A long time coming...

Unbelievably, I finished painting the converted Lannister House Guard that I started way back in June 2013:

They're plastic Minas Tirith bodies with all insignia removed, with cast converted heads and roman oval shields with a cast on lion insignia from an Advanced Heroquest figure, led by a Finecast Minas Tirith hornblower with a Perry head (mostly for the pursed lips) and the sword that was broken by the lot he came in being sent in a bag with zero packaging material by an unthinking seller cunningly replaced with one from the Perry mounted men at arms set:

I filed away the front of the hand to allow the graft of the whole piece from the Perry set, rather than trying to pin a teeny thin blade onto his fist...

Completing these 8 miniatures doubles the current size of my Lannister forces, so I suppose I should get round to painting a hero type or two to lead them... 

(Ignore Dengar for now...)

Tally - 14 vs 15 = -1

I'm still here, honest...

So, things have been all quiet on the blogging front of late, as I now have somewhat reduced modelling space:

Yes, that's right, I am now the proud owner of one tiny ewok. She spends a lot of time sleeping currently, so I've been grabbing some modelling and painting time during my Paternity leave where I can...

Well, if by grabbing modelling and painting time you mean wildly procrastinating, watching blocks of Community on Netflix, or spending half an hour searching for your superglue because you can't remember where you put it when tidying away dangerous things ready for having a baby only to find that you did in fact put it somewhere sensible you just didn't look at the back of the modelling supplies cubbyhole... 

When I finally tracked down the necessary materials, I thought I'd crack on with the Jaime Lannister conversion that's been rattling around the Song of Ice and Fire project box for a ridiculous amount of time waiting for the right head transplant...

One Westwind Pictish head later and voila, we have a Jaime ready for painting. So, based on how long it took me to finish my Ned miniature, expect to see a post in two to three years...

After six months of being good, I had a little splurge though, and ordered a few bits for some Mass Effect inspired fun:

A limited edition Mantic figure that is 'heavily inspired' by the Geth. All I need to do now is work out whether I should spend infinity money on buying more of these, or should I see about casting up the head to use on donor bodies...

A Strider mech from Dreadball, because I got it for such a good price that I figured I could convert some weapons onto it rather than just coughing up the cash to pay full price for the Deadzone one that comes with weapon arms...

And also an Enforcer starter to convert into Cerberus Assault Troopers and the kickstarter exclusive figure to convert into a Quarian scavenger type. 

Alas, I still find myself searching for the right helmets for headswaps before work can begin in earnest - the general look I'm after is this:

The closest I've found is a Pig Iron head (top centre), but I'm still hoping there's something better that I have as yet to discover (anyone that can think of any I've not seen, drop me a comment and I'll love you forever)

Well, heads and the new Enforcer support booster and an Infinity ninja (to convert a Guardian and Phantom respectively), but then I'll be right on the productivity train (well, that or go back to looking for heads to Frankenstein onto Sedition Wars bodies...)

Tally - 6 vs 15 = -9

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...