So yeah, when I said I'd returned...

...that might have been a little premature.

Son came, and all productivity went out of the window.

(this is the day he was born, he's bigger now)

One of his middle names is Cassian (at my wife's suggestion, to my surprise), so we have an action figure ready for when he's older:

As alluded to in my previous post, I'd been trying to convert some additional Traitor Guard to make the squads in Blackstone Fortress up to ten man units, but after some fun kitbashing I just couldn't seem to get the heads to a point I was happy with them...

I struggled to find any donor heads that I liked, so tried to cast some, but results were... mixed. I think maybe since I had already built the miniatures it was a little tricky to make an easily useable mould...

Enthusiasm faltered somewhat after this. If anyone has any ideas for suitable heads (or spare heads from the BSF traitor guard left over from a conversion) let me know so I can rescue this project from limbo...

After this, I had a hankering for some 40k (a friend of mine had recently rekindled his own enthusiasm for 40k, and I'm easily swept along by enthusiasm), and dug out my abandoned paused Chaos Space Marine project. I mulled over what to do with them, and had a weird epiphany where suddenly the Black Legion made sense to me. Previously, they'd seemed like the Chaotic Ultramarines, the vanilla option, but as I was sifting through my bits box thinking what colour scheme would work for an army with Noise Marines, Plague Marines and some weird Dark Mechanicus stuff, something clicked in my head and I realized that the Black Legion are the best of all worlds - slap a snazzy black and gold paint job on any chaos mini and you've got a great looking veteran of the Long War ready to roll poorly shooting at less pointy Space Marines.

I built and undercoated a small force, but apparently I only managed to take a single picture of a chap that I converted to be wielding a melta gun before my attention wandered again:

(I also added a couple of bits to the Tally buying some Plague Marines, mostly because it was one of these minis that I saw a very nice Black Legion paintjob on that started the ball rolling in my mind...)

Taking a break from miniatures (because why focus on one hobby when you can spread yourself over three or four - see also videogames, binge-watching Parks and Rec with my wife as she's on Maternity Leave) I built some Gunpla:

Build Burning Gundam, beautiful and delightfully poseable, and also a valuable learning experience - don't use Tamiya panel liner accent colour like it's an ink wash, as it will eat through plastic:

(they were fixed with judicious application of glue, then sanding it back down and painting them to look like they had never been carelessly ruined).

Also - Wing Gundam Fenice, which is built, but still needs going back over to fix any seam lines, then painting and posing:

It's been a couple of months since reaching this point though...

Then, inspiration struck for a long back-burnered project:

Had a hankering to re-watch the film while my wife was out at a hen do, and set to digging out a selection of gribbly bits (and then watching the 2011 prequel, which honestly I enjoyed)

Ah, horrific aberrations in miniature form presented without comment. Inspiration burned fiercely and I finished building half a dozen or so miniatures, but ground to a halt somewhat when I couldn't find a suitably sized dog head that I liked. To see someone that actually finished their Thing project (and also that is good), click here for inspiration. If I make one more man-sized Thing, two more Spawn sized Things, and one boss sized Thing that should be enough to knock up some rules...

Then, running into a friend of mine, the conversation ran over a selection of RPG topics, touching on the Iron Kingdoms RPG, and I was reminded of how good the fluff is for Warmachine, with a complex, mulit-layered plot that actually advances. I had every MK1 book, and decided to go back and get caught up with everything I'd missed in the last decade (seriously, if you've never read any Warmachine lore, give it a go - I think they set up a company to generate steampunk war fiction and the wargame was just a happy accident that spun out of it). As these things tend to, this gave me a hankering to paint some miniatures. Handily, I already had a selection of miniatures in the Lead Mountain, and thus was able to dig out some bits and bobs without spending any money.

Well, that was the plan anyway.

What can I say, I was minding my own business trawling eBay and I'm a sucker for a bargain. Also for classic sculpts like this Haley. 

Side note: reading old issues of No Quarter, Kev White sculpted way more Warmachine and Hordes miniatures than I had previously realised. 

So yeah, Haley (because I love her in the lore. Not because she's an epic time controlling protagonist, but because she spends an amount of time going 'oh bugger it' which amuses me) and some Stormsmiths, because I like their triangulate ability, it appeals to the maths side of me.

Also, since I got Haley, I got her character Jack Thorn too so she'd have a friend. And a Squire, because I've wanted a little robot battery for a while.

So into the stripping pot they go:

(with a few chums)

Not everything I wanted to strip would fit in the pot though... There's a lunchbox full of leftovers I've got my eye on though as soon as I can slip it past my wife...

While we're on the subject of hits to the Tally, I found myself with an hour to kill between visits at work (darn trains) so nipped into a games shop that I'd never been into, and as you should always support local businesses that you enjoy or else they will disappear treated myself to some Thri-Keen from the Nolzur's miniatures line:

Probably not something I'd ever use, but I've got a soft spot for those wacky bug men. Anyway, there were no beholders.

So, four months of purchases brings the Tally to:

2 vs 27 = -25

Honestly, could have been way worse. 

I looked over the 2019 Challenge just in case I'd accidentally knocked something off, but no such luck. If I finish a miniature every other day until the end of the year, I should be able to cross off at least one thing...

While it may seem that I've mostly been building and accruing miniatures, some painting has occurred, it's just that I've generally got someone with me:

So, expect to see some finished miniatures in the near future...

(check out those liver spots - thanks to the Midwinter Minis painting videos for inspiring that)

Updated adventures in my stripping pot

For the first time in several years, I've completely emptied out my stripping pot!

Well, it really was an odd mix of bits and bobs - some metal Skaven Gutter Runners; some broken plastic marines that I think I had vague plans to try and refurbish into Heresy era marines; a couple of em4 post apocalyptic savages dug out of the miniature drawers to use as Fallout Raiders; an em4 figure that I'd earmarked as a potential basis for a Dirty Frank conversion but may have to abandon until I can find a more hunched figure; and a batch of em4 'not-terminators' that I'm torn between modelling as Fallout Synths or Hutt Battle droids for Star Wars (like the ones that appeared in the now defunct mobile game Star Wars Uprising), although I think with some careful colour choices I think I might be able to get away with using them for both...

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (16/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old) x2
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

I'm not intentionally working through them in order, I swear! Note to future Olly - watch some Planet of the Apes and get cracking on the monkey box!

In other news, I also reread pretty much the entirety of Sinister Dexter, so have a hankering to place a little order with East Riding Miniatures for a set of miniatures that look somewhat uncannily like the eponymous hitmen from the series. I have absolutely no use for them, realistically, though, so I might be able to resist.

The perils of stripping:

Note to future Olly from past Olly: next time you clear out your stripping pot, either stick to using the tweezers to fish bits out of the pot, or wear gloves, because a couple days after your hands start to fall off:

Well, I had been considering converting some Dark Vengeance cultists into Necromunda Scavvies, looks like I just got started on myself early...

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...

Gesso is black wizard juice!

Having read several peoples' success stories of using gesso to prime miniatures, I thought I'd give it a go. Mostly because when I spray undercoat miniatures, I have to do it in a carpark and it tends to rain whenever I do (apologies to everyone else in Kent for that).

Looking online, a pot of gesso tends to set you back around fifteen quid (or just under a tenner here:  Pebeo 500 ml Studio Acrylics Auxiliaries Gesso, Black ). In my local art shop though, I found a pot discounted to four pound something:

Score one to team me! Double score, as it's a non-toxic type, rather than one of the ones that give you cancer (seriously, I've seen the labels that warn about the carcinogenic nature of some gessos...).Having done plenty of research online about how much to apply, whether to thin the gesso and other hints and tips, I ignored it all and slapped some on a test mini:

An Artizan chap that was in the queue of things to undercoat. As you can (sort of) see, I slapped on a nice thick coat of gesso, poking it into all the nooks and crannies with a brush that I wasn't particularly attached to:

Leaving it overnight, I found that all the rumours about gesso are true, it's actually magical! as it shrinks as it dries, that globby, detail-drowned miniature dried into this:

Mmm, crisp. There were a couple of spots that were bare metal (where the gesso had shrunk), but that was easily remedied with another dabbing of gesso.

Fear factor aside (it's a bit disconcerting globbing gesso onto a miniature the first time), I think gesso is awesome, and may retire my cans of spray primer. It's cheaper, odourless, and I can do it in the comfort of being indoors. It's probably a little quicker too (for me, at least - when I spray undercoat, I spray the front, the back, each side and then front and back from an angle, and still usually need to give them a once over with a brush to hit some of the more awkward spots). But mostly because it works a little bit like magic!

Having been converted to the joys of gesso, I cracked on and undercoated some other goodies:

In non-gesso related news, another couple of Slayers have come out of the stripping pot:

(Yeah, I know. The Muppets are awesome.)