Ned Stark, Warden of the North

With the expected imminent arrival of baby, I've not had my paints and tools out for a few weeks. With the expected delivery date for baby having been and gone though, I decided to put the finishing touches to my Ned Stark conversion:

Pow, 1 year, 7 months and 5 days from conversion to finished paint job! But hey, I had lunch with my mother today and she told me that she recently found a half-made cushion that she started twenty years ago, so I guess that's where I get it from...

And yes, I did go back and add grey hairs to his beard after re-reading his wiki page... 

Tally - 6 vs 0 = +6

Pathfinder - a first adventure

With the impending arrival of my daughter and the attendant construction of furniture and hiding of knives that that entails, I've not been able to get any painting time in, but fret Ye not fans of this blog, I've been getting in some alternate geekery in the meantime, playing in a Pathfinder campaign, the last session of which was last night...

My character, as previously posted

The original concept for my character was something along the lines of:

Vampire Hunter D 

meets 

Gungrave

But over the course of our level one adventure, he's turned more into 

Vash the Stampede

meets

Immortal Rain.

As is often the case, at level one, your heroic intentions are usually let down by your low ability scores, but more often than not it's been my dice rolling that has caused this! Whenever I have some elaborate plan (often culminating in a ridiculous one-liner), staring up from the table at me seems to be this:

Elaborate acrobatics to spring at the villain's wife whilst disguised in his clothes and lying in the road covered in blood? Oh no you don't, and take a flash bomb to the eyes!

Also, my originally planned dark, brooding outsider with a dark secret and a dark past (did I mention dark enough times?) has found himself the face of the group, in part due to our party composition (one player is very reserved, the other took roleplaying as 'hurr, I'm a dwarf, I hit it with my hammer' while he still turned up), and in part due to me being a goon. He's gone from moody badass to goof with a determination for theatrics in very little time, and I'm okay with that!

We played through the published adventure Murder's Mark, which despite a couple of niggles was good fun - although it was quite slow going at times, as we approached the murder mystery with the determination of a CSI team, sure that if we asked the right questions (of everyone that could talk) and prodded every thing that we could prod, we'd find the right clues to piece together the puzzle and work it out for ourselves, rather than what would have been faster, bobbing along from encounter to encounter and having it revealed to us at the end! 

Long story short - we blundered into who was behind a string of murders, generally talking our way out of fights (as we're in the middle of a city, and trying to avoid devolving into murder hobos), accidentally murdered an innocent dwarf along the way (in the middle of the enemy lair, the one time I shoot first it's a prisoner being pushed into the room), and got handshakes and rewards from the grateful citizenry. The villain's wife, however, managed to escape (as our high speed chase was somewhat hampered by working out how to lower a wolf down a 25' shaft rather than leave him behind), so it looks like that will be our next adventure, to our GMs surprise - perhaps he assumed we'd rise above petty vengeance?

And so, Ichabod is level 2, with enough gold to fancy up his firearm, and we go on hiatus until my daughter is born, when hopefully he'll spend more time succeeding at needlessly acrobatic theatrics, and less time bleeding out...

House Stark marches to war in the New Year!

Having chipped away little by little, I've managed to get the 5 House Stark conversions that I'd previously posted finished:

Which brings my Stark forces to 13 minis total - I should really finish up statting up the various troop choices so that I can paint to a points limit or force organization of some sort rather than just what I fancy building at any particular time!

Tally:

5 vs 0 = +5

New year, new Starks!

Trying to stick to the plans of the year before last, here's a wip pic of some House Stark troop conversions I've been working on:

The archers are mostly from the new Perry Agincourt sprues, whilst the rest are a mix of Fireforge and Gripping Beast bits to get the look I was after. My possible favourite of the bunch would maybe have to be the mace wielding chap, as he looks almost sad that he's about to have to brain someone...

He'll stab you in the spleen and then suck out your brains...

After several months of cutting (literally, not figuratively, as it was quite a nice head that I'd like to use somewhere else that was awkwardly placed in a high collar and so required careful shallow cuts from several angles), I finally managed to remove the head from the Hasslefree figure for this conversion:

Essentially, he's Markus, a Mark Evans sculpt from Hasslefree, with a minion from Crooked Dice head and the sword from a GW Boromir figure. What would drive a man such as myself to combine such an odd assortment of parts you might ask? This:

A couple of Salutes back, I saw this limited edition Gale Force 9 Dungeons & Dragons box set of an Illithid Raiding Party, and was quite taken with the idea of a swashbuckling scoundrel Illithid. Not wanting to spend £40 to get a single figure though, bathe idea was abandoned to sit in my hindbrain and wait for the right alignment of parts to show themselves...

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! 

Just what are you lot up to?

As I generally post and view blogs from my smartphone via various apps, I don't often actually sign into blogger and see my traffic stats, traffic sources and so on. Finding myself sat on a rail replacement bus, today I thought I'd have a nose and see if any interesting search terms had lead people to my corner of the internet, and discovered this:

Femtrooper porn? I'm sorry that this wasn't what you were looking for...