2018 End of year post

It's that time of year again...

Tally

Now you won't believe it, but for the first time in the blog's entire history, the Tally is ending up A POSITIVE!

In part, I have been very sensible this year, but really it's more to do with me having sold a load of miniatures to finance this year's treats at Salute and pledging to back the Hellboy boardgame Kickstarter... Regardles of that, I'm happy to have completed 52 miniatures this year, rather than slumping down to the 2013 levels of productivity!

52 vs 0 = +52

2018: +52 (52 painted)
2017: -14 (47 painted)
2016: -287 (56 painted)

2015: -96 (59 painted)

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)
2012: -103 (68 painted)
2011: -173 (122 painted)

Posts

33 this year, including this one - one of the quieter years all told! There was the traditional lull over the summer (nothing at all in June of August) and in the run-up to Christmas, as is inevitable as life tends to get in the way of hobby time (and to be fair if it didn't then there would be something seriously wrong!). I started fairly strong, with 8 posts in January, but it was only Zomtober that pulled me back to a semi-regular posting schedule. Eh, I paint what I paint when the fancy takes me and chronicle it on the blog in the hopes someone somewhere is reading it, rather than creating content for an audience, so I'm fairly easy going about it, but Blogger is making it harder to post easily, which may also have something to do with a lack of smaller updates, so Instagram is where they get posted...

Challenge

2018 Challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish something pre-blog old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• 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)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

And again, I'm fairly laid back about my Challenge - it's more something to occasionally guide me with a set of vague objectives rather than a whip to beat myself with, as evidenced by the fact that there was almost no progress on any of the challenges for 10 out of 12 months I think! I'm a little disappointed that I didn't finish a member of the Nextwave team though - the last two have been sat on my painting tile for a couple of months, but I just haven't been drawn to them...

Projects (according to last year's end of year post)

Star Wars -

I painted Boba Fett for May the Fourth, but that's the only Star Wars project miniature finished all year... 

ASOIAF - 

Only The Mountain finished this year, in a shocking turn of events - you would not believe the number of undercoated Wildlings I have sat on my desk - so many that I think it's why they keep getting passed over in favour of other more varied (and smaller!) projects...

Zombies - 

I did Zomtober and beyond this year, which was nice - assuming that I never get my set of zombie rules to a workable state (they're pretty much already playtest ready at this stage, but who knows, it feels like I add two more rules each time I look at them and ask myself concept questions) I'd quite like to get some of the Walking Dead storyline expansions that Mantic produce and play through them whilst rereading the comics...

Necromunda -

[whistling noises] Nothing. Every time I look at the sprues, I'm struck with option paralysis - do I build them as suggested with the sample fighters that come on cards in the box, or try and write a list and then convert figures to that? Indecision reigns, I need to just crack on really...

Back Burner:

Batman - Nothing

Fallout - a wanderer (painted purely because I painted him at Mantic's paint station at Salute) and a Raider. That's it.

ROTPOTA - It turns out this year was in fact not the year I finally finish prepping the apes. 

Conan - A Lich that is only tangentially linked to the Conan project; the rest of the minis I have prepped still stare forlornly at me from the painting queue.

As ever, it was the things that I hadn't planed to paint the got painted this year - a couple of superheroes, some random fantasy miniatures, a Blood Bowl team, and Zomtober, which gave the bulk of my finished miniatures this year!

Projects for 2019:

Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress

I hope to paint up everything from this box next year. And play it. Stranger things have happened.


ASOIAF

It's always going to be on the list, even if it's just because I have so many miniatures that I can build for it! When Fireforge release their Northern Troops plastics, I may have to get some of them, and build and paint them to justify having purchased them...

Star Wars

I'll commit to doing a May the Fourth post, and maybe even get around to converting and painting some rebel troopers...


Zombies

I'll do Zomtober. There are a couple of minis left over that were prepped for this year's Zomtober, so who knows, I may end up painting them if the fancy takes me in the interim... On the other hand, I might have to wait until I get the Shane booster before I paint Rick so that I can ensure their uniform shirts match!

Hellboy

The Kickstarter that I backed is due to turn up next year, so I'll hopefully paint that too! I have some Hellboy miniatures in my painting queue that I dug out just to whet my appetite, which may get some love as palette cleansers between batch painting Traitor Guardsmen from Blackstone Fortress!


Back Burner
Necromunda - I may come back to it, but I think Black Fortress is going to occupy that niche in my attention span this year
40K - Uncle Johnny has been hearing the siren call of GW's core game recently, so who knows - I've had a hankering to add some Nerdmarines to my squad and a half that I painted a while ago, plus my Sisters of Battle could probably do with a repaint given that we're looking to see some new releases next year...
Fallout - I've got some fun Fallout miniatures tucked away in my drawers of fun, so I may end up getting wildly distracted and pulling them out...
ROTPOTA - I know I've said it before, but maybe next year is the year I finally finish prepping the apes...

Conan disappears into the abyss, which is where things seem to be most likely to end up getting done. I've been playing an Assassin's Creed ios app a lot recently which is a lot of fun, which has tempted me to go back to playing the main series games, and led to me googling 'Assassins Creed miniatures' to see what is available, only to discover a kickstarter for a beautiful game, but I just couldn't justify spending £150 on a Kickstarter just before Christmas. If it turns up at a Salute in the future though all bets are off... In other news, have you sen those new Night Goblins that GW previewed recently? They're called something else now, I know, but I've got a half-painted Night Goblin army tucked away that might just get some reinforcements...

Next year's challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game of Blackstone Fortress with fully painted miniatures
• 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)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

You might notice the list is somewhat reduced from previous years - there are a number of factors in play with this, including expecting another child next year, but also some previous challenges were now redundant - there's nothing in my stripping pot, for example, making it rather hard to paint anything from it...

Freak on a Lich

Another random mini plucked from the painting queue:

He's a Mage Knight figure originally I think, so the detail is a little funky, but I quite like his imperious pose. He's been in the painting queue for so long that that's actually a GW base he's on, so he was prepared before I started buying bases specially for miniatures rather than just scavenging them from Warhammer kits.

I originally had ideas of trying to speckle a starry design on his robe, but the pressing need to finish an average of about two miniatures a week to hit my total of 52 for the year put paid to that! I added a little extra detail to his tabard though, to jazz it up a little. Also, carefully applied some guyliner.

He'll probably be a Lich (a word that should rhyme which 'itch', but I tend to pronounce 'leash' when I'm tired, much to the chagrin of my D&D group) in the generic fantasy project, or can get added to the box of miniatures that can be used to menace Conan. Which reminds me, I should get around to painting some more companions for Conan!

Tally:

36 vs -46 = +82

2017 end of year post

It's that time of year again...

Tally

So, for the second time ever, thanks to my own continued dedication to reducing the Lead Mountain and my iron willpower I was able to end the year with the Tally in the positive hahaha not really I just bought Necromunda which sinks me back into the negative:

(daughter's plastic dinosaur making an appearance thanks to my wife)

Eh, my Mother-in-Law got me a GW voucher that covered most of it, knowing that I was hankering after it. I was tempted to hold out until the Tally resets with the New Year, but doing that would have set the 2018 Tally straight into the negative and also I wouldn't have it right now to look at. And smell.

47 vs 61 = -14

2017: -14 (47 painted)
2016: -287 (56 painted)

2015: -96 (59 painted)

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)
2012: -103 (68 painted)
2011: -173 (122 painted)

Not the worst year - if not for Necromunda, it would have been the first year of actually ending up in the positive rather than just scraping to break even like 2014! Second worst for number of figures completed though, but considering I had an incident with a cleaver that left me unable to paint for a while I don't think that is too bad! Still nowhere near the levels of 2011 though - mid-20's me obviously had a lot more free time!

Posts

This is the 300th post on the blog, excitingly!

Total: 40, including this one. The exact same number as 2016, oddly. More than I thought it was, until I looked it up too!

Nothing in August or September. Probably something to do with an accident involving a meat cleaver. And The Witcher 3.

Throwing myself into getting my Spyrers ready in the last month or so produced a decent number of posts - I think for the first time in ages, there was actually content every other day for a week and a half, so hopefully I popped up in everyone's blogrolls!

Challenge

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 (16/15)
• 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)

One that I crossed off now as I didn't twig at the time was the 'complete skirmish force' - my Spyrers are a legal, playable Necromunda gang! Well, under the original rules. Still counts.

Other than that... a mixed bag. As I'd imagined. Rather than aiming to cross everything off by the end of the year (although if I had I'd have been exceptionally smug), I used it more as a series of optional hoops to try and channel my attention through. Building a wargames board is still something I'd like to do, but not the sort of thing I could just make a start on as the whim took me; I managed to clear a number of miniatures from the queue that would otherwise still be languishing there; and the monkey box, oh the monkey box. I've tried, I promise you, but I think the thing I like least in our hobby might have to be whacking great integral bases. I've taken them out, spent some time filing and dremeling away excess material, not had fun, and put them back to come back to later. Eventually I'll have finished removing all of the integral bases and can paint me some monkeys. I'd hoped that it would be this year. It was not.



Projects (according to last year's end of year post)

Star Wars - 

I painted 4-Lom and Zuckuss! Maybe next year I should paint my Knight Models Boba Fett to complete the set of Bounty Hunters... 

Mostly inspired by Imperial Assault, I actually finished more miniatures for the Star Wars project than I'd normally expect (including painting a Rey for May the Fourth), but still no Rebel Troopers. I started pulling together the bits for my planned Death Trooper conversions (mentioned in last year's end of year post) but lacking accessory pieces that look right (as the pieces I'd originally considered using looked much to large when I started mocking up the conversions), they're still sat on my desk awaiting inspiration to strike...

ASOIAF -

4 Lannister crossbowmen and an undead reindeer. I actually built and converted a ton of wildlings while the most recent series was on, but as my stash of 25mm round bases has run dry, momentum stalled somewhat. When I do get round to ordering some more, who knows if I'll be drawn to do them, as there's a daunting amount of bare plastic now staring at me from my desk...

Zombies - 

As seems to be the case in recent years, zombies get painted during Zomtober and rarely ever else. I'm fine with that. I have many, many zombies, so any more that I paint are really just for my own amusement rather than trying to get enough to be able to play a game...


On the back burner:

Batman - Just the one, Two-Face. I need to go back to reading old Batman comics (or maybe free up some time to watch some of the animated movies) to get my hunger for Batman back up to get momentum on building some of the Batman miniatures in my Lead Mountain.
Fallout - The Fallout project saw a few miniatures and a couple of pieces of scenery finished in the early part of the year, then my interest wandered. And then I finished Fallout 4, so who knows when that interest will fall here again...
The Last of Us - I don't think this counts as a project any more, given how long I've been saying I'm going to build something and then failed to actually finish anything...
Path to Glory -
ROTPOTA -  I've spoken of the monkey box earlier. I did finish a very handsome gorilla though, so we're still on track for finishing this project in the year 2093...

Things that weren't in the plan, but got painted anyway because the plan is best described as a loose guideline:

Conan - no one says no to Conan.

Generic Fantasy - I'm always going to paint some random fantasy here and there. 

Necromunda - rather than rush out and buy the rerelease, I showed remarkable restraint and instead painted some bits that had been sat undercoated for years. That statement was true when I was working on the draft of this post. You now know that it is no longer the case. I showed some restraint. Less than I could have.

Inquisimunda - is cool. I'm not going to make this a main project, as I like being able to add bits here and there as I fancy rather than feeling like I need to complete a quota...

Brunel - it took this long for the first VSF project miniature to get painted and featured on the blog. Don't hold your breath for the next (although that's probably tempting fate, I'll be unavoidably drawn to reread the Doctor Grordbort graphic novels and then find myself converting some more martians...)

Rincewind - just because.

Monica - we're averaging about one member of the Nextwave squad a year, at this point. I should probably add this to the Challenge...

Projects for 2018:

Star Wars

I still love Star Wars. I still have many, many Star Wars miniatures to be getting on with painting. When this post goes live, I (barring unforseen mishaps) should have seen The Last Jedi the previous day. We'll see.

ASOIAF

As mentioned, I've plenty of Wildlings to paint! Plus, I always enjoy kitbashing miniatures for this project. I think maybe I need to clear all of the paints off of my desk and set up a space to tinker with building some miniatures, and see what comes out of that.

Zombies

I'll do Zomtober again this year. Crooked Dice have recently previewed some rather lovely looking modern survivors, which may end up coming home with me from Salute...

Necromunda

I'd like to say that I'm pledging to finish enough gangs to play, but we both know that there's no point me making any guarantees like that... As I cracked and picked up the new boxed game though, I've got at least two gangs to be getting on with, plus the urge to convert some hired guns from the old ruleset...

Back Burner

Batman - as mentioned earlier, I'll aim to get something added to this project over the next year...

Fallout - not dead, merely sleeping.

ROTPOTA - maybe next year is the year I finally finish prepping the apes. 

Conan - there are a couple more accomplices in the painting queue that would make a small warband for Song of Blades and Heroes based hack and slash action...

Who knows what else will end up getting done though - I'm currently considering going back and starting to watch Doctor Who again (as we previously gave up after a couple of episodes of Capaldi) to catch up in order to watch the new series, and if that happens I'll probably end up finishing the War Doctor that's been sat undercoated in the queue for a while now...

Next year's challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish something pre-blog old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• 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)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

This post probably won't blow you away...

To accompany the previous post's rock themed monster, we have an air elemental:

He's from the same Mage Knight set, and was a fairly speedy but pleasing paintjob. Not speedy in actual time (as it was something like six or seven months between basing and finishing), but once I actually got down to brass tacks, layering up splashes of highlight a little more white at a time was a delight that just flowed rapidly.

Sloppy application of highlights is my favourite way to do it. There are more higher than lower on the model, to make it look like he's coalescing and spinning faster as he forms. I was a little concerned about choosing to paint him blue, thinking he might look more like water than air. The original model's colour scheme was grey, which I figured would look a little blah on a grey base, and too similar to the rock golem previously posted.

Tally:

47 vs 40 = +7

That's probably it this side of Christmas though, unless someone has a Sanity Claws miniature that they want to send me so that I can paint and post something festive...

Rock Lobster (has been the draft title for so long I guess it gets to stay)

Wow, the date on the draft of this post is exactly 6 months before when I started writing it...

In an unusual continued burst of productivity, I've finished a very, very grey beastie:

Everyone loves a rock golem, right (imagine the B52s song 'Rock Lobster', but with the word lobster replaced with the word monster, that's what is playing in my head right now), and he can run double duty for Dungeons and Dragons as well as menacing Conan in that project if need be.

My main concern was making sure that the grey of his body was differentiated from the grey of the ground, so I worked up from a brown basecoat rather than the black of the ground. Careful edging gave way to drybrushing as the sharp detail of the larger rock pieces gave way to the softer detail of the other lumpy... bits. Ah, Mage Knight sculpts, thou art so varied in quality. On the same model, sometimes.

The base was built up to look like the golem is either bursting out of the ground, or having just smashed down with such force that the rock around him is rippling with the impact. I'd originally based him on a smaller base than the one I ended up going with, so glued that straight to the top of the larger base to give some additional height:

Torn up cork sheet was then glued around the edge before being blended in with plaster, and then basing was finished in my usual fashion:

Here he is with Conan for scale - I think without the additional size given by the extra base size he would have struggled to really threaten anyone, especially given his hunched pose (I think he would have ended up looking menacingly at a lot of opponent's navels):

Finishing this nice Mid-Boss to speedbump heroes of all denominations brings the Tally to:

46 vs 40 = +6

What is best in life?

Yeah, it's everyone's favourite brooding Cimmerian, Conan:

Mood music:

I love Conan, and have had vague plans to game in Hyperborea for several years now. Small scale, run using the Song of Blades and Heroes ruleset, borrowing models liberally from the other fantasy projects, it's yet another one of those ideas I had where I thought 'this is small enough that I'll be able to finish it and actually get a game in' that then ended up getting mothballed until my attention swung back round again...

Admittedly part of the reason for the delay was finding a miniature that I was happy with for the main man, but in the end I went with this lovely lad from Hasslefree. 

You might notice a slight bit of shininess and or discolouration around his axe arm, which is a result of repairs and some minor cosmetic surgery after an escape attempt:

I have vague plans for a 'tree' style campaign (the kind where if Player A wins a game, you play one scenario next, but if player B, you take a different branch, potentially unlocking additional reinforcements or other boons in a final climatic battle along the way), which I'm sure I started sketching out on a scrap of paper that I should probably try and track down...

But wait, there's more!

Conan doesn't want to take on the cult of various snake gods on his lonesome, though, so I've also finished one of the chums I have for him in the painting queue:

Nice, classic Grenadier/em4 barbarian. Chosen almost entirely because I love the idea of a near-nude berserker taking the precaution of wearing a full helm (I assume his mother made him promise to never go out without wearing his helmet, and so he always has). He was also painted to a lighter skintone than Conan, to make the big guy seem all the more bronzed by comparison.

I feel like I might have missed a trick by not giving him a comedic beauty mark or heart tattoo on his backside though...

And here's the pair of them together:

The Grenadier barbarian looks a little bigger and chunkier than Conan, but that's fine, he's in a more dynamic pose, and was always described as being athletic as well as beefy, so I'm still happy with my choice!

Tally

41 vs 40 = +1

Back in the black!

Necromunda pre-orders went up today though. I've been good so far.

Catmandu! Or don't. It's your choice.

Another miniature from the depths of the project box, this is a thing that's largely been painted a layer here, a layer there between other projects:

Originally a Mage Knight Dungeons (or perhaps Pyramid) figure, he was rebased many, many moons ago for use in D&D and the seemingly long-forgotten Conan project. 

Several layers of drybrushed have picked out some nice detail on his fur, so now he's good to go and terrorise hapless adventurers!

I gave him blue eyes, because a four second google image search suggested that that was a thing that tigers might have:

(Presumably with the assistance of Photoshop, but I liked the idea regardless)

In hindsight, maybe I should have painted him in a snowy or arctic theme, to use him for Frostgrave, but either way, finishing him takes the Tally to:

19 vs 0 = +19

The dead rise, and distractions...

So yeah, another quiet spell... Stuff's been happening, but I didn't want to make yet another post without any painted miniatures... But before we get to that, time for some blather!
(Although I'm not above slipping in a teaser pic of most of the painted miniatures, since that's a more interesting picture for peoples' newsfeeds...)

So, I finally got my Knight Models Arkham City models that Nicole ordered me for Christmas:

A Joker Crew and Harley Quinn, and Killer Croc to get me started. Well, that and a number of Heroclix sculpts currently taking a bath:

Although the paint on these more recent Heroclix releases seems somewhat unwilling to shift, even with the attention of the ever-trusty surgical spirit. It's probably worth mentioning a few things about Rocket Hobbies (the peeps that supplied us with such loveliness): they're awesome, they're our new FLGS, and they're a nightmarishly far way away from civilization to get to on foot. Especially when you're trekking down with someone that's just got over the flu because you think the fresh air will do them good. Ignore Google maps too, it's further than it looks and leads you down unlit backstreets and tries to make you climb barbed wire fences. But once you get there, you get Batman toys, so it's super worth it!

As was the original plan, all focus has shifted to this Batman project and Path to Glory (the Nurgle warband is now all converted and currently undercoated).

Until John came and told me his wife wanted to play dungeons and dragons.

Obviously, I assumed he was lying, and accused him of using his wife as a screen to ask me to play geeky games.

But then his wife mentioned that she fancied trying dungeons and dragons (after watching a documentary that mostly portrayed dungeon masters in a rather unhappy light, oddly). Which puts me here:

Trying to write an introductory adventure that's both interesting and straightforward enough to both entertain and simultaneously not put off five players of various experience levels. As was inevitable, I've gotten distracted from the finer details and plotted some campaign arcs that could last five years (Damn you extensive series of articles on dungeon mastering by celebrity DM Chris Perkins). But hey, once that's out of my system I can get back to writing an adventure that would work both as a one-shot or as a lead-in to a longer campaign... Either way, it's the perfect excuse to post my desktop background on the blog:

Heehee dinosaurs performing archetypical RPG roles, complete with wizard hat.

Which brings us to the painted miniatures:

7 zombies from heresy, as I need some undead goons to throw at players. (Oh, did I forget to mention that I'm one of those people that wants to use miniatures rather than tokens for RPG combat?) There were originally 8, but the other one (see here, although while looking for a pic I realised I also own the fantasy zombies sculpted by Steve Buddle, and perhaps should have painted them up too) I purloined for the zombie project, as I liked it so much...

Having decided that 7 miniatures wasn't enough to paint to break a six month drought, I also painted up this:

Some spectre looking creep that was originally a Mage Knight Dungeons monster - he was painted using thin layers over a layered grey undercoat to make him look a bit spooky (and just to clarify, the grey bits at the edges are smoke as he 'bampfs' in and out of the material plane to take a swing at a PC, not badly sculpted fur...)

Which brings the tally to: 8 vs 7 = +1 - back into the positive for the first time in what feels like forever!
The main problem I have now is that anything that falls into the bracket of 'generic fantasy miniature' is going to be assumed to be in the adventure I'm going to run... But I'm sure I can find some way to cram in a few surprises...

Arabian (k)niiiiiiiiiiights...

...like Arabian daaaaays.... More often than not, they're hotter than hot, in a lot of gooood waaaaaaays! Ah Aladdin... except imagine Aladdin joined a cult and decided to menace Conan:

Not only for Conan, they'll also make a nice Song of Blades & Heroes warband, or stand-in for Dungeons and Dragons. We have the Magister, flanked by a Hero and Champion looking pair:

(Crikey, photos are even worse than usual today, that's what I get for not finishing in time to use natural light). When I first pulled the central chap out of his ebay package, I thought about using him as some sort of town official, but it didn't take long before he'd been recast in my mind as some sort of evil magister. I mean, look how fancy his coat is!

Supporting them (and by supporting, I mean dying in droves under the onslaught of even the lowliest Hero type) we have a couple of henchmen:

I don't know why that guy even bothers with that shield, he's not even wearing a shirt!

Unsure of whether they're goodies or baddies, we have a pair of warrior princess types:

(pretend these photos are brighter)

When they're not part of a sinister cult, they can stand in for various character classes too.

Last but not least, we have the minis that shape the theme of the warband, dependant on their inclusion:

Zombies! With these, we have the entourage of an evil necromancer, without them, they're the bodyguards of an accountant...

Every miniature features a red sash or scarf, to tie them all together, but also to link them to the Snakeman I painted a while back, huzzah!

Actually finishing some miniatures brings the tally to:

27 vs 67 = -40 As soon as I can find a shade of pink I like for finishing off needlers, I'll have another dozen finished miniatures, but that still means I'll need another 28 to get back to zero - and Salute's in three weeks...

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...