Slow Progress

So, I totally blame Ghost Recon Wildlands for my slow progress. I finally caved in to buy it when it hit the 1/2 price mark, and it was actually quite enjoyable to play (once you just accepted that it is everything but a military tactical shooter...).

Anyway, you are not here to read my ramblings about video game!

I did some more work on the Magach:

And I also finally put together Natalya Federici and the Protos Avatar, to be painted for a Femme Fatale challenge on the German forums:

And I prepared the 6mm Sd Kfz 251/1 and some vehicles for a CO base for painting:

Last, but not least, and to prove that the name of this blog is accurate, I joined a facebook group of local Epic 40K players. I don't have a proper Epic army, but I know that there is a lot of excellent miniatures out there!
My favorite idea so far is an Emperor's Children army (NetEA rules) using Onslaught Miniatures' Hellborn Fallen Sisters.

Marines

Raptors

Havocs

Terminators

Noise Marines

Demons

For vehicles, I prefer Vanguard Miniatures' Novan Elites range (although I would have to convert them to the dark side).

Rhinos

Land Raider

Well, that's all for today.
(And did I mention that I just bought Horizon Zero Dawn?)

New Beginnings

Hello,
as you might know I recently moved to a new place. That was the main reason why I haven't done a lot of hobby stuff lately, but now that we are settled in to our new home I have to sort out my hobby room!

(Well, I have to share it with the wife's sewing machine and knitting supplies, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it?)

I thought that would be a good opportunity to show some of my collection, although very little of it is actually finished.

Let's start with some 6mm Cold War Commander armies, i.e. Syrians, British Army of the Rhine and IDF:

Next, most of my Bolt Action armies: 8th Army, Early War Soviets, Hungarians and Late War Germans

 As you can see there is a lot to do, I need to paint/repair a lot of the 8th Army vehicles, and the Soviets should get some reinforcements soon since we are going to have a big Bolt Action battle again at the start of December. In the background you can just make out a GAZ AA, Komsomolet and some Black Tree Design infantry.
Well, and the Hungarians and Germans are not even half painted... One day I will finish the 44M TAS and Rohamloeveg in the fictitious ambush camo pattern I want.

I also plan to venture into 1/35th territory:

I love IDF armor, and the Meng Production figures are awesome! I hope I won't get too annoyed by the tracks with multiple pieces per link...

I also decided to expand my 6mm Germans for Blitzkrieg Commander:

I guess a fine drill and some steel wire are in demand to fix these barrels... Anyway, I am planning to paint those units and some infantry as part of a P500 on the German Tabletopwelt forum. This is a nifty little event they have every year in which you pledge to paint a full army with each 500 points block being finished in 6 weeks. It's a great way to get feedback and motivation, and I think this kind of "pressure" is very good to get me doing something. And since one of those Jagdtigers is already worth 280 points, I also decided to double the points per block to 1000. More about this project soon, it starts on November 1st!

20 kg of Awesomeness

One thing I did during my vacation was sending a package to myself - 20kg of toys that were in storage at my parents place. Today, it finally arrived!

The box was pretty beaten, but it travelled around the world. I was just hoping I packed everything reasonably safe...

Nope :(
The horror...

Man down! Man down!

But luckily most of it was okay.

So what was inside? For example my 6mm Modern IDF:

And some half-done Germans:

Plus reinforcements for my BAOR and Syrians:

Some 6mm Brigade Models Neo-Soviets:

One and a half 15mm Mighty Armies forces:

And two more:

A 15mm Walker from Micropanzer Wargames, long time oop and awful to assemble:

But the main part of it was BattleTech miniatures. I bought my first BattleTech novel, Way of the Clans, when I was 14, and I was hooked. Got the Mechs! box as a present soon after, but never actually played the game until I was 17. But then, BattleTech was HUGE in my circle of friends, especially during my last years of school and first years of study. We played an ongoing campaign with a mercenary unit, and back in the day there was heaps of organized play throuch MechForce and communities like Lordprotector and Batchall. I still own hundreds of BattlecTech miniatures, and maybe half of them are now back here with me.

Sadly, they suffered the most during transit...

First we have the mangled remains of my Clan Hell's Horse Omega Keshik:

 
The Hell's Horses always have been my favorite clan, I loved their schism between Crusaders and Warden and I loved their use of second line Mechs beside OmniMechs and their combined arms tactics. They were like one step smarter than the average clanner.

Well, if you are looking for a game with even more ridiculous tank designs than 40K, look no further! Also, I have way more ProtoMechs than I remember...

I also have a bunch of rather boring Clan Wolf machines:

Including a Fenris with this quite presentable free-hand logo I did:

And a bunch of unpainted Clan Mechs, including 3 Dire Wolves :)

One of them is a Widowmaker, produced by the MechForce UK. But I suspect mine is a re-cast.

Beside this, I also created my own mercenary outfit, with the rather unoriginal name of Ronin. They were a bunch of soldiers who lost their units, families and/or homeworld in the Clan invasion. The core was the remnants of an FRR unit which teamed up with a beaten up Steiner mercenary lance and went from there. Yepp, I had a very detailed background for this unit.
They adapted the same organisation as the clans with 5 Mechs per unit, and employed an "open" company structure, meaning that lances were put together into comapanies according to teh task at hand.

This is the command lance:

I was not very skilled when I painted those, and I think they deserve a new (hopefully better) paint job.

The Ronin employed three combat lances of mixed weight, employing embedded scouts in combat units:

The Thug is a bit of a stretch for a mercenary outfit in 3052, but I am sure there was a very good story for it being there.

Talking about stretches, of course they have a LAM leading their scout lance!

The other two light lances are more combat oriented, with an ambush lance of 5 Javelins, well, technically three JVN-10N Javelins and two JVN-10F Fire Javelins, and a Hunter/Killer lance with two Phoenix Hawks and three Valkyries.

More specialized units come in form of an urban combat lance, as heavy as possible while being jump-capable and  painted brightly red for easy identification in the chaos of close quarter combat, a fire support lance and the pride of my collection, the Guard lance with an Unseen Marauder II, two Unseen Marauders and an Unseen metal Warhammer (the painted Warhammer is plastic)!

Later, I expanded the Ronin to a full bataillon with Mechs from the newer TROs. Here are some of them, although each lance is missing at least one member - I guess they stayed behind when I packed the box...

And some more unaligned Mechs:

The last picture also contains a disturbing amount of unaccounted bits...

I hope you enjoyed this little trip through my hobby history!
And there is still another smaller box sitting here waiting to be unpacked. :)

Bring & Buy 2016 Loot

Hello,
today was the first day of the Christchurch Wargaming Club Bring & Buy 2016, and I decided that this year I would be solely on the "Buy" side ;). The event grew quite a bit from last year, and we got a couple of hundred people through the door before lunchtime!

I spent 80 NZ$, which is about 58 US$. And look at my loot!

I got a couple of awesome books for 5 NZ$ (3.6 US$) each:

Another awesome score was this box of 1983 Grenadier Models Orcs - still in their original, also slightly decomposed, foam inlay:

 These Reaper and Bombshell blister cost me 1 NZ$ (0.72 US$) each!

And same for these Epic Demolishers and 6mm Dark Realm Miniatures tanks!

I also found a "Never Surrender" British Para (that was the pre-order exclusive for the first edition of Bolt Action):

And somebody was even selling demons from the The Others: 7 Sins boardgame!

And last but not least, 1/35th and 1/72th model kits which just looked like fun to build:

I am very happy with this pile of new toys!

And here are some more pictures of other interesting stuff on offer which sadly didn't fit into my budget: