The Not Quite a Year in Review Post

Slightly jumping on the bandwagon (late, again) with this post but thought it better to use it to define a few new goals for the next year.

I've been back into the "hobby" for a little over 6/7 months and it's been a wonderous voyage of (re)discovery. LOADS of new models, some amazing rules for anything you can mention and the blogging of others have kept me stoked throughout. There have been a few dips in motivation and the tedium of painting similar models has got to me once or twice, but I'm still amped on getting things done as best I can. (Except maybe those plastic Skaven, those guys sucked).

Gaming wise - there's only been some rather sad solo games of SoBH and 2ed 40k, and while a blast it's not quite the same as facing off against someone. My scenery needs a bit of work but it's a millions miles away from the stuff I made as a teenager, if I even bothered at all back then!

Orks n Arbites on the rad Deep Cut mat (with my iffy scenery).

Anyhows, a few things I want to do in 2016.

• Keep painting 40k stuff. This past year saw me finish small 250pt warbands of Space Marines, Orks and Adeptus Arbites. I've got a Pirate group coming together but next on the list and (currently in progress) is a small Stealer coven using the Macrocosm minis. Ideally I want to expand these to 500pts and then possibly upwards from there. I snaffled some later age Ork figs from t'bay which should give me a good base for a potential 1000pt army. I'd like to end with at least that and an opposing force by the end of the year.
• Get back into Epic. I have a ton of this stuff and really enjoyed playing it so it's probably about time to dig it out and get it properly painted. I've knocked up a few 1500pts army lists to begin with so I'd like to get those done at least and see where I'm going from there. There is a very active scene for this out there too, and a lot of it in Bristol it seems, so who knows maybe I'll get adventurous and check it out.
• Warbands, warbands, warbands. SoBH is still a great game and I want to keep chipping away at various fantasy stuff until I've got a decent collection that I can pull out at any time and run off a game. I may even learn how to paint Skeletons properly this year too.
• Post Apoc stuff. Get started with this, it a loose aim and will probably end up as a project I work on when I'm sick of the others.
• More Goblin Quest! As the boy nears school age I'm hoping to get him a bit more interested in some gaming stuff. Keeping his attention long enough is tricky. I may have a look at simplifying (even more!) the SoBH rules and see how that goes. Either way more gaming with the boy in 2016n would be rad.
• Play against real live people. Unsure how much of this I will do, it may help if I bite the bullet and sign up to the Oldhammer forum to see who is out there, or just get along somewhere and maybe try a few demo games of something. There has been an idea thrown about of meeting up with Mark and getting a few games at the end of Feb so fingers crossed that will happen.
• Check out some new rules. Not really too important but I do like looking about. Frostgrave is getting plenty of attention and it does look fun, Infinity might be interesting but looks like it gets really involved really quickly.
• Get better with the painting. Again one that will come with time. I need to expand my paint collection a lot more and learn what to do with it (especially yellows). More reading and video watching there I feel.
• Lose weight. Personal one this but I turn 40 in 2017 and I'd like to not be rounder than I am tall by then. Diet fun!

So thats that, it'll no doubt mutate over time but it's a good start. I'm thoroughly enjoying delving back into all this stuff and hope to get deeper in the rabbit hole this year!

Happy New year everyone!

Badly Painted Boy(z)

Had a spare afternoon "working from home" so managed to finish a few more of the Doom Legion Space Fascists and also set up a slightly more professional set up to take pictures of some of my better minis. I know I am nowhere near a good painter, as I'm basically learning from scratch due to never putting the effort in when I was younger but these are a couple I'm happy with so far!

Doom Legion Captain, last mini to be finished, as usual a few bits good, a few bits bad!

em4 Rebel/ganger fella. Tried for a punk bleached jeans look, almost worked!

Orc Warboss, loads of fun to paint!

Zombie dude types. MmMbwaains n'ting.

Chaos Sorcerer type. Pointy, skully joy!

Slow down

The end of summer is always busy in our house, especially with a 3yr old. Various weddings, parties, mini-holidays, summer touch rugby and other social shenanigans have lead to a slow down in my lobbying. Not to say I haven't been doing anything but the painting was pretty much non-existent!

That said I did purchase this:



Yep, that's a 2nd Ed box. Contains everything but the space marines and all in good condition too, didn't cost the earth either. I plan to use it for more skirmish based games initially and have a few warbands planned but I'll save those for a later post.

As for painting then there was this ganger type from em4 that was one of my first purchases when I started up again.



And then my first painted marine for a long time! One of the newer plastic ones picked up cheap with some other off the bay. Gone for a Doom Legion paint job mainly as its pretty straightforward! Looking at the picture there are a few bits I need to sort out but quite stoked on it.



More updates soon if this new app I have proves to be any good!