And lo, there was wire!

After a long search for the missing camera wire, it appears our house has eaten it. Amazon has furnished us with a replacement, allowing me to post pics of stuff I received and painted a week ago...

Commander Vyper, being a rather nice chap, sent me some Mantic zombies when I bought some old copies of Harbinger magazine from him. Huzzah for zombies, -3 points to the tally...

...and yes, I am easily swayed by the motion of crowds. A whole bunch of chaps over on the LAF have recently started Star Wars projects, which reminded me of the number of plastic WOTC SW minis I own, and the fact that I'd borrowed the old SWMB rules from an old friend... Now, I love Boba Fett. But I do not own a prepaint Boba Fett, and they go for silly money on ebay, hence me now owning this dinky little 25mm WEG Boba instead. I haven't been able to bring myself to strip him yet (partially because I know how much I struggle to match colours when painting), but eventually he'll get repainted as Feskitt Bobb, Boba's slightly shorter cousin...

However, it's not just been minuses on the tally:

Strange Aeons



Rat King! A combination of Terry Pratchett's 'The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents' and the first Penny Arcade dnd podcast has left me with a bizarre fondness for ratkings... mini is from black cat bases, - I considered cutting him off of the sculpted base so that he'd fit in with the rest of my minis, but that was a lot of work that would have ended up with me throwing away 80% of the mini, so I didn't bother. He'll be a 'queen swarm' for Strange Aeons (from 'Shocking Tales of Madness and Mayhem'), which means I'll need another swarm for him to direct around - I'm torn between getting another swarm from black cat bases, and having two identical minis, or perhaps getting a dnd prepaint and rebasing it to give a bit of variety...

Zombies

5 Zombies from Copplestone and 2 ghouls from black cat bases (painted last monday, a full week ago, to my shame) take my total of painted zombies up to 65, I think (still never enough...).A couple of them have accesories from the Urban Litter kit from black cat, which I love (the zombie in the workout shorts looks sad that he's dropped his drink...)

Also, have a needless group shot:



Which brings us to a total of:

23 vs 13 = +10

Still in the green (and afaik, there's only four miniatures currently on their way to me in the post)! Not my most productive month though, as nosing through some old folders on the laptop I see that last august I painted 28 miniatures in a single month, which will be the new benchmark to aim for...

All quiet...

...so, no posts in a while now, as I just haven't finished anything... little bits are still getting done, and another twenty minis got hit with undercoat, so hopefully there'll be something to show in the near future.

That hasn't stopped me from being easily distracted and buying stuff though, which leads us to the main point of this post - an old Harlequin Davros dropped through the letterbox today courtesy of the electronic-bay (no size comparison pics with the MU daleks sadly, as the camera charging wire seems to have gone walkabout) taking the current tally to:

15 vs 8 = +7

Although I did just get a notification from ebay telling me that I'm a winner...

[via the magic of post-production:]

Davros! I thought I'd have to convert him to get him to look like current era davros, but I think I can get away with just painting his right hand silver...

and also:

He's a pretty good size next to a MU dalek, although I think i need to get some slightly larger bases for those...

Science!

In this economy, a lot of people are having to work two jobs just to make ends meet. Which is why these three, although Torchwood scientists by day, are pulling double duty as researchers for an Evil Genius by night...

3 scientists from Black Cat Bases - although I really like them, they weren't much fun to paint, as I just couldn't seem to get the paint to go where I wanted to (although that might have more to do with flu than with anything else...)

So with the addition of these three, the year's tally becomes:

15 vs 7 = +8

also making this one of my most productive months in living memory, and we're only a fortnight in... Having cleared some space in the painting queue, I've also cleaned up and based some more miniatures ready for undercoat, which might even get painted within a month of being prepared, which is almost unheard of!

Oh Mummy...

...because that's what I painted:

Well, I say painted, drybrushed and washed would be a more accuate description. Don't click on the picture and look at it bigger, if anything you should stand at least two feet away from your screen to enjoy it correctly! I'll probably end up painting another one of these based for Strange Aeons, and I'll try harder then I promise.

Also finished were this pair:

although I realised whilst I was uploading the pics that I'd forgotten to paint the chap's belt... but I'll have to finish that tomorrow (well, today technically). This lovely pair is from Hasslefree, and yes, I did have to do a Google image search to remind myself what colour the chap's trousers should be (which was fortunate, as I then realised that I'd also forgotten that he wears a striped tie). Painting the eyes on these were a nightmare, they're tiny! A bit of hand wobbling resulted in the girl getting some unexpected eye makeup (bam, do the same thing under the other eye and voila, with the aid of handwavium, it's explained away as intentional!)

And just to prove that I do paint the backs of my miniatures:

Hmm, her hair hasn't come out looking that great in this picture... and yes, I will clean up his collar when I come back to paint his belt ;) - I hate painting white, as I'm sure you can tell from the state of the chap's shirt. Worthy of note is the gold Casio he's wearing though, modelled after the watch I got my young lady for christmas (and yes, I did ask her advice on what colour to paint the girl's headband - always keep a young lady to hand for miniature fashion enquiries!)

So, these three finished (well, they will be finished, so I'm counting them) brings the tally to:

12 vs 7 = +5

Yesterday: false starts and secret projects

Well, the first package of the year arrived:

from Crooked Dice, two sets of their new minions (armed and unarmed, with human and alien head sets), and their casually dressed not-Amy Pond sculpted by Andrew Rae (which I thought I'd ordered when it originally came out, but then could find no trace of said order). Lovely stuff, and great service from the chaps at CD HQ as always, but these have already been filed into the Star Wars shoebox where I'm keeping all my recent miniature purchases (which is a lot more organized than my previous system of 'in a massive pile on my desk') until it stops raining long enough to undercoat some minis.

The arrival of these took the year's tally to:

6 vs 7 = -1
my first dip into the negatives (and not my last, I'm sure...)

So I cracked on with some painting, and finished the following;

Faceless Firefly NPC

Quite literally 'faceless', in this case, as she was originally a Star Wars prepaint (I forget which), and there was only so much my meagre brush skills could to in the way of reconstructive surgery. It's also quite sad that the first finished mini for this project is a randomer, but hey, progress is progress.

Dungeons and Dragons

You remember in an earlier post I mentioned that I may have forgotten some projects from the list? This is one of them (as is Afro Samurai, but we'll come back to that if I ever do anything about it). At some point in the future, I'd like to play dnd 4e. No specified timeframe, or definite plans, but like most of my great ideas I leapt in feet first and started buying up all sorts of generic fantasy minis, digging out old copies of dnd boardgames, and then not doing much more.

Which brings us to these two: the sludge monster was originally a Mage Knight prepaint (from a Ral Partha sulpt, iirc), and to look at it you wouldn't believe how many layers and washes went into this paintjob (it was something along the lines of 'apply layer; apply highlight; apply glaze; frown; wash; frown; repeat'). The wizard is from Heroquest, and came from an ebay lot that I bought because I wanted the Heroquest mummy (which is currently still half finished in the painting queue), and was nicely nostalgic to paint, hence the use of so many primary colours. That, and he got blue trousers because it looks like he's wearing jeggings. Metrosexual wizard FTW!

Taking the tally back into the green at:

9 vs 7 = 2

huzzah!

Which brings us to today (these were finished at around one in the morning, and I didn't fancy typing all this up as well). An excursion into town via the sorting office so my young lady could pick up her new camera led to the acquisition of this from Poundland:

One of those dinosaur skeleton kits that seem to pop up all the time on various forums, shown here with the Doctor and a companion for scale - I'm thinking a few quick cuts, a base and some gravel, and voila, perfect scenery for pulp, VSF, or any number of other settings. However, saying how quick and easy it will be doesn't mean I'm likely to get it done any time soon...

Westgate games update

Time for some sad news: my FLGS, Westgate Games, appears to be no more.

I went to nip in after work on Tuesday to pick up some plasticard, only to find the lights off. 'Fair enough, it's a bank holiday, they must have closed early' I thought (it was just atfter five, after all).

Today, getting out of work at half four, I try again, to find the lights off again, and further investigation revealed a note up in the door to the effect of 'this shop is now closed due to current economic conditions'.

Hopefully this is only a short term setback, but I fear the worst...

Can this daredevil pace continue?

Well, probably not, but I'm currently trying to build up a bit of a buffer so that my tally stays in the green. Only one miniature finished today, which is this:

Daredevil

The man without ears

(or something like that...)

Another heroclix repaint, it was a pretty crappy sculpt of a character I'm not overly fond of (although there's a weird dent in the back of his head, which you could charitably say is where his mask ties up, or uncharitably say that's where Wizkids used to snap them off the sprue). But hey, that's one less mini in the painting queue, bringing the tally to:

6 vs 0 = +6

As well as finishing off this chap, (among other things) I've also made a start on my first Hasslefree miniature (well, first Hasslefree miniature sculpted by Kev White) - at one point whilst basecoating the face, I stopped, turned to my young lady, and exclaimed 'crikey, this is well sculpted', followed by a bout of trepidation as I feared that I wouldn't be able to do it justice. Admittedly, it's looking rather nice already with just a basecoat on the flesh areas, and I think the quality of the sculpting would shine through even if I were to throw a bucket of paint at it from across the room...

A promising start...

...to the new year. Galvanised by my shame at only having a single post on my blog, I decided to slap some paint around today and managed to actually finish five miniatures! So we have the following:

Kronen Roxxon

An armoured chappie with an inordinately large sword, finishing Kronen (after however many months he'd been sat in the painting queue) is a landmark in a number of ways: not only is he my first finished mini for Anima Tactics, but by finishing him, I've also completed 1/6th of the Anima minis that I own (but must remember that that isn't an excuse to buy some more...)
I may go back and add some grass to his base at some point in the future, but for now, that's one for the tally (see later).

Zombies

Well, two survivors and a zombie with an awesome doll actually:



The disappointed looking chap is a miniature (for the Dark Age game, originally) that I saw online many years ago and just had to have. There's just something about the Werner Klocke sculpt that I love... enough that that was justification enough for me to buy the main rulebook for the game whilst perusing the shelves in the FLGS after a couple of drinks... only to discover that the rules for this particular model aren't in that book. But hey, live and learn.  The mexican wrestler is a DC heroclix figure, and in a previous life was Bane, the man who broke the bat, before he discovered a penchant for brighter colours... Finally, the poor little girl with the great taste in dolls is a Hasslefree mini, purchased solely because of the cthulhu doll she's holding.

Wait, did he say finally? I thought that it was five miniatures finshed...

Yup, I finished something more useful for the zombie project: the king!

Stealing inspiration shamelessly from Mael from the novel Monster Island, I thought it'd be cool to have a reanimated mummy type bossing the more mindless zombies around (in the homebrew rules I'm writing, zombie mobs usually can only activate by passing a test if there's action going on near them, but the King can activate a mob for free). I've got a couple of the old metal Tomb Guards (is that what they were called?) in my bits box that might get some torn bandages added to use as bodyguard types for the king, but that might mean have to add special rules for them, and be more overcomplication that they're worth... Back to the King though, that big base looks awfully sparse, so I might go back and add some grass, or maybe a broken museum exhibit sign...

2011 Tally

Taking my cue from the lovely chaps over at the LAF, I'm going to keep a running tally of my finished miniatures vs purchased miniatures. Most people who do this do so in an attempt to decrease the size of their lead mountain, I'm approaching it more as scientific proof of how easily distracted I am, and the fact that I'm rather good at buying miniatures, not so good at actually using them...

So, the tally will be formatted as folows:

Miniatures finished (a) vs miniatures purchased (b) = score (a-b) - if the score is positive, I'm being super productive (but knowing myself, will likely see that as a sign to buy more miniatures...)

So, the current tally for 2011 is:

5 vs 0 = +5

(admittedly, we're only in the positive as the miniatures that I ordered last year haven't arrived yet...)

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...