A busy weekend - Forsaken and lots of figure prep

Well, after aiming to get them done in August, I've finally got five Forsaken painted and table ready in January! This is another unit for my challenge with James at Gonzo History Gaming. These are my first finished models of the year, and it's left me feeling really positive and cheery.

I've also pottered along with assembling one of the Chaos Spawn - it's an astonishingly versatile kit for it's time. I'm looking forward to getting this one fully assembled and painted. It will be serving double duty in both Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K.

Here's some old "never released by Citadel" figures that Wargames Foundry have now put out under their Warmonger Miniatures line. They'll be joining a squad of "not GW" Inquisitorial retinue of various figures I've picked up over time of stuff I thought was cool.

The space suited miniature had a bump on his backpack that I recognised as being intended for a Space Marine style backpack. I dug out a Forge World piece from the bitz box (I think it may be from a Legion Recon Squad? I don't know) so he could have one. I thought it was a fun mix of old and new.

I also finished basing up the EM4 Miniatures scavengers I'd started on last weekend. As those around the UK will be aware, it's not exactly been undercoating weather, so there's a big build up of bits and pieces awaiting undercoating.

Well, this takes the biscuit for rubbish progress pics, doesn't it? At least there's some other, real progress above it. This is a Forge World Renegade psyker and an Antenocitis Workshop "egg car" I got as a freebie when I attended the Infinity Winter Challenge down in Exeter.

I washed the resin, as you should, and cleaned up the (minimal) mould lines on both. I'm planning on doing a "cracked earth" style base for the psyker, so I'm keeping him separate to his base until both are painted. This is a bit of a new thing for me. To get the base ready for undercoating, I filled in the little hole the GW bases have with a bit of polyfilla.

So, there you go - 12 figures made ready for undercoating, and the last 2 figures of a set of 5 painted. I'm not sure if we'll keep up the pace, but I'm pleased to be managing to get some time at the hobby desk and not getting distracted and wandering off.

Tale of Gamers: A little more Marauder Progress

Just a few more colours blocked in, and another wash or two down...

A trip to Wargames Foundry

After our trip to Warhammer World for the Open Day, I'd insisted on heading over to the new Wargames Foundry shop to have a nose around before heading home. I was very glad we went!

Foundry is owned by Bryan Ansell, who got a lot of old Warhammer figures when he left Game Workshop.

We caught up with Kev Adams while we were there - he heard us nosing around the shop and came out to say hello!

We did a bunch of shopping while we were there. "Mrs TRO" has a Secret Project she was looking for some very specific figures for. I was after a few random bits and pieces, which I've been intending to get for a while.

I haven't taken any pictures of the purchases, but hopefully they'll reach the top of the painting pile soon enough and you can see them then!

I was having a very Squat obsessed day, wasn't I?

 Mrs Ansell popped in to say hello and arrange to make us a mug of tea, which was much needed after the long weekend of talking to many, many gamers.

The lovely chap who was minding the shop that day showed me these wonderful cave painting style shields that he's painted. But I'm a terrible human being and forgot his name!

I noticed the block style Ork artwork on the side of this classif fort, too. There's a ton of cool stuff at Foundry, and it's well worth a visit!

Assemble all the things!

I've not been very inspired by the paintbrush recently, but I have been happily plugging away at cleaning up models and assembling them.

First up are the Snorklings. Some of these I picked up with my Warmonger Miniatures goblin purchase. Others were from Foundry's Goblinaid pack. Some of them are meant to be part of a "set", where I don't have all of them (one is meant to be leaning on a cart, but I have no cart, and the snorkling rider whose mount is eating a friend is meant to have another Snorkling with a rope trying to hold it back), but I managed to tinker about with them until they looked OK.

A lot of the Snorklings are doing relatively domestic things. I have a strange and unrepentant love for the baggage trains of 3rd Edition Fantasy. And I am not the only one. As such, in my head, when I have an assembled Oldhammer army with a glorious and complicated baggage train, these chaps will deployed near it as hangers on lurking around for scraps, but also a useful tarpit to get through if you really want to see what a goblin keeps in his cart...

As I'd opened the Goblinaid blister, I thought I might as well get Little Kev sorted out. Quick cleaning off of the flash, bit of glue, a little sandy paste, and he's ready for undercoating. Even small progress is progress!

The assembly stuff is also working well for me because I can do little bursts and come back to it. With the model below, I only really got him out on Sunday, got him cleaned up, his arms on and a pin in the foot in a couple of passes over Sunday, and then glued him to the base and added the brass etch this evening in between taking the photos of the other models for the blog.

Wow. My photos seem to be really blurry today. I've managed to focus on the feet and not the head here. This is a Prowler with Spitfire for Infinity. He's one of a couple of models I bought with my prize voucher for coming third in the Dark Sphere Slow Grow League. His base and etched brass facing marker are by Antenocitis Workshop.

I'm trying to be better now about turning around stuff relatively quickly when it comes in, although there are strange and complicated rules about this in my head. Execution Force I'm holding off on until I've finished assembling the Space Wolves from Stormclaw, for example.

I know, academically, I'd much rather be getting models completely finished - painted, based and ready for play. But I don't want to push myself into doing something I'm not inspired by right now - this is a hobby for enjoyment, after all. So, I'm getting productive stuff done with the hobby, and if I don't feel too guilty, I can put some undercoated models down - at least it's better than proxies, right?

Salute 2015: Obligatory Materialist Post

I was tempted to call this year's post Salüt, but I wasn't sure how well Blogger would cope with that in a title...

First up, we have the Salute free miniature this year - an Agincourt model. I'm not sure what exactly I'll do with him, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

I picked up a few bits and pieces from Resina Planet. Vorfang is one of their Orc sculpts. Euphoria is a little skirmish game they had, and it came with four figures, so I thought I'd give it a go. That meant I spent enough money to get their show model - a character called Undertaker for Euphoria.

I picked up the "Moss Triad" of Foundry paint to try out on Vorfang. I saw someone else's Orc painted with these colours and thought it looked awesome. Lets see if I can replicate that...

Here are a few food themed Snorklings, sculpted by Kev Adams, that I got with my purchases at the Warmonger stand. Aren't they the adorablest?

Here are some chaos critters from Eureka Miniatures. They're a bunch of weird things based on the paintings of Bosch and Breugel. They're not up on the website yet, but I'm told they will be relatively soon. Eureka were also running a game of Two-up because of Anzac Day, although I didn't participate.

Then I went to EM4 Miniatures. They have Many Things. But what I was looking for primarily was their Scavenger range, which I have been looking at thoughtfully for a while since I saw them on someone else's blog a while ago. They are apparently originally by someone else, but EM4 bought them up when the original company went under.

I also got these "Phagons" from EM4 Miniatures, which are from an old "Spacelords" range. You can't get them on the EM4 website, but you can see a lot of what they have on the Spacelords Facebook Page. Obviously, I'll be using these as Beastmen.

 Here's my Hasslefree purchases this year. Unfortunately, it looks like Boudi and Maika have both taken a small knock due to my careless handling since I bought them. Still, I'm reasonably sure both are salvageable - but it does remind me to be careful of metal miniatures, as they can get damaged just as easy as resin ones with bad handling.
 

I bought a Sea Queen from Paranoid Miniatures. They're working on a Cthulu inspired game which seems to be called Mythos.

Continuing the aquatic and tentacle theme, here's a Squiddo from the Dice Bag Lady. She doesn't just do Dice Bags now. She's stocking a wide range of sensibly dressed female miniatures, and is also starting to commission her own.

The last thing I picked up at Salute were a few bits and pieces of Reaper Bones from DMB Games. Their main thing is dungeon parts, but they had some boxes of Reaper Bones minis to pick through, so I grabbed some bits and pieces - a Gorgon, some Kobolds, a couple of Hobgoblins, and some Goblins.

Oh yes. Goblins.

It seems that Salute this year was the year of the Goblin Related Accident. Here's a wide range of goblins from Midlam Miniatures. You may remember them from last year's Salute post for their game Stalagbite. I also got their Imps to use as a different "tribe" of Goblins.

I also got the Daywatch from Northumbrian Tin Soldier's "Nightfolk" range. I'm planning on getting some more of the Nightfolk when I've finished painting the ones I have and my wallet has stopped crying.

I got a whole bunch of goblins from Otherworld Miniatures too. They have a pretty wide range of classic D&D style stuff. Sadly (or perhaps fortunately for me) they'd sold out of some of their other goblin models by this point.

I didn't pick up a huge amount from Heresy this year, as I have a Kickstarter order coming from them. Still, a goblin command group will come in handy for all the goblins I've already got, right?

 And here is where the goblin madness started... I bought a bunch of the new goblins from Warmonger Miniatures. They have a definite old school feel, and I'll be the first to admit I like some a lot more than others. Still, they have sent me down a path of goblinoid madness...

A week away

I'm afraid I didn't get much modelling and painting done last week, as I was on holiday! During this holiday, I did many things.

I went to Golem Painting Studio and had a painting lesson, which was excellent. The step change in my painting from what I was doing before to what I'd done at the end was incredible.

We went to Wargames Foundry. I failed to take any pictures, but my darling wife took this photo of one of her purchases, which was some goblins torturing a dwarf with feathers. I bought Fort Wynn a present, which I will leave them to explain, but also dropping them in the lurch so they need to both post and also paint it and blog that too!

I was really taken by their fantasy range and was saddened to read on their blog when I got back that they are having some woes regarding them. I picked up the "Little Kev" model and also some Victorian gentlemen to use as civilians in Malifaux, should I have a mind.

I also went to Warhammer World, where I played a little game of 40K against my beloved, who managed to get through an 850 point game without murdering me for being boring. It can't have been that bad, because at least some of my wife's Forge World related slips that weekend seem to have come from reading the rules for them rather than the look of the models. What is the world coming to?

I also got an incredible second game in against an Iyanden Eldar list which came right down to the wire. Many thanks to my opponent, who is an old friend who lives in the Nottingham area who I agreed to play when his scheduled opponent had to drop out at the last minute.

I may have had a wallet related slip in the vicinity of Games Workshop as I had a teensy bit of a panic buy of a teensy amount of metal given the rumours that GW may be ditching more of its metal stock. I bought pretty much all the metal models I've ever wanted, which was both elating and rather painful. With the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge now staring me in the face, I really need to knuckle down to getting paint on models and projects finished.

Wish me luck!