[Personal Work] Tiny men in massive hats.

It may have come to your attention that I have done hardly any painting so far this year. To be honest, I haven't done any serious painting since October I think. Which is a worry. This is partly down to fatigue, and partly down to me trying to get stuff built and boxed up rather than just painting one or two models a month.

Good news is I am down to my last Nyss before the unit is fully assembled. I have had none of the issues people have described when it comes to building these guys. Guess its because I have pinned every joint and part on each model to make them easy to hand and hopefully durable. I need to do a little greenstuffing before painting to mask some of the neck gaps (thinking furry collars). I've managed to get two games in with them so far. Pretty impressed with their shotting, but its amazing how not that impressive POW 9 weapon masters really are. Guess I am spoiled by Banes (who knew). Still, they are there to shoot over most other things so I am happy with the unit.

As part of my efforts to get back in to painting, I decided to do something a little different to warm up and relax myself. I have been a massive fan of Epic since I became aware of wargaming as a thing. Indeed, my first memory of GW came before I have ever even stepped foot in there, seeing a poster of an Imperator Titan as I walked bast a store and being blown away by the sight of a castle on legs. It just looked cool.

I have two Epic armies these days, Orks and Guard. The Orks were one of those forces you accidentally end up owning, but the Guard are my passion. Epic is the only scale that really lets you play the guard as they should be, masses of grunts, waves of tanks and a titan or two backing them up. Not to mention the air support swooping in and strafing the unwitting enemy.

When it came to choosing a colour scheme for my guard, I had every intention of going for the Valhallans in their classic white and green piebald scheme. But just before starting the army I was gripped by a madness and decided that Vostroyans were the way forward. Not only that, but I decided sculpting hats on 6mm models was a really good idea...

I am going to dig up my force and put some photos up shortly, but to keep you reading, here is a shot of the Fire Support Team that I have just finished. I love 6mm scale (people always say it seems hard to paint, not at all, the details are so small that you can get some amazing results pretty simply).

The hats are not perfect, but on mass they look pretty effective, as I hope I can show soon.

Hope you like them.

Till next time.
 

[Personal Work] Of Elves and Alligators

One of the things I have realised recently is that I own a lot of models... not as many as I used to, but still far too many. Even worse, many of these are not even built. They have never seen the table or had dice rolled in anger against them. That's just sad and has to change!

It may have come to your attention by now that Cryx is my one true love these days, and much of my pile of lead (all gamers have one right?) is comprised of masses of thralls in bits. Sort of apt really, a pile of body parts waiting the mad necrosurgeon (or in this case me) to come along and breath unlife into them.

Despite my love of all things Zombie,  the infantry swarm of yore is falling by the wayside to an extent at the moment. Something to do with giant electric blue robots and irritating blonde pole dancers or something...

So us Lich Lords are having to come up with new ideas in the fight against the living. Enter the mercs.

I was a purist for MKI, but sadly you can only fight the inevitable for so long. I have been picking up various merc solos and units for a while now and slowly slotting them in to my forces. Interestingly, most of the mercs I own are ranged... says something about Cryx I think.

To that end I am currently in the process of adding a full unit of Nyss Hunters, as well as Wrong Eye and Snapjaw to my current army list. Ok, the Voodoo Croc is not known for his ranged game, but he trumps the ranged meta brilliantly by ignoring it completely, hiding in his portable ponds with his overgrown handbag of a friend.

The Nyss bring both melee and ranged potential. CRA and hunter let me deal with some annoying things at range rather than up close, but they can always go in swinging with those claymores if it gets up close and personal.

While I am a fair way from putting paint on either of these options yet, assembly is going well. WEaSJ are done awaiting greenstuff, and I have done four of the elves. Considering these are comprised of 7-8 pieces each (all of which are pinned on mine) I am doing well. I am even adding all the optional extras to every model, so that's 3-4 parts on top of everything else.

So, raw fingers covered in glue, and still over half the unit to go... but I am hoping to bring them to battle tomorrow so I better press on.

While the glue was drying on SnapJaw I also found some time to continue my work on the ebay Nuln army. Nothing that impressive yet as I am overpainting some older minis, but the lack of actual paint in a blogpost would upset me, so this is better than nothing.

I should finish these up early next week, then its on to that Dreadball team that is on my desk I guess...

[Personal Work] New Year Update

Despite my best intentions and me putting in a reasonable amount of hobby time over the December period I failed to get any blog updates done... which was bad of me.

So, I had better remedy that now, and also hopefully kick start a more productive year with plenty of hobby coverage to keep all 15 of you entertained. If there are even 15 of you out there reading this.

One of the things that I have been becoming even more aware of these days is the vast amount of gaming crap I have built up again. When I moved to London I sold off vast amounts of GW minis, but still have three Conrfontation armies, not to mention all my Cryx, board games and sundry other bits and pieces hanging around.

With the Relic Knights kickstarter shipping rapidly approaching I need to clear out some space from the hobby room. To this end I am tidying up the remains of my GW stuff to ship on. Of course I will be keeping my Tyranids for the time being, I have spent a great deal of my Christmas holiday stripping and cleaning up these little blighters, so despite not being enamoured with 6th ed 40K I will hold on to them for now.

However, I still have odds and ends left from my fantasy armies, in particular my Empire. Despite my best efforts with ebay there seems to be a lack of interest in the Empire these days, at least in their raw form.

To that end I have decided to paint up what I have left of the army and hopefully get them to a point where people may actually take them off my hands.

My old empire army was painted up in the colours of Altdorf, but as this is a quick and dirty paint job I have decided to go Nuln as a lot of the work is done in the undercoat stage.

So far I have painted a mortar crew as well as half of a long gunner unit.
Some nice basing and using the red and khaki  as a spot colour helps grab attention despite the fairly plain overall scheme.

I'm hoping to get the remains of the "ranged" element of the army done this month, then reward myself with some characters. Then I will sort out the cavalry and finally the infantry. I should have about 1500- 2000 points by the time all is said and done, though I don't have the new army book so can't work it out exactly.

So, let me know what you think of the scheme. If you know anyone who might be interested in picking up some Empire models then feel free to pass them my way.

Expect another, slightly random update later in the week and hopefully we will be back to our regular Warmachine and Hordes schedule, as well as some new commissions in the not too distant future.

Thanks for reading and happy 2013.