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!

Orctobervember

As usual a day(month) late and a dollar(couple of quid) short. My painting speed ranges from stop to slowslowstop so these fellas have taken me almost 2 months to do. To be fair I lacked a bit of motivation during October, and November was my boys birthday (and seemingly every other child in his pre-school class) so painting time is at a premium. I have avowed to dedicate at least 1 night a week to slapping on some pigment so things may hopefully improve in regards to blog updates.

Quite happy with the big fella, he's going to be the BigBoss of my Nobz mob.

The rest of the Nobz, yep - all from the 2ed box set. Quite fun to paint but I'm not a fan of black undercoats now.

Group shot with added Mekboy (who will be used as a Nob with a Flamer).

Again apologies for terrible photos, one day I will sort out a nice shoot with my proper camera in direct sunlight and do a mega-blog-post of all my painted gubbins. Well at least the stuff I'm happy with.


Anyways - this lot are all part of my 2ed skirmish project - a few warbands of roughly 250pts. Along with the Orcs there will be some Marines, an Adeptus Arbites squad (with added Ogryn "Enforcer"), a pirate/gang squad and a small Genestealer cult made up from old plastic Space Hulk Stealers and the excellent Malignancy miniatures from Macrocosm. Oh and maybe a Chaos Cultist squad too as I just scored some of the new GW figures super cheap on t'bay. If I get all that done before 2020 it'll be a miracle.

All that and I've also sketched out a few warbands for Ganesha Game's Flying Lead rules based on the Vegas Apocalypse books I've been sneakily reading via Scribd at work. These will be semi-post apocalyptic/modern survivor types but I'm struggling to find any figures to represent the Rojos - any tips on Vato-esque minis gratefully recieved!

Waaagh n'that

Orctober has started slowly. Got a lot more space greenies to paint but lacking the motivation a bit.

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!

Clash of Warbands

Recently I luckily found myself with a chance to have empty house all to myself for a day due to an early vet appointment. Not one to miss an opportunity I figured I could get in a good swathe of hobby based fun. After discovering aforementioned cat was fine, apart from a sore tail probably caused by scrapping with the one across the road, I was back in the house by 9.30am and excited by what I could get on with.

First task was to finish 2 drastic plastic Skaven from the Warhammer Armies massive box set I had as a kid. These had been sprayed over rather than cleaned first and they looked OK to paint, not too much loss of details. How wrong I was, they promptly turned out pretty rubbish, wether this is down to my poor painting skills or the rushed nature of the task (I wanted them for my Chaos warband for this days gaming, turns out...didn't get round to using them).

Painting woe aside the afternoon was earmarked for some serious SoBH gaming. A mini campaign/tourny of sorts with myself against...myself. One thing I would really like to do is get a game of something in with someone, plans are afoot for maybe just this later in the year but perhaps I need to bite the bullet and get out there and join a club?

That aside the plan was to play 4 of my warbands against each other in 2 games, "winners" going through to play the other, then the warband left standing facing off against the newly created Chaos Warband. Background fluff loosly based around the news that a maurading Chaos warband were laying waste to local areas and searching for a mystic stone where they hoped to summon a Great Demon. Each warband were searching for magical items to aid them in seeing off this threat but it appears others were thinking the same thing. Apart from maybe the Undead who just wanted (spicy?) Chaos brains for tea.

First game saw the Gobbo clan of Garg Urkls Kneebiterz facing off against Extan Slygrin's Undead warband. 3 markers were places around the board, one of which would contain the magic item (rolled off the basic magic item chart in the SoBH rulebook). Things started well for the Goblins as in so much they actually moved forward, apart from the archers who think hiding at the back is probably best for them. The Troll got ganged up on by the Twitchers who must have been so hungry that they thought Troll flesh was appealing.

Gerroff my legz wiv dem point fings

Extan Slygrin himself used his Flight and Free Disengage skills to move around as he needed, and even took out one goblin easily with his Assasin skill. The terror inducing Lich snuck up the left flank hoping to open one of the chests located there. Moment of the game was when he charged a lowly Goblin hoping to cause terror but this Gobbo must have been made of sturdier stuff as he promptly passed all 3 Quality rolls and proceeded to batter the Lich to death (errr...again) in combat! By this stage the Troll was in a standoff with the Twitchers and there was only one chest left to check. The Gobbo Shamen, Garg Urkl himself and one of his remaining boys were stuck in a race to it with Extan the Wraith Lord. The gobbos got there first but before they could leg it Extan slaughtered the poor fella holding it, picked up the Cloak of Stealth and flew off to safety. Sneaky win for the Undead!

Second up were the Gladerunner Elves against another new warband - Clan Dirwir dwarves. It seemed equally matched, with both side having decent quality scores. The skirmish was fun, the Dwarves showing their close combat prowess by taking out the elf warrior early, the Elf mage and bowman working well in tandem to take a dwarf or two out. 

Right lads theres one of them long haired types, lets gerrim...

This one was settled however when the Dwarf leader found the magic item (Enchanted Javelins, perfect for a dwarf!) and being the only one without the short move hinderence promptly shuffled away with it while his crossbowmen held off the Young Wood Elves trying to chase him down.

You watch my back while I nab this magic thingyme, then we'll LEG IT.

For the final clash of the day (took longer than I thought to get through the other games and I figured I should be on time to picmk up my son from pre-school!) I changed the format to a "take the hill" type of game, this was to allow the winning warband to gain a good tactical deployment area for the final clash (which hasn't been played yet). The warband with the most figures on the hill by the end of turn 6 would win. As it turned out we barely got to the final round as the Undead were wiped out fully in turn 6 by the Dwarves. Their superior quality score, coupled with sticking in range of the Leader for the +1 bonus gave them a decent advantage over the Undead who struggled to keep it together. Again the Lich was taken out early, he is a useful piece but suffers in combat when his target is able to pass the terror roll!

This was the most I've played since spending days round my mate Neil's (Aka Jeff, aka Moley) house as a teenager and it was throughly enjoyable. Hopefully this write up wasn't too wordy, I've tried to sneak a few pictures in too so you can have a giggle at my terrible terrain! I can see more of this happening soon, infact the wife is off out tonight so I may just get in the final game once the boy is in bed.

Spiky, axey, bucket-heady

After a skate trip to Hamburg curtailed my painting time I finally got around to these 2, probably part of a chaos warband for SoBH with an aim to be part of a bigger chaos faction for WHFB3. Chaos mage was an eBay purchase and I do like his purpleyness. Gurt big marauder dude is an Avatars of War miniature and I'm not totally happy with his skin - was my first time using the Vallejo skin wash and it seems really dark. Still not too bad overall.