WOMP day six!

Yep, hadn't planned today as part of the week of mega power, but ended up with an hour spare and thought I'd crack on with the remaining conversions for Halo: Red vs Blue, and ended up with these (and a bloody finger, but the less said about that the better):

The plasma gun wielding chaps are faily similar, admittedly, but there's only so much I could do (short of making him into a crouching pose, but I've not got a great deal of those legs...)

As always, the conversions were exceedingly simple ('ware, ahead are terrible iphone pictures!). For the crouching needler wielder, take one kneeling sniper model:

and chop him in half at the waist (handily, Spartan armour has some handy bumps at the back and sides of the waist that you can use to make sure your cut is straight):

Next grab the poor sap that's donating his torso:

and likewise bisect the poor fool:

As I'm sure you've guessed, the next part is simply glueing together the bits:

Voila! Needler Spartan!

Likewise, the plasma Spartan was as straightforward (and I took less pictures, the steps remain the same though):

Plasma Spartan + legs from the previous Needler conversion =

Newly posed plasma Spartan!

With these two finished, that's everything for the basics of the Red vs Blue project done:

Two poses of each of six options (pistols, battle rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, needlers and plasma rifle), read for basing and painting. Well, I say ready, the sand I'd ordered arrived this morning, but rather than normal basing sand the padded envelope had two bags of fine sand. Bugger. Alas, dust-fine sand won't take a drybrush, so hopefully it won't take too long to sort, and then eventually I'll be able to get these into the painting queue... And once these are done, I can make a start on some Halo Wars project fun...

WOMP day five...

...the end of the inaugral WOMP week, also known as 'a biker, a priest, a singer and an ape walk into a bar...'

A biker from em4, this survivor has a substantially better chance of survival than the average - I mean, doing drive-bys on zombies with a samurai sword? Although admittedly there is an increased risk of incapacitating yourself and dooming yourself to getting eaten. In other news, Day of the Dead is on at the minute, which raises several points:
- Fast zombies? Seriously? Slow zombies are awesome, you can sneak past them, you can trick them into falling down holes, they're like a tide, a force of nature, but fast zombies that can crawl on the ceiling? That's not awesome, that's your life expectancy in that scenario whistling past your ear and down to zero. 28 Days later started some sort of 'my zombie's better than yours' war with any new zombie movie...
- Why is it that people in zombie films are so unprepared? Do zombie films not exist in-universe in zombie films? And if not, why are they calling them zombies? (I know, I know, suspension of disbelief, but still...)

Eolith's monk, bought from Heresy because it's just such a nice sculpt - look at it, so simple, but with so much character! It's one of those minis that's so nicely sculpted that it's an absolute pleasure to paint, and so you lavish more care and attention on it than you normally would.

Joining the cleric above in the on and off project of dnd classes is this bard, from Hasslfree, that I picked up at last year's Salute. Another lovely miniature, but I just couldn't get his face how I wanted...

The last of today's output is this hairy fellow, an Orangutan from Black Cat Bases for my possible Rise of the Planet of the Apes (ROTPOTA) project, because every squad of improved-intelligence apes needs a wise-looking Orangutan to act as spiritual advisor and strategist... I have a gorilla in the painting queue at the minute, but as I bought it sight unseen it's a little smaller than I'd like (and the Bushido gorilla has since caught my eye...)

with these four finished, the tally now stands at:

12 vs 27 = -15

Alas, the postman still didn't bring the goodies I was expecting this morning, which threw my plans off somewhat. There's a group of 15 fantasy minis waiting for some love in the painting queue, which would take me back up to zero, or I could paint the 10 minis for Strange Aeons, or crack on with finishing my zombie horde base... but what I really want is for the postman to bring the things I'm waiting for so I can get distracted by them. Truth be told though, in this wonderful high-tech modern era that we live in, I have the Song of Blades and Heroes rulebooks on my phone, so that should help with keeping my motivation pointed in that diretion...

10,000 pageviews!

Awesomesauce, most of all I'd like to thank the hundreds of guys (or girls I guess, I don't want to be exclusive) from France that have visited. Seriously, 3 for every 2 from the UK. Merci!

WOMP day four...

Not much done today, as the postman failed to bring any of the packages I was expecting, and we've been busy with other things. Determined not to have a 'dead day' as it were, I managed to finish some undead (oh, pun-tastic!):

A zombie Lovecraft, a limited edition miniature from Uncle Mike's, purveyors of the exceedingly fine Strange Aeons. This was my first try with my new pot of TCR, and it was a bit weird - it didn't darken as much as usual when I added black, and when I added more it seemed to curdle and go lumpy... ah well, gore is gore is gore I suppose...

This zombie is apparently called Moe, and although he is now available from Fenris, I got him as part of the Frothers sculpting competition set a while back. He had a horrendous mould line down his back, going right over some ripples in his jumper which was a bugger to fix, so no pics of that. Also, he's ginger, because there aren't enough ginger zombies. And yes, blown up I do see that his left eye is a bit wonky.

These two getting finished brings the tally to:

8 vs 27 = -19

Slowly but surely, I'm creeping back towards that zero line... I'm reading the rules for Song of Blades and Heroes currently, and think I'll use them for gaming Conan and generic dungeon crawl fun - handily, there's fifteen half-painted minis in the painting queue that would make a nice evil human warband, all I have to do is finish them!

WOMP day three

So, it turns out wargaming isn't actually my hobby. It's just what I do when I'm not doing my actual hobby, procrastinating:

Teehee, he's holding a paintbrush! Maybe he'll paint himself! (He didn't). Just in case, I nipped into town, just in case he got stagefright. Well, that and my young lady needed some sewing thingies, so I thought I'd accompany her and see in Poundland would offer up some appropriately scaled vehicles that I could smash up to make some scenery with (I fancy modelling a crashed helicopter). Alas, they didn't, so returning home I cracked on with actually painting things myself:

Ghoooooost! Or some sort of smoke monster, I guess. Originally a dungeons and dragons prepaint, this is another great example of my 'seven layers that look like two' technique.

Also, (as previewed a couple of inches up this page, I guess) I finished this chap:

Originally a Hordes miniature that I bought because it was going cheap, and because who can't find a home in their collection for a whacking great golem made out of stone and sticks and held together with twine? Not me, that's for sure! Especially fun to paint were the gazillion little bits of rope tucked all over it, lots of holding my breath and going cross-eyed...

With these two finished, it brings the tally for the year to:

6 vs 27 = -21

Right, game plan time: As soon as the postman comes tomorrow, I'll do the last two halo pvp conversions, get them based, finish some more miniatures, and then undercoat the halo miniatures ready for painting on Friday. The only problem is, I'm going out for a drink with the Topshop boys and girls tomorrow night, which may throw a spanner in the works of my productivity...

WOMP day two

Another day, another blog post as I continue to not fail in my attempts at sticking to a plan that I have posted on the internet for all and sundry to see and judge:

I had a six foot tall lamp on my shoulder when I took this, and it's still a bit dark. Huzzah, a skeletal cyclops though! Originally a dungeons and dragons prepaint, he's a funky little sculpt - well, I say little:

He does rather loom over a 28mm type that's currently in the painting queue...

Not being content with finishing just one miniature, I actually finished... two.

A Prizefighter for Firefly, wearing Blue Sun sponsorship colours. And yes, I screwed up his left eye, so painted it swollen shut. Bam, instant fix! But what's that, three colours isn't enough?

We also have a fourth colour and some shaky freehand, which says 'fiscal wing exclamation mark' in simplified chinese.

...

Which is as close to 'wealth and glory to the winner' as my google translation skills could get (seriously, 'winner' 胜利者 just wouldn't fit). Because yes, sometimes an obscure reference to an old Japanese giant robot Playstation game is sometimes more important than grammar.

With these two finished, it brings the tally to:

4 vs 27 = -23

Currently I can see half a dozen miniatures that with only a little focus and determination I can finish tomorrow. But don't hold your breath, there's also twenty-eight miniatures next to them that are nowhere near finishing, which I will inevitably find more attractive when I come to next pick up a paintbrush...

WOMP day one...

So pow, an explosive start to the Week of Mega Power (it's a thing now)!

Well, almost, the Patriots vs 49ers game last night went into overtime, meaning we didn't get to bed until after 4am, which impacted negatively on the time we then got up this morning. When I did manage to get some coffee in myself, I set myself up for a day of painting:

(ignore the dancing statue of liberty, it has no relevance) - a nice assortment of bits and bobs, including some mystery miniatures from ebay that will hopefully be fighting Conan at some point in the future, although I've been thinking about picking up Song of Blades and Heroes to rock some warband scale skirmish at some point too. Dammit, that reminds me, I still need to get a Conan miniature...

Despite my high-falutin' intentions, I only actually managed to finish a single miniature today:

My second Black Cat Bases Rat Swarm (and yes, now I can use my chambered Star Wars acronym joke - it's a 'womp'-rat!), so that I can field a Rat King to it's fullest potential in games of Strange Aeons:

Finishing that doubles my productivity for the year thus far, and takes the tally to:

2 vs 27 = -25

Tomorrow, I will endeavour to finish more than a single miniature, and if some more sand turns up, I can crack on with some halo funtimes...

Final thought - sometimes, you're out drinking, and the pool table's not free, what do you do? Yes, you remember you've got Citadel Combat Cards stashed in your bag:

(and yes, I won)

There can never be enough Energy Swords...

Wow, half-century post, bam!

Well, my afternoon/evening has been spent prepping some Halo minis ready for WOMP, starting with various iterations of the faceless hero, the Master Chief:

The plan is to have various miniatures with different weapon loadouts, to allow some sort of weapon-swap feature when it comes to actually wargaming Halo. Due to a lack of minis / not wanting to prepare so many versions of the same character that it puts me off painting them, I ended up with seven differently armed chiefs (although I have another three or four weapons on generic spartans that are ripe for conversion, as well as having to decide whether to sell or paint the 'active camouflage' (read: see-through) Master Chief with Energy Sword that I have...)

Once that was done, I cracked on with converting and rebasing some bog-standard Spartans:

The plan for these is to be able to run some PVP redvsblue games, again with weapon swapping - entirely arbitrarily, I think six different sets of weapons is good, as it allows for some D6 rolling fun. As well as painting them red and blue, I wanted each pose to be different too - thence ensued some weapon swaps and the joy that is reposing plastic miniatures using the Turkish Bath method:

On the left is the original (and, in all honesty, a little silly looking) Snifer Rifle armed Spartan. A simple weapon-swap with a Battle Rifle armed Spartan and voila! We have a new pose!

The same goes for this chap - an SMG armed Master Chief had his sidearm removed, the gap filled over with liquid Greenstuff, and then had a new pair of arms grafted. Voila! We have a new pose!

And then... well, you get the idea. At this point, I've got the first four weapon options finished, from left-right, front-back: Dual Magnums, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle and Battle Rifle.

Once all these are done, it's ready for the tabletop! and then I can go back to bigger ideas - either Master Chief versus hordes of bad types, or some sort of Halo Wars-esque battle type games (along the lines of what Halo Tabletop Waraming is planning).

Due to the limited number of sculpts and poses available, I'm going to have to do a lot of converting to try and make this project look more interesting (handily, I've plenty of ideas bubbling away, like converting a Brute Chieftan with a Gravity Hammer, since my secong Master Chief with Fist of Rukt came broken...). And anyway, research for this project is a lot of fun...

Prep for WOMP and the postman hates my tally...

So, in preperation for the Week of Mega Power (which shall here on in be referred to as 'WOMP'), I've been prepping some minis:

Yes, I have to undercoat my miniatures in a carpark. And it started raining immediately after I took this picture, forcing me to seek shelter and finish spraying later.

As usual, I've had some more miniatures arrive:



2 Runequest Baboons from the ever-wonderful Svennn, for Planet of the Apes shenanigans. I'm still having trouble finding chimps in the right scale, as Mega Minis have sold their moulds and the UK importer of Eureka miniatures don't seem to have the chimps on their site...

I also bought some Warmachine minis that were on clearance at work, but no pics of these as I've already built and opened one of them (which you can just about see in the first pic - and yes, it's not based for Warmachine)

leaving the tally at:

1 vs 27 = -26

but if WOMP is especially successful, I'll have no problem getting back into the positives. Surely. Don't hold your breath.

Anyway, now to rebase and potentially convert some Halo clix...

Halo, and the upcoming Week of Mega Power...

Spent the evening sorting out some Halo actionclix and heroclix ready for some repainting. Just look. Mmmm... toys:

No Ghost, but I can live without it (especially since they're around £25 on eBay right now). I really need to get the Hunter Combat Pack though, as it's the only way to get the two Hunters and sniper marine sculpts (I'm kicking myself, since we used to sell them at work, but I was young and foolish and hadn't yet given Halo a chance to enter my heart...). But last year all that changed, I gave Halo a chance rather than just dismissing it out of hand, and now several games, a couple of encyclopedias and a whole bunch of little men later I'm quite the fan.

Whilst not sorting out a hundred little men on the coffee table, I also made myself this fancy hat:

My young lady was especially impressed.

And so, on to the Week of Mega Power! Next week, as we're off work, the plan is to do something hobby-related every day and blog about it, thereby increasing our creative productivity (and blogging regularity). The name still amuses me, and if it works, may become a semi-regular feature...

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun...

First miniature of the year finished:

Studio Miniatures' 'not-Ash', ready to take the fight to any deadites or primitive screwheads that get in his way.

He'd been in the painting queue for a little while now (pretty much since he came out...), but having finished him means I can now retroactively claim that all those hours spent playing Army of Darkness on my iphone were justified for research purposes (and yes, I did check what colour various parts of the chainsaw are in the game...)

However, as is traditional in nearly every post I make, it's not just a positive swing for the tally, as my order from Heresy arrived this morning:

There was a sale on! However, I was much better than I usually am at restraining myself from buying miniatures, and came away with only 7, all sculpted by Steve Buddle - the two packs of modern zombies, and a monk type chappy with a hammer that's such a lovely sculpt that I'm rather looking forward to throwing some paint at it...

So all in all the 2012 tally stands at:

1 vs 22 = -21

Not where I was aiming to be a fortnight into the new year, but then again not so deep into the negatives that I can't see myself getting out...

The tally's first hit of the year...

So, yeah, my high hopes for this year being different to last year have already taken a drubbing... A new pot of TCR came last week. Oh, and all these miniatures:

In my defence, I had a discount code for Black Cat, hence this box of lovelies - there's a couple of packs of Obelisk bits in there (zombies to menace Conan and Baboons because they're great) as well as some of Black Cat's own apes that I fancy painting for some Planet of the Apes style shenanigans.

Also arriving today was this package from em4 (which arrived frighteningly quickly, as usual):

Mostly bases, as I'd nearly run out, but yes, there's a miniature hiding in there too (they're just so cheap, it's hard to resist!)

With this little lot, this year's tally of painted vs purchased currently sits at:

0 vs 15 = -15

And yes, I took advantage of Heresy's Christmas Sale to pick up some Spyglass/Eolith minis, so it's going to go even further into the negatives in the near future...

Honestly, I have been painting recently, I've just not finished anything to post up! My young lady and I have a week off in about a fortnight, so I'm thinking of doing some sort of Mega Power Week (or Week of Mega Power, the name's not confirmed yet) whereby we pledge to try and complete something hobby related every day and post about it, with some sort of reward at the end of the week if we succeed...

Speaking of my young lady, today she hit some charity shops, and amidst the old vinyl and wellington boots, she picked me up this:

Which is fairly handy, as I'm almost out of sand...