Back to the Elves

I'm a little proud of this one. Not the models themselves, more the fact that I've managed to actually swing my attention back to an ongoing army project.

It's normally something I really struggle with. Once I’ve gotten the dopamine hit from completing a few units, my Hobby ADHD and actual Neurospicy distraction usually kicks in and I don't return to it for months, if at all. It's most of the reason I have so few painted, playable armies, despite having been in the hobby for over 20 years now!

The fact that I've got another event coming up has definitely helped, but I'm still taking it as a win!

So yeah, I've managed to get another unit of Dark Riders done across the last couple of evenings:

I also started on the Dragon I mentioned last time. Not too shabby a start, although still a way to go on it:

I'm hoping to harness my current streak of productivity and get him done by early next week, to avoid the usual last minute rush to sort stuff out, but we'll see what happens there. I'll keep you updated!

Off to a decent start

The great de-backlogging is off to a pretty good start. I managed to get the last of my Speed Freaks units for my Orks done over the last week, with a Shokkjump Dragster and trio of Deffkoptas ticked off my To Do list!

The Shokkjump in particular I'm really glad turned out well. I converted it basically from scratch using a kids toy i found in a charity shop as as base. It fits in pretty well I reckon.

The Boomdakka I showed off in my last post, but decided to photograph it again, as I love it so much.

The Koptas are the last of a batch of 15 I've been painting recently for the summer tournament at my local club. I ended in 4th Place, which really wasn't bad considering I'd hardly played 40k for the better part of two years! I originally joined as a way to boost numbers and have an excuse to paint some Orks, but it turns out there's a lot of armies out there which can't cope with massed whirly death machines being slammed down the field turn 1!

As I said, these are the last of my 'Need to do' Ork stuff. There's still plenty of Ork stuff in my backlog, but they're less of a priority. Im going to take a break from painting green for a while and probably turn my attention towards some Necromunda stuff. There's a few bits I want to get done for the local campaign I've started running and most of it should be relatively low effort pallete cleansers. 

I'm definitely finding it easier to focus now i have a goal to aim for and a place to document it all here on the blog, so I'm hoping my productive streak continues.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

A short break

I decided to take the a little break from painting Trolls this week. I may be on a deadline but I'm chugging along nicely with the army as a whole and I needed a bit of a pallete cleanser.

I'm also waiting on a few more models to arrive before my final push on the army, so it's all good.

Anyway I finally managed to get my Masque painted. I've had the model knocking around for a few years now and she was the only model I had unpainted in.my AoS 4 test game the other week, so it made sense to get her done.

She turned put very nicely I think. A lovely change of pace. I'm still getting used to the fact that my new phone camera picks up more than my eye can when I'm painting. Some of the highlights and layers are looking a little rough when I post the pics on here, but I have to keep reminding myself that it'll look fine when on the table!

If nothing else it's a nice little push for me to improve my skills!

The other thing I've been doing is cracking on with the terrain I've been meaning to do for my local club for a few months now, but kept getting distracted from:

It's a much simpler paint job than the Masque. I've just been drybrushing whilst watch stuff on YouTube. Strangely relaxing in an almost zen way.

It turned out pretty nice considering how simple the scheme is. Just Skavenblight Dinge over a white spray, then drybrushed up with white.

Got a few more bits I need to get done too, but it won't take too long now I've started.

All in all it's been a pretty productive week. My next batch of Trolls should arrive in the next few days, then it'll be back to the ground ready for October. It's been nice taking a little break though, plus having my hobby mojo properly returning has been wonderful. I'm going to ride it while I still can!

Trolls!

Despite being busy at work and the frankly ridiculous heat in the last couple of days, I've managed to get a little bit of hobby done.

I now have a solid goal to be working towards, which has really helped my focus. I signed up for a local Old World event at the start of October, so I need a fully painted army done by then. Deadlines focus my hobby ADD brilliantly, which is why I've got so many fully painted Middle Earth armies!

I decided to cheat on this one a little though and run Troll Horde. I only need to paint about 20 models for that! On the other hand, I get to paint a bunch of cool Trolls, so it's all good.

Forgive the cluttered hobby desk in the background. I didn't have the time to set up my light box for them:

They turned put alright I reckon. The poor light doesn't show them off as well as it could, but I'll get a better picture when I've got this full batch of 13 done.

I even managed to sneak in a little freehand to taint one of our local dwarf players, in the form of a pilfered banner!

Not bad I'd say, although I could definitely do better. It's been a while since I attempted anything like that.

Just another 8 Trolls to go and then I've got the Hag and Wyvern Boss to do. I'm chugging along nicely I'd say!

That's all for today though. I'll bring you more soon.

I'm back!! (hopefully)

So as usual, I've been utterly terrible at keeping up with this blog. I've been in a bit of a hobby funk recently that I've just gotten over, so hopefully I'll be getting a bit more to show you guys soon.

I did manage to get these guys done for my AoS Slaanesh though:

These Blissbarb Archers have been sitting unfinished on my desk for about a year now. There was so much detail on them that i was a little daunted so i kept putting off painting them.

I recently saw a YouTube video though that made them look a lot simpler than I thought, so i decided to give it a go. It certainly wasn't as easy as they made it look! I'm glad i gave it a try though, as in my opinion they're some of the nicest results I've achieved on anything for ages!

Posting them up here has actually made me realise I could probably do with going over the base trims with another layer, but that's easily fixed. 

I particularly love the skin tone I achieved for them. It really gives a nice, unnaturally pale look to the whole unit which I'll definitely be transferring to other projects.

All in all these guys have really given my hobby mojo the kick up the arse it needed and I'm pretty psyched to get working on other bits. I definitely want to see if i can get more of my Hedonites churned out whilst I'm in the right mood for it, but I've also got some Old World bits to be working on too. I'll post more once ive decided what it'll be.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

Savage things

So after my last post I was raring to go with hobby and get a load done. My body had other ideas though and I spent the next week and a half feeling extremely ill. Bloody typical!

Now I'm in the mend though, I've not only been able to get a couple more games of Old World in, but I've managed to sit down and do some hobby for the first time in a couple of weeks. 

Despite their absolutely abysmal performance in the game last night, I decided that my Boar Boyz were next up on my hobby desk. 

I'm actually really quite happy with how they turned out, considering it was just a few hours work.

 Weirdly, despite appearances, the Boars took longer than the Boys to do, needing several layers of drybrushing and washes, whereas the riders were mostly Contrast, with a few strategic highlights. I'm clearly starting to get get the method locked down for the army scheme, as it was a breeze to work through.

I think the purple really does make the whole thing pop. I'll definitely be integrating it more into the rest of the army as I go along.

That's it for today though. Hopefully this burst of progress will propel me forward and I'll be have more to show soon. I'm definitely riding this Old World kick right now, so no doubt it'll be something of that ilk, but only time will tell what specifically that might be. 

Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Old World Shenanigans

Despite my best of intentions, I've been pretty lazy with posting so far this year. 

January is usually quite a productive month for me, as I normally work a bit less as things calm down from the Christmas rush, but it turned out to be an unexpectedly busy month this time round, between work and Pokemon Regionals. Then in February I just haven't found the time to sit down and post anything.

Luckily I actually got a ton of stuff done, albeit more at the start of January than past couple of week. I got the entire core of my Orcs and Goblins done for Old World.

 Turns out that a looming game release after three years of procrastinating was a fantastic motivator to get shit done!

I still need to finish up the Squigs, Chariot and a few extra dudes, but I still got a huge chunk done. It was mostly done using Contrast and speed painting techniques, but they look pretty great when ranked up, so I'm pretty happy with them. 

I'm actually really proud of how my Great Shaman/Wurrzag came out. It was only about three hours work, but I absolutely loved the result!

I wasn't originally planning to use a big Orc Shaman, preferring Gobbos when it comes to magic. He was just part of the big lot I bought ages ago, but I like the paint job on him so much I'm definitely going to try to squeeze him into a few lists.

On top of my Orcs, I also dug out my old Dark Elves and gave them some fancy new spaced movement trays to get them compatible with the new edition:

They still need a lot of work to bring them up to a good standard, plus I built/rebuilt a load of monsters to go with them, but I'll cover that in a later post. This is already getting pretty long already and I also wanted to show off a few pics from the games I've had already. 

I've been having an absolutely fantastic time in just the three games I've played so far. It's not just the nostalgia talking, there's just something about it which revs me up far more than anything has recently, especially compared to the latest incarnation of 40k.

Heresy and Middle Earth have come close, but honestly I can see this becoming the main game I'll be playing for a while, even more so than it did back in the day. It's incredibly good fun.

Anyway I'm going end this post here and try and be back soon with another, now I've gotten caught up. I'm actually off work this week, so hopefully I'll be able to get some stuff done which I can show off. It is nice to finally get a post out though. I do enjoy posting here, it's just not as easy to keep up as it used to be. 

Anyway, until next time, happy hobbyingl

Goodbye 2023, hello 2024

Happy New Year to you all!

Im a little later than usual with my end of year hobby review post, but at least I'm here now. Welcome to my annual hobby ramble! 

I actually had a really good hobby year in 2023. I joined a new gaming group at the start of the year, so I've been gaming a lot more than I normally do.

They're a great bunch of guys and I've had some really fun games, including participating in a 40k League and trying to introduce them to smaller games like Middle Earth and Heresy. 

On the whole it's been pretty successful and I've had a blast. It's also given me a huge boost to my mental health and a good excuse to get out and be more sociable, so I consider that a win all round. 

I'm honestly little shocked at just how much I've been playing. I've always been far more of a hobbyist than a gamer, but it's been rather excellent getting out and getting some serious gaming in. In previous years I was able to get one game a month if I was lucky. 2023 saw me play 55 games. That's an average of more than one a week! 

It did feel like I'd gotten less stuff painted as a result though, as I've been playing instead of painting on my main night off every week. Turns out though that when I gathered everything together for a photo, I was very wrong:

That's a pretty massive chunk of hobby progress!

 I still thought it was a bit less than previous years, but it turns out I'd pulled out 454 points of hobby progress, which was actually a few points up on last year. I guess I'm just really crap at judging these things! 

I guess I was a little fooled by the fact I've been working on a lot of points-heavy big things, but I certainly won't complain. All hobby progress is good progress! 

It has helped that I've been trying to only game with fully painted models whenever possible. There's nothing like wanting to try something new to give me the push to crank out some fresh models! 

So moving on, where am I going in 2024? Well I've decided to keep it simple this year. At least to begin with I want to get a few existing projects finished, like my 30k Emperor's Children and Imperial Fists, as well as keep working on my Old World armies. 

That latter one is likely to occupy most of my immediate attention, especially with pre orders having been announced. I'm just so excited to have Warhammer Fantasy back! 

I reckon most of January will be consumed with mass production of Orcs and Gobbos. I've got a good method down for them now, so I should be able to zoom through a ton of them, it's just a matter of putting in the time. 

I'm kicking myself a little at having let my Old World projects slip so much, even though I've known the game is coming for four years. I was hoping to have a couple fully playable armies ready to go for launch, but now I'm running out of time, especially as I know a lot of the local players are chomping at the bit to dive in with it. 

I've just got to try and play catch up as best I can. At least it'll keep me busy and motivated! 

Apart from that, i just want to generally focus on getting stuff done for a while. I'm quite comfortably in positive painting points now, but my backlog is still pretty ridiculous, so a bit of a pause on model buying outside of Old World makes a lot of sense for a few months. Quite honestly, I could probably not buy a single model for the next few years and still not run out of stuff to be working on! 

The first few months of the year is normally a good time for me to focus on my backlog anyway, as the hours at work go way down, so I don't have a huge amount of disposable income. It also gives me more free time for hobby, so it just makes sense to focus that for a little while. 

Whatever I end up doing, I do want to try and post on here more regularly. I'm fully aware that in 2024, hobby blogs are a pretty dead form of media. Social media is definitely where it's at for online hobby. There's something very satisfying about maintaining this blog though, so I want to keep it going as long as I can, even if noone's really paying attention to it.

So that's it for this year's round up. It's a little less structured and wandering than usual, but you don't come here for concise thoughts anyway, so it's all good.

Have a fantastic 2024 and I'll catch you all soon! 

Green Christmas

I've spent a lot of the last month being pretty ill. Nothing too serious, but I've been feeling rough as hell.

As you can imagine, that put quite a crimp in my hobby mojo for a while. Luckily in the last week or so I've been able the get some of my momentum back.

I'm definitely on the hype train for the rapidly approaching release of Old World, so I've gone into full mass production mode on my Orcs and Goblin army. 

As you can see I've been pretty productive! 

Although I've still got a long way to go, it's definitely one of those projects where Contrast paint is my best friend. It's ready made for the kind of batch painting. I wish that it had existed back in the day, as I would have faced much fewer hordes of grey plastic!

Anyway, a few days after that pic was taken, I used my last night off before Christmas to get a few units finished, after a lot of playing around with methods and trying a few bits out:

I also popped them in my light box to get some better photos, but I just wanted to get a group pic. Maybe it's the nostalgia kicking in, but there's something very satisfying about seeing even a couple of Fantasy units ranked up together.

Anyway, here's a close up. 

It's a really simple scheme, but I reckon it looks pretty effective. More importantly it can be reproduced over 100+ models without driving me utterly insane!

The Goblins do look a little odd on the new larger bases. Some of that might just be the break in how I'm used to seeing them, but the Skull Pass Gobbos were also tiny in comparison to the multipart kit. I reckon if I mix a few of those in as the horde expands, it should all be good.

The Savages Orcs on the other hand have the opposite problem. 

They were almost too big for 25mm bases even in 8th edition and we haven't been told their new base size yet. I'm guessing they're going to go to 30mm, but I'm not wanting to jump the gun on it. I do however want an army ready to go for release, so I've decided to paint them on their original bases for now, then put them on correctly spaced movement trays later.

That'll do for today. Hopefully I'll get a chance to sort out my usual hobby review post between now and the new year, but for now, I'll just say Merry Christmas to you all and see you soon! 

Catching up

I know I vanished a little after my last post, but don't worry, my hobby mojo hasn't evaporated already! 

I'd love to say that I was just waiting until I finished up some stuff before showing it off, but honesty I'm just really terrible at finding the time and focus to write up blog posts.

As ever, I'll try and get better at posting in sometime resembling a timely manner, but for now have some nice photos of finished models to distract you from my failings:

I'm continuing my push towards the launch of Old World and managed to turn out an entire regiment of Executioners in the space of about two weeks. I'm really impressed with how they turned out and I have to say that the sight of a fully ranked Regiment makes me both nostalgic and excited for the return of Fantasy!

I haven't neglected my other projects, but there's far too much to go through in one post. I'll just show you what I've been working on in the past few days and try to keep things up to date in future:

I actually managed to crank out these three relatively quickly. I've got a Middle Earth event coming up this weekend, but I've been dithering on what to take. I finally decided last week to go with something a bit silly and fun, but I was short a few painted models I needed to make it work. 

I managed to get these done in just a couple of long sessions. They're by no means my best work, but I'm pretty happy with them and they'll do the job.

That's it for today. Like I said, there's a ton of stuff I've gotten finished which I just don't have space to show off. Like I said, I'll try and keep up with things a bit better in future.

For now though, happy hobbying! 

I'm back!

I finally managed to break out of my hobby slump! 

After a few months of doing pretty much nothing, I've actually been able to coax my hobby mojo back into life over the last few weeks. Turns out all I needed to do is jettison 40k from my project pile. 

Despite having a strong start, I've been coming to the conclusion that 10th edition is a bit of a mess and not too fun to play right now, so I've decided to focus on other game systems, such as Heresy and Middle Earth instead. I might wheel back to 40k later once a few more Codexes are out, but honestly I'm having more fun elsewhere atm. 

It did help that I've been able to get quite a few games of 30k in recently. I've even being able to get down to one of the regular Heresy nights at my FLGS, which has got me  super keen to finally sort out my Emperor's Children. 

So yeah, I'm on a real Heresy kick right now. I even found a pretty good deal for a bunch of Heresy Emperor's Children on a FB trade group, which I snapped up pretty quickly:

 There's a lot of work to be done on them, but I was going to be doing some pretty hefty conversion work on them anyway, so it's not too bad. 

It gives me a very solid backbone to build the army around, so I'm going to enjoy working through this lot.

In the meantime though, I decided to work on some Kakophonii to 'get my eye in'.

I really liked how these turned out. They're really a a rebuild/paint of my old 40k Noise Marines, but I think they do the trick and give you an idea of how I want the final army to feel.

They're a bit more '40k' in feel than most 30k EC's you see, but that's kind of the point of the army. It's meant to be a Siege of Terra force. The 3rd Legion fell quicker and faster than most other Legions, so a sprinkling of chaotic nonsense seems fitting. The real trick will be making sure they're still unified enough to pass for a 30k force. 

I'm going to have a lot of fun with this project. I'm very much drawing on 80's/90's Slaanesh models and iconography as an inspiration. So much so I decide to attempt some freehand to jazz them up a bit.

The stripes aren't perfect but not bad for a first attempt I reckon and looks decent enough from a distance. Given the plan for the army, I'll certainly have plenty of chances to practice!

So yeah, just in case you couldn't tell, I'm massively excited to be finally getting this project properly off the ground. Ive actually got a week and a half off work starting today do I'm hoping to really crack on withthis over that time. Wish me luck!

I want to get as much done on this as possible before the new year, as it was confirmed yesterday that Old World will finally be releasing then and I know I'm going to definitely get sucked into that in a big way!

But yeah, I'll post up how I get on this week. It's good to be back on the hobby train again. See you soon! 

In a funk

My hobby seems to be a bit all or nothing atm. After a few weeks of being productive, I've not really touched too much for nearly a month now. I think it's a slight bit of burnout after my blitz of activity in the build up to my last Middle Earth event and the excitement of 10th Edition's release, but also I don't really have anything major to be focusing on right now.

Hopefully the release of Epic in a few weeks will change that, but for now I'm just 'picking' at various projects without actually getting too much done. Real life has kept me pretty busy as well, so I guess that's contributed to it too.

I did finally manage to get some Killa Kans and a Mek done for my Orks this week though.

They're nothing too fancy, but it is nice to call something done. It also keeps up my self-imposed pledge to paint things up before I use them in 10th Edition.

The guns are fully magnetised too, so I'll need to paint up the spares at some point, but for now I'm happy to take the small win and enjoy the feeling of actually getting something finished!

Hopefully I'll break out of my funk more fully soon, but until then happy hobbying! 

Hobby Adventures

It's been a strange couple of weeks for me in the hobby. 

First of all, I'm happy to report that I managed to finish up the last of the Corsairs I needed for my event, embracing the 'good enough' mantra I talked about last post:

They came out pretty well in my opinion. Reasonably high tabletop standard, with a bit of extra effort put into Dalamyr, but nothing too fancy.

I had a really fun time at the event too. I met some great people and it was pretty excellent to be playing some Middle Earth again after several months of mostly 40k. Definitely going to have to find some time to get some more games in at some point!

That time might get a little squeezed though, as I've picked up a new game! After years of grumbling about what GW did to the Old World, a mate of mine down the local club has finally convinced me to give Age of Sigmar a try!

To be fair, I've been oggling the Hedonites range ever since it came out and I've been warming towards the fluff for a few years now, so I figured I'd give it a go using my existing Slaanesh Deamons army for 40k. Turns out it's surprisingly fun! It was actually the most fun I'd had playing with my Deamons for years! 

So I'm an Age of Sigmar player now. It certainly won't become the main game that I play, but it'll definitely scratch my Fantasy itch for a while, at least until Old World eventually comes out.

I needed some Mortals to go with my Deamons, so ended up picking up the Hedonites Vanguard box when when I went to collect the Leviathan box last weekend.

My excited mood was a little soured by just how fiddly and awkward the Blissbarbs were to build. They were *very* CAD designed and took me nearly six hours just to build this lot, but I persevered. 

I'm really looking forward to getting some paint on these. I'll have to hurry things along though, as GW dropped a massive bombshell over the weekend that is likely to suck up a lot of my hobby time and budget.

Epic's back next month!

I knew it was coming, but didn't expect it quite so soon. I'm a massive fan of Titanicus already, so I'm going to be buying into this in a big way! That means I need to definitely clear some space in my backlog.

So yeah, there's been some big swerves in what I'm doing, but I'm pretty psyched for the hobby again and feeling pretty good right now.

Watch this space, I'll be back soon! 

I did it!

I've reached quite a cool moment on my hobby.. For the first time in the 20ish years I've been playing, I've actually got a fully painted 2000 point army for 40k!

I've collected a lot of armies over the years, but I've never been all that disciplined in getting them painted. I've always gotten distracted by other projects.

Having taken part in a 40k league at the local club for the last six months though, it's helped me focus quite considerably.

It helped that Orks are quite fun to paint and I chose quite a simple paint scheme. It still took me the better part of two years since restarting the army to get there though. 

Just in time for 10th Edition to screw with the points!

It's fine though, it gives me a solid pool of finished models to draw on to keep to my goal of only playing with painted models in 10th, with a fair few more that could be finished quite quickly if I want to use something different, so it's onwards and upwards from here!

Next up is getting some Corsairs ready for a Middle Earth event at the end of the month, then tackling the Leviathan box, so that should be a lot of fun. 

Until next time, happy hobbying! 

Gordakka Da Stompy

I had lot of fun this week painting up my Mega Dread.

I had the night off work on Thursday with nothing else to do, so I really managed to get into the flow with it. About 9 hours work in total. I don't think I've ever painted up such a large model so quickly!

It's always a nice feeling when that happens. I wish it was that easy all the time. 

I also had some fun with applying transfers. Normally I don't bother with them with Orks, as I think they look a bit out of place, but with a bit of experimenting I found they worked perfectly for what I had in mind, especially once I did a bit of weathering over the top.

I even managed to get the glyphs on his knee pad to match his name. It's something which literally noone will ever notice unless I point it out, but I know it's there at least and that's what matters.

Next up is the Deff Dread and some Beast Snaggas and my league list is fully painted. If I can get those done before 10th Edition drops I'll be very happy, but I'll have to see how I get on. I've got a busy couple of weeks ahead of me at work, so it'll come down to how much free time I end up getting.

Enjoy the pretty pics for now though. I'll hopefully post more soon! 

Looks like I'm back!

Well I was right, the Old World preview got me fired up. Even if the game's coming a bit later than I'd hoped, it still did the job of getting me painting again. I'm determined to finally get my Dark Elves sorted and ready for the table for when it does launch. 

I got so excited that I actually got an entire unit of Dark Riders done in less than a week, which is pretty damn speedy for me. 

They're certainly not the best paint job I've ever done, but they look good enough for me. I'm not a huge fan of these particular sculpts, but they'll do the job until I can get hold of some of the classic models. I'm holding out hope for a Made to Order for a lot of the 6th Ed metals when the game drops, as ebay prices are looking a little ridiculous right now! 

It actually feels pretty weird to be painting up my first Fantasy regiment in nearly six years, but it's a nice feeling. Fantasy was never my main game, but I still have a lot of nostalgia for it, so it's great to be able to return to an army I thought had been permanently shelved. 

Digging out everything I could find from various boxes, turns out I have a lot of work to do! 

Most of my old Dark Elf army was in the process of being stripped for repainting when it went into storage, so I basically have an entire army to paint up. Should keep me busy! 

Low Effort Hobby

I've been feeling a bit burned out on hobby, after nearly three months of being ridiculously productive. I'm not sure if it's just I've been a bit busy with work, or that with Pokemon Internationals coming up my mind's just been elsewhere. Either way, I've not been wanting to do anything too involved on the few occasions recently when my mind's turned to painting.

Luckily I have the perfect project for that:

My Heresy Imperial Fists have an incredibly simple scheme, 90% of which is just blocking in base colours. It's the kind of thing which is perfect for doing mindlessly in small stints, so that's what I've been doing.

It's actually pretty relaxing not having to think too much about what I'm working on, whilst still making progress. 

I'm sure once 10th Edition 40k rolls closer, I'll move back to something a bit more involved, but for now I'm enjoying the slower pace of hobby.

That's all for now. I'll post more as I get more done. 

Going Purple

It would seem that I can either be really good at getting stuff done or getting posts up in a timely manner, but never both.

As I mentioned a little while back, I recently had a week and half of work and not much to fill it with, so I cracked on with some hobby. I managed to get quite a bit done actually, to the point where I'm finally starting to feel really good about the way my backlog is shrinking. I'm also still managing to keep to my pledge not to buy any new models in for as long as possible in 2023, so there's huge chunks being carved into my 'To Do' pile. There's still a long way to go, but it's definitely heading in the right direction.

Anyway, rather than doing a lengthy catch up post with everything I've been doing, I figured I'd share with you what I'm working on right now, then try to actually keep up with blogging.

So I finally managed go get these guys done:

I started my 30k Emperor's Children back when the Age of Darkness box first launched, then got distracted after moved flat in the summer. Its good to finally go back and get these dudes done. This is one of those projects that I've always wanted to do, but never had the time or drive until now, so it feels excellent to be making a proper start on them.

I've got some Cataphractii Terminators on my desk atm to go with them:

These are starting to take shape nicely, although I'll admit they're taking far longer than I expected. That trim is a killer!

Although I'm looking forward to seeing the end result, its turning into one hell of a slog. I'm thinking of taking a bit of a break once the first five are done before doing the rest of the squad, but I'll have to see. I'm a little concerned though that if I leave it, they'll never get done. 

That's a problem for the future though. For now, I'm just happy I finally got a blog post out!

Until next time happy Hobbying! 

Quick but Satisfying

After sprucing up my Grey Company the other day, it seemed like the natural next step to do the same to the rest of the Fellowship models I owned, so I spent a relaxing afternoon going over them with a few extra highlights and washes. 

Not too bad at all I reckon. It was pretty simple to do and the Fellowship as a whole looks coherent again, so that pleases my autistic sense of order and neatness. 

I had to improvise a bit on the bases though, as the superglue I used for the flock frosted a bit as I applied it, but I reckon I made it work ok. I'll have to try and find a weaker glue to do basing with I think, as that's happened to me a few times recently. 

I'm particularly happy with how Boromir turned out, as he was the most basic of the original paint jobs. I managed to get some really nice shadows and highlights into his tunic, as well as a tiny bit of freehand on the sleeves to really bring the model to life

It really does show how far I've come in terms of painting quality if you compare it to the original paint job I did back in 2019.

It's always nice to revamp old projects like this, but I think next I'm going going to move on to something new. Not sure what yet, but I'll see what catches my attention. 

That's it for today. Just a quick one for now. Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Mordor Glow-up!

It really says a lot about my mindset when I take an army which already won a best painted award, and feel the need to spruce it up!

I have a problem. 

To be fair it was just a couple of hours of work, but I think my point still stands. 

It came about as I was looking at the spears I painted the other day alongside the existing models I had for my Mordor army and the difference in quality stood out in my mind. Not massively, but enough to bug me. 

So onto the painting table they went:

It was only a couple extra highlights on each model, but the difference is pretty drastic. The army should at least look a bit more united now.

That's the problem with going back and adding to an old army project though. Your level of painting will inevitably improve and there's the danger of being locked into an eternal cycling of touching up and improving what you've already done. I just have resist the temptation to to go back again if/when I add more to the army later!

On a similar note, I finished my Grey Company too:

This was just taking the Fellowship models I painted about four years ago and bringing them in line with the Legolas model I did for my Mirkwood Rangers last year, plus a few touch ups on Elladan and Elrohir.

I absolutely love how they look as a group and I'm quite proud of how they turned out. I feel they're some of the best figures I've painted for a while. It was really satisfying to be able to go to town on some individual characters as a break from the massed army painting I've been doing for the last few months.

So yeah, that's both my armies ready for the event next weekend. I don't think I've ever been this prepared so far in advance! I've got a week off work next week so I'll have to see where my painting inspiration takes me. I'll definitely be doing something. My hobby mojo is in overdrive at the moment!

Until next time, happy hobbying!