pinning and basing and spraying I have put on my soon-to-be-painted painting table the following;
5 Attillan Roughriders
5 Marine Scouts
a 10 man Space Marine squad
5 Necromundan Pit Slaves (simply because I would love to make some rules up for mining weapons against tanks)
Fabius Bile
and various human fighters that aren't really IG but can be used as Brood Brothers, Pirates, Adventurers, Cultists or even a retinue of a Rogue Trader.
And of course now I really want to put my jetbikes together and convert my Dark Elf Cold One Riders into Exodite Knights!
Is it any wonder I can never finish any project?

Chaos Attack on Gamultum Tertious

Well I had a small 40K skirmish game with Boy, my 11 year old son with about 400 points a side. He used Imperial Guard, and I took a Chaos Cult army . It seems my camera is AWOL at the moment so no pictures.



We played 2nd edition 40K as I prefer the close combat system as well as all the different ranges of weapons, the hard as fuck characters and break tests lite.

As it has been an absolute age since my last game of 40K it turned out to be a bit of a debacle for all concerned. Demagogue Fenzor Crutt and his motley array of foamy-mouthed cultists sort of stuttered across the table where they should have galloped. Captain Igsamel Procratitor hid in a plascrete building for the entire battle while his guardsmen stood in line formation shooting at the writhing freaks as they desperately tried to violate enemy lines. The only thing that saved them was the pathetic martial ability of the aforementioned writhers and the fact that two units of cowardly asbo's broke when they got close. The last two turns had some desultory fire and lacklustre close combat ending in a marginal win for the forces of the Imperium. Neither army fulfilled their primary objective (the killing of the enemy general), so it came to casualties. Two units of broken cat torturers verses a squad of Cadians reduced to half strength.

So as far as the campaign goes, Fenzor Crutt has to make a bold decisive attack on an Imperial outpost so he can gain followers to his cause. Procratitor on the other hand has beaten off a small force of raiders who seemed ineptly led so other than getting his command back up to strength he has little to worry about.

Boy expressed an interest in Space Marines so as I have a squad of Blood Angels half done I will finish them for the next battle. I on the other hand will just paint up a few more cultists and give them a couple of renegade IG squads, maybe a Valhallan and an Attillan to be going on with. Mind you I was looking at my Swooping Hawks to paint so maybe there could be an appearance of the Eldar in the not too distant future, about 38,000 years or so..............

The Dirty Bastads

Well as I'm seriously into my gaming fad at the momment I went up into my loft and got my entire painted figure collection and put it on a large bookcase for me to look at, to tell the truth I had them in so many different containers, figure cases and jars that I really had no idea what I had. When I did look I was pleasantly surprised to see figures I just hadn't seen in years, plus a few I'd even forgotten I've painted!
Then I found out that the recent cold spell (it had gotten to -17C during December) had chilled the varnish on some of my figures. Whole areas of varnish had gone white. So that has pissed me off immensely and put me in a big sulk, on what should have been a beautiful unveiling ceremony! Looks like the bunting and flags will have to be put back into storage for another while.
I was just looking at the GW website and now they seem to be making stuff out of resign and calling it citadel finecast. Still very fucking pricey though, but then thats because I've been collecting since the late 80's and they used to be £2.99 for 5 (yes five) miniatures. So €22 for a single figure seems pretty fucked up to me. But then my whole anti GW rant is a whole new (and lengthy, venom filled wail about corporate retailing).
I see there is a button just below my blog that if you click I can become megafamous.
Go on, click it now!

A wee bit of paint.

Well the purpose of this entry is to put a couple of pictures on here to prove that I do paint and I'm not some weirdo pretending to (I'm sure there are some about). As I'm not completely au fait with blogger I hope I don't just cock it up with the pictures.

Here is my Genestealer Hybrid whom is waiting for the rest of his brood to arrive so he can start destroying the imperium asap.

Next is my Warzone demon with chains wrapped around him, a nice figure, one of those impulse buys that have potential but rarely get that much battlfield action. I was hoping to use him as an ultra arch nemesis baddy in Warhammer Quest, but thats a whole differant topic.

Finally for now is Gilberon the chaos cultist. I loved (not in the Slaanesh way) the figures when they came out (also not the Slaanesh way), but never got enough to make a unit, let alone an entire army. Still, I like his pink laspistol skin that he got from his local Nokia shop (in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war).

So thats my third entry into the world of blogger (I blogged like hell on myspace, but thats deader than Nagash). So next time I hope to put some more pretty pictures up.

why the big pause?

Well those couple of of years have flown by haven't they? Just to update my blog as it was crap, I've just started messing around with my little toy soldiers again and in particular I'm doing a lot of converting and such so hopefully I'll put some pictures up for the craic.