All dwarfs are bastards in their fathers eyes...

So, having acquired the body for my Tyrion conversion (as mentioned in a previous post), I was still left trying to find a suitable head. I'd originally assumed that once I had the body in hand, inspiration would strike me like a lightning bolt (or a lightning lord), but alas nothing was coming to me. So I put the question to John, who came up with not just answers, but bits:

A variety of plastic heads, as well as an old Citadel warrior (as he'll probably look suitable with his plume chopped off) and a plastic chap from the Perrys, which he thought would make a good head donor for a Ramsay Bolton conversion, should I ever get round to modelling him. Minus two to the tally:

8 vs 24 = -16

But plus one to me being able to convert a miniature that I'll later be able to paint, so I guess that evens out? Karmically, if not mathematically for the tally...

And so, to start the conversion, the old head had to come off:

I carefully removed the helmeted head with a sharp knife and saw, and have dutifully stored it in my bits box, even though it's incredibly unlikely I'll ever need a hobbit head wearing a Minas Tirith helmet for a future conversion (but the packrat gamer in me insists that you never know when something will come in handy...). There were a couple of heads that I considered using, which were dutifully stuck on with blutac to be judged:

The former head won, because A) it's in focus, and B) it's better looking, both in terms of shaggy hair and fairness of face. I'm not slaving exclusively to the vision of either the TV Series or the books (or the card game, the art from which can be viewed here), but picking and choosing whichever suits me more, or in this case, a mashup of everything that stews in my brain... Beauty contest judging over, it was time to start the actual converting - cutting away the model's sword:

which involved a great deal of careful sanding to ensure that the surrounding detail wasn't obliterated by my clumsy cutting, so that I could pin in his new weapon, an axe:

The axe came from the Bretonnian Men-at-Arms sprue, and was chosen because it was small enough that it looked like a dwarf would be able to wield it, but chunky enough that it would take a pin (as I didn't fancy it falling off when I came to pain the model). It originally had a small pouch attached to it (as it is designed to be modelled hanging from a soldier's belt) but this was carefully cut and filed away. I did briefly consider giving him a fancier weapon (perhaps the hand axe from the Empire Greatwsords kit, but I don't have one of them unfortunately), but thought that the one I ended up using looked nice and brutal, a practical weapon for swinging into bellies, and cutting foes down at the knees. In hindsight, it's perhaps a little chunky, but alas these are the sacrifices we make sometimes...
Once that was done, it was a case of attaching the new cleaned-up head:

with a lot of careful sanding, to both the neck area to receive the pin and the head itself to shape the neck to fit against the body, as well as to reshape the chin. Funnily, when I was sanding down his chin, I slipped and took the tip of his nose off (spoilers if you've not read Clash of Kings - this didn't ruin the model). Then came using green stuff to fill the slot in the base and (again after some careful sanding) to turn his bare hobbit feet into little boots:

As I was uploading the pictures to write this post, I realised that I needed to lengthen the haft of the axe a little, to make his grip on it look a little more realistic - the green stuff is currently curing on it as I type, so I've added it in using some seamless photoshop Microsoft Paint work...

Which is the completed conversion, seen here with a half-painted Hasslefree beauty and a Heroquest Chaos Sorceror for scale:

Come Salute, I'm sure I'll be wandering past the Perry Miniatures stand and end up buying some troops to fight and die for him...

Judge Minty, Hobbits, and a Game of Thrones...

So, some goodies arrived for me:

The latest Frothers charity miniature, Judge Minty (complete with signed picture of Edmund Dehn), which is absolutely beautiful (as if you'd expect anything else from Kev White), and a couple of hobbits picked up on eBay. The one on the left will probably get a weapon swap and his shield sanded flat and be used for dungeons & dragons, and the little chap on the right  was bought to use for a Tyrion Lannister conversion.

Yeah, so I guess I started a new project. I gave the Game of Thrones TV series a second chance (the first time round, I watched five episodes back to back and got bored), this time watching it with my young lady, and got suckered in. So much so that I ended my Song of Ice and Fire embargo and bought the rest of the books (I read the first one a while back, and decreed that I wouldn't read the rest straight away, lest I read nothing else but them for the following months. That and the fact that it'll probably be a decade before the series gets finished...). I spent a while looking at various medieval miniature ranges, planning hypothetical conversions... Until I mentioned the project to John, who disappeared into the loft and dug me out some Perry mounted Men at Arms that he'd bought at a previous Salute and never used:

Because he's awesome like that. So, cool toys to cut up, but a hit to the tally:

8 vs 22 = -14 back into the negatives, for now...

However, using this as inspiration:

(awesome conversion by Mr.J over on the LAF)

It shouldn't belong before I'm back into the positives... (he says, having a strange sense of deja vu knowing there's a package on it's way from eBay...)

Speaking of eBay, I'm selling things to fund my upcoming wedding and offset the imbalance created by starting a new project - mostly manga currently, but the shinies will be on later (well, there's a BPRD heroclix set and a box of Dreamblade miniatures up now, if that takes your fancy): my eBay sales link

The dead rise, and distractions...

So yeah, another quiet spell... Stuff's been happening, but I didn't want to make yet another post without any painted miniatures... But before we get to that, time for some blather!
(Although I'm not above slipping in a teaser pic of most of the painted miniatures, since that's a more interesting picture for peoples' newsfeeds...)

So, I finally got my Knight Models Arkham City models that Nicole ordered me for Christmas:

A Joker Crew and Harley Quinn, and Killer Croc to get me started. Well, that and a number of Heroclix sculpts currently taking a bath:

Although the paint on these more recent Heroclix releases seems somewhat unwilling to shift, even with the attention of the ever-trusty surgical spirit. It's probably worth mentioning a few things about Rocket Hobbies (the peeps that supplied us with such loveliness): they're awesome, they're our new FLGS, and they're a nightmarishly far way away from civilization to get to on foot. Especially when you're trekking down with someone that's just got over the flu because you think the fresh air will do them good. Ignore Google maps too, it's further than it looks and leads you down unlit backstreets and tries to make you climb barbed wire fences. But once you get there, you get Batman toys, so it's super worth it!

As was the original plan, all focus has shifted to this Batman project and Path to Glory (the Nurgle warband is now all converted and currently undercoated).

Until John came and told me his wife wanted to play dungeons and dragons.

Obviously, I assumed he was lying, and accused him of using his wife as a screen to ask me to play geeky games.

But then his wife mentioned that she fancied trying dungeons and dragons (after watching a documentary that mostly portrayed dungeon masters in a rather unhappy light, oddly). Which puts me here:

Trying to write an introductory adventure that's both interesting and straightforward enough to both entertain and simultaneously not put off five players of various experience levels. As was inevitable, I've gotten distracted from the finer details and plotted some campaign arcs that could last five years (Damn you extensive series of articles on dungeon mastering by celebrity DM Chris Perkins). But hey, once that's out of my system I can get back to writing an adventure that would work both as a one-shot or as a lead-in to a longer campaign... Either way, it's the perfect excuse to post my desktop background on the blog:

Heehee dinosaurs performing archetypical RPG roles, complete with wizard hat.

Which brings us to the painted miniatures:

7 zombies from heresy, as I need some undead goons to throw at players. (Oh, did I forget to mention that I'm one of those people that wants to use miniatures rather than tokens for RPG combat?) There were originally 8, but the other one (see here, although while looking for a pic I realised I also own the fantasy zombies sculpted by Steve Buddle, and perhaps should have painted them up too) I purloined for the zombie project, as I liked it so much...

Having decided that 7 miniatures wasn't enough to paint to break a six month drought, I also painted up this:

Some spectre looking creep that was originally a Mage Knight Dungeons monster - he was painted using thin layers over a layered grey undercoat to make him look a bit spooky (and just to clarify, the grey bits at the edges are smoke as he 'bampfs' in and out of the material plane to take a swing at a PC, not badly sculpted fur...)

Which brings the tally to: 8 vs 7 = +1 - back into the positive for the first time in what feels like forever!
The main problem I have now is that anything that falls into the bracket of 'generic fantasy miniature' is going to be assumed to be in the adventure I'm going to run... But I'm sure I can find some way to cram in a few surprises...

I'm not dead!

...I've just been busy...

Busy enough that I've missed my traditional year in review posts, the blogs second anniversary, as well as a million and one other things. Despite the lack of posts for a couple of months, the blog seems to still have gotten some traffic, so thankyou and apologies to everyone who visited while I was away. But hey, let's play catch-up now!

Abridged 2012 in review - the tally ended up at 68 vs 171 = -103, so perhaps the less said the better (although it isn't as bad a position as the previous year, so hey, small victories). And yes, I still haven't finished painting a miniature since moving house. But that's not to say I haven't done anything hobby related, just not a great deal...

Projects:

As I'm getting married this year, there can be no new projects started, and I should probably focus on just painting miniatures that I already have. We'll see how that turns out, but it's good to get the intent down in writing surely?

And thus, the official list of projects is as such:


Path to Glory:

This is my Nurgle warband as it stands:

Pretty much ready to go with the exception of a Spawn. As previously mentioned in this post, my plan is to convert a Spawn inspired by one of my favourite old conversions, with the body of the original Beast of Nurgle. Handily, I recently managed to acquire this:

Which unfortunately takes the new tally down to 0 vs 1 = -1

So all I need now is a suitably old-school looking Chaos Warrior to hack in half and then I'll be ready to actually start painting them! I'm quite fond of the old Nurgle warrior with a horned helm and bulbous sword, but they don't seem to turn up on eBay when I want them... (hint, hint)

Admittedly, I did also roll up a Slaanesh warband, which I planned to convert from Dark Eldar miniatures (Lelith Hesperax conversion for champion, Wyches as the basis for warriors and Wracks as the basis for Chosen), but the price of that little warband would be be obscene (based mostly on having to buy a box of finecast Wracks) for the number of miniatures I'd actually use, so that one may have to go onto the backburner...

I've also been making some Chaos terrain to use for Path to Glory, but that's not finished yet, so I'll save that for another post...


Batman:

Knight Models Arkham City miniatures are lovely. Just lovely. So lovely that it spurred me to get round to playing Arkham Asylum. And now Arkham City. My lovely young lady ordered me a bunch of the miniatures for Christmas, which alas are still yet to arrive, so in the meantime I've been buying magazines to get batmobiles and stripping heroclix:

As lovely as the Knight Models miniatures are, I'll still be using heroclix for a number of characters, as a) I already have a bunch; and b) in some cases I prefer the comicbook character designs to the Arkham City ones (Scarecrow, for example - as kooky as the computer game design is, I think I'll stick with an oldschool look..)


Zombieslayer/Slayers:

I still plan on doing something along these lines, although the large themed Undead and Empire armies may have to wait in favour of painting a Slayer or two here and there in between other projects. I had a dig through my box of Slayers the other day to see which sculpts I was missing, and discovered that while there are a few varieties left to collect, I also have some that aren't listed in the 'Collecting Dwarfs' book:

For example, both the musician and the standard bearer are different to the one in the book, as well as a couple of Slayers looking like variations of the ones pictured (the ones next to the picture rather than on top of it)... And don't worry, I have more Slayers than this, these are just the basic Slayers (although if anyone has any I'm missing and fancies a trade, let me know!)

Gotrek and Felix may also get painted at some point, but then I'd have to paint some Skaven, and buy a copy of Warhammer quest for obscene amounts of money to get the dungeon tiles and cards...


Star Wars:

Although I'm still planning on getting round to painting enough figures from the classic trilogy for some skirmish gaming, I'm also quite taken with the idea of running a game recreating Grievous' kidnap of Palpatine - I've already got the Knight Models Grievous and Magnaguards, plus my Christmas Stocking had this:

I've got a WOTC Shaak Ti squirreled away somewhere, so all I'd need would be a Roron Corobb and a Foul Moudama and I'd be ready to go - and yes, to pre-empt any hardcore nerds asking where's Roth-Del Masona and B'ink Utrila, I'm basing it on the animated series canon directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, because I think it's cool. So Ner ;)

On the Star Wars front, I'm also now the proud owner of a copy of the Star Wars: X-Wing game, so I had a dig to see if I had any ships in a useable scale and came up with these:

Plus the obligatory Slave-I:

So I'm sure something can be done with all this...


Other bits and bobs:

Halo, ROTPOTA and the zombies project aren't forgotten about, but I have no specific plans for them at this point in time. The Halo project is ready to go for PVP games, so I might start painting some Flood or Covenant if the mood takes me (aka when I get round to playing through Halo 3, ODST and Reach...). Blood Bowl is still on the cards, as I could finish my team with a single day of focus, but don't expect that to happen any time soon. Rob's painting Warmachine stuff at the minute, which whenever he tells me about it tempts me to dig out my unfinished Mercenaries... or my unpainted Cygnar... or my unbuilt Cryx... Tavo's threatening to run an RPG, so my attention could swing back round to the generic fantasy miniatures... Uncle Johnny's cleaning up a dozen or so epic titans at the minute, which is a pretty tempting prospect too... Talking of Uncle Johnny, we managed to get a game of Battle for Armageddon in a while back:

 Despite a number of tactical blunders on my part (going against canon with a misunderstanding of the rules led to my Gretchin being at the back - I assumed that I'd be able to punch a hole in the Imperial lines by throwing all my good stuff forward from the get-go, not realising how debilitating attrition would be...)

Starting to get my head round how the game worked I started pressing forward...

And forward, grinding through hives as I went...

At which point, despite a couple of stupid bold death or glory strikes that left me losing a couple of vital counters as they either smashed face first into John's defences or were cut off from supply...

I managed to pile enough counters around the last hive to topple it with a few choice dice rolls, winning me the game, and proving once again that whenever John and I play a game the stars seem to align to allow me the right combination of luck, skill, handsomeness, modesty, and sheer jamminess.

 Right, that's probably about three months worth of posting in a single post right there...

A Champion Rises!

Finally managed to get my hands on the Nurgle Champion I wanted to lead my Path to Glory warband thanks to eBay and a chap in New Zealand:

Which takes the tally to:

68 vs 171 = -103

All I need now is the Spawn and I'll have all the miniatures I need to make my warband, and there's an auction on eBay ending tomorrow with the bits that I need for that conversion...

Alas, no other progress has been made, as we're still unpacking, hence the 17" pile of White Dwarfs currently in the middle of the living room:

That's not all of them though, as there are still more to be found in boxes yet unpacked, and that's nothing compared to the 29" pile of rulebooks in the corner... Once everything's found, it'll get put on the correct shelf, and then I can start unpacking the boxes labelled 'tools & toys' that I've been saving as a reward for myself for unpacking every other single thing we own... Speaking of things found, I found this in my Space Marine Codex:

A colour scheme chart for a Space Marine army that still consists of a single half-painted miniature. And yes, although there are various online colourscheme editors available, I did trace this and colour it in with felt tip pens. That's just how I roll.

Mystery miniature

aka Uncle Johnny fights the tally...

An old rust monster (because I loves them. Also owlbears. And Myconids.); some Aliens (from Leading edge); a WEG Darth Vader (because we love the Wars) some zombie ogre looking chap (because a while back I mentioned that I was looking to make some sort of ogre unit filler for my eventual Zombieslayer project); a Warzone chap of some sort (because John gave me several baggies of them a while ago); an awesome mummy that I'd been after for a while (is it an old citadel one?); the chap from Heroquest that always gets painted up like skeletor; and a mystery monster because I like 'weird' miniatures:

Anyone have any ideas what he is or who made him?

This little care package takes the tally to:

68 vs 170 = -102

It's still doable!

In other news, I still have as of yet to make any progress on my Path to Glory warband, mostly because I've not yet been able to unpack my tools (I did open the box with my WIP conversions in, thinking I'd packed the basics in there, but it turns out I was too organised and actually packed all my tools away...)

[Brief diversion]: The one good thing about moving? Getting to read all the odd comments and comics that I'd previously written on various boxes whilst sick of packing:

They're like a gift from past me to future me (who is now present me).

(a picture as non-sequitur as that last sentence...)

However, Rob did drop in some Chaos Warrior heads for my planned Marauder conversions though, so as soon as I've got access to knives and glue again we're good to go!

Speaking of conversions, I'm sure I mentioned a while ago that I couldn't find any pictures of a couple of old chaos spawn conversions that I was thinking about recreating... Turns out that whilst they are not anywhere on the internet (well, they probably are, but nowhere I could find them), they were in fact in an old White Dwarf in Uncle Johnny's library:

Barbarian + wolf + spawn bits conversion I was originally considering...

Slug body Spawn! As it's a Nurgle warband I'm making, I think this is the one I will use for inspiration. Unfortunately, this is the conversion that isn't included in the article, so if anyone has a copy of the 'Citadel Miniatures Modelling Guide' you could make me very happy...

Also, if anyone has the beast of nurgle that the slug body is from that you don't want anymore, let me know...

And lo, I return...

...post-move, post-Reading Festival, and post-birthday (not in that order). Nicole went all-out this year, and amongst the piles of other presents was an order confirmation for some Games Workshop goodies that I got to pick up yesterday:

Dark Vengeance (cultists woo!), as well as the Mordheim Frenzied Mob and an Undead warband, both of which made their way onto my birthday list as part of the long planned Zombieslayer project. Speaking of the birthday list, I emailed some bits and bobs to Nicole, including the 1989 Nurgle Champion with Halberd that I'm currently after, which a GW employee apparently claimed could be ordered... alas, he was wrong. Does anyone have one? I tried over on the LAF, but so far all quiet... This chap:

So, piles of miniatures: good for making me happy, not so good for the tally:

68 vs 161 = -93

Poop.

Post-move, we're partially unpacked, but all my toys are still locked away in their boxes, so no positive swings to the tally just yet. Path to Glory remains a priority though (as long as I don't get distracted by the shiny new push-fit Dark Vengeance plastics), with the Marauders at the top of the list.

Speaking of the move, whilst on a jolly up to Ikea to buy furniture (yes, and stock up on cork), we nipped into Bluewater where I was able to snap a couple of pics of the Ork Baneblade painted by John of John's Toy Soldiers:

Gorgeously modelled and painted, and worth having a nose at if you find yourself in the area!