Four more years! 2014 in review...

Ah, the annual year in review post, wherein your intrepid author aims to objectively review his project progress for the year without waffle or navel-gazing, which inevitably devolves into a list of things that I have still not completed and the things that distracted me from them!

I made 68 posts last year, making it my most prolific to date. Despite my claims last year that I'd try and post more wip posts rather than just painted miniatures, this didn't always happen (and in fact there are still wip projects waiting to be posted from the year before!) - an exception being the post before this one, but in the interest of full disclosure I'd have to admit that he only got posted because I was reminded of the fact that I was going to be posting more wip pics whilst working on a draft of this post!

I also managed to make at least one post a month, although the traditional drought towards the end of the year was still present - I just don't seem to get stuff done in the Autumn and Winter! This year admittedly though it was down to a number of factors, including some time spent playing Mass Effect, a downer period of wanting to get a new job, and preparation for the impending arrival of my daughter next year, which will also mean that I'll have less hobby time next year! Well, we all know I was never going to be an army painter anyway...

Tally

80 vs 80 = 0

I squeaked it back into the black (technically) at the eleventh hour, which is especially impressive considering the monumental size of the negative the year before!

2014: 0 (80 painted)

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

Last year's 'projects for next year':

Path to glory

Another year, and the warband is still sat undercoated in a box waiting for a tickle with the paintbrush. Admittedly a little paint has been daubed on some of the miniatures, but not enough to warrant a post about the affair. Whilst I did in fact get round to producing a finalised updated set of rules for the modern wargamer who fancied a spot of Chaos warband based skirmish wargaming, I still have as of yet to finish the Chaos Wastes themed scenery that has likewise been sat half-finished for over a year now... It's a bit of an odd fish this one, as it's a project that I'm enthused about, I have everything I need for it, and it's not exactly an unreasonable amount of miniatures to paint before calling it done, but it just seems whenever I go to put some time into it something else always seems more appealing... I'm not going to relegate this project to the back burner just yet, as it's still eminently achieve able, but admittedly that's what I said this time last year... 

Batman

I emptied the Heroclix figures out of my stripping pot, found that they were generally still as caked in paint as the year I'd put them in there, and then packed them away in a baggie. Onto the back burner for this project, for now at least...

Zombieslayer/slayers

I acquired some more for the collection, and painted Gotrek and Felix, but beyond  cleaning up and undercoating a couple if models no other progress has been made...

It's a bit like the Path to Glory project in a way, in that I've pretty much for everything I need, but whenever I sit down to paint something there's always something else that just piques my interest a little bit more...

Star Wars 

(This picture is from my wedding day)

The one project that looked like I was actually focusing on a single thing for once, after playing some Star Wars Battlefront with my godson back in August and joining the 6 Month Mountain Reduction Project, I beavered away and managed to knock out a few painted figures! All I need to do now is paint up an equivalent amount of Rebel Troopers and (gasp) I could even use them to play some sort of game!

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones):

Waaaay back in February, I painted the House Stark troops that I'd previously converted. Other than that, I've converted a couple of Lannister troops, worked on my in armoured Jaime conversion (the head I have for it is just a smudge too big I think, curse you slender figures!), and done some work on the flesh times of my Ned conversion, but nothing else. The Christmas gift of some new Perry sprues should spur me into some more conversions though (and admittedly, the only reason I didn't start doing some on Christmas Day was that my superglue had dried out!)


Dungeons and Dragons

It seems ever more unlikely with the passage of time that my 4e game will take off (I mean, 5th edition is out now, it's been that long). That doesn't stop me from painting generic fantasy miniatures though, and as I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder campaign I may end up painting a few miniatures for that too, and then it's really just the same project with the serial numbers filed off and a snazzy new title...


Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I bought the hench gorilla I was after from Bushido the game, and put him in the tub of miniatures that I have for this project. I even picked up the Heroclix figures I was after for a couple of conversions (I wanted some 28mm discarded riot gear for apes to brandish), but having still not gotten around to seeing the film, bar a single slightly too small gorilla painted back in April my attention still hasn't swung around to painting up gangs of apes (and potentially the whacking great integral bases that need filing off of a number of the miniatures might have something to do with it too...)

Others:

The backburner projects: Halo, Three Kingdoms, Doctor Who, Blood Bowl, and all the rest - not a lot doing. I painted up a couple of Silence miniatures, and the occasional oddment that caught my eye, as is my way.

I did however finish the display board that I was making, that I now use in most (if not all) of the pictures that I post, so that's a victory of sorts I guess?

Next years projects:

(Yes, this will be the basis of next year's retrospective post)

ASOIAF

As mentioned, I've just had some new figures for this project, so will hopefully be able to take the two starter forces up to skirmish level (including painting my Ned conversion and finishing off my Jaime). This project has always suffered from being a bit too grand in scope, as I have ideas for all sorts of warbands, but if I can get a couple done then I can add a figure or two here and there gradually as time goes on... 

Since starting the draft of this post, I've built a couple of House Stark archers and bought a copy of the World of Ice & Fire book, so you may be seeing something from this project sooner than you'd expect!

The Last of Us

If I let myself buy some bits from Miniature Mojo (assuming that the bits that I want are back available on their webstore) then with the bits I already have squirrelled away and a little green stuff this project could be a goer, as it only needs about half a dozen conversions and it's ready to go! We've heard that before though, so we shall see...

The Thing

As my beloved put some 'not The Thing' survivor miniatures from Studio Miniatures in my stocking this Christmas, and I have a whole host of chaos spawn bits for making grubby fleshy monstrosities in my bits box, this is another small scale easily achieveable project that I will probably get distracted from...

Star Wars

As previously mentioned, basing and painting a squad of rebels is all I'd need to do to have two skirmish size forces, then it would just be a case of painting the occasional figure that caught my fancy (like the remaining bounty hunters, for example - if anyone has a spare Zuckuss figure lying around to complete my set I'd be eternally grateful...)

Path To Glory

Same as last year, I just need to finish painting the warband that's been under coated for gods knows how long... And then finish the scenery that is already almost done...

Mass Effect

Way back when (four years or so back) I started playing the original Mass Effect. Alas, my xbox wiped my save, and it was four years before I was ready to give it a second chance, and even then that is mostly because a friend of mine played through the games around the time of the birth of his son, and with the imminent arrival of my daughter I thought that seemed like as good a reason as any to give it another go! Being a Bioware game (oh, Knights of the Old Republic, how I loved you), it's a compelling sci if tale that really would translate quite well to something miniatures based, whether that be a tabletop wargame or perhaps the D20 RPG that you can find floating sound on the internet... Alas, I don't have any miniatures already in the lead mountain that can be pressed into service, but if I can get my hands on a copy of Sedition Wars and some Infinity and Mantic miniatures I should be able to come up with something! The main issue I've had so far is that all of the aliens look so very... alien, which makes it hard to proxy humanoid scifi miniatures for them! And don't get me started on the difficulty of finding a suitable head donor for a Batarian...

On the back burner:

ROTPOTA - going onto the backburner for now, because that's where it's most likely to get worked on when it distracts me from a main project! Although admittedly, between finishing the draft of this post and it actually hitting the internet, I've since re-watched the first (modern) film, so we'll see if that affects my future decisions on what to paint!

Nerdmarines - 3 minis to paint, but 2 are vehicles. Might get some love between larger projects, but we'll see...

Everything else - if you've read this blog more than once, you'll know my hobby preferences are like that of a magpie, so the occasional Doctor Who miniature (or maybe the Deadpool mini I got for Christmas) will probably sneak in here and there! 

Firefly Gunslinger

So, little by little (not the one day mad rush I'd originally envisioned as a shock to the system and palette cleanser) Firefly guy is done:

Which takes the tally to:

37 vs 35 = 2

Back to the Space Marines now I think though, and back on plan.

Well, or I might have started digging out miniatures for some destiny inspired kitbashes:

Currently, my Titan inspired figure is an armless Halo figure that's had some bits of armour trimmed down or completely removed and some gaps green-stuffed to make him look a little less obviously Spartan:

Arms from another Halo figure, shoulder pads from an old Judge Dredd sprue, and a gun from an Infinity figure should give the effect I'm going for, I just need to source a Mantic Enforcer head from somewhere for that robot Exo look (or I guess I could see about knocking up some sort of helmet, but currently I quite fancy the idea of a helmet less character). I've got a couple of coat-wearing figures set aside as potential body donors for a Warlock, and I've got my eye on a Dark Vengeance cultist as a donor of a nice gas mask wearing hooded head for a Hunter...

Or, y'know, something else. I keep meaning to dig out my copy of Space Hulk...

Third Anniversary, and 2013 in review...

Wow, so this little irregularly-updated corner of the internet turns 3 today!

2013 was a funny old year for me personally, managing to contain both the highest of highs (getting married! Honeymooning!) and the lowest of lows, and because of this was fairly quiet hobby and blogging wise. I mean, I only managed 27 posts last year, an average of one a fortnight. I'd planned (and prepped miniatures for) a Doctor Who post to tie in with the Christmas Day episode, but alas I didn't get to actually paint them, and thus there were no posts at all in December. I mean, the thing is, I'm not any less geeky than usual - here's a picture of our headboard currently:

(I dug out some old survivor miniatures to use as alternate playing pieces in a family game of Zombies over Christmas, which are currently living in the bedroom until I get around to re-packing them)

I think part of the problem on the lack of posts front is my tendency to only post on completion of something, which when crossed with my tendency to get easily distracted and flit from project to project leads to a folder of unpublished pictures of projects that are half-finished that 'I'll get around to finishing one day', like stripping Batman Heroclix, a set of Chaos themed scatter terrain and a set of wip pictures of my old-school influenced Chaos Spawn conversion that has been sat undercoated for at least half a year now... Resolution - post what I do as I do it, which will hopefully keep momentum high...

As is now traditional, I got a White Dwarf subscription for Christmas from my good lady wife, the exclusive miniature for which is this rather nice vampire-hunting dwarf, which leaves 2013's tally at:

25 vs 441 = -416

Daaaaaaaaaaamn.

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

The less said about that the better, I suppose - although this year's massive minus is mostly (entirely) due to stocking up on lovely multi-part plastic kits at Salute for my ASOIAF project (and I'm sure I'll pick up a couple more boxes this year to make sure that I definitely have enough bits...)

On the Christmas front, I also got some paintbrushes from one of our friends that works with my wife, which I thought was rather sweet of her (and I guess shows that my nerdity isn't as subtle as you might otherwise think):

Looking at last year's review post, let's see how wildly inaccurate my predictions for projects for the coming year were:

Path to Glory: As mentioned earlier this post, my Chaos Spawn conversion is done (but just not posted), and the entire warband has been sat undercoated waiting for my attention to swing back their way. I've got a set of half-finished Chaos Wastes scatter terrain to go with them too, that match my previously completed set of generic rocky terrain so as to be able to play some games... You'd think that the low model count needed to be able to start playing games would be a good incentive to get them finished, but hey, go figure...

Batman: What do they even paint the more recent Heroclix figures with? I've had a bunch sat in the stripping pot getting the occasional scrub for what feels like an age, and there's largely no less paint on them than the day I bought them (they are however exceptionally clean). Again, low model count needed, so it would only take a tiny, tiny amount of focus in order to have a useable set of figures...

Zombieslayer/Slayers: One day. gadget, one day... Potentially if (as rumours suggest) the next edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle has a starter box containing Empire, that might kickstart this project, or if I get a chance to read the three latest Gotrek and Felix books that I've got waiting, but until then it stays on the backburner...

Star Wars: Again, one day, gadget, one day. Curse my tiny attention span! There's plenty of Star Wars media on the way though, so I may end up making some progress in the future...


Other bits and bobs:

I painted a number of generic fantasy miniatures, but other than that all my predictions were wildly inaccurate.

Projects for the coming year (aka the framework for next year's year in review post):

As well as all of the aforementioned half finished projects that are only a few steps from completion and posting to little internet fanfare, my (planned) projects for 2014 are:

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones):

The project that got started after I said I wouldn't be starting an more projects - as previously mentioned (and you can potentially just about see in the previous picture), I've got a bunch of Lannisters painted, and an equivalent amount of House Stark troops converted just awaiting basing and undercoat. I've got boxes of miniatures and assorted bits set aside for this project, so it should be fairly easy to make progress (famous last words) - admittedly though, I have been fairly tempted to buy some bits to start converting some Wildlings, pretty much the only Westerosi force that I don't already have suitable miniatures for, but I think I'll be able to hold focus on the Staks versus Lannisters for now (although one day I'll get around to writing a blogpost outlining my general plans for the ASOIAF project...)

Dungeons and Dragons

Much delayed, but not forgotten...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The release of a new '...of the Planet of the Apes' film should hopefully inspire me to get back on track with my ROTPOTA project - I'll probably pick up an 'Aiko and Gorilla' from Bushido from GCT Miniatures (because that's a much hencher gorilla than the one I had previously bought), dig up or adapt a suitable skirmish ruleset and we're away!

Others:

The backburner projects are still there: Halo, Three Kingdoms, Doctor Who, Blood Bowl, and all the rest - although as we've seen, listing something as 'not a priority for the near future' seems to be the way to ensure that it gets some love when it comes to my hobby focus... I also sporadically get the urge to go back and try and rewrite the set of rules I was going to use for the Zombie project, that were lost when my laptop wiped a couple of years back, but that would involve literally starting from scratch...

I should also hopefully finish the display board that I mentioned in my previous post in the near future, which will allow me to start posting some more visually appealing pictures of painted miniatures (when I get around to actually finishing some, hyuck huck...)

Last but not least, when we were putting up our (artificial) Christmas Tree, one of the branches fell off:

Bad news for Christmas, but good news for wargaming craft supplies - my wife agreed that we could just have that side of the tree facing the wall, and I now have the means to experiment with making wargaming trees out of leftover bits of Christmas Tree...

His name is John...

So, I finished up some miniatures:

Master Chief(s) FTW!

I've painted enough different armaments to be able to use him as a third colour in redvsblue games (when I get round to sorting out a ruleset and playing some that is);

As well as some that will be more useful for playing Master Chief vs Covenant games;

As well as some that I think are cool - although I accept that the Cortana miniature isn't really much use for gaming, but worst comes to worst it'll make a nice objective marker for capture the flag type games! And yes, I did paint over a Super Rare Active Camo Master Chief clix fig.

So, with these finished, it brings the tally to:

68 vs 90 = -22

which is a leap back in the right direction, and brings the 28mm Halo project one step further along (although I realise that I might not have previously explained the steps in the wargaming Halo plan):

1.  redvsblue (aka PVP) - only needing 6 spartans per player (for the different weapons I'd chosen to use), once twelve miniatures are finished this step is ready to game, although more miniatures can always be added later!
2. Halo - Assuming I'd already painted some Master Chiefs for redvsblue, all it would take would be a couple more Master Chiefs and a handful of Covenant to be able to play some 'dungeon crawl' type games, similar thematically to the main Halo trilogy (and later expandable to include the Flood etc)
3. Halo Wars - Paint more of everything and they can be used for larger scale (ie squad-based rather than skirmishing individuals) games, up to and including vehicles! The general plan being, that anything from one step can be used in the higher steps - so, I need Master Chief with a plasma Rifle, great, I've already painted him for redvsblue! I need three Spartans with a variety of weapons for Halo Wars, great, I can use a red one, a blue one and a Master Chief for that! (and so on and so forth).

Red vs Blue and first problems with the new gw pots...

Bam, finally got around to finishing my first two sets of Spartans for some Red vs Blue action:

The blues came out a little darker than I thought they would, but all in all we're good. Painting these was a bit of a nightmare, with lots of referring to the Halo Encyclopedia to work out where various bits of armour ended and undersuit begain, but once the basecoats were blocked in it was pretty much plain sailing. However, they did have to wait a fortnight or so until gw released their new paints so that I could get a bright enough pink to paint the needler ammo... which leads me to my next point:

Although the new lids are great at staying open, when you close them the triangular bit doesn't pop back out to it's starting position, they get caught under the lid and get forced into contact with the paint, leaving you to have to pop them back out with your finger and get covered in bright pink paint. But I digress...

Finishing these two squads of six brings the tally to:

39 vs 68 = -29

Not bad, and if I can remain focused enough to fnish everything currently in front of me that'll be another 18 off the total... Before I go to salute and we see another swing backwards...

Spartans Assemble!

So, rather than cracking on and starting to paint my converted spartans in fetching shades of red and blue, I thought I should probably convert some more to make enough for a four-player game. I'll use Master Chief for one player, but that meant I still needed seven more minis...

To start with, pistols:

I had to convert two, since there isn't already a Master Chief fig with a pair of pistols (although I'll use the Master Chief I'd previously converted for him, as that way it's only the M.C. figs that are stood on various large chunks of scenery...)

Whilst converting these I had a sudden thought: what if, rather than cutting through arms, wrists etc to convert them, I just wrenched the whole arm out? Turns out they're held in place with a handy Tetris-piece shaped plug (which you can sort of see here):

Which you'd think would make arm swapping fairly straightforward, no? Turns out they're positioned somewhat differently in different figures, resulting in the following:

All hail surrender Spartan! He amused me briefly, but a little bit of cutting, some liquid green stuff and a dab of superglue later, and he became the Spartan you saw in the first picture.

I won't bore you with individual shots of each of the other five:

From L-R:
Battle Rifle (that was originally going to be on the sniper model, but I just couldn't get the Sniper Rifle to sit right so they got swapped);
Shotgun (using a Brute Shot body so it looks like he's rocking back in response to some suddenly appearing threat);
Sniper Rifle (I think this one's the body of a carbine wielder on a random pair of legs from my halo bits box);
Needlers (legs from the leaping carbine figure, looks a bit like he's doing ballet though...);
Plasma Rifle (I used the energy sword body with an arm swap and some hot water repositioning to make it look like the rifle had just overheated and burned his fingers, because that's how I imagine it happening whenever I play the Xbox game...)

So with these done, that brings us to two dozen:

Bammo, I'll base the rest once this post is up and then they'll be ready for undercoating (which probably won't be until the weekend).

Before all of this happened though, I decided to base the discworld miniatures I had on the cobblestone bases I'd made:

I added a few patches of rough sand to mucky it up a little and voila, done! Well, not entirely. Note the green stuff under Rincewind's boots, where I made an epic fuck-up. After spending so much time coating those bases with PVA to protect them from the harshness of aerosoals and chemicals, in a moment of unthinking ridiculousness I pinned Rincewind to his base. Yep, I drilled through the protective coating into the poor, defenseless foam and poured in superglue. It promptly started dissolving, prompting a bout of swearing and and a rush to pour enough green stuff into the recently created holes to try and plug them up... I think I'm going to brush undercoat the bases before I spray them though, just in case anything else goes wrong...

My first SPNKr

No, not a toy for small children, but the result of my first attempt at using Instant Mold:

It still needs a bit of cleaning up, but it's come out quite nice- if anything, the fiddly underneath bit needs less cleaning up and fixing than the fairly plain top...

A winner is me! And also, instant mold and SPNKRs

Yeah, I used to play KOL, sometimes I lapse back into their syntax...

Back to the point at hand, Chris over at Sippin' On Paint Water ran a little competiton, to guess what the next thing he'd be casting would be. I guessed right, and Chris very kindly sent me some goodies:

A lovely little selection of crates, boxes, and the prize-winning pallet. I've been thinking about making some urban barricades for a little while now, and these will be perfect for that.

Onto the second part of the title, my Instant Mold came!

I'll save you the advertising spiel, which I'm sure you've heard before, but for the less geeky followers of the blog, the premise is this: you can heat it up and mash it round an object to make a mould of it. So, having only a single SPNKR rocket launcher for the Halo project, I thought I'd have a crack at making some more. I grabbed two glasses of water (one boiling, one chilled):

And then squeezed it round the SPNKR I'd liberated from an clix figure:

Technically at this point I dunked it in the cold water to harden it, but then when I tried to cut it open it went tits-up, so I started again. We'll pretend that everything went right the first time though, and jump to hardening the mould in cold water (I cut the excess off this time, to make it easier to cut into):

I then ever so carefully cut around the lump to free the original mode, stuffed it with green stuff (a little at a time, to make sure it got into all the nooks and crannies) and then squeezed the bejeesus out of it. As I couldn't find any elastic bands, I had to turn to hair bands to provide some continued pressure:

I swear, there's a mould in there somewhere. So, fingers crossed when I open it again there will be a useable 28mm scale rocket launcher in there. We shall see.

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...