End Of The Week - ?/^&$%" (0)

Some progress has been made, never as much as I would like. Most of the current project and the background project now has a base colour and a wash although there are a few I have barely touched. Almost not detailing has been done and that is what generally takes the time. What I have done so far looks pretty good to me. If I pushed it today I would probably finish but I have friends here so that is unlikely to happen. My plan is basically to add another five figures into the mix. If I can finish them next week it would put be back on track. A bit of basing of some more elves (alfar) has been done. These are planned as black alfar for the Viking Game.

Today's post is a little bit early so maybe I am being a little bit premature in saying this but I haven't finished any figures again this week. It has been a very busy week for me. Painting has played a major part in it but unfortunately the paint has been emulsion and the objects involved were walls. Someone now has a Slytherin themed bedroom. After a series of some hard and some fun days, painting has not been on the top of the agenda.

Instead of painting I have been board gaming. This has been an enjoyable distraction. There may be some more of that next week. I will probably get around to posting some pictures of the games when I get round to it.

End Of The Week - Not My Best Work (15)

Earlier on I was expecting a much busier day. The time of year and the end of daylight savings time, with some lack of sleep made and with what I was expecting to be doing today made time look a little short. Sunday is usually the day I do any last minute work to finish of my plan for the week. So I was was relatively happy when on the way to a jog I tripped over the curb, skinned my knee and fingers and did some damage to my foot. With all plans out of the window it was back home to put my leg up. And paint.

Despite some misgivings I have achieved my plan and surpassed my expectations. The New, New Cruelty is happy. I have tinkered about with some terrain and got along way through the prepping process for a load of figures. Not a bad week.

Some of the figures this week have been a bit entertaining to paint. The Rebels and the Star Saga scientists suffer from some flatness of detail. Nothing wrong with this but it is difficult to make them shine. The three Malifaux figures were good fun to paint. Lots of nice detail. At the end of the process I was quite happy with what I had done with them. Although looking at them now I can see there are a couple of missed details. These were for the Viktorias crew and until this week one of the Viktorias was missing. Now that I have found the figure I remembered why I didn't do it at the time I got them, one of the figure looks almost impossible to glue together (with any hope of the bits staying on and being apparently impossible to pin). Lastly there is a lonely cowboy which I started last week. Despite being on the table for over two weeks it was the last figure to get finished.

Next week is looking like a freeish week. Currently I plan to go to Salute next weekend. This will be the first time I have been to the biggest show in the country. Painting wise, I have a couple of figures that I have been using as background projects. Background projects have not figures highly just of late so I think I might grab some figures for that purpose. As for the main working objective I want to work on some Blood Bowl and I suspect that there might be a range of odds and sods. Some cowboys, the odd modern figure and post apocalypse seem appealing. Maybe some terrain might make in there somewhere.

Quick Start

Another week of working hard looks like it is in the offing. Already I am getting static from all quarters and I need to find even more paperwork. Still, enough griping as I also have some painting to do.

So another mixed bag this week. Last year I was all about getting blocks of stuff done. This ended with big queues and feeling just a little demotivated. At the moment, this really is working for me. So four more Mantic Star Saga figures are on the table. I did a little bit on these last week. There is one Artizan Designs cowboy which has been hanging around as well. the biggest chunk will be the Star Wars Legion Rebels. These have been staring at me for a few weeks now so probably time to crack on with them. Lastly there are three Malifaux figures. I plan to spend some extra time on these and get them as perfect as I can. It's about time I did something with them. They cost enough when I got them and they have been gathering dust for ages. Maybe it will push me into doing something practical with them.

End Of The Week, Maybe A Little Late

As the end of the week has been and gone, I thought I'd better show you what I had been up to. The New Cruelty demands five figures per week and  that is what I managed. With a bit of effort I even managed a bit more than the five.

The main aim for the week was to finish some more Human Blood Bowl team players. When the week started, things were going well but I had a little injury time so things slowed up for a few days. I finished them off and gave the bases a couple of coats at the same time as painting the bases for the precious Human Team players and the seven Orc Linemen from the week before.









There have been a few figures on the workbench for months. Some rats and a frost wraith for Frostgrave and a spirit of some kind from reaper. The rats have taken a few steps closer to being finished. The frost wraith is pretty much done.

The spirit was a bit of an experiment. This is a figure I have had for probably fifteen years. It was an impulse buy and it has never really gripped me. This has allowed me to experiment with it a little. Still a bit of work to do on this one.






My shopping trip yesterday saw me get some Blood Bowl Goblins. Whilst I have no immediate urge for a goblin team, some goblins are needed to cover all the bases on the Orc Team. I think I might do a Goblin team and an Underworld team at some point so these will do for that. Some special players and a few more goblins would be nice to finish that lot off.  So four Goblins have been glued up and based. Just need a Varag and the team will be all but complete.




My mind is turning to what is going to get done next. My mind is a little all over the place at the moment so I am not really seeing a next step. Whilst I am enjoying the Blood Bowl thing, the Goblins, the Human Catchers and the Ogre are not really doing it for me. An old fave of mine was a RPG called Conspiracy X, my mind is being drawn towards this. Some more fantasy stuff that would fit in the Viking game would be a possibility. The Frostgrave stuff I have done recently has been done because it was there, not because I have any real urge to paint. I was having a fling at Malifaux on eBay during the week. There are some figures I might tart up a bit. Still I don't have a clear direction for next week.

Rats

Rats. Northstar rats in particular. Nice looking miniatures on line but lots of flash, so much so I still don't think I got it all and I will have to hide some of the undersides when I do the bases. These were brought because I don't have any medium sized rats I have plenty of smaller rats (which are ral Partha) which are about accurate size of slightly bigger and even the odd humanoid rat. I figure as well as a fantasy game they would do for Fallout or other post apocalyptic genres (anything that has use across multiple games is good).

Over time I have been a big devotee of the Frostgrave range. Whilst I don't own the complete range I am not that far off it. Here I went as far as buying three packs of figures because I liked the look of them so much. In hindsight, whilst the figures are nice, the castings are pretty poor which is unexpected as most of the Frostgrave stuff has been excellent.

They are still work in progress (and have been sat on the bench half painted for months) so no close up shots yet. As these get finished off. I would hope that they will improve. These are nice looking sculpts and fit my purposes perfectly although this may take a while. Rat wise I need a rat swarm and some larger ones still and all my rat needs should be taken care of.

I have had some more second hand malifaux stuff  through the post today. It wa cheap so I guess I can't complain but it did arrive a bit battered. Maybe I will move on to doing a bit more of that as time goes by.

P.S. Not sure what happened when I first went to post this but this morning I found the page full full of gibberish. A few unkind souls might say that there is nothing new there then. When I came back into the room the cat was sat next to the computer so I am guessing that might have something to do with it.

Orc Linemen

Having spent a good part of the last two days painting I am feeling back like I am back in the saddle. I may even make the target for The New Cruelty. Well more or less. I can't varnish them and therefore cannot stick the transfers on because right here right now the rain is falling pretty hard despite being a pretty good day so far. To be honest there are a number of details that need attending to, ear tips and a few pieces of jewellry still need doing but the day isn't over.

The figures are really nice. The body shape fits my idea of what an orc should look like. Much bigger than people and have the crazed barbarian look.

I haven't finished the Troll. There is a lot of work in this figure if you want to get it right. As well as being more than twice the size of a regular figure it also carries a goblin which needs painting. The Goblins are not that much smaller than a regular 28mm fantasy figure. This makes it at least as much work as three other figures.

The mini has come out darker than I wanted (it's the same colour as the Black Orc Blockers). This will need a bit of work to bring it back. Hopefully this will be finished next week.

Some of the human figures are already put together. Now I am putting a few more together. I already have the ogre but lack Griff Oberwald and The Mighty Zug. I will probably order them through the local GW store and wait for them to arrive before starting the force.

Today I have won a few bits of eBay. In fact I have won pretty much everything I have bid on and it has all come in at the right price. I have a sprue of Skaven. This will go with one of my birthday choices which will have everything else I need.

All the other stuff is Malifaux. I have an urge to play this at the moment. It is also making me want to make a gaming table. One big enough for smaller games. I already have some wood cut to make a 4' by 4' coffee/gaming table. Then plan is to do something pretty close to a regular gaming table with a lip to store stuff like mugs, dice and figures out of the way and a hinged lid  to give me some storage space. SO perhaps another project.

What To Do For Terrain

Terrain is a big thing in my games and for most tabletop gamers. I do a lot of different games so I need a lot of terrain. Some crosses over but there is a surprising amount of stuff that does not. Things have gotten a bit easier as a lot of games no use much smaller tables, often 3' by 3' rather than 6' by 4'.  I usually find wargames tables quite bare. I remember when I started wargaming regularly it was using the Command Decision rules which had vast areas of western Europe, up to half a mile, with nothing on them. It always favoured the Panzer Pixies and more poor old Shermans never got a look in.

I posses vast amounts of terrain. I have about 100 litres of boxes full of the stuff. I don't have as much 28mm terrain. There is a respectable amount but mostly dark age stuff. Some of that will do double duty but not so much. As I am planning games that will need scenery, I thought I'd have a look at what I had planned. Then I realised that I actually had about four different lists for games so I trimmed it down to one.

When I looked at it, I figured the word "trimmed" might not do it justice. It's about five pages long. This would do Sci-fi, modern, post apocalypse, some fantasy (on top of what I already have) and maybe some of what I want for VBCW and Malifaux.

I have acquired a lot of terrain over the years in a fairly ad-hoc manner. What I see is stuff that looks mismatched. What I did with the 15mm terrain (which is all desert) as that I tried to give it a look where everything matched. So I guess this is what I am aiming at now. Now I am looking at the scale of the project. I am just trying to work out how much I would need to do roads and rivers (and tracks and streams and smaller roads and paths and post apocalyptic roads and tracks and rail tracks). I am up to two full sheets of boards (a total 8' by 8') and I am not there yet so almost at three boards. It's a good job I have a table saw.

That wold be just be the beginning. There are fields and broken terrain. A big long list

What's On The Workbench

 This is one of those posts where I don't have too much to say today. I've done my Zomtober bit for the day but still feel the urge. Work has not progressed much but I feel the urge to blog about something. The work bench is looking very distressed at the moment. On the plus side I can actually see some green so I have some surface to play with. It's probably time that I had a bit of a tidy up or maybe just add some more shelves so I have less to complain about.

More Malifaux

This is the rest of the Rasputina Malifaux band including the eponymous hero herself. I think it's the hero figure that I like the least. You have to wonder waht they were thinking of when they had the design meeting (which must happen a lot in design meetings). There are a lot of little Ice Gamin (which is apparently not a type of sat nav but a small ice spirit). The Gamin should fit nicely with the winter theme of the Skyrim game. They all come of those round lipped bases which I hate. These are much bigger than the usual 25mm/1" which makes them fun on gridded tabletops. Without them they don't work for Malifaux. Aside from the boss I have ideas for all the others. I suspect the boss is going to end as a workbench warmer. Mind you I have enough of them already I should be able to grow tomatoes in the work room.

Malifaux - Ice Golem

There have been a number of games that I have been talked into trying by friends with very little actually happen after the initial purchase. This is another of those purchases, at least at the moment. My old guard chique took a momentary knock when I talked to staff in the shop but I got over it. It wasn't as bad as they day I went into workshop to buy some paint to find that I owned acrylic paint that was older than all of the staff.  Even though the game looked a little bit poop I embraced it. I was almost giddy. This time though I thought I'd be clever and I'll buy some figures that I can use for something else even if they did look a little bit anime.

I really think this figure is fantastic. I have a thing for winter role playing so the icy themed Rasputina  Malifaux mixed set seemed like a good idea. I got some other stuff  for this force and other packs too (one that is still in the same spot it landed four months ago unopened but it was very cheap on eBay) but that hasn't been started let alone finished yet. I liked the Ice Golem so I thought I's put this up first not really Malifaux offering.

He is now officially a fantasy monster. I see a use for him in Skyrim and have a idea for a combat involving him and his buddies. Giant frost atonarch?