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which when crossed with my tendency to get easily distracted and flit from project to project leads to a folder of unpublished pictures of projects that are half-finished that 'I'll get around to finishing one day', like stripping Batman Heroclix, a set of Chaos themed scatter terrain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...

A brief diversion

So yeah, I quickly knocked up this figure so that I could take part in the LAF Ancients Painting Club:

Red-faced hero of Shu Guan Yu.

Painted using these images for reference:

Alas, this means that I've now completed a grand total of 1 miniature for the Three Kingdoms project (curse you 24 half-painted chinese peasants!) but does bring the tally to:

19 vs 341 = -322

I got a bit impatient whilst painting Guan Yu though, and had to turn to alternate methods to speed up the undercoat drying:

In other news, I've finally caught up on Doctor Who, and ended up finding my secret stash of Doctor Who toys whilst cleaning out a storage box:

So it's entirely possible that I may end up painting something Whovian between Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire miniatures...

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...

The beginning...

I'm only 24, but a month or so ago I was digging through the lead mountain and found a miniature that I honestly had no recollection of ever acquiring. So, this is why I started a blog. In all honesty, I'm not that great at the hobby (I'm a mediocre converter, slow painter, but excellent purchaser of shiny new toys), but hopefully having a blog will encourage me to actually finish stuff.

As for the name of this blog, yes, that took two of us about ten minutes to come up with (and yes, there were index cards involved) - many of my miniatures are zombies, but also there's the risk that some of the miniatures I've purchased will never get painted, effectively rendering them 'dead lead'. You don't want to hear the rejected titles...

And so, to the post proper, whereby our intrepid hero outlines the ridiculous number of projects he has on the go, to provide a basis and foundation for further posts:

Primary Projects:

Zombies



My main project is the zombies - currently I have 58 zombies, 3 brutes, and 5 survivors (including a cyborg ninja and a girl chained to a big rock) painted, with a herd, king, and more zombies currently WIP, and I don't really want to put a definite figure on the number of unpainted zombies that I own in case the missus happens to see...

Rules are a homebrew, using LOTOW as a base, and are currently half done (I'm aiming for participation game style pick up and play rules, which unfortunately will mean producing about a kerzillion cards for ease of reference...)

I really need to finish some more survivors if it's ever going to get played though...

Three Kingdoms

Three Kingdoms, warfare in one of the most tumultuous eras of China's history - aka Dynasty Warriors using adapted War of the Ring rules - no pics yet, as everything is currently either WIP or still in the bag it came in (from Curtey's, Black Hat, and Renegade - we're probably approaching 200 minis, with not a single one finished yet...). And yes, I should hasten to add, this is not neccesarily a historically accurate project. It's inspired by a computer game, the Osprey I ordered on the period took ten months to arrive, and the miniatures I'm using technically represent troops in use four hundred years earlier. Phew, it's good to get that out in the open before the button counters arrive...

Firefly/Serenity

Another project with not a single miniature finished yet, although an almost obscene proportion of my WIP miniature are for this project - also, what better rules to use for cowboys in space than adapted LOTOW?

Strange Aeons

Yup, I got tempted by Uncle Mike's game of Lovecraftian horror - so far it's only these few minis painted (speedily, to meet the deadline of  painting competition), but there's more of Uncle Mike's minis, the LE King in Yellow, and some minis that were originally purchased for my VSF project (see later) have been pressed into future service here. Plus, I'm already considering a few future purchases from Artizan, em4, Pulp Figures, Rattrap...

One more thing, I found the perfect vehicle for one of my future cults:

Because what sensible cultist is going to be driving around in a van with 'evil wagon' plastered all over it?

Doctor Who

I didn't use to like the new Doctor Who (which would come as a surprise to most people that know me - I keep my files and knives in a Davros bucket on my desk). Someone I used to work with spent a lot of time and effort trying to persuade me of the error of my ways, to no avail. Until I held one of those bendy plastic Micro Universe Cybermen in my hand, at which point I got over myself and realised 'I like this! Don't be stupid!'

Handily, there's a whole slew of Who miniatures available, as well as a large bag of the aforementioned MU plastic chaps stashed away on top of the lead mountain, purchased when a local clearance vendor had them on the cheap...

Future plans for this project seem to be heading towards recreating 'the Next Doctor', with a load of Victorian civilians already acquired/on order from Blue Moon and Foundry, although I still need a couple more Cybermen to convert into Cybershades...

Secondary projects:

VSF

In what is becoming a recurring theme, another project with zero finished miniatures - in my defence though, there's a whole bunch of converted ministures in this project's drawer (both brits in space and savage martians in the style of Greg Broadmore's excellent 'Victory'), as well as a Ramshackle tunneling device that needs a bit more paint before it's done... (I think I stated this project a couple of years back, had a buying spree, converted some miniatures, then got distracted...)

AEWWII

One of my first loves when I got back into fiddling around with little lead men, Darkson Design's AEWWII is a project very much on the back burner. I originally found out about the game in Harbinger magazine, which I think was the first few steps down the rocky road of relapse. But I digress, we might see some additions to this project if my prize for winning the DD scenario design competition a couple of years back turns up, or I get round to building and paintng the tanks that I bought for this project oh so long ago...

Warmachine

Mercenaries, Cygnar, Cryx - a project I started years ago, that I always mean to come back to, but never seem to finish anything...

Anima Tactics

Again, a project that I have several half-painted miniatures for. Handily though, due to the small scale of the game, it'll only take finishing a couple of miniatures to be able to declare this a 'finished' project (although we all know that there's no such thing really...)

Evil Genius/7TV

Crooked Dice are bringing out their 7TV rules this year, so I rushed out and bought a load of Copplestone and Artizan miniatures in preperation.

Marvel Superheroes

Less a project, more that I fancied repainting some of theHeroclix that I have. Pictured here with some urban scenery (that I forgot to stick in the photo of my zombies) we have Spider-man and Sandman (please ignore the massive, unmissable mouldline across his fist), with Vulture, Doc Ock and Daredevil currently half painted, and Scorpion awaiting undercoat.



GW:

Games Workshop gets it's own heading, seperate from other projects. I have far too many GW projects on the go, many of them dating back several years. I'm not a GW fanatic, but I always seem to come back to these projects a little at a time. There's so many, I'll bullet point them:

Fantasy

• Night Goblins - a couple of half-painted regiments and squig herds, a giant awaiting undercoat, and several boxes of stuff.
• Skaven - the new boxed game for WFB came with skaven, so I set about buying up old 90's skaven miniatures. I then put them in a box for safekeeping.
• Dwarves - I may have accidentally started a Dwarf army by buying loads of slayers after reading the latest gotrek and felix novel (although I also planned to start an epic undead horde too, in the style of the olden days when you could have a necromacer lord and a horde of zombies, but I've managed to hold back from buying anything... for now)
• Mordheim - I have the boxed game and enough miniatures for three warbands. Other than that, nothing doing.

40k

• Witch hunters - a squad of stormtroopers and a squad of sisters of battle are painted, with about 3,000 points worth of bare metal awaiting my attention span.
• Chaos - a couple of squads of marines and berzerkers painted up, some half painted possessed and a rhino, some undercoated terminators and Huron Blackheart, some unpainted converted daemons, and boxes and boxes of stuff.
• Space Marines - largely boxed, mint on sprue. I did draw a chart of what colour the armour would be on different squads though...
• Orks - I used to love the orks when I was a wee nipper, but buying the codex after getting the Black Reach box left me somewhat cold... I'll probably come back to them one day though...
• Blood Pact - a squad and a half converted (guardsmen with grotesques made from cut down goblin faces), the rest in boxes.

Well, I've probably missed a few things, and not even mentioned the other projects clamouring at my brain for attention so that I'll start them (Fallout, for one, which should really be on the main list as I've already bought some miniatures for it), but there we have the starting point for this blog. I might start a running count of miniatures received vs miniatures painted, just to see how bad I am, and I promise all you brave adventurers that made it all the way to the end that not every post will be as long as this one...