Zomtober 2021 week 3!

 Another week, another post deadline successfully hit!

This week's offering is another Hasslefree survivor, another fine Kev White sculpt:

I have him stripes down his sleeves, as a bit of visual interest but also mostly so that I could make this joke on Instagram:

What is the fascination with chainsaws and zombies? Practically, it would be less than ideal as a zombie-fighting weapon: heavy, loud, needs refuelling. On the other hand:

I went to town weathering this mini, and I think he looks much better for it! Dusty, grubby, oily, this is someone that has had other things on his mind than laundry recently…

You can’t really see it in the other pictures, but I also gave him a five o’clock shadow, that also highlights that he’s shaved his head because he’s balding than for purely practical reasons:

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

24 vs 23 = +1

Next time - more zombies!

Zomtober 2021 week 2

 Another Sunday, another zombie themed submission!

This week I present for your delectation a Hasslefree survivor that I think was originally prepped as a backup mini for a previous Zomtober, and so has sat undercoated waiting for her time in the sun for far too long.

The details on the face are very fine, and I think I went too pale and lost some of the definition - there’s nothing like painting for a deadline to lower your standards though! When initially taking the pictures for this post, I noted how pale she was and went back to add some colour to her lips to try and make her look a little more lively, but I think all I’ve succeeded in doing is making her look like she’s enjoyed some beetroot at some point in the past…

I also wouldn’t have gone as light on the hair if I were to paint her again - up until that last application though, it looked very flat and dark, so I’m not sure that a do over would come out any better (as ever, I asked my wife to suggest a hair colour, as is usually the case whenever I’m painting near her). The acid wash jeans effect is a little hit or miss too, but again, done is done, so points on the Tally!

23 vs 23 = +0

Back to equilibrium!

A Wildling Princess...

Another mini finished as the end of the year looms closer, this time a lovely Hasslefree sculpt that I’ve painted as a ‘Wildling princess’ for the A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones project. Having a nicely sculpted face helps with the painting, although the flesh tones on this miniature were actually painted ages ago before she was relegated to the ‘Work In Progress’ drawer for who knows how long, so may have been before my current face painting slump began! It’s hard to tell in this picture, but she does actually have pupils, although I went over them again with the Micron pen after taking this picture to make sure they were more visible, as you can see in this blurry close-up:

Just to head off the inevitable criticism at the pass - yes, as she’s a Hasslefree mini, there’s more underboob on show than would be practical for a barbarian lass from snowy climes (the gloss varnish on which is actually still wet in these pictures) I know. The rest of the Wildlings in the queue are practically dressed I promise.

One thing that was especially fun about painting a Wildling was the fact that they tend not to have much in the way of iron weapons and armour, so painting her bracers and other metal details in a variety of shades was an interesting challenge, and Indecided to paint her twin blades to look slightly rusty and worn, as if they were long ago scavenged and not particularly well maintained. She got a head of red hair as I figured that being ‘kissed by fire’ would only add to the Wildling princess feel!

Tally:

30 vs 27 = +3

Zomtober week 4: the circle is complete

If by circle you mean the challenge, that is.

Week four is another survivor, from Hasslefree this time:

As always with a hasslefree miniature, she’s a lovely sculpt, even though my attempts at fixing her pupil have left her with an entirely black eye looking somewhat like the mother from Coraline... Which admittedly I don’t completely hate, so am leaving as is. I might go back and see if I can get some definition back into her shoelaces though...

She was originally bought one Salute for the The Last of Us project, as I like that she has a torch, but she can pull double duty fighting her way through zombie hordes if needs be.

Painting her brings the Tally to:

15 vs 27 = -12

and also draws this Zomtober to a close - not my biggest year, being four ladies and a cameraman, but expect something related to appear in the next couple of weeks (as unfortunately I just couldn’t get them finished in time for this post! Unless I save them for next year...)

In other news, I had thought that the blogosphere was dying out, but having dug deeper it seems that my followed blogs weren’t showing up properly in Bloglovin (the reader app I use), so I’d been missing out on a ton of people’s blog posts! I’ve been taking steps to manually rectify this, so hopefully I won’t miss anything else!

Post-Salute 2018 post

Only a week after the actual event - did I mention that I'm not a fan of the Blogger app being killed off?

The night before Salute, I made a meme after seeing that Troll Trader were running their usual 'first 50 people spending over a certain amount get a goody bag':

My first stop at the show was their stand, where I bought the Collector's Edition of The Walking Dead game from Mantic, so I guess Dark Side Kermit won there...

Ah, early morning starts, everyone's favourite, but a pilgrimage requires sacrifice:

(I think at this point I'd already been ignoring my alarm for twenty minutes)

The usual Salute outfit of Jayne hat - this year was unseasonably warm though, so it spent most of the day in my bag, leading to complaints from my companions that they then couldn't find me.

My phone is alas on the way out, and doesn't hold charge as well as it used to, so less photos than usual, presented in almost no order:

[Obligatory queueing shot]

Modiphius Fallout miniatures: 

I like them, but at a larger scale than my existing stuff, I'm not sure if I'll get any (he says, setting up for future 'well, although last year I said...' posts. Wait, didn't I say last year that I wasn't going to get The Walking Dead?)

One of the thing's I was most excited to see was Mantic's upcoming Hellboy kickstarter - alas, there was only a handful of preview miniatures, and no game content, but look how pretty they are!

Particularlyexciting is that it looks like there's a mechanic for the frog monsters to evolve from little swarms up to big gribblies...

There was a rather large and nice Star Wars Legion table:

(read again my comments about the Fallout game re: larger scale, me not investing)

Mantic were running a paint and take table, so I tried my hand at knocking out a Star Saga Scientist:

Not bad for half hour with a large brush!

I'm not going to count him as painted for the Tally just yet, as I think I'll repaint his face (as it took a couple of goes with the brush I had to get it to this state of acceptability, but could definitely be improved), as well as potentially changing the colours of some things like his kneepads, maybe adding a Vault number to the back of his suit so that I can use him for Fallout, as well as rebasing him!

I managed to snap some pictures of Fireforge Games' upcoming Fantasy Northern troops, and they're rather lovely:

I wasn't sure how they'd look in the flesh, as pre-production renders seen online can hide a multitude of sins (Wargame Factory zombies being one of the most well-known examples of this) but they look like they take paint pretty well:

I think with some custom shields they'll make ideal House Bolton troops for my Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire project, as well as providing some additional bits for House Stark kitbashes...

I took this photo of a Bad Squiddo table to use as an inspirational image for future scatter terrain building, as I think that those rubble and broken pipe pieces look great!

This is an awful picture of a lovely Crooked Dice Post-Apocalyptic table - I think they were running two games on the same table, one with plant zombies and one with dune buggies?

Got to see Angel Giraldez painting again - insert the now traditional 'so handsome, so talented, it just isn't fair' comment!

Joe, our DM, is a feeder. This is fine with me. Picnic lunch with some old friends that I hadn't seen in a while, including Ciarron, who long-time followers may remember from a Salute post a few years back where we both got super excited about the Batman Miniatures game, bought a bunch of stuff and vowed to play. We still haven't.

Someone had painted up their Westfalia Northern Mercenaries kickstarter and entered it in the painting competition! I really should paint mine...

Now, the real meat of any Salute post - the loot!

• Rogue Stars Psions (because one looks like farmboy Luke with a lightsaber, and the other is a froggy looking alien)
• Frostgrave Barbarian Tracker (to fill out the kitbashed Wildlings that have been sat on my hobby desk since last summer)
• Rumbleslam goblin & Kromlech orc pilot from my Troll Trader goody bag
• Assorted dice and badges
• Heresy Ebric the Doomed (as I try to always buy something from Heresy - support the companies you love or they might not still be around next year!)
• 2 Crooked Dice Wasteland Warriors (to add some greater female representation to my Survivors collection)
• '!' tokens from Fenris, to use with the set of zombie rules I'm working on
• Some Hasslefree Survivors
• An assortment of Wargames Illustrated Giants in Miniature models, to get the show-exclusive Druid
• [heavily inspired by] Fallout / Mass Effect / Star Wars miniatures from Brother Vinni 
• This year's show mini

Also, the Mantic Walking Dead game, plus a selection of bits from my goody bag, like a couple of rulebooks, a cardboard building that is the perfect size for 1/144 Gundam models, a stencil, some weathering powder, a bunch of beer mats and a handful of sweets!

Fun fact - after Salute, I went for dinner at my Mother-in-Law's, where I showed my daughter the miniature that I had painted that day, which then vanished without a trace. Several days later, he turned up in grandma's bag...

Adding everything up (and factoring in the things that sold on eBay just before the show) brings the Tally to:

9 vs -36 = +27

I'm thinking that I might have to reconsider my 'board game pieces don't count towards the Tally for acquisition' when some of the games come with what are clearly miniatures, as they Tally would look a lot less robust after buying The Walking Dead game! I'm selling some more bits on eBay in preparation for the aforementioned Hellboy Kickstarter, so expect to see the Tally distort even further...

In other news, the sun briefly came out in the UK, and the sound of rattle cans resounded across the land as we had that perfect combination, a warm day with no wind. Not me though, as by the time everything was sorted and my daughter was settled in bed it was ten at night, but I'm not one to let something like that stop me so I set about getting a bunch more odds and ends into the painting queue:

Top Tip: though you might think you've been very careful with your spraying box, in the cold light of day it usually turns out you've sprayed a black line onto the paving slabs in the garden.

Lurking in the shadows...

...to suck out your brains - finished painting my converted Illithid rogue (that I finished converting from a Hasslefree figure way back in December of 2014):

Lord knows when I'll meed a Mind Flayer in studded armour, but when that day does come I will be ready.

His flesh was one of those times when you finish painting happy with what you've done, then come back to it the next time and decide it needs more done to it over and over, hence quite a stark difference between the darkest shade in the deepest recesses and the lightest areas. His weaponry was painted in non-standard colours after being inspired by a flick through the 4th Edition Monster Manual (hence the aqua/teal hilt to the purple-sheened blade, and grey rather than colourful gems on the scabbard of his secondary weapon).

I also had a play posing him with some of my wife's plants (more and more of which seem to appear in the house each week):

As well as playing with the settings and applying filters to make moody pictures like this:

Tally:

7 vs 0 = +7


In other news, a family emergency last week led to us heading down to Portsmouth a week earlier then originally planned - horrible times, but one upside to spending four hours each way on trains was that I cracked on and managed to mostly get the set of zombie rules that I've had knocking around half-formed in my head longer than I've had this blog that have been previously alluded to on paper:

Don't worry about trying to decipher my scrawl about rules for fighting across barricades, the picture is just illustrative to break up blocks of text ;)

It's in no particular order currently, fairly free-form as I remembered / thought of things, but I think I've got a fairly workable framework once I rearrange it and chisel out the heart. I have a vague thought to run a zombie game at halloween, which would need some scenery building and cards making (well, as well as actually playtesting these rules to see whether they actually work at all!)

Otherwise, I'm still wanting to get on with Necromunda, although I'm in a bit of a quandary - I'm reticent to start building models until I've built a gang roster, but don't want to build a gang roster without knowing what's good or that I like to play with... I could just build the models in their stock poses (which are lovely, don't get me wrong), but shouldn't I choose their loadouts myself? Argh, such conflict...

I also starting playing the Game of Thrones: Conquest game whilst waiting for the laptop to fire up tonight, which I'd assumed would give me a hankering for that project, but the game is so buggy (oh how it crashes) that hasn't kicked in at all...

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.

The Hammer is my Penis

Totally worth the expense and effort just to have a blog post with that title.

You've all watched Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, right?

If not, go do it now.

I'll wait.

Seriously, it's three parts, will take forty minutes of your life, and is highly recommended if you like things that are good.

Done? Good. Pow, that ending!

But on a more cheery note, having re-watched it this year (as it turned out that my wife had somehow never seen it) I had a hankering to pick up the 'Sergeant Spanner' figure from Hasslefree that bears a passable resemblance to a certain Hammertastic hero, and so picked one up at Salute (even better, he was one of the freebie figures on offer for pre-ordering, so double score!).

He was painted mostly on lunchtimes at work, under terrible lighting conditions. The shirt was one of those cases of painting until I decided I couldn't tinker with it any more, and so took the plunge to freehand on the tiny hammer logo - I started by carefully painting on a black circle to outline the whole thing, then a couple of gentle layers of yellow, breath held and fingers crossed! A dash of brown and a curve of silver later and voila, we have a tiny hammer!

The thing that took the longest to paint was probably his right eye - I don't think that micron pen that I use for dotting in pupils travels particularly well, and seemed to splurt ink out somewhat, so his right eye was probably repainted three or four times in the end until I managed to get a satisfactory result!

I have no idea what project he is for - I could probably shoehorn him into the Zombies project as a random event, and he's probably underpowered to go toe-to-toe with any Marvel superheroes... Ah well, sometimes you need to paint something just because you want to!

Tally:

25 vs 40 = -15

Rey the Force be with you

Ah, puns and Star Wars, my two loves.

As is my incredibly inconsistent tradition, I painted up something thematic for May the Fourth:

Hasslefree's Kami Riko, which with some minor conversion work makes a very satisfying Rey.

A Rey that's very difficult to photograph, due to her dynamic pose, but satisfying nevertheless.

As is the case with all Hasslefree Miniatures, she was an absolute pleasure to paint - enough detail to enjoy painting, but not so much fussy detail that you spend ages painting gems and pouches only to feel like you're making zero progress. The face is especially nice. Also, highlighting all or the rags was surprisingly therepeutic, whereas normally I'd just give them a drybrush and move onto the next piece!

I also added a piece to her base from a Maelstrom's Edge sprue that came in my Salute goody-bag last year so that it looks like she's fighting to defend a piece of salvage from other scavengers.

Tally

18 vs 40 = -22

Salute 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Discworld broom racing game with a nice Unseen University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Osprey were previewing their new dwarf sculpts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tally

9 vs 40 = -31

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

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

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