My laser like focus endures...

So, I had my immediate progress all mapped out - I was working on a limited selection of miniatures that would take me to 15 finished from the queue, allowing me to check off the next item on the Challenge list, and hopefully allowing me enough time to finish something thematic in time for May the Fourth. 

And then I was rooting around in the queue when I found this Games Workshop Banshee sat undercoated and the next thing I knew I just couldn't wait any longer to get her painted:

Lord only knows where she came from - I have a feeling it was either in a blind box at a Games Day many years ago (when GW were liquidating their stock of metals), random cheapie from the LAF, or an eBay random back when I was nabbing bits with the vague intention of building a Kemmler and Krell led warband to bash some Dwarf Slayers like in the novel Zombieslayer.

It's a lovely little sculpt - enough detail to be fun to paint, but simple enough (with only five real sections - clothing, gold, sword, flesh and hair) that it was a satisfyingly quick paintjob, being completed in only a single evening whilst also working on other miniatures whilst various layers and washes dried.

I quite like how the flesh came out (although it's a little washed out in the pictures - the perils of taking your pictures late at night in a basement with a lamp with a daylight bulb in it balanced over your shoulder) - I still have the old pot of the old GW zombie flesh tone that I forget the name of at this exact moment in time that I still haven't given back to Uncle Johnny, and after a wash with Soft Tone wash was mixed with increasing amounts of white for the highlights.

Dark Reaper (firmly cementing itself as my favourite paint ever) for the material parts, because it's fun to highlight up to a pasty grey. The red hair came about when I was googling to check if a particular part of the miniature was flesh or material, and stumbled across some painted examples that featured vibrant red hair paired with cool blues - so, I stole that idea and being me ended up dialling it waaaaaay back. Maybe in next year's set of challenges I should include 'be more bold in my colour choices'?


Tally

13 vs 40 = -27


2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (12/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old) x2
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

Big Brother

You know what a skirmish scale Apes comma Planet Of The (and or the rise thereof) warband would need to really be it's best? That's right, a whacking great gorilla: 

This chunky monkey is from GCT Studios Bushido game, and is a suitably battle scarred, huge and imposing miniature - much more so than the original miniature sourced to be the muscle of the group:

That's more like it.

I see him as the 'big brother' of the group - the Orangutan is the wise elder, the gorilla the muscle, the smart ape is the leader, and the rest are a horde of chattering simians, poop flinging canon fodder being chaperoned by advanced, more evolved apes.

I made the mistake at looking at the studio painted version at Salute. It is much nicer than mine. It's nipples are better highlighted.

I love the scars on the miniature - he looks properly grizzled! I think I'll retire the original gorilla to the role of a young male, tagging along behind this alpha male...

Tally

12 vs 40 = -28


2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (11/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old) x2
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Pow, finishing things continues:

Isambard Kickass Brunel from Ramshackle Games, because sometimes you need an engineer, according to a mug of mine:

I always seem to misspell his name Isembard though - I blame Tolkien for having Isengard be a word that is in my brain. I was inspired to finish this particular miniature after having a pint in a pub named after him with my wife and her Nan in February, of all things. 

Also interesting to note, is that it's the first miniature from the occasionally mentioned but mostly abandoned in a drawer VSF project to make an appearance on the blog. Part of the reason that that particular project stalled was my dissatisfaction with the Wargames Factory figures that I was using to convert aether marines, but as the Perry twins have released a nice set of plastic chaps that would be suitable who knows what the future might hold...

The more eagle-eyed of you might have noticed that IKB was not alone in the first picture - I also finished painting this tunneling machine (also from Ramshackle):

It's an absolute beauty, and a hefty chunk of resin; it's just a shame that it's taken me the best part of a decade to get it painted!

Tally

11 vs 40 = -29


Painting these also lets me knock off a couple of challenges, as they both pre-date the blog, and are the 9th and 10th miniature I've finished from the queue without starting anything new:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old) x2
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

Salute 2017

So, today was the annual jaunt to Salute! Early morning coaches make for manic gamers, it seems:

Westminster is always my favourite stop on the journey up, as you feel like you're in a weird hybrid of Necromunda and The Crystal Maze:

The journey up was fairly uneventful; the station we normally get off is apparently closed for the rest of the year, but it turns out the stop after actually drops you off closer to Salute, so it's swings and roundabouts really! Well, on the way there, the way out was a bit of a nightmare with huge crowds that would normally be split over two stops funnelled onto one...

We made pretty good time, and so ended up quite close to the front of the queue:

After a mad initial dash over to Troll Trader to scope their bargains and snaffle a goody bag, I made the usual rounds, picking up the preorders I had organizedly placed, and not at all pinballing willy-nilly around flailing wildly at things as they caught my eye (just in case my wife asks).

And so, I present the usual assortment of pictures that are really only the barest of fractions of the number of awesome things that were on display:

A Discworld broom racing game with a nice Unseen University

Some dungeon tiles! I forget who makes them, but I'm fairly sure I have a card of theirs in the stack of paperwork and fliers I've accrued over the course of the day

Anvil Industries had the most eye-catching demo board - they were running games on the bonnet and in the back of this vehicle!

A Mantic Walking Dead demo board. I'm not going to start another project. Even though I found out I can get the core game at massive discount through work. No more projects. None.

A nice Horus Heresy board, with about a billion points and pounds worth of miniatures on it.

My favourite part of the whole board though was a little spinning radar dish.

Crooked Dice's London and Underground demo board - having followed the build over on the LAF a while back, it was great to see it in the flesh!

Warlord were showing off the new Doctor Who game - I'm still not sure if it's a board game or a wargame at this point... (side note - no Judge Dredd minis anywhere this year, boo)

Osprey were previewing their new dwarf sculpts.

I also managed to find the nice man from Westfalia (after last year's difficulties in hunting him down) who was offering preview minis of his lovely range.

Another Doctor Who board game, whose pieces look to paint up very nicely!

This Chewbacca was pretty good - about 7 foot tall, with a recorded roar!

Saga. I've never really gotten into Saga. Maybe I should.

I managed to miss the Blogger meet-up again, as in the excitement of the day I lost track of time and before I knew it it was quarter to two! This year's Salute seemed like it went by the fastest of the ones I've attended...

And five hours later, it was time to make the journey back, and time to dig through other people's blogs to find the things that I'd managed to miss. I also wondered why there were some people missing from previous years, like Amera, Brother Vinni and EM4 - whilst Salute seemed to be pretty busy and fly past for me, is it not worth it for some companies who have stayed away? It's a shame if that's the case...

Also, I found myself in someones Instagram video, something which never normally happens! Well, I found the back of my head, but that still counts.

And so, the meat of this post - the loot!

• A box of Frostgrave barbarians, as well as a couple of blisters from the same range
• A pair of giant scorpions from Heresy
• Not Rey, post apoc Raider type and a not Captain Hammer from Hasslefree
• A handful of lovely preview minis from Westfalia
• The Walking Dead scenery pack
• A trio of sample Mantic Walking Dead miniatures
• A pair of Infinity miniatures, because they were crazily reduced and also buy one get one free
• Not Brienne and not Flashman (and the promo mini!) from Wargames Illustrated
• Alliance Smuggler and Grand Inquisitor packs for Imperial Assault
• Dogs, heads and crates from Crooked Dice
• A not-tiny Lady Mormont pack from Bad Squiddo games - I was hoping to get a few more bits from them, but by the time I was able to get there when their stand wasn't thronged with people the majority of the bits I was after had sold out!
• Freebie Wild West Exodus Legendary Captain Nimue
• Dice, because I roll bad.
• A copy of the last edition of the Skaven army book that I didn't own, as I regretted not buying it last year and it was still sat in the same box on the same stall a year later! I may well go to my bookshelf to file it and find that I've gotten mixed up between what editions I have though... While writing this list I've just discovered that the book's previous owner had apparently torn out the last page with the rules reference on and used it as a bookmark...
• The Salute promo mini
• A goody bag from Troll Trader containing a variety of bits - a couple of old edition rulebooks (Deadzone & Carnevale), a painting DVD, a hexagon stencil, a cardboard house, assorted other bits and bobs, as well as a preview mini for the new Rumbleslam game and a Goblin Shaman miniature
• Free beer mats, which I was genuinely excited about

Tally

9 vs 40 = -31

Not the worst hole I've been in after a Salute!

So, just need to finish off a few more miniatures to tick off a couple more challenges, prep and paint something for May the Fourth, and knock out a Westfalia promo after that, before I can start any of the number of new miniatures clamouring for my attention - easy!

[note - some additional stuff has been added to this post Sunday morning that I managed to miss last night!]

Two (face) sleeps until Salute!

So, finished this guy:

A repainted Heroclix Two Face. I've always liked Two Face, whether it was as Harvey Dent in the Long Halloween, to his stint as champion of the people during No Man's Land, and even through his weird attempt to seduce Montoya back to heterosexuality by ruining her life (spoilers for 20 year old comics I guess). There may have been some dorky stories that focused on his obsession with the number two (generally Batman solves the crime by realizing that obviously Two Face is going to try and hit the museum during their display of large golden twos), but there have been a greater number of stories that delve into more interesting aspects of his character (and hey, stories where he's a psychopath deciding whether someone lives or dies with the flip of a coin are fun too!)

Things that are less fun than that though: painting pinstripes on a model where the detail is at times less than defined. Traditionally, the symbolism in Two Face's clothing is fairly heavy handed - dark side of the suit on the bad side, light on the unscarred side, but I flipped tradition, because I thought the pinstripe would look better as the lighter side! The scarred side of his face has come up a little dark in the pictures, but is a little redder in real life - I went for a red raw look, with a burnt and blackened layer over the top - kinda half Arkham City, half Dark Knight.



Tally:

9 vs -10 = +19

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (8/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (8/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old)
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

See you at Salute!

A wizzard and his Luggage

Progress has been slow recently, despite my desperation enthusiasm to get fifteen miniatures finished before starting anything new, before Salute and May Fourth, largely because I keep falling asleep whenever I put my daughter to bed recently...

When I've managed to stave off narcolepsy though, I've managed to squeeze in the occasional hour painting while my wife is at work and finished painting Rincewind and the Luggage, only 62 months after I built them

Ah Rincewind, hapless protagonist of the early Discworld books that we didn't really see much of in later years...

And the Luggage, animated carry case and psychopath:

I really, really like this sculpt; if I had any criticism it would be that the detail is a little soft on the feet. They've also not photographed especially well, but I can assure you time was spent highlighting each of the many many toes!

Not much else to say about these really, except to note that these are the first miniatures that I've ever painted purely for display purposes - everything else has been intended for a game (although most of those plans haven't come to fruition, but that's neither here nor there).

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

8 vs -10 = +18

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (7/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (7/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old)
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

So, 8 more old miniatures to paint to finish off the top of the challenge before I can get started on the rest - but with Salute imminent, who knows how far I'll get before getting distracted...