I aten't dead...

But I've had a busy four weeks - I got married at the end of August:

(this is the correct way to dance to 'Fett's Vette' by MC Chris)

and then honeymooned in Toronto (beautiful) and New York (awesome), and even had two thirds of Haim come up to me to compliment me on my choice of shirt, which was nice:

(here's my wife playing it cool hanging out with a couple of Haims)

We conquered various monuments and areas of natural beauty, ate a number of incredibly fine meals that would otherwise feed a small family, and I drank a rainbow assortment of flavours of Mountain Dew and delicious (and cheap! a pint and a half can is cheaper than a small bottle of coke!) hipster beer:

Returning to the UK has been busy too, both for having interviewed for (and gotten) a new job that I start this Sunday (hooray) and a death in the family (boo), which hasn't left me a lot of time for painting little men, and I'm a couple of months behind on reading everyone's blogs...

That doesn't mean I'm quitting the game, by any means, but there's still a ways to go before I'm back to finishing things with any sort of regularity to fuel blog posts... Although hopefully we should be starting a Dungeons & Dragons campaign soon. It's been on the cards for a while, as Uncle Johnny's wife (oddly) got the hankering after watching a documentary that portrayed Dungeon Masters as tragic figures, prone to suicidal thoughts and failed relationships, and asked me to DM as I'm A) the geekiest person they know, presumably, and B) I have the books (and hopefully C) unlikely to be dragged into a deep depression by DMing like every single DM in the documentary).

I'd been wanting to play for a while, but I'll settle for playing as the ego-maniacal one behind the screen:

The aforementioned busy times put it on hold for a while, but we should be ready to play imminently (we'd potentially be able to start sooner if I hadn't been raised the sort to scoff at the idea of playing with unpainted miniatures...)

As an aside, despite my wife's lack of geekiness, whenever we ended up going in a games shop on the honeymoon we ended up spending more on her than me - at Hairy Tarantula in Toronto, I picked up a couple of small Munchkin expansions and she decided that she needed more dice if she was going to play D&D (bearing in mind I bought her a set at Salute), as I manfully resisted the urge to pick up some Magic cards:

And when we went to the Compleat Strategist in New York, I frugally only bought myself a small sample of Reaper Bones (to use as the potential basis of a Song of Ice and Fire knightly conversion), but my wife saw a pack of barstaff Mouslings and demanded that I buy them and write them into the campaign somehow (god bless the old fantasy handwave of 'a wizard did it'):

Alas, this takes the tally to:

19 vs 434 = -425

The two and a half month break without completing any painting or posting makes it seem (as it does pretty much every year at around this time) unlikely that I'll be back in the black before the count resets with the New Year... But hey, I'd settle for getting back into the swing of painting... 

Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell

So, amidst converting some more Stark warriors, I thought I should probably make a start on converting a miniature of the guy that they're going to be dying in droves around: Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, ably portrayed in the telly series by Sean Bean (spoilers - he has the life expectancy of a character played by Sean Bean).

The base of my conversion was a Lord of the Rings Boromir miniature, as it had a tiny Sean Bean visage and  I quite liked the coat. The whacking great shield on his back had to go though, as did his somewhat cricket bat shaped sword and the horn of Gondor:

Which left me with this, Boromir looking slightly 'armless (teehee).

I read an interesting online discussion about who would win in a straight fight out of Jaime and Ned, had their duel not been interrupted, which raised the point of whether Ned would be carrying his Valyrian blade Ice while he's mooching around King's Landing. Conventional wisdom suggests no, but I reckon he would probably keep it with him at all times, for fear of losing it or needing to swiftly despatch some justice with a personal touch, so he got a new sword from a Ral Partha fighter (who is pegged to become the basis of a  Vargo Hoat conversion at some point):

Some gentle bending was required to reposition the sword arm to get it to fit. He also got a new left hand (from the Perry Mercenaries command sprue) - in the end it came down to a choice of two hands, a clenched fist from the Gripping Beast Vikings or this one, and my other half voted for the 'Bitch Please' / 'I Need Everybody to Just Calm the Fuck Down' hand...

As I'm sure you can't fail to notice, Ned also got a new cloak, to cover the scars left from removing the shield that was originally moulded to his back:

Instant Mould + Mordheim Middenheimer sprue + Greenstuff = new cloak! Truth be told, this was probably the result of the seventh or eighth attempt, as I was a little overkeen and kept trying to attach it before I'd left it to cure for long enough...

Once the cloak has finished curing overnight, I'll go back and use liquid Greenstuff to fix the slight gaps at his wrist and hand, as well as adding some detail into the indent that I made to show the cloak being affixed at his shoulders.


A while back, I mentioned to Rob that I was looking for some Warriors of Rohan to use as a basis for some Stark conversions, and he said that he might have a couple of spares knocking around. Then this week he brings me this:

You wouldn't think it, but you can fit fifty miniatures into an old GW box it turns out... as well as half a skeleton and a Lizardman shield. Also pictured is the replacement Legolas I'd been waiting for, which takes the tally to:

19 vs 431 = -412

Stark shields - one part moulding continues...

As you may have seen in my previous post,  the shields I'd ordered for my Stark troops turned up, so it's moulding time again:

Instant mould and boiling water leads to the usual unappealing looking Turkish Delight:

Which trims down to a much more appealing looking stamp:

Unlike previous attempts, with this mould I was able to transfer the greenstuff wolf head directly onto the recipient shield:

I think my previous attempts failed as I was trying to transfer detail that was too thin, but this wolf head is oldschool gw - nice and thick! Plonk the filled mould straight onto the shield, pop out the greenstuff, and then a quick clean up round the edges with a sharp knife and pow, the shield is ready to go. Multiple shields are ready to go, in fact:

Well, that was last night. Today was an unusually sunny day, and as my mother told me so often during my youth, you should go outside and get some fresh air - so I did:

Alas, some of the neighbours were enjoying the pleasant weather more traditionally, with thumping drum n bass, but I had Les Trucs to try and cancel out the noise... Much (much) filing of integral bases later (oh how I hate integral bases), a retreat indoors for dinner and some cutting and glueing later, and we have the beginnings of my House Stark warband:

Fireforge Men-at-Arms bodies with converted Gripping Beast Viking arms (my favourite being on the leftmost spearman, carefully removed from the body it was originally attached to to get the pose I wanted) and a mix of Fireforge and GB heads. The bowmen were already done (Fireforge bodies with Perry arms and accesories), I only actually got four miniatures built. Not a load, but it's a start - I'll probably add another chap with a sword and one with a spear, as well as a couple of guys with two-handed weapons, and maybe a knight or two (even though in the North they don't really have knights, but you know what I mean). Then I should probably start working out some stats and points values for these guys, before adding an Eddard Stark miniature so I can game the Ned/Jaime showdown:

I know, it was added for the TV series, but it's cool and easily gameable at skirmish level, what's not to love? As previously alluded to, I already have a miniature lined up for a Jaime conversion, and it turns out I forgot to add to the tally the miniature that arrived to be the basis for my Ned:

Oh Sean Bean, how handy it is that there's a readily available tiny metal version of your face. Alas, [spoilers] this conversion won't get much use [/spoilers], but still. Also pictured is a Rohan chap that was cheap from the same seller, that may or may not end up as the basis of a Robb conversion.

Actually remembering to include these two brings the tally to:

19 vs 382 = -363

I didn't think they existed anymore...

...but finding myself in Rochester with my beloved to meet our wedding photographer for a coffee, we found an honest to god bricks and mortar FLGS:

Rochester Games & Models! I'm still sad that I don't have a FLGS since Westgate Games went away, so I had to go in and investigate, and I'm happy that I did. Unfortunately we only had about quarter of an hour before we had to leave, so I didn't get to spend as much time as I'd have liked riffling through the racks of minis:  

I mean, they had everything from Ral Partha to Foundry and a ton in between! Alas, I didn't have time to buy any single miniatures (probably for the best, as I almost bought a copy of AFMBE on my way out, and in my state of hobby shop nostalgia could have walked away with a truckload more), but did pick up some boxes from fire forge that I'd been planning on ordering online, as well as a Perry medieval cottage (I'll update the tally when I'm not sat on a train back to Canterbury posting from my phone). 

Although ordering online would have saved me some money, I was more than happy to pay full retail to support a family business. Plus, it took the online retailer I was going to order from two weeks to get back to me with an answer to my stock question, the lady in the shop took seconds ;) 

Long story short, we're probably going to be coming back to Rochester in the future to investigate a bit more, and when we do I'll be setting aside some time to have a proper rummage...


[edit, now we're home:] as well as my unexpected purchase in Rochester, I've had a couple of other bits turn up:

Starting top left and working clockwise, we have:

• A plastic mounted Norman-looking type and some sort of spear-wielding chap on foot, surprise minis for my ASOIAF project in exchange for sending a nice chap over on the LAF a sprue of WF zombies 
• a half dozen LOTR minis, for Stark character conversions - for example, Theoden will likely be the basis of a Blackfish conversion (scale armour teehee),and Eowyn is an especially nice mini of a female in practical armour. The chap I bought these from sent me the wrong Legolas, but has very kindly offered to send the correct one (for a 'Theon: the early days' conversion) FOC, which is nice. 
• you can barely see them, but a bunch of hoplite shields for my planned Stark shield conversions and a Hasslefree 'Markus', to use as the basis of a conversion inspired by the limited edition Gale Force 9 illithid warrior - there was a bit of a saga with these, as my order email apparently went awry, but Dameon at Artemis Black's got it all straightened out and I have them now!

Which leaves the tally at: 19 vs 380 = -361 (I'm not counting the cottage as a miniature, so ner)

Lunchtime productivity

I've set myself up a little temporary paint station at work so I can get some painting done on my lunch break:

Word to the wise though - if you followed my instructions to make your own ghetto wet palette, you need to transport it very carefully as it's not actually watertight...

How long until this gets shut down?

(pic is a screen-cap from an online ad)

Considering there doesn't seem to be the usual Games Workshop copyright slapped all over this game (or even anywhere this game), it seems a lot like they're using a Space Marine to advertise it...

Sweepstake on how efficient GW drop pod lawyers are?

Experiments in one part moulding: the end, I guess...

So, some careful cutting and filing later, and we have a cutesy little lion that we can glue onto a modified shield donated by some Roman chaps:

Not just one, a whole bunch:

 For some I used green stuff, others a mix of green stuff and milliput. I think the green stuff casts feel like they've captured the detail better initially, but feel a little softer as I was handling them during clean-up, whereas the ones made using the milliput mix are rock hard and unlikely to deform, but lack the flexibility of their green stuff counterparts... Either way, I'm using a mix of both, as I'm trying to be less fussy. Less fussy, in that I discarded the rest of the casts of my converted Lannister guard helmet, as they all either broke or had imperfections that it was more work than it was worth to fix whilst cleaning them up, leading to making a couple of new moulds to cast some fresh ones, in green stuff this time:

Yes, my beloved finally gets to sit down at her sewing machine and I stick a bunch of tiny heads on sticks under her light, that's perfectly acceptable behaviour isn't it?

Quick, here's a pic of the bodies awaiting their new heads and shields to distract you from dwelling on my ungentlemanly behaviour:

Although the finecast hornblower needs a whole bunch of fixin' (not to mention a new weapon, as his flimsy original one didn't survive the journey to me...)