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...