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! 

Delves in my stripping pot...

Having finally overcome my deeply ingrained (and generally unfounded) nerdrage, my wife and I have been catching up with Marvel's cinematic output (I'd previously only seen The Avengers , having decried all comic book films as a comic book fan). We've been watching them in chronological order, and we're now currently halfway through Agents of SHIELD, waiting for Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 to pop up on Netflix! As tends to happen in these scenarios, I found myself with a hankering to recreate what I'd seen in (roughly) 28mm, and so duly procured a Marvel Heroclix Avengers Movie Mini Gamefor the four sculpts within, with the intention to strip and repaint them:

Which reminded me, some of the miniatures in my stripping pot had been there for over a year, so it was probably about time to clear it out before adding anything else to it!

So, so time last February (I thought March, but the Valentines cards in the background of the next picture would suggest otherwise!) I picked up a whole bevy of Batman Heroclix from Blue Rat Games with the intention of painting up a posse or two for the Batman Miniatures Game:

Including picking up one particular Two-Face figure purely for the fact that it came with a 1:1 scale replica of Two-Face's coin, which I (should I ever manage to get a crew painted) will use to make every decision whilst playing as Two-Face!

There are some nice little sculpts in the Heroclix range (although admittedly generally not as nice as the entire range of miniatures that Knight Models has brought out in the time that these have been sat in my stripping pot), although they are sometimes hidden under thick (and goofy!) layers of paint:

Chilling. Master of fear indeed.

So, I attempted to strip them. Nail polish remover would absolutely destroy the plastic that they're made from, so I gave it a go in some Fairy Power Spray, which I'd read positive reviews of:

But nothing. Months of dunking, scrubbing, and repeating, and nothing. Frustrated, I dumped the lot into my usual stripping pot (of Surgical Spirit), where once more, they were dunked, scrubbed, rinse and repeat. Almost no change to the paint. What are they painting these things with?! As you can see, they've been in long enough that the glue holding them together has dissolved, but not the paint:

As well as the various Batman Heroclix, there were also a couple of Mage Knight sculpts that I fancied repurposing for the Dungeons and Dragons project (which I should really make a greater effort to get off the ground, what with the release date for the next edition having been announced and everythig); some Games Workshop Dwarf Slayers that you've seen in previous posts before their fragrant bath; the old Spirit Host ghost I picked up at Salute; Manfred, an old Fighter; and a mounted Eomer that I picked up as a potential base for a mounted Robb Stark conversion for the ASOIAF project.

Although I wasn't able to remove the paint from the Heroclix (which after another rinse off I'm probably just going to paint over the top of. Or throw into a fire.), they are now however exceptionally clean, and somewhat soapy smelling, leaving my stripping pot looking like this:

Into which have gone the Avengers from the start of the post, just in the off chance that their paint is somehow different from the previous releases...

One of the benefits of having a blog...

...is that sometimes people contact you out of the blue with miniatures that you need for your collection. I got one such email from a nice young man by the name of Greg the other day, and a couple of emails and the exchange of monies later, I now have Daemon slayer 3 taking a lazy bath in my stripping pot:

No change to the tally though, as since a chum of mine had stated that he was looking to paint up some Blood Angels as part of our 500 point 40k plans, I dug this chap out of my stripping pot to gift to him:

Missing his weapon top, but easily fixable!

So, one up and one down with no finished painted miniatures yet leaves the tally still at:

22 vs 35 = -13

Collecting Dwarf Slayers Redux

Having had a fellow enthusiast by the name of James Peake (he doesn't currently have a blog, but I'll update with a link if that changes) get in touch, I was able to cross off a couple more Slayers from my list of Dorfs I need. Unfortunately, he'd also pulled together a much more comprehensive list that the one that I'd previously cobbled together (in the form of a pdf and spreadsheet), which revealed in handy pictoral form that there's a bunch more than I thought that I want (please note, my list still doesn't include Slayer pirates, 54mm releases etc, as they're not currently on my 'want list'):

(10/10, woo!)

(at some point I'll get around to picking up the Troll Slayers...)

(just need the command figures now from the newest set!)

The following images are shamelessly stolen from James Peake's PDF, so I can take no credit for them (except for the shaky crossing through to signify that I own them already, that's all me)

(If I were to get the Blood Bowl Slayers though, I'd be faced with a difficult choice: do I convert them to be armed so that they fit into a unit, or leave them as-is in their original form?) 

(Mmmm, Talisman-y)

(I own two of these, but I forget which. Note to self: dig out of storage and cross them off shakily using MS Paint)

 (Oh, the unit filler you'll be)

(Unreleased, iirc. Can't justify the price this guy tends to go for...)

I realise now that I still don't have a picture of the Battle for Skull Pass plastic slayer for this, but hey, you know what it looks like right?

[edit]: no change to the tally, as the trades were on a one-for-one basis - two marauder slayers and a more modern standard bearer for these three, who are now having a relaxing bath in the stripping pot:

Not-Sterling Archer...

Having recently started watching Archer on Netflix, I found myself with the urge to paint a dapper looking gentleman in a grey suit:

He's a little older looking, but passable I think:

Handily, I had the miniature (a Copplestone sculpt) already based and undercoated (and had done for... I don't know, a couple of years probably), with a basecoat on his flesh, which meant I was able to paint him in a single afternoon (rather than the 'a little here, a little there over days/weeks/months/years' approach I usually end up taking). To that end, he was painted almost entirely using a Citadel Large Brush, with the exception of the whites, which used a much sharper tool:

I forget where I read 'use the largest brush you can get away with', but it seems to be good advice - the miniature was a lot quicker to paint than usual, and hasn't suffered much quality wise (although my usual standard doesn't set the bar unreachably high, I'll admit) - it was quite nice having a brush that held paint, rather than my usual time-consuming approach where I spend as much time reloading the brush as i do actually applying paint to the miniature... Something to think about in future sessions, I think...

In the time since my last post though, I've received a couple of goodies - a halfling from Uncle Johnny that's currently an experiment in using very thin layers over a white undercoat with a black wash (that I was sure I'd already posted about and included in the tally, but apparently not), and the pair of slayers that I needed to complete my set of Marauder sculpts:

These two likely lads are currently taking a long soak in the stripping pot, and take the current tally to:

14 vs 19 = -5