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Leadballoony – It's a lead thing

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The dreaded retrospective post

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized

≈ 32 Comments

Greetings Earthlings, and oh my goodness – another standard Terran year has flown by! Holy shit-sticks, that went by fast, and what a year! I think that I can safely say that this was my best wargaming/modelling/painting year to date, with some truly memorable hobby events & experiences in 2017. Let’s do the traditional month-by-month review shall we? *warning – photodumptastic!*

January: I put together a Blood Bowl team with a twist – ever looking for re-use opportunities, I converted up a team of 40K Servitors that I can play as Undead in Blood Bowl, or use in the 40K setting as plot points or ambulatory scenery. Most of the team were painted in January:

 

February: I completed my 12 strong team, and unleash the Clockwork Oranges on the pitch:

I also received my summons for what turned out to be one of the highlights of the hobby year – my invitation to the Chapel:

I had volunteered to help bring the Albino Forest to life, so did a woodland base to help me nail down the look, plus a forest creeper (can you spot her?):

 

March: March was when I started to get stuck in to the Chapel project in earnest. I managed to paint up 2 more woodland bases for the forest, and I completed a pair of Ostium Guides:

I also started converting up my Chapel warband…

 

April: More converting and priming of the warband in April, but only one painted mini… but wow, what a mini! Lindethiel Gladesinger, Spiritseer of the Crimson Tree Exodite clan and leader of my warband was born into the world:

This model really encapsulates what I was trying to achieve with this project, and is a personal all-time favourite of mine. I hope she presents a different take on the Eldar, exploring the possibilities of an Exodite world where Wraithbone is replaced with a naturally occurring wood. Other than the leaves, the only colours here are greens, bone, gold and white – a really challenging reduction of colour that was as exciting as the unconventional build.

 

May: I had a real shift in focus during May, with my Undead forces for AoS taking centre stage. I managed some 43 minis to table-top standard over the month, including 3 C17 command unit figures, 5 ghosty things, a big Skellie from Knightmare Games, 18 Nightmare Legion skellies, 9 Cursed Company skellies, and 5 random skellies…  phew, that’s a lot of skellies!

I also cranked out 3 stand-alone trees for the Albino Forest, including a heavily converted flesh-eating arboreal monstrosity:

Oh, and I also finished the last assignment for my degree! Five years of graft finished, and just the long wait for the results to endure.

 

June: … was a write-off – a combination of post-degree burn-out, a week on holiday and a fortnight of business travel meant that I did NOTHING hobby related.

 

July: I had a great July – First up, I completed a second member of my Chapel warband – Eldranar the Huntsmaster:

He’s essentially a Dire Avenger Exarch, reimagined for an Exodite warband. The same restricted palette was used here as for Lindethiel, with the addition of grey for the cloak. There was more Chapel excitement as I had the pleasure of meeting up with Mark in RL to work on the boards that would be used for the Albino Forest, and got to see his superb minis first hand. Last, but by no means least, BOYL happened… as usual, this prompted a flurry of last-minute painting, and I managed 11 Tallarn (including one on a toy-hammered jet bike), 7 Blind Beggar androids, and a Tom Meier Zombie Dragon:

BOYL itself was epic – what a weekend!!! Getting to meet so many virtual friends & making new ones, shaking hands with hobby heroes of legend, seeing some of the most classic & beautiful oldhammer minis in the world, and playing so many awesome games made this a weekend to remember! If you missed the big write-up, you can read all about it here.

 

August: Obviously, BOYL inevitably leads to BOYL booty! (the pirate kind, not the ghetto kind), so August saw me quickly paint up 5 Victorian zombies and 5 zombie dogs:

I then powered my way through the Zombies of Karr-Keel set from Upstream Games House, (beautifully sculpted by Kev Adams), and so the ranks of my deadwalkers were swelled by 12 zombies (including a monkey) and a corpse cart:

All these new zombies inspired me to complete a Die-Hard Miniatures Necromancer to ‘mance all their asses:

I also painted another BOYL purchase with my youngest son – a Tony Adams Wolfman (the one on the right – duh!):

Finally, I completed some more models for the Chapel project – four more Exodite Avengers to complete the flesh’n’blood side of the warband:

 

September: … was all about the Chapel project… The first order of events was to meet my commitment to finishing the Albino Forest – six more Woodland bases were completed, including some pretty involved conversions like these:

That took the total forest to 9 bases, plus 3 stand-alone pieces:

 

I also pulled out all the stops to finish the tree constructs & complete my warband (really proud of these guys, especially the big’un):

Here’s the whole band on the first day:

The weekend was absolutely awesome – a real Inq28-style feast of free-flowing game play and gorgeous minis. There are loads more pics of the stunning work on display here & here – go take a look if you haven’t seen them already!

 

October: I had quite a quiet month in October – maybe a bit of hobby burn out, but I just didn’t really feel like doing much. I had my graduation ceremony, (and was formally awarded a 1st class honors degree – woohoo!!), and I managed to get motivated to paint up some more skellies for AoS, starting with another 24 Nightmare Legion minis:

These were joined by 4 random skellies and another Necromancer:

 

November: I kicked off a new army project in November – the rather spiffing Eru-Kin from Die-Hard miniatures, starting with this lovely Predatoresque General:

Me being me, this inevitably includes a terrain side-project, so I started a space-jungle (as you do):

And added 9 Eru-Kin gunners:

I also did a quick terrain/vehicle piece for games with my kids – a toy Tardis painted up ‘properly’:

 

December: Bringing us bang up to date, December saw 3 more Eru-Kin get completed:

And 5 more bits of space-jungle:

 

Phew! I know it’s daft, but I do like to do a tally for the year… in this sense, 2017 was a stonker – I managed 154 individual miniatures and some 30 bits of terrain of varying size & complexity. Obviously, the quality and complexity vary, and I posted less this year than last, but interestingly, my blog stats are up despite publishing fewer posts. On a more generally reflective note, 2017 has been an incredible hobby year – BOYL was superb, as was the Chapel project – the Chapel in particular inspired me to create what I think might be some of my best work to date. I also need to give a nod to the various games & mini producers out there – there has been some awesome kickstarters over the year, and the big dogs (i.e. GW) have had some incredible releases as well.

Creatively, I’m painfully aware that I have swung wildly between the world of Oldhammer and the Inq28 universe on this blog… honestly, of the two I find Inq28 the most demanding mindset to maintain, but also the most rewarding. That said, I love collecting & painting the old stuff, and the OH community is such a nice place to hang out. Looking to next year, I definitely want to get to BOYL again, and plan have an Eru-Kin army for the occasion. I’m also keeping my fingers and toes crossed that there will be another invitational from Mark of Heresyofus fame, so that we can keep the Chapel narrative alive. I’ll almost certainly going to be playing more AoS and Frostgrave, and I’m really looking forward to getting into the new Frostgrave release ‘Ghost Archipelago’… Oh, and there is the small matter of Necromunda… no doubt all of these distractions will require warbands/gangs and terrain. As a matter of fact, I have some OldHammer Necromunda plans lurking at the back of my mind, but maybe there will be a slight lean towards Inq28 this year… I might continue growing my Exodite warband, or (more likely), start something entirely new as a way to keep pushing my painting and modelling standards. Most importantly, I want to keep having fun with what I do.

The fun aspect is important in terms of keeping me engaged with a hobby that continues to provide a much-needed relief from the pressures of real life. But… it is so much more than just an escape – it is a way of meeting great people (online & RL), of playing great games and telling great stories, and of creating a shared experience that very few get to know. Of course, 2017 included the full range of ‘life stuff’ for me – as most years do, and in many ways it was a pretty grotty year. But I also know how hard this year has been for some of you guys… I have been humbled and inspired by the courage, honesty and dignity shown by friends that are really only known to me through this creative thing that we share.

It turns out that, on reflection, this hobby can be friendship and support, kinship and identification, distraction and solace, motivation and inspiration… Not a bad return for ‘playing with toy soldiers’, eh? Here’s looking to the future – thank you for being a part of this thing for me, and for letting me be a part of it for you. Happy new year.

Blood Bowl 2.0

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

New stuff

Hello peeps, sorry but still no painted minis to share – still horribly busy with studying, working and Dadding. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom – I was up in the Nottingham area on the weekend, and took the opportunity to swing by Warhammer World with my tribe:

img_0908

Blogging maestro Wugugast recently did a brilliant series on the many awesome displays that are housed there, so I’m not going to re-do what has already been done so well. However, there was a new display regarding the much anticipated relaunch of Blood Bowl, and I thought you folks might like to take a look:

img_0911 Box contents 1

img_0912 & 2

img_0913 Push-fit Orks

img_0914 and Humies

img_0915 Assembled Humies

img_0916 and Orks

img_0917 Alternative pitch on the reverse

img_0918 The Gouged Eye painted up

img_0919 and The Skavenblight Scramblers

img_0920 and the Reikland Reavers

 

I also snapped this, because nothing says ‘f*** you’ like an armoured company.

img_0924

 

So that’s it for now dudes, sorry for the lack of anything new painted. My super-evil death cultists are close, but not quite there yet… but soon my pretties, soon…

M is for Murder

M is for Malice

M is for Malevolence

M is for…. ?

Bits and pieces

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Greetings fellows! It has been a while since I last posted, and there’s a good reason for that. I’m finding my hobby time severely restricted at the moment – my degree course is hitting a critical point, and is consuming way more time than usual. I’m on the home stretch though, just 6 months to go before I’m done. In the meantime, I’m afraid that you can expect a slow-down from me in terms of hobby output.

It hasn’t been entirely barren though, me and my eldest had a session building Gargoyles for his fledgling Nid hoard:

img_0905

He did a great job of focusing on this, and zero accidents! We’ll be walking through these over the next few weeks, so I’ll post up the results as we progress.

Also, I took a day out to go to Brighton a few weeks back to check out an Ian Miller exhibition. For those that don’t know, Ian was one of the original artists with Games Workshop, and his art is threaded throughout the older books and magazines. It was fantastic to see his work in the flesh, having admired it from afar for some 28 years or so. I loved one piece in particular, and after some serious head vs. heart warfare, I dipped into my savings and bought an art. ‘Rote 1’ now takes pride of place on my study/games room wall:

img_0906

I have managed a little painting myself, but nothing that is ready to show yet… stand by though dudes and dudettes , because I’m putting together the most sinister, evil, vicious cult ever to grace this, or any other plane of existence! These guys piss all over Genestealers, kick the crap out of all Chaos cults, laugh in the face of Scientology and eat Satanists for breakfast… they didn’t even call Cultist Chan back after that crazy-hot afterparty at the 2013 Cult-con…  Seriously folks, these dudes are badass… be afraid.

Boat building tutorial

30 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

scenery

Hi guys, I’ve put together a quick post to show how I go about building a boat out of coffee stirrers…  A few of you were asking, so  have at it – lots of pics, and not much words :-)

img_0882 Soak ’em

 

img_0883 Brace ’em

 

img_0884 Add boiling water & leave overnight, then pour the water away and leave the stirrers for a day to dry while braced in position

 

img_0885 Nice bend to them, still slightly damp

 

img_0886 Very flexible

 

img_0887 Braces glued on to form the sides

 

img_0888 Put them ‘back to back’ (braces out!)

 

img_0889 Cut the shape of the prow through both sides…

 

img_0890 so that it matches…

 

img_0891 Repeat at the other end

 

img_0892 switch the sides around and glue prow and stern

 

img_0893 Glue in some bracing – top…

 

img_0894 and bottom…   Let it all dry for a day or two

 

img_0900 Add planking (I planked the bottom on this one to make a rowing boat, but my first one had the planking on top to make a deck… your choice!)

 

img_0901 Add some bits…

 

img_0902 and some bobs!

 

There we go, I hope that makes the process a bit clearer. Obviously, this is just a very quick scenery project – the boats are not especially to scale, and aren’t highly detailed. This is a quick, low cost solution to address a particular need within a Frostgrave scenario, but this approach should also work for a range of games from fantasy, historical, pirates, whatever! I daresay that with more time, effort and skill, you could really create something spectacular… (Mikko, I’m lookin’ at you bud!)

Peace out dudes, catch you all at high tide!

Z z z z Zombie Troll!!

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Hello folks, a cheeky little bonus post this evening – I cranked out a rather lovely Frostgrave Zombie Troll from Northstar Games this evening. He was already undercoated and I’d textured up the base already so I just spent a few hours splashing some ink around. I needed to get him speed-painted up for a spoooky halloween game I’m planning for my own tribe of little horrors – it’ll be a stripped down version of the Frostgrave rules, and will pitch Hraxi Jonas and Samwise Short-round against the shambling undead in a heroic quest for treasure! And candy!  Should be good fun ;-) 


Happy Haloween!

You now have 15 seconds to comply…

08 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

A bit of fiddling around today… some improvement I feel, whadda you guys think? Stick or twist?

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