Handy is as handy does

Several weeks ago, like many people we watched the Fallout TV show, and it made me want to revisit my Fallout project, so I dig out a Brother Vinni robot that had been sat unbuilt in his baggie for far too long. After putting together so many tiny fiddly bits, it looks real nice, and several applications of dirt grime and rust over a shiny chrome basecoat later looks like this:

The flying stand is slightly wonky, but let’s be friends and pretend that was intentional to create the illusion of movement.

I’d long ignored the Modiphius Fallout game, as the minis for it are on the larger side and so wouldn’t match anything that I’d previously painted for the project, but thinking about it I could just use the rules with my own minis, which a timely Humble Bundle furnished me with. I’ll probably pick up the two player starter at some point in the future too, as I figure Super Mutant miniatures looking over my survivors would look less out of place than a survivor being head and shoulders taller than is companions.

Although…

Speaking of looming head and shoulders over a survivor, here’s our handy robot chum next to a vault dweller to give you an idea of scale:

The Tally has also take a couple of bits in the opposite direction.

I popped into GW before picking my son up from Squirrels during the week to grab a pot of paint, and also grabbed the latest mini of the month:

As there’s always space for a lady barbarian in my life, and doubly so if she’s free.

Also, it’s Father’s Day today, and so I was gifted with this:

A kit with a miniature, a couple of brushes, and some little pots of Vallejo paint, which was nice. Funny story, my wife asked if there were any particular miniatures that I wanted that she could point the kids towards, so I explained about the Monstrous Alphabet project, and told her that I’d actually made a list recently of what monsters I still needed to do, explaining that the ones in brackets were the ones that I didn’t actually own yet. She had it backwards though, and thought that the ones in brackets were the ones I didn’t own, so I should probably dig out all of the other Yuan Ti minis I already own so that he can have some friends on the painting tile!

All in all, the Tally now stands at:

23 vs 149 = -126

Next - something that’s been alluded to a few times in previous posts…

2018 End of year post

It's that time of year again...

Tally

Now you won't believe it, but for the first time in the blog's entire history, the Tally is ending up A POSITIVE!

In part, I have been very sensible this year, but really it's more to do with me having sold a load of miniatures to finance this year's treats at Salute and pledging to back the Hellboy boardgame Kickstarter... Regardles of that, I'm happy to have completed 52 miniatures this year, rather than slumping down to the 2013 levels of productivity!

52 vs 0 = +52

2018: +52 (52 painted)
2017: -14 (47 painted)
2016: -287 (56 painted)

2015: -96 (59 painted)

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)
2012: -103 (68 painted)
2011: -173 (122 painted)

Posts

33 this year, including this one - one of the quieter years all told! There was the traditional lull over the summer (nothing at all in June of August) and in the run-up to Christmas, as is inevitable as life tends to get in the way of hobby time (and to be fair if it didn't then there would be something seriously wrong!). I started fairly strong, with 8 posts in January, but it was only Zomtober that pulled me back to a semi-regular posting schedule. Eh, I paint what I paint when the fancy takes me and chronicle it on the blog in the hopes someone somewhere is reading it, rather than creating content for an audience, so I'm fairly easy going about it, but Blogger is making it harder to post easily, which may also have something to do with a lack of smaller updates, so Instagram is where they get posted...

Challenge

2018 Challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish something pre-blog old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
• Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

And again, I'm fairly laid back about my Challenge - it's more something to occasionally guide me with a set of vague objectives rather than a whip to beat myself with, as evidenced by the fact that there was almost no progress on any of the challenges for 10 out of 12 months I think! I'm a little disappointed that I didn't finish a member of the Nextwave team though - the last two have been sat on my painting tile for a couple of months, but I just haven't been drawn to them...

Projects (according to last year's end of year post)

Star Wars -

I painted Boba Fett for May the Fourth, but that's the only Star Wars project miniature finished all year... 

ASOIAF - 

Only The Mountain finished this year, in a shocking turn of events - you would not believe the number of undercoated Wildlings I have sat on my desk - so many that I think it's why they keep getting passed over in favour of other more varied (and smaller!) projects...

Zombies - 

I did Zomtober and beyond this year, which was nice - assuming that I never get my set of zombie rules to a workable state (they're pretty much already playtest ready at this stage, but who knows, it feels like I add two more rules each time I look at them and ask myself concept questions) I'd quite like to get some of the Walking Dead storyline expansions that Mantic produce and play through them whilst rereading the comics...

Necromunda -

[whistling noises] Nothing. Every time I look at the sprues, I'm struck with option paralysis - do I build them as suggested with the sample fighters that come on cards in the box, or try and write a list and then convert figures to that? Indecision reigns, I need to just crack on really...

Back Burner:

Batman - Nothing

Fallout - a wanderer (painted purely because I painted him at Mantic's paint station at Salute) and a Raider. That's it.

ROTPOTA - It turns out this year was in fact not the year I finally finish prepping the apes. 

Conan - A Lich that is only tangentially linked to the Conan project; the rest of the minis I have prepped still stare forlornly at me from the painting queue.

As ever, it was the things that I hadn't planed to paint the got painted this year - a couple of superheroes, some random fantasy miniatures, a Blood Bowl team, and Zomtober, which gave the bulk of my finished miniatures this year!

Projects for 2019:

Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress

I hope to paint up everything from this box next year. And play it. Stranger things have happened.


ASOIAF

It's always going to be on the list, even if it's just because I have so many miniatures that I can build for it! When Fireforge release their Northern Troops plastics, I may have to get some of them, and build and paint them to justify having purchased them...

Star Wars

I'll commit to doing a May the Fourth post, and maybe even get around to converting and painting some rebel troopers...


Zombies

I'll do Zomtober. There are a couple of minis left over that were prepped for this year's Zomtober, so who knows, I may end up painting them if the fancy takes me in the interim... On the other hand, I might have to wait until I get the Shane booster before I paint Rick so that I can ensure their uniform shirts match!

Hellboy

The Kickstarter that I backed is due to turn up next year, so I'll hopefully paint that too! I have some Hellboy miniatures in my painting queue that I dug out just to whet my appetite, which may get some love as palette cleansers between batch painting Traitor Guardsmen from Blackstone Fortress!


Back Burner
Necromunda - I may come back to it, but I think Black Fortress is going to occupy that niche in my attention span this year
40K - Uncle Johnny has been hearing the siren call of GW's core game recently, so who knows - I've had a hankering to add some Nerdmarines to my squad and a half that I painted a while ago, plus my Sisters of Battle could probably do with a repaint given that we're looking to see some new releases next year...
Fallout - I've got some fun Fallout miniatures tucked away in my drawers of fun, so I may end up getting wildly distracted and pulling them out...
ROTPOTA - I know I've said it before, but maybe next year is the year I finally finish prepping the apes...

Conan disappears into the abyss, which is where things seem to be most likely to end up getting done. I've been playing an Assassin's Creed ios app a lot recently which is a lot of fun, which has tempted me to go back to playing the main series games, and led to me googling 'Assassins Creed miniatures' to see what is available, only to discover a kickstarter for a beautiful game, but I just couldn't justify spending £150 on a Kickstarter just before Christmas. If it turns up at a Salute in the future though all bets are off... In other news, have you sen those new Night Goblins that GW previewed recently? They're called something else now, I know, but I've got a half-painted Night Goblin army tucked away that might just get some reinforcements...

Next year's challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game of Blackstone Fortress with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

You might notice the list is somewhat reduced from previous years - there are a number of factors in play with this, including expecting another child next year, but also some previous challenges were now redundant - there's nothing in my stripping pot, for example, making it rather hard to paint anything from it...

A belated Fallout wanderer...

A very belated post today - over a week ago now, I finally finished off the figure that I painted at Mantics paint and take stand at Salute:

I repainted a few things, like his kneepads, and added a Vault number to the back of his suit to tie him into the rest of the Fallout project (which was pretty much a complete accident - I only painted him blue and yellow originally as these were the colours that were to hand at the time!):

I left the vaguely ridiculous yellow gloves though, as they were such a pain to paint originally that I couldn't bring myself to paint over them - Army Painter yellow is veeeeeery thin, fyi.

I also repainted his face, again! I had a couple of goes at Salute, and then another at home, until I realised the reason that it kept coming out looking like a cadaverous skull, was that he's wearing glasses! As soon as this realisation struck, one more go across the face and it came out looking like something I was happy with!

I figure, looking at him, that he's someone that's robbed a vault suit from another survivor, given that he doesn't have a pip-boy, but has what looks like a pip-boy screen strapped to his belt - he's also turned out to be fairly well-timed, as the next Fallout game has just been announced, and seems to be a scavenge skirmish and survive type multiplayer game!

Finishing him takes the Tally to:

13 vs -69 = +82

Another thing that broke from the norm for me with this miniature was basing him after he was painted, as usually I like to sort any basing before the model gets undercoated. It seemed fine though (although I was a little nervous about cutting through a painted model to separate him from his integral base) - not that it wasn't without issue:

(I got distracted whilst doing something else at the same time and ended up glueing the base to the perspex on my desk, and snapping it in two when I tried to get it off)

Attempt number two was more successful though:

I'll probably stick to my usual method for most things, but I'm considering basing after painting some walkers from Mantic's Walking Dead game, as I'm planning on rebasing them on 30mm DS bases to match the rest of my zombie miniatures:

In other, tangentially related news, I also picked up some more Really Useful Boxes, as the 4 litre / A4 boxes are perfect for storing miniatures:

Unless you have pikemen, in which case you have to go back out the following day and buy a deeper box:

In other other news, the Mantic Hellboy Kickstarter finished, so expect a post about that in 9 months time...

Raider from the stripping pot

Here's another one from the painting queue:

An em4/Grenadier Future Wars savage from the depths of my stripping pot, for use in the Fallout project as a savage Raider, which lets me strike off the first item from this years challenge list:

2018 Challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish something pre-blog old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

Oddly, I found myself becoming less and less enthusiastic with this sculpt as I was painting it. Especially when working with oddities like sculpted bulging eyeballs:

Nuts, the splotch of spilled wash on his hand is super obvious. Ah, Raiders in Fallout are generally filthy dirty, I'm fine with leaving it there.

Tally

2 vs 0 = +2

There are two more miniatures currently half painted on my desk (as I cleared away a lot of the accumulated bits and bobs that had accrued over the year), so I think I'll see about finishing and posting them before clearing away my paints and making space for other projects. Or potentially getting around to painting the scenery that I built back in... June?

Making the wastes secure from what exactly?

The next miniature to make it's way out of the painting queue is this, a Fallout Securitron:

Well, officially it's a monobot from Black Cat Bases iirc, but we're among friends here so we'll just acknowledge what it is heavily influenced by!

While I was a big Fallout 3 fan, and was excited enough by New Vegas to preorder the expensive Collectors Edition, something about it just didn't click with me, and I barely played it. I think I imagined that I'd go back to it one day (as often tends to be the case - if something doesn't grab me the first or second try, chances are I'm going to fall pretty hard for it the third time!) but in this case that just never happened, and is unlikely to now as we're a whole console generation ahead... The Securitrons from New Vegas are a nice robot design though, so I was happy to add one to the Lead Mountain when I saw this!

His goofy face is heavily influenced by Yes Man, and was added with careful use of the micron pen that I usually use for dotting in pupils.

Mmm, weathering. Modelling anything Fallout related offers a lot of opportunities for a young man to enjoy himself with a sponge! Ignore the slightly waffy wheel though, that was a bit of dodgy casting...

I think when I get around to finalising rules for the Fallout project, he'll be an encounter card where he is a hostile enemy unless you can pass an Intelligence test to reprogram him, in which case he will join your character as a companion.


Tally

19 vs 40 = -21

Fallout Scavenger Camp

As previously mentioned, the third bit of terrain was pretty quick to paint - in fact, writing this blog post has taken longer than finishing the painting, as apparently the Blogger app that I have up until now used for my posts is kaput, and there doesn't seem to be an equivalent available on the app store (so I'm currently borrowing the wife's laptop to type this out on an actual keyboard like some sort of caveman).

Unusual amounts of planning went into this terrain piece:

By which I mean I had a vague idea, shamelessly ripped off from a vague recollection of a similar piece I'd seen over on the LAF that did the same thing, and scribbled an outline onto my base.

Then it was just a case of scavenging suitable pieces from the various stashes, which took way longer than it really should have - I should never move anything, because it always seems that I can remember where something used to be rather than where it is...

Like these tiny chairs, for example (from Frontline wargames, irc, bought waaaaay back when, when we used to have a FLGS in Canterbury) which for the longest time were in a Star Wars shoe box, and took me an entire evening to find (as apparently I'd had a bit of a rearrange when we moved).

One metal chair, some bits of sprue, a little filler, a chunk of cork, a plaster crate (bought on eBay long, long ago, as part of a lot of 'battle damaged crates and barrels' that when they came turned out to just be someone's bubble ridden miscasts in some ridiculously soft plaster, and I've held on to ever since waiting for the right opportunity to use them) and a plastic barrel that came with a Batmobile later we have this:

The basis of one of those Scavenger camps that you often stumble across in Fallout!

I also added a holdall from a 1:48 Tamiya tank accessories sprue that looked like the ones you find in the game, before applying bird sand - this was done at around the same time as the previous terrain piece, hence still having the annoying larger flecks that I plan to sieve out before future uses:

I also added a jerry can from the same Tamiya sprue, before adding a burnt out campfire with cut down pieces of matchstick.

These were initially just glued down with PVA, but I later went back and doused them with thin superglue to set them rock hard. I painted over the campfire area with some textured paint to give a surface that would look burnt with some careful drybrushing.

And then, painting:

I showed one of the guys at work that I know is a Fallout fan the pictures of the finished piece and the first thing he said was 'shouldn't that can be red'? I know, I was thinking that as I was playing Fallout 4 between paint applications (as I found some in-game, which reminded me that they were all red in the game) but at that point I'd already basecoated them blue because I fancied painting them blue, truth be told. I can always make some scatter terrain later with some broken crates and a couple of red cans if need be!

Cue the standard posed shot:

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (0/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (0/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (0/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old)
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

Right, time to clear the desk off and get back to painting some miniatures I think!

Storage shack - the Challenge distraction continues...

Like most wargamers, I have a habit of finding treasure in trash, literally - I have a box of interestingly shaped packaging; rolls of corrugated cardboard; even a sack of chunks of polystyrene secreted in the loft in case of terrain building inspiration. It's gotten to the point where my wife uses it against me - I came home one day and found that my wife had eaten a pack of delicious macarons without saving me any; her response: 'I saved you the packaging they came in!' - and admittedly, that packaging is currently sat downstairs on my desk as it looks like it would make some nice free standing motor or engine type scenery once decorated with suitable gubbins so I think her distraction tactic might have worked...

Inspiration struck once more when my daughter ate a tiny sandwich, leaving me this interestingly shaped piece of plastic:

Having been playing a lot of Fallout 4 recently, it struck me that it would make a nice storage shed of some kind, suitably weathered. So, off came the lid, and I drew on a rough outline for where I'd build a door:

Having previously had issues with the structural integrity of scenery made from hollow plastic, I thought I'd give papier mache a try this time:

In the next picture you can also see the door that I made from scrap card and aparrently forgot to take any more pictures of. I cut out the marked frame, and stuck my door behind it so that it would look slightly inset, giving the illusion of depth.

I also cut a sheet of corrugated card to cover the flat area on the side of the sandwich packaging that looked a little incongruous. Then, it was just a case of gluing and clamping the piece to a prepared base:

In hindsight, I'm not sure if the papier mache was fully dry when I got to this point, but hey, it's too late to go back and fix now...
I also made a door frame out of cut down matchsticks:

Learning from previous experience, I remembered not to skip this step - blending the edges of the piece into the base with filler. I left a path to the door mostly clear, and blended in the lower corners of the door, so that it would look like an area trampled down by repeated use.

As those of you who follow me on Instagram will have seen, I picked up a variety of supplies (at a pound a piece, no less) to experiment with for terrain making:

Rather than using my expensive modelling sand, I'm using bird sand from the Pets section of Wilkos. It looks great, but has some larger shell-like shards that I'm not a fan of, but unfortunately fit straight through the mesh of my kitchen sieve - May be more of a winner if I can find a finer mesh...

Then comes a large passage of time between pictures. We closed down a bookshop at work, which was a busy week but left me with this inspirational image should I ever get round to building some rubble piles:

And then apparently I was really bad at taking WIP pictures, and so here it is fully painted:

The Pound Land silver spray that I used came out much more matte than I had expected, and almost seemed to repel paint, so lots of washes and scrubbing on scrappy weathering ensued:

(despite what it looks like in the oddly-angled above image, the streak does actually look like it's following a path set by gravity in real life!)

Hmm, reviewing this image makes me think maybe I could have gone further with the rust effects, it looks a lot oranger in real life...

And of course, a posed shot with my trusty shotgun wielding Vault dweller!

And for those of you wondering about the viability of using Wilkos tester pots for painting terrain rather than expensive model paints, well it didn't go very well. The paint consistency was weird (after the first coat, it seemed to have slipped off of the top of the sand somewhat) and really didn't drybrush well. In the end, I gave it a final drybrush with Tyrant Skull, and chalked it up to a learning experience:

Which adds another tick to the Challenge list:

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (0/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (0/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (0/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old)
• Finish a piece of terrain x2 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

You might notice that I've also added a couple of challenges (about completing old miniatures) mostly because the Timehop app keeps reminding me just how long it has been since I started various miniatures that I still haven't painted!

On the Challenges front, I'm determined to finish the third piece of terrain previously alluded to (that I also realise you can see in the background of some of these pictures) so that I can clear my desk off before moving onto other Challenges - it's fairly small, so hopefully it shouldn't take too long! Then, I'm going to try and crack out the '15 miniature from the queue' challenge, but it's going to be difficult given how many ideas I've had for various projects recently!

There has also been movement on the Tally front (inevitably, it might seem, given the length of time between blog posts), but not in the direction you might assume - Uncle Johnny mentioned that he wished he had some of the old, hunch-backed Chaos Warriors, as he felt like the newer style ones wouldn't fit in with the rest of his Chaos miniatures, and, having a rummage, it turned out I had 30 of them! So, off they went to their new home, in the vain hopes that they'll see the field of battle again (although John and I have managed one solitary game of Warhammer in the last decade, and both now have more children and less free time between us than we did back then, but I live in hope...)

Tally:
1 vs -16 = +15

In other news, I decided that I was going to sit down and crack on with working on the Star Wars/LOTOW adaptation that I was working on, as I think given how great Rogue One was this might be the year that I actually finish some Star Wars miniatures; I spent an evening trying to reverse engineer how I'd come up with the points total for a Stormtrooper in my existing notes, wrote a list of things I had miniatures for that I'd need to stat up, and then it was bedtime. The next night I got distracted and seem to have sketched out the basics of a ruleset for gaming Fallout, although I currently have a couple of options for dice mechanics that will need playtesting...