I is for…

 …Intellect Devourers!

I forget why I painted these, as I don’t think I have a pressing need for them in the family D&D campaign, but it may well be because the scene in the D&D movies where the NPC warns the party that intellect devourers will attack whoever is smartest, only for them to then completely ignore the party, is classic D&D humour (and yet another reason it’s such a shame that we’re unlikely to see a sequel to that film).

You might not be able to tell from the picture, but these are absolutely tiny - that’s a 20mm base they’re on! Add some prominent mould lines, and me having to repaint the brain after I went too heavy handed highlighting it and it ended up far too light, to give a paint job that was surprisingly taxing considering it’s so small, but done is better than perfect, as I think the saying goes…

This brings the Monstrous Alphabet project up to:

A is for
B is for Bullywug
C is for Carrion Crawler
D is for
E is for Elemental (More than one)
F is for Flameskull
G is for Goblin
H is for
I is for Intellect Devourer
J is for
K is for
L is for Lich
M is for Mind Flayer, Myconid, Mummy, Manticore
N is for
O is for Owlbear, Ooze
P is for Purple Worm
Q is for
R is for Rust Monster
S is for Shambling Mound, Scarecrow, Skeleton
T is for Thri-Kreen
U is for
V is for
W is for Wraith
X is for
Y is for
Z is for Zombie

Although they’ve released a new Monster Manual since I started this project, which may affect some of the letters (I’m fairly certain I have twice as many options for ‘Q’ if I update it to the new MM, for example).

Speaking of the family D&D game, we’ve managed to continue playing intermittently. Highlights include learning that encounter balance is tricky, like thinking siccing a second Shambling Mound on three level fours sounds like a good idea only for my wife (and main damage dealer in the party) to then suddenly fail to hit anything, ever, leading to some scary times:

Luckily their new friend that is a manticore was there to take some of the heat, otherwise we’d have been starting fb a whole new campaign…

Unpainted Dreamblade minis stood in for Ankhegs in the next session, where the party found out getting grappled and covered in acid sucks, but they were much better equipped to visit murder on these bugs than the Shambling Mounds:

Given the amount of time that has passed since my last blogpost, despite the fact that it’s almost Salute and I usually save my spending money for that, I’ve had a couple of deliveries. First of all, a package from Northstar:

While I may not have been painting much, I’ve been thinking about projects a lot, and I’m keen to make some headway on my Alamo miniatures. As I got a nice Mexican Command Group sent over from the States by my brother in law for Christmas, I thought I’d prep them and paint the alongside the conversions I’d made from Perry plastics. The banner bearer needed a pole, so I dutifully ordered some brass spears (and I’m looking forward to trying out making a flag from tomato purse packaging), and while I was there also treated myself to a discounted Wargames Illustrated (because it came with a free sprite of greatcoat wearing French, which will get converted into Mexicans most likely), and also an ACW miniature from the Giants in Miniature range that was also on sale, because logically seeing as the Alamo led into the Mexican American War and then the American Civil War it’s surely only a matter of time before I start a project like that too.

The other parcel that turned up is nothing to do with any current projects:

As occasionally happens, I was reminiscing on how good the Warmachine lore is, and trying to work out how far I’d got on reading my way through it. I dug out some books, and had an idle search on eBay looking for the Retribution book (which I should have bought when it was £3 on eBay rather than putting it off!), and ended up stumbling on this lot - the pics were blurry (and occasionally of the seller’s floor) but I saw some gun mages (which I already have, but are always cool) and a storm tower type thing that I didn’t own, so figured I’d stick a couple of quid on just on the off chance, and ended up winning. I was even more pleased when they turned up, as it looks like the Warjack in the lot is actually the Character Jack Thorn, owned by Lieutenant Haley, who has been in my painting queue for quite some time!

All in all, the Tally now stands at:

3 vs 23 = -20

So already slipping further into the red, and with Salute just around the corner! I suspect it’s going to get worse before it gets better, as the Perrys have previewed two boxes of plastic Napoleonic Spanish, and between currently reading Sharpe’s Eagle and the Alamo project I can see myself getting a couple of boxes…

Like dogs, only scaly, and bitier…

And so finally we come to the end of the Travelodge minis:

A pair of… drakes? I think one is an ambush drake, the other I’m not sure about. 

The family D&D game may well swing into Tyranny of Dragons once we finish the mash up of the various starter set adventures I’m running for them currently, so I figured a pair of tiny dragons would probably come in handy as they start smashing up the operations of the Cult of the Dragon:

As ever, they’re surprisingly nice sculpts for pre-paints. Not so nice that I’d pay the shipping costs on more of them though…

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

47 vs 198 = -151

As for what’s next, your guess is as good as mine! The orcs that I was previously painting have already been used half-painted a couple of times in D&D, plus I’ve been overcome with a sudden urge to paint some superheroes of the mutant persuasion…

Man’s best friend

So, a couple of weeks back I had the rarest of things - a free evening. My daughter was away at camp, my son was soundly sleeping, and so I dug out my Frostgrave stuff with the full intention of continuing the adventures of Tim the Necromancer. Perusing my Wizard Sheet, I remembered that I’d earned enough money to add a dog to his warband, which was probably quite sensible considering they’re planning on venturing into a ruined potion shop for sniffing out treasures. So I dug out this mini:

He’s the cultist hound, and I think he’s perfect for Tim because he has a fancy little gold armband that you can’t really see in these pictures.

I was originally just going to paint him as a black dog, but decided to instead take inspiration from the studio paint job to avoid it ending up looking too much like something else in the painting queue.

The next half dozen miniatures you’ll see on the blog were mostly painted in a Travelodge in Ilford, as I found myself staying away for work, and figured I’d use it as an opportunity it’s to get some painting done.

Obviously I forgot some vital paints, so they ended up getting finished when I got home…

As well as finishing this mini, I’ve also acquired some more. I found a bricks and mortar board game cafe two doors down from a surviving comic book shop while in Southend for work, and came away with these:

I also ordered myself a couple of sprues of Oathmark orcs, since my family are likely to come across some sooner rather than later in the family D&D game, and weirdly I don’t have any in my collection…

Speaking of work, I also came away with three sprues of space dwarfs, that my colleague saved from the bin for me:

All in, the Tally now stands at:

42 vs 196 = -154

As has been alluded to, there are more finished miniatures on the way. I mean, not enough to pull the Tally back into the black, but enough to nudge the needle a fraction…

All quiet on the western front…

So, having spent a month and a half unpacking, we’re still not done. Not even halfway, potentially. But even so, I figured it was time to pull out some of my miniature bits, as all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or so it is said.

While I haven’t been doing any painting, I have started prepping some miniatures, which if you look at the swathes of prepped but unpainted miniatures in my house you might think was my actual hobby…

After watching one of the Spider-Man movies with my youngest (as he was insistent we watch the second Andrew Garfield movie, but we thought the Gwen Stacy death scene might be a bit much as he’s only four) I dug out some of my painted Superheroes and some Heroclix mats and whipped up a quick set of rules so that we could play out some four colour tights & fights action:

Opposed rolls, different size dice for different skill levels. More play testing required perhaps, as these were thrown together in about half an hour.

A bin was the first thing I found that could be used as an objective, so Spider-Man, Scorpion and Boom Boom were fighting to recover secret plans that had been dropped in the trash…

After the first game, we added a second character each (as it wasn’t much fun for my youngest getting knocked out relatively quickly) 

My dice rolling remained characteristically terrible though, here’s me using Scorpion’s power attack (allowing him to sacrifice two actions to roll double dice, which against an opponent rolling a single, probably smaller, die, should be nigh on unstoppable) and absolutely whiffing it.

Despite not doing any painting so far this year, the Tally has taken a hit as my wife bought me some miniatures as part of my Valentine’s present:

Half-orcs and Tieflings, as I mentioned that I didn’t have any miniatures of either, which takes the Tally to: 

0 vs 4 

The rain let up enough for me to spray some minis too, so there may even be some painting in my future…

Last Days Seasons campaign: August

Having had quite a busy month (being in Ohio for a fortnight for my Brother-in-Law’s wedding ate up a lot of potential gaming time!) I found myself setting up for this month’s zombie survival game the night before my birthday. 

(Brief aside - I didn’t find any fireman miniatures in Ohio, so the previously shown fire axe wielding miniature joined the group as my as yet unnamed firefighter)

Looking back over my campaign record, I noted that a lot of the time I’d been playing custom scenarios of my own invention, so figured I should probably try one of the generic scenarios from the rulebook (to make sure I’m getting my money’s worth, if nothing else) and promptly rolled Home Defence, which I’ve not yet finished the scenery for, so I re-roles until I got Bushwhack. Now, bushwhack doesn’t really work as a solo scenario (as there’s not really much point in trying to assassinate a particular zombie) so I set it up as a sort of reverse bushwhack that I dubbed ‘the rookie run’ - three survivors find themselves cut off from the rest of the group and must make their escape with their scavenged supplies as well as their lives. So, it seems Devon and Cece have taken the new guy into the city on a supply run and found themselves surrounded - can they break out? Can the rest of the group get to them to cut them a path to safety?

Setting up the table, it looked like this:

Why is there a pile of corpses in the ruins next to the cemetery? Just what have people been getting up to?

Rolling for weather, it turned out we had been caught in the middle of a summer storm, and so visibility would be notably reduced. 

The group make their way through the gate of the garage where they had briefly taken shelter and Devon and the Fireman start shooting at aimlessly milling zombies to try and clear a path. Devon manages to take out the first zombie on his second shot, but the Fireman isn’t yet used to his brand new revolver and is wildly inaccurate.

Barely five minutes into their breakout attempt the weather changes. No more storm, but the sun is starting to set - luckily behind the group so the sun isn’t in their eyes!

At the start of the next turn, my usual inability to roll low on noise checks is rewarded, as rather than more zombies Dionne and Kev appear on the board to investigate the gunshots. And are immediately jumped by a pair of zombies.

The fireman had apparently only loaded a single bullet into his revolver, and found himself needing to reload. Luckily his superior physical fitness means that even pausing to do so he can still cover just as much ground as Devon or Cece…

Dionne attempts to break free of the zombie grabbing at her in order to bring her murderous crossbow skills to bear, but it seems to be fairly handsy and so she is forced to draw her samurai sword. Is it a replica or is it real? Who knows, but we’ll find out in the CQC phase…

Devon again takes out a zombie on his second shot (thank heavens he has a semi-automatic rather than a revolver!) The Fireman, slightly embarrassed at his earlier performance, takes a little longer to line up his shot and gets his first zombie kill. Cece almost manages to line up a shot on a zombie coming up behind them, but unfortunately the sun is in her eyes and she narrowly misses.

Dionne’s samurai sword turns out to be real enough, as she takes out her opponent with little difficulty. Kev however struggles somewhat, eventually managing to get the better of his opponent, and thanks to his Headhunter skill narrowly manages to get his knife in the zombie’s eye. 

The fireman needs to reload after taking a single shot again - if we make it back to the shelter, someone is going to have to show him how to chamber more than a single bullet at a time! Saying that, maybe he learned from Cece, as she also keeps needing to reload after taking a single shot…

Drawn by the sounds of gunfire, zombies start streaming out of the woods and nearby cemetery:

The central group of survivors continues their advance to freedom, back to back (and probably with some sweet military hand signals as they do so), with Cece clambering on top of a dumpster to try and bring her hunting rifle into play to cover their escape:

As they do this, Kev and Dionne move up to link up with them - Kev lunges at a zombie on the way, hoping to quickly take it out to prevent it later sneaking up on them, and unfortunately gets some disgusting fluid in his mouth, gaining another level of sickness (which means that he’ll unfortunately be bedridden after the game).

Dionne, on the other hand, doesn’t have time for getting up close and personal, and instead starts heading for open space so that she can start peppering zombies with crossbow bolts.

Devon takes out another zombie between his group and freedom with his semi-automatic (again on the second shot - more time needed shooting tin cans on the firing range methinks to get used to shooting with only one good eye). The Fireman then attempts a shot at the one remaining zombie between them and freedom, and narrowly misses, his bullet pinging off of the back of a yellow truck nearby. Luckily, this doesn’t set off it’s alarm. ‘Be careful of car alarms when you’re shooting’ hisses Cece to him, before narrowly avoiding doing the exact same thing.

Dionne, meanwhile, shows us why she is the deadliest survivor on the block, easily taking out a zombie cheerleader with her crossbow.

Kev manages to beat his zombie in close combat, but despite being armed with a suite of weaponry and skills to excel in specifically this situation fails to put it down. In return, the zombie scrabbles ineffectually at him, tying him up for another turn. 

All of a sudden, five zombies burst out of the garages that the group had originally been taking shelter by in the centre of the table - this is going to put a bit more pressure on the group to make their escape speedily!

Luckily for the group, Jess has apparently heard all of this commotion and appears on the table directly in their path. Less fortunately, the Fireman and Cece discovered once again that they had apparently only reloaded a single bullet previously - more haste less speed needed! And then Devon’s gun clicked empty (presumably because he’d been taking two bullets to hit each zombie he’d taken out so far) - torn between whether to reload their guns or put all of their energy into making a break for it, they decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that they were just going to try to sprint straight to Jess! 

(Normally I’d have gone xp farming and tried to rack up as many zombie kills as possible, but it was getting late on the night before my birthday, so trying to get the supplies off safely won out - I’m assuming that at least one of the supply tokens was the ingredients for a birthday cake). The Fireman, having a surplus of Action Points and no space to move into with his extra reloaded his revolver before making his run - I imagine that he was reloading, complaining about how seemingly often you have to reload a revolver, before looking up to see Devon running off some distance ahead of him, at which point he goes ‘oh shi-‘ and sprints after him, not wanting to get left behind.

Cece climbs down off the dumpster, the box of supplies cradled awkwardly under one arm, and seeing that she wouldn’t make it safely far past the zombie between her and Jess grimly reloads her hunting rifle… Luckily for her, just our view Dionne has come around the corner and is sighting down her crossbow at the same zombie. Cece makes her shot and hits, but isn’t able to turn that hit into a kill. A second later, a crossbow bolt appears puncturing it’s skull, and it ripples out of sight. ‘Dionne, is that you?’ Cece timidly calls…

Or at least that’s what would have happened if I hadn’t realised at this point that in my excitement to to see if the survivors could break out I’d forgotten to move the zombies this turn, so set about rectifying this. With so many zombies immediately behind her:

Cece would have run round the single zombie rather than staying where she is and getting mobbed, so I retcon the last paragraph and move her. Re-playing events, as she sprints past the zombie a crossbow bolt sprouts from its head just as it is reaching out to grab her, and out of the corner of her eye Cece sees Dionne furiously gesturing for her to run faster. Ahead of her, Jess blasts away with her surplus assault rifle, taking down a single zombie that had been closing in on the escaping group. 

Kev, despite me only managing to roll a 1 manages to beat his opponent again, but for a second time fails to turn it into a kill. I’m assuming this is because he’s already starting to feel groggy after getting splattered with grossness earlier, and so will need a lie-down when we get back to the shelter…

The sun goes behind a cloud, which is handy, as pretty much every zombie is now between the group and the direction of the setting sun! 

Hearing Jess’ fusillade of fire, Lynn appears at her side, cradling the sawn-off shotgun that Kev had previously gifted her after receiving his arm injury that meant he was no longer able to make use of it.

Seeing that the shit was about to hit the fan with a huge horde of zombies moments away from catching up to the group:

everyone turned tail and sprinted off of the board to safety. Except Kev, who still couldn’t get away from the zombie that he had been grappling with for the last few turns, and there were now a couple more zombies bearing down on him…

Seeing that he was now all alone, Kev was spurred to greater heights of ferocity and savagely hacked apart the zombie, before dodging the clawing hands of the next zombie reaching for him, and dancing off of the board (which is probably for the best, as I’d just rolled the event that means from that point on D3 zombies appear whenever 1 would have previously, so the board was going to start getting even fuller…)

Post-game:

Fairly quiet for level ups this game, as most characters only rolled a 1 or 2 on their D6 for surviving the game, and most of the characters that didn’t start the game on the board didn’t really do much, truth be told.

Devon gained the gunfighter skill (one last step on the way to getting a master skill!) which will let him dial-wield pistols. Here’s to hoping we find one! Otherwise he might have to borrow Kev’s magnum, which I think he’s only actually fired once since getting it…

The Fireman, being a fresh recruit, gained enough experience to level up and chose a characteristic boost rather than a skill to start with, and gained +1 to his Firearms skill - I’m assuming Devon has sent him to shoot tin cans for the forseeable (reloading after every single shot I don’t doubt).

Having managed to get all 3 supply tokens to safety, I decided to roll once on the Sunmer table, once on Winter, and once on the standard table from the main rulebook. We found some fuel, a preserved meal, plenty of Scavenge, and a semi-automatic - hooray, dual wielding for Devon is a go!

When it came to allocating jobs, I took a bit of a risk and only had Dionne gathering food, but I figured that as the group had a substantial stash of preserved meals it was worth it to allow Jess to continue building up a stockpile of medicine (as the real enemy for the group so far has been sickness more than the zombies) and Lynn to build a second garden so that in future months multiple people can work on harvesting and hopefully canning food to prepare for the coming winter. On that front, we also need to build up our fuel stores, as well as thinking about ways to heat the farmhouse more efficiently. Thanks to the single dose of medicine that Jess managed to harvest last month, Kev was able to recover completely from his sickness, and is now feeling right as rain again.

Seeing as how I’m 8 months in and with no plans to stop, I should probably see about printing out and laminating some proper tokens rather than the scraps of paper I’m currently using…

As well as playing a game, the Tally has taken a number of hits:

In Ohio, I picked up the Battletech Essentials box (as it’s a Target exclusive), as well as picking up a Beginner box and Barnes &  Noble exclusive box of battlemechs (as seen in my previous post - we went to another B&N so I grabbed them!). And a couple of packs of D&D minis from a comic shop we found on an excursion into Colombus - some pixies, because I’ll probably need them for Silver Bayonet, and Xorn, because I figured they’d probably come in handy if my attention swings round to my Monstrous Alphabet project again.

Then the day after I played this game it was my birthday, where I was gifted miniature goodies:

The battletech box has another 8 mechs in, and that Skaven Bombardier fits on a 20mm square base with a certain amount of cursing about fiddly tubes…

So once everything is factored in, the Tally now looks like:

27 vs 86 = -59

Oof, the chances of me ending the year in the positive are looking fairly slim aren’t they? Especially when you consider I placed a little Heresy order at the start of the week during their big sale…

B is for…

 Bullywug! 

Whilst working on my Frostgrave warband, I also had this burly froggy chap on my painting tile:

A Bullywug thug, who as well as menacing adventurers in D&D will also be a thug in my starting Frostgrave band. I hadn’t originally planned to use him when setting out the minis to paint, but one of my initially selected minis in hindsight isn’t really dressed for exploring a frozen city, and looked a bit out of place next to the rest, whereas this muscular frog chap looks just like the sort of hired muscle that might sign up with an unscrupulous Necromancer!

He’s a chunky little mini, and in hindsight I wish I’d taken a picture of him next to an average human mini so you can see that he’s taller and broader than his chums are going to be. Looking at these pictures. I wonder if I should have done something else with his armour, but perfect is the enemy of done as they say. Tried to copy the pupil style featured in official art too, which actually came out looking vaguely how I wanted, which was a pleasant surprise. 

With his completion, the Tally now stands at :

3 vs 0 = +3 

(Mostly because I’ve been holding fire on spending Christmas money on new toys, despite watching YouTube videos to broaden my knowledge of Napoleonic war gaming to prepare myself for the Silver Bayonet leaving me with the urge to buy several hundred Perry Miniatures that I’ll never finish painting)

And updates the Monstrous Alphabet to this:

A is for
B is for Bullywug
C is for Carrion Crawler
D is for
E is for Elemental (More than one)
F is for Flameskull
G is for Goblin
H is for
I is for
J is for
K is for
L is for Lich
M is for Mind Flayer, Myconid, Mummy
N is for
O is for Owlbear
P is for Purple Worm
Q is for
R is for
S is for Shambling Mound, Scarecrow, Skeleton
T is for
U is for
V is for
W is for Wraith
X is for
Y is for
Z is for Zombie

2022 Challenge:

• Add at least 3 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project (1/3)

Zomtober 2021!

And so begins another year of Zomtober! In case this is your first brush with the annual challenge, the aim is to paint and post at least one zombie themed miniature every Sunday in the month of October. I’m not sure if anyone else is doing it this year, but if you are shout in the comments!

So, submission one, a Zombie Hulk:

Fun fact - taking these pictures I noticed some patchy bits on the green, like his wrist, so have gone back and fixed that!

Here you can see I tried to paint some texture on his loincloth, to give the impression of it being hideous scratchy sackcloth rather than a luxuriously silken garment…

I don’t think this mini even has stats in the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons, so if he sees the table it will likely be as some sort of ogre with zombie rules added in.

He’s quite a big lad, looming over any human sized adventurers that might cross his path…

Painting him brings the Tally to:

22 vs 23 = -1

So, what’s next? More zombies, obviously! As is always the case though, despite having prepped everything I needed ready for a month of thematic painting, I of course found my mind wandering while doing the washing up last night and realised I could do something from the monkey box that thematically ties in to the month…

Patrón

(The joke in the title only really works if you read this blog post immediately after my previous one...)

Despite working longer than usual hours at work (lockdown plus Christmas makes for busy times) I’ve managed to finish another miniature, snatching twenty minutes of an evening whenever I could:

She’s a repaint of an old Dungeons & Dragons prepaint, an Elf Warlock from an old starter set I believe. The detail is a little soft, but she still came out looking quite nice!

The boob armour was a bit much, but I think with a bit of careful colour selection it looks more like a set of clothes rather than a couple of bowls strapped to her chest now! She got purple hair because... I let my wife choose. While yes it is the same as the miniature in my previous post, no I did not paint them simultaneously, despite the fact that that would have been a much more efficient use of time...

Finishing her brings me one step closer to completing the admittedly fairly sidelined Classes project:

Classes (as of 5e Player’s Handbook):

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue (and also here)
• Sorcerer

• Warlock
• Wizard

(I would have updated the links, but blogger just won’t let me on any device currently, so you’ll have to try and imagine the others I’ve finished!)

I may even expand the project out to encompass miniatures to cover all of the races featured in the Player’s Handbook too, but that might be a project for next year...

The Tally took an equal hit in the other direction too this week:

I grabbed myself a Saruman from eBay after grabbing the latest issue of White Dwarf, in order to be able to play the Wizards Duel game in it (I already have a bare metal Gandalf somewhere in the Lead Mountain). So he hops straight into the stripping pot, and takes the Tally to:

46 vs 134 = -88

Blockage cleared!

You know, sometimes there are miniatures that just sit half-painted for months, taunting you from the old tile that you used to use to mix paint on, that you are determined to finish but never seem to. Whenever you try, you pick them up, turn them over, dab on a little paint here and there, and then distract yourself with clearing your work surface, or filing some mould lines off of the miniatures that are part of the project after the next one. These were some of those:

Cultists from Heresy - These are lovely miniatures (and rumour is there might be a plastic kit of them at some point in the future), but I just struggled to finish them. The leader type's staff is a bit miscast, but it was so long between buying them and starting to paint them that I decided to just use it as-is rather than bugging Heresy for a replacement! It probably didn't help that they were originally started a couple of years ago, that I wasn't happy with how I painted the robes, the skin (the list goes on) - but it got to the point where I needed them finished (in the hopes of starting D&D) and so I wasn't getting anything else done.

On the painting desk at the same time was the following miniature, that I just couldn't get a decent finish on:

A shiny, shiny Drow adventurer. Apologies for the use of flash, but it's dark in here.

Now that these are out of the way, there's only a single miniature that needs finishing (the big bad for the adventure that I've written), which I'm currently considering stripping and starting from scratch (and it's literally only the flesh that I've done so far...)

When I wasn't finishing up several year old paintjobs last night, John challenged me to identify a number of mystery bits from his bits box, the majority of which he then gave me:

No whole miniatures, so I'm not adding any points to the tally! There's what looks to be:

•  a Daemon Prince sized sword
• the top half of a wraith type (that could probably be attached to some mounted legs or the top of a flowing cloak to fix)
• Aekold Helbrass, that someone has removed the sword (and a finger) from, that could probably be fixed with a sausage of green stuff and the addition of the aforementioned large sword
• a bird, from the old Wood Elf Special Character Skaw the Falconer, that will most likely become part of the ASOIAF project when I get around to doing wildlings and make myself a Varamyr Sixskins type skinchanger
• A weaponless Kislevite, that's pretty cool - likely to end up in the Zombieslayer project, when I get around to it
• The legs from the Blood Bowl thrower John gave me two and a half years ago - alas, the person that cut off the torso also apparently cut out the belly, but these could still be used to make an injured chap on a stretcher...

Speaking of Uncle Johnny, he mentioned the idea of making an Underworld Blood Bowl team, as he had a few 2nd edition goblins and skaven, so I dug him out this to bulk up the numbers:

an old skaven blitzer that I picked up at Salute a couple of years back. When I went to deliver it though, he had his Blood Bowl collection out on the desk, and it seems he owns 90% of the old-school BB minis ever released! There's a lot of nice stuff, but I think I still prefer 3rd :p

So, when all's said and done, it's time to turn to the tally:

25 vs 440 (yes I'm counting giving away the skaven as minus one to the acquired total!) = -415

So, at this rate by the end of the year I'll have painted a miniature every other week... Admittedly, I've not bought any miniatures in a while, so it's likely that this year's total won't slip any further away from the centre, although it's almost Christmas and yet again I've forgotten to buy a Sanity Claws to paint for the occasion...