The Konigsburg Kings

Longtime followers of the blog might remember that at the start of each year I tend to set myself a set of challenges, that are largely ignored for the majority of the year only to pop up again in my end of year post. This year, one of my challenges to myself was to complete 52 painted miniatures over the course of the year, averaging one a week. Mid November, I looked back at the challenges and was reminded of this, and saw that I had 15 more miniatures to complete in order to hit this challenge. 

I briefly considered chipping away at it with a selection of odds and ends from the painting queue, but then though what better for a last dash, Hail Mary finish than a Blood Bowl Team?

A Blood Bowl team alone wouldn't be enough to hit the target though, so I also dug out this classic sculpt: 

I am not a fan of painting stripes. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out though, even if I did put off finishing him until last in order to delay having to paint the stripes!

Also, a Coach model that I converted many moons back, when I'd first planned this team:

He's an old Empire Engineer that has had his repeater pistol removed and replaced with a scroll from the Mordheim accessory sprue added (to represent either some complex play plan or perhaps a players contract), as well as having a cigar added by greenstuffing over a short length of cut paperclip that was pinned between two of his fingers! I also filed off the detail on his medallion, and added a tiny greenstuff football, to make an amulet to Nuffle. I was sure I had some WIP pictures of the conversion saved somewhere, but alas they may be on another, long-dead laptop.

Here's a picture with flash to give you a better idea of there actually being some colour on the model:

And a rear view:

I thought that his satchel of scrolls worked nicely as a bag of plays. I forget how I justified leaving the hammer on him when I was doing the conversion work...

When I planned this team way back when, I think I lifted the list almost entirely from an old White Dwarf Blood Bowl tactics article, which included a roster featuring the Mighty Zug:

He's a lovely little chunk of metal, not really done justice by these poorly lit pictures... Hmm, I need to go back and add some gloss varnish to the gem on his kneepad though...

And so, on to the team itself:

The team is mostly metal figures, supplemented with a couple of the main game box set plastics to fill out the roster. Uncle Johnny gifted me the metals yonks ago, as he is something of a 2nd Edition Blood Bowl purist and finds these Gary Morley sculpted figures a little flatly posed. For me, however, this is the era of figures I nostalgically remember!

Four blitzers for maximum bashing.

The numeric markings on the players are transfers (I figured that I should mark them, just in case I ever play in a League rather than just popping these on a shelf forevermore) - I'd originally misremembered the transfers in the Blood Bowl box set being white, but upon digging them out to apply it turned out they were black, and so would have been almost invisible on the blue pads of my players...

Enter the old faithful Cadian transfer sheet, which with some careful cutting and judicious applications of Micro Sol and Micro Set furnished me with numbers 1-11, as well as a threatening looking skull for Star Player Zug.

I'd like to pretend that I did a ton of research into how Blood Bowl teams should be numbered, but in reality I had a quick google search, and then rearranged what I found to put the catchers in positions 10 and 11, purely because I didn't fancy trying to fit a large '10' transfer onto a single shoulder pad, whereas I new that I could scavenge smaller '1' and '0' transfers from the Cadian transfer sheet to make the higher numbers that would then fit onto the tiny shields that the Catchers sport. Trying to line up those tiny transfers was a pain though, believe me...

Other things I learned whilst painting this team: if you bought a pot of Stirland Mud when it first came out to try and haven't really used it since and it's dried out somewhat, you can in fact bring it back to life by mashing it up with some Acrylic Thinner (that admittedly you accidentally bought when you meant to buy enamel thinner but hey looks like it worked out after all):

Finishing this team brings the Tally to:

52 vs 0 = +52

and as well as bringing me to 52 painted miniatures, also lets me cross another thing off the challenge list, as they're a playable 'force':

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!

Here's another picture of the Konigsburg kings (and yes, I realise that that makes them the kingtown kings, that's the sort of redundant humour I enjoy) that I retook with slightly better lighting:

I may come back and add a little crown emblem to their helmets one day, but for now I'm calling them done!

Four more years! 2014 in review...

Ah, the annual year in review post, wherein your intrepid author aims to objectively review his project progress for the year without waffle or navel-gazing, which inevitably devolves into a list of things that I have still not completed and the things that distracted me from them!

I made 68 posts last year, making it my most prolific to date. Despite my claims last year that I'd try and post more wip posts rather than just painted miniatures, this didn't always happen (and in fact there are still wip projects waiting to be posted from the year before!) - an exception being the post before this one, but in the interest of full disclosure I'd have to admit that he only got posted because I was reminded of the fact that I was going to be posting more wip pics whilst working on a draft of this post!

I also managed to make at least one post a month, although the traditional drought towards the end of the year was still present - I just don't seem to get stuff done in the Autumn and Winter! This year admittedly though it was down to a number of factors, including some time spent playing Mass Effect, a downer period of wanting to get a new job, and preparation for the impending arrival of my daughter next year, which will also mean that I'll have less hobby time next year! Well, we all know I was never going to be an army painter anyway...

Tally

80 vs 80 = 0

I squeaked it back into the black (technically) at the eleventh hour, which is especially impressive considering the monumental size of the negative the year before!

2014: 0 (80 painted)

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

Last year's 'projects for next year':

Path to glory

Another year, and the warband is still sat undercoated in a box waiting for a tickle with the paintbrush. Admittedly a little paint has been daubed on some of the miniatures, but not enough to warrant a post about the affair. Whilst I did in fact get round to producing a finalised updated set of rules for the modern wargamer who fancied a spot of Chaos warband based skirmish wargaming, I still have as of yet to finish the Chaos Wastes themed scenery that has likewise been sat half-finished for over a year now... It's a bit of an odd fish this one, as it's a project that I'm enthused about, I have everything I need for it, and it's not exactly an unreasonable amount of miniatures to paint before calling it done, but it just seems whenever I go to put some time into it something else always seems more appealing... I'm not going to relegate this project to the back burner just yet, as it's still eminently achieve able, but admittedly that's what I said this time last year... 

Batman

I emptied the Heroclix figures out of my stripping pot, found that they were generally still as caked in paint as the year I'd put them in there, and then packed them away in a baggie. Onto the back burner for this project, for now at least...

Zombieslayer/slayers

I acquired some more for the collection, and painted Gotrek and Felix, but beyond  cleaning up and undercoating a couple if models no other progress has been made...

It's a bit like the Path to Glory project in a way, in that I've pretty much for everything I need, but whenever I sit down to paint something there's always something else that just piques my interest a little bit more...

Star Wars 

(This picture is from my wedding day)

The one project that looked like I was actually focusing on a single thing for once, after playing some Star Wars Battlefront with my godson back in August and joining the 6 Month Mountain Reduction Project, I beavered away and managed to knock out a few painted figures! All I need to do now is paint up an equivalent amount of Rebel Troopers and (gasp) I could even use them to play some sort of game!

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones):

Waaaay back in February, I painted the House Stark troops that I'd previously converted. Other than that, I've converted a couple of Lannister troops, worked on my in armoured Jaime conversion (the head I have for it is just a smudge too big I think, curse you slender figures!), and done some work on the flesh times of my Ned conversion, but nothing else. The Christmas gift of some new Perry sprues should spur me into some more conversions though (and admittedly, the only reason I didn't start doing some on Christmas Day was that my superglue had dried out!)


Dungeons and Dragons

It seems ever more unlikely with the passage of time that my 4e game will take off (I mean, 5th edition is out now, it's been that long). That doesn't stop me from painting generic fantasy miniatures though, and as I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder campaign I may end up painting a few miniatures for that too, and then it's really just the same project with the serial numbers filed off and a snazzy new title...


Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I bought the hench gorilla I was after from Bushido the game, and put him in the tub of miniatures that I have for this project. I even picked up the Heroclix figures I was after for a couple of conversions (I wanted some 28mm discarded riot gear for apes to brandish), but having still not gotten around to seeing the film, bar a single slightly too small gorilla painted back in April my attention still hasn't swung around to painting up gangs of apes (and potentially the whacking great integral bases that need filing off of a number of the miniatures might have something to do with it too...)

Others:

The backburner projects: Halo, Three Kingdoms, Doctor Who, Blood Bowl, and all the rest - not a lot doing. I painted up a couple of Silence miniatures, and the occasional oddment that caught my eye, as is my way.

I did however finish the display board that I was making, that I now use in most (if not all) of the pictures that I post, so that's a victory of sorts I guess?

Next years projects:

(Yes, this will be the basis of next year's retrospective post)

ASOIAF

As mentioned, I've just had some new figures for this project, so will hopefully be able to take the two starter forces up to skirmish level (including painting my Ned conversion and finishing off my Jaime). This project has always suffered from being a bit too grand in scope, as I have ideas for all sorts of warbands, but if I can get a couple done then I can add a figure or two here and there gradually as time goes on... 

Since starting the draft of this post, I've built a couple of House Stark archers and bought a copy of the World of Ice & Fire book, so you may be seeing something from this project sooner than you'd expect!

The Last of Us

If I let myself buy some bits from Miniature Mojo (assuming that the bits that I want are back available on their webstore) then with the bits I already have squirrelled away and a little green stuff this project could be a goer, as it only needs about half a dozen conversions and it's ready to go! We've heard that before though, so we shall see...

The Thing

As my beloved put some 'not The Thing' survivor miniatures from Studio Miniatures in my stocking this Christmas, and I have a whole host of chaos spawn bits for making grubby fleshy monstrosities in my bits box, this is another small scale easily achieveable project that I will probably get distracted from...

Star Wars

As previously mentioned, basing and painting a squad of rebels is all I'd need to do to have two skirmish size forces, then it would just be a case of painting the occasional figure that caught my fancy (like the remaining bounty hunters, for example - if anyone has a spare Zuckuss figure lying around to complete my set I'd be eternally grateful...)

Path To Glory

Same as last year, I just need to finish painting the warband that's been under coated for gods knows how long... And then finish the scenery that is already almost done...

Mass Effect

Way back when (four years or so back) I started playing the original Mass Effect. Alas, my xbox wiped my save, and it was four years before I was ready to give it a second chance, and even then that is mostly because a friend of mine played through the games around the time of the birth of his son, and with the imminent arrival of my daughter I thought that seemed like as good a reason as any to give it another go! Being a Bioware game (oh, Knights of the Old Republic, how I loved you), it's a compelling sci if tale that really would translate quite well to something miniatures based, whether that be a tabletop wargame or perhaps the D20 RPG that you can find floating sound on the internet... Alas, I don't have any miniatures already in the lead mountain that can be pressed into service, but if I can get my hands on a copy of Sedition Wars and some Infinity and Mantic miniatures I should be able to come up with something! The main issue I've had so far is that all of the aliens look so very... alien, which makes it hard to proxy humanoid scifi miniatures for them! And don't get me started on the difficulty of finding a suitable head donor for a Batarian...

On the back burner:

ROTPOTA - going onto the backburner for now, because that's where it's most likely to get worked on when it distracts me from a main project! Although admittedly, between finishing the draft of this post and it actually hitting the internet, I've since re-watched the first (modern) film, so we'll see if that affects my future decisions on what to paint!

Nerdmarines - 3 minis to paint, but 2 are vehicles. Might get some love between larger projects, but we'll see...

Everything else - if you've read this blog more than once, you'll know my hobby preferences are like that of a magpie, so the occasional Doctor Who miniature (or maybe the Deadpool mini I got for Christmas) will probably sneak in here and there! 

Third Anniversary, and 2013 in review...

Wow, so this little irregularly-updated corner of the internet turns 3 today!

2013 was a funny old year for me personally, managing to contain both the highest of highs (getting married! Honeymooning!) and the lowest of lows, and because of this was fairly quiet hobby and blogging wise. I mean, I only managed 27 posts last year, an average of one a fortnight. I'd planned (and prepped miniatures for) a Doctor Who post to tie in with the Christmas Day episode, but alas I didn't get to actually paint them, and thus there were no posts at all in December. I mean, the thing is, I'm not any less geeky than usual - here's a picture of our headboard currently:

(I dug out some old survivor miniatures to use as alternate playing pieces in a family game of Zombies over Christmas, which are currently living in the bedroom until I get around to re-packing them)

I think part of the problem on the lack of posts front is my tendency to only post on completion of something, which when crossed with my tendency to get easily distracted and flit from project to project leads to a folder of unpublished pictures of projects that are half-finished that 'I'll get around to finishing one day', like stripping Batman Heroclix, a set of Chaos themed scatter terrain and a set of wip pictures of my old-school influenced Chaos Spawn conversion that has been sat undercoated for at least half a year now... Resolution - post what I do as I do it, which will hopefully keep momentum high...

As is now traditional, I got a White Dwarf subscription for Christmas from my good lady wife, the exclusive miniature for which is this rather nice vampire-hunting dwarf, which leaves 2013's tally at:

25 vs 441 = -416

Daaaaaaaaaaamn.

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

The less said about that the better, I suppose - although this year's massive minus is mostly (entirely) due to stocking up on lovely multi-part plastic kits at Salute for my ASOIAF project (and I'm sure I'll pick up a couple more boxes this year to make sure that I definitely have enough bits...)

On the Christmas front, I also got some paintbrushes from one of our friends that works with my wife, which I thought was rather sweet of her (and I guess shows that my nerdity isn't as subtle as you might otherwise think):

Looking at last year's review post, let's see how wildly inaccurate my predictions for projects for the coming year were:

Path to Glory: As mentioned earlier this post, my Chaos Spawn conversion is done (but just not posted), and the entire warband has been sat undercoated waiting for my attention to swing back their way. I've got a set of half-finished Chaos Wastes scatter terrain to go with them too, that match my previously completed set of generic rocky terrain so as to be able to play some games... You'd think that the low model count needed to be able to start playing games would be a good incentive to get them finished, but hey, go figure...

Batman: What do they even paint the more recent Heroclix figures with? I've had a bunch sat in the stripping pot getting the occasional scrub for what feels like an age, and there's largely no less paint on them than the day I bought them (they are however exceptionally clean). Again, low model count needed, so it would only take a tiny, tiny amount of focus in order to have a useable set of figures...

Zombieslayer/Slayers: One day. gadget, one day... Potentially if (as rumours suggest) the next edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle has a starter box containing Empire, that might kickstart this project, or if I get a chance to read the three latest Gotrek and Felix books that I've got waiting, but until then it stays on the backburner...

Star Wars: Again, one day, gadget, one day. Curse my tiny attention span! There's plenty of Star Wars media on the way though, so I may end up making some progress in the future...


Other bits and bobs:

I painted a number of generic fantasy miniatures, but other than that all my predictions were wildly inaccurate.

Projects for the coming year (aka the framework for next year's year in review post):

As well as all of the aforementioned half finished projects that are only a few steps from completion and posting to little internet fanfare, my (planned) projects for 2014 are:

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones):

The project that got started after I said I wouldn't be starting an more projects - as previously mentioned (and you can potentially just about see in the previous picture), I've got a bunch of Lannisters painted, and an equivalent amount of House Stark troops converted just awaiting basing and undercoat. I've got boxes of miniatures and assorted bits set aside for this project, so it should be fairly easy to make progress (famous last words) - admittedly though, I have been fairly tempted to buy some bits to start converting some Wildlings, pretty much the only Westerosi force that I don't already have suitable miniatures for, but I think I'll be able to hold focus on the Staks versus Lannisters for now (although one day I'll get around to writing a blogpost outlining my general plans for the ASOIAF project...)

Dungeons and Dragons

Much delayed, but not forgotten...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The release of a new '...of the Planet of the Apes' film should hopefully inspire me to get back on track with my ROTPOTA project - I'll probably pick up an 'Aiko and Gorilla' from Bushido from GCT Miniatures (because that's a much hencher gorilla than the one I had previously bought), dig up or adapt a suitable skirmish ruleset and we're away!

Others:

The backburner projects are still there: Halo, Three Kingdoms, Doctor Who, Blood Bowl, and all the rest - although as we've seen, listing something as 'not a priority for the near future' seems to be the way to ensure that it gets some love when it comes to my hobby focus... I also sporadically get the urge to go back and try and rewrite the set of rules I was going to use for the Zombie project, that were lost when my laptop wiped a couple of years back, but that would involve literally starting from scratch...

I should also hopefully finish the display board that I mentioned in my previous post in the near future, which will allow me to start posting some more visually appealing pictures of painted miniatures (when I get around to actually finishing some, hyuck huck...)

Last but not least, when we were putting up our (artificial) Christmas Tree, one of the branches fell off:

Bad news for Christmas, but good news for wargaming craft supplies - my wife agreed that we could just have that side of the tree facing the wall, and I now have the means to experiment with making wargaming trees out of leftover bits of Christmas Tree...

Just in time for Halloween

A frankenman, Blood Bowl Star Player Frank N Stein.

Oh wait, I hadn't mentioned him before or included him in the tally? Fine, John gave me a Frank N Stein when he found he had two in the loft (insert archive picture from a week or so ago that I didn't post at the time): 

He's a great, classic mini, and so I decided to paint him using the original Wayne England artwork as inspiration:

This was my first real use of the GW basing paint, and it's not what I expected - it just seems a little lacking in substance, truth be told, and I had to glob on a load to get a nice ground texture - even though I was later adding grass and the traditional white line that should be part of every Blood Bowl miniatures base!

So, my first finished miniature in a while segues nicely into the next set of pictures, as my wife has made herself a ghetto wet palette and started painting her gnome, her first miniature ever:

I've dug out my copies of the Kev Dallimore painting guides, but I think they're a little daunting for a beginner... I'm looking forward to sharing the breadth of my knowledge with her though:

(ooh, second Scott Kurtz reference this blogpost!)

Before we head to the traditional update of the tally, I should note that I received a mysterious package in the post the other day:

I'd not ordered any miniatures in months, and genuinely had no idea what to expect when I opened the package: 

A beautiful sample of the Tekumel range, that I'd completely forgotten that I'd put my name down for a few months before! They're a tasty looking set of miniatures, and I'm somewhat torn as to how to paint them - my first thought was to paint them like some sort of animated statue (for maximum gaming versatility), but it seems a shame to give such nice looking miniatures such a basic paint job, so they may end up getting painted like brightly coloured oni types...

Which, inevitably brings us to the tally:

20 vs 441 = -421

The less said the better, I guess. I've got some other miniatures lined up that aren't that far away from being finished, but we're talking about half a dozen rather than the four hundred odd that I'd need to get the tally back into the black - maybe next year will be my year...

2011 in review, and looking forward to the future...

Well, a year in already! (well, technically the blog is a year old tomorrow, but let's not quibble over details). 9,368 page views is a pretty respectable amount, especially considering the fact that I had a slump that lasted a couple of months and meant no new posts...

Looking back at the projects listed in my original post, we can make a breakdown of productivity for the past year:

Zombies: Miniatures painted, rules lost in laptop debacle.
Three Kingdoms: No progress made, still not a single finished figure.
Firefly: Three miniatures painted.
Strange Aeons: the project that got the most love, I now have just enough miniatures to actually start playing some games! I loaned the rulebook to one of the guys at work though, so I probably won't get a game in for a little while...
Doctor Who: Bits done here and there, but still not enough to play an actual game (although if I could just focus for long enough, I should have enough miniatures to play the Canary Wharf scenarios...)
VSF: no progress made, not even on the converted miniatures that sit mocking me in their drawers...
AEWWII: dead project. The only miniature I have on the go for this is a Captain America, and I can't yet bring myself to paint all the tiny white stars on his shield. There's some Tamiya tanks in a box for this project though, so I might get round to building and painting them eventually.
Warmachine: I sometimes take these miniatures out of their drawers and boxes, sigh, and then pack them away again.
Anima Tactics: Pretty much the same as Warmachine, I've four or five half painted miniatures that just don't grab my attention when I'm choosing what to work on.
Evil Genius/7tv: Only two finished miniatures so far, but tons more to come...
Marvel Superheroes: Percentage-wise, one of the most expanded projects. It's probably the fact that each part is only a single miniature, which is so different to everything else in my collection, that keeps me interested.
GW: combining all the projects into one, we get: blah. Yes, that's a giant in the picture. No, he probably won't get painted next year either.

...

Well, I'm not swearing off GW completely, I'm still halfway through painting my Blood Bowl team, planning to paint a max-size unit of Dwarf Slayers, epic Zombieslayer-inspired Undead army (I've got Kemmler, Krell and the Wyvern) as well as being tempted by Skaven, but who knows what I'll actually get done.

As far as new projects go, it's the generic fantasy that is the biggest, and most likely to get other bits added to it, purely due to it's breadth, and my inability to focus on an particular thing for more than a week or so.

As it's the last day of the year, it's the last time we see the tally looking like this:

122 vs 295 = -173

before we reset to zero tomorrow. Hurrah! Although I kinda wish I'd bought a load of miniatures to go on this tally rather than next year's, since this one was already beyond redemption...

Looking forward to next year, there's a number of new projects I'm considering starting. I'm loving Halo at the minute, and so quite fancy repainting some Heroclix for that. Star Wars is a project that's been nipping at my imagination for some time now, primarily due to the number of plastic prepaints I own - I think it reveals something about my character though that I haven't yet started the project because I don't have enough miniatures to make a detachment of Stormtroopers as described in the old miniature battles book - despite the fact that I'm unlikely to ever need a detachment, and the fact that if I started painting a detachment I'd rapidly get bored and wander off to do something else. Gundam and Evangelion would be awesome to do too, but luckily the fact that they're not in God's True Scale has stopped me from starting either of those (yet). Ooh, and Planet of the Apes - I could use survivor miniatures from the Zombie project for this, meaning I'd only need to convert and paint various chimps, gorillas and orangs armed with makeshift spears... well, an expansion of a project doesn't count as a new project surely?

I might need to do something to sort out my productivity too. These days, I have a couple of drawers of miniatures in various stages of completion, and spend almost as much time going through minis choosing what to paint as I do actually painting, which combined with the fact that what I fancy painting changes from session to session results in how rarely I ever actually complete a miniature (the Christmas Zombies posted recently were the fist time I'd painted something in one session in longer than I can remember). A few years back, when I was just starting my AEWWII project, I had a system. I had three tiny trays (that were originally dividers in the box I store most of my paints in), each probably 2x3". I'd only paint what was on one of those trays, and couldn't start something new until I'd cleared a space by completing something else. Each tray could hold maybe three miniatures at a push, and you'd be amazed at the number of miniatures I finished purely because I'd just bought something else that I really couldn't wait to paint. Admittedly, I don't think I have the willpower to be that strict with myself these days, but it's something to consider...

Blood Bowl Human Team Coach conversion

 So, there I was the other day, so eager to start painting my Mighty Zug that I couldn't even wait for it to be spraying conditions. So I decided to brush undercoat him. Now, I don't know when the last time you brush undercoated a miniature was, but it's got to be a couple of years for me. And it takes ages. And ages. And then you have to go back and re-undercoat the bits that didn't get hit properly the first two or three times round. He's had a couple of passes with the brush, but there are still bits that need another looking at, which somewhat killed my enthusiasm.

Determined to try and keep at least some sort of forward momentum thought, tonight I thought I'd have a crack at a simple conversion I'd been thinking about for a little while: a coach for the team.

Taking an Empire Engineer as my base model:

I carefully cut away his gun (which goes straight in the bits box, waste not want not and all that):

I then sanded down any remnants of the gun in the hand, paying special attention to the pistol grip, and making sure I left a nice flat surface either side of his hand for the next step, attaching a scroll from the Mordheim accessories sprue:

A little liquid Green Stuff was applied to smooth the pistol grip into the scroll: (apologies for the terrible picture, my iPhone doesn't seem to like extreme closeups...)

And, we're done! Wait, why stop there? Thinking he needed to look a little bit more like a Blood Bowl coach rather than just 'weaponless engineer holding scroll', I sanded off the engineer symbol from the medallion round his neck and painted on a football using liquid Green Stuff. I literally painted on the rough shape, building up a couple of layers to give it more depth, before smoothing it down with a damp brush and then tidying the edges with my knife:

And anyway, every good Blood Bowl coach needs to be smoking a fat cigar, right? I drilled a tiny hole between two of his fingers, glued in a teensy bit of paperclip, and then gave it a once-over with some more liquid Green Stuff to fatten it up, which brings us to the finished mini:

Well, I say finished, I'll probably give him a once over with a file once the Green Stuff has dried just to sharpen it up a little bit, especially on the Green Stuff I used to tidy up the ends of the scroll, but other than that he's ready to join the basing queue...

As a slight diversion, here's a quick picture of what I have to look at whilst I'm working at my desk:

Yup, right in my face is drawers full of unpainted models, taunting me. I usually aim to empty a WIP drawer completely before adding anything new to it, but it usually ends up with me emptying just enough space for the next thing (and even then it's usually a close call...)

Olly's final thought: don't download Dungeon Raid on your iPhone. It eats time. You'll never accomplish anything else ever again.