The year of the plague (doctor)

Whilst it may have been a while since my last confession, do not think that I have been idle! Although admittedly the things that have taken up most of my time aren’t finished yet, so you won’t see the fruits of that this post...

My Salute order from Fenris arrived, and had a free miniature in, taking another point off of the Tally:

(I’ve also placed and received another order since that I apparently forgot to take any pictures of, but it was some walls and rubble, so no effect on the Tally)

The chum who waved Rangers of Shadow Deep under my nose was considering ordering a couple of Frostgrave sprues to try them out, so I offered to trade him one of my Soldier 1 sprues if he ordered a couple of Soldier 2, so I find myself in possession of this bunch of lovely ladies:

He also threw in Mad Donna, because my friends are generous to a fault. 

The box I delivered the week before:

I threw in a couple of interesting bits from the Barbarian sprues as well in case he fancied taking a barbarian companion for his own solo ROSD games...


At ten to midnight on the day that Partizan would have been, I found myself idly scrolling the Crooked Dice web store, and ordered myself a Captain Scarlet lookalike as it was on sale (which has led to me spending the last week or so of lockdown watching the original series while I do the washing up, and considering ordering a load more to do an entire Spectrum force, but I’ve managed to hold off thus far as I’ve only undercoated this first one so far!)

My order came with another freebie as well, tugging the Tally even further into the red (or should that be scarlet)...

Finally, I ordered a pack of Copplestone Giant Spiders that I’d need for the first couple of ROSD scenarios, seen here with Captain Scarlet for scale: 

They’re horrible, in a good way. I thoroughly enjoyed bending their little legs and mandibles around to get a variety of poses!


It hasn’t all just been me gingerly receiving packages at arms length from the postman though; having vowed to any gods that would listen that I would dedicate myself solely to finishing miniatures and terrain needed so that I could play the first couple of Rangers of a Shadow Deep of course the first thing that I’ve finished isn’t actually for that:

A plague doctor from CP Models, that I have no real need for but it caught my fancy, given the state of current affairs. Maybe I’ll claim it’s the first model in an Assassin’s Creed miniatures project that I haven’t started yet...

Lots of dry brushing to grubby him up as he stalks his way through the plague choked streets made this a relatively quick and satisfying paint job to complete, which brings the Tally to:

3 vs 68 = -65

What’s next? The miniatures needed for ROSD are half completed, so shouldn’t take much longer to get over the finish line. I’m about halfway through painting the buildings that I knocked up for the first scenario, but I find painting terrain much less entertaining than miniatures, so I’m jumping back and forth between the two currently...

In other news, after killing the blogger app, it seems they’ve now updated it so that it’s almost unusable in Chrome on my iPad. This post was brought to you by emailing the post to blogger as suggested by a quick google, that not working at all, and so flip flopping between various applications and drafts copying and pasting chunks, then doing it all again when none of the pictures worked. How is everyone posting? And if you’re also having to jump through these hoops, how do you deal with that frustration?

Doctor Aphra, I presume?

This year’s May the Fourth miniature is this Doctor Aphra expy:

Originally released for Rogue Stars, I thought she’d make a delightful stand-in for Chelli Aphra (it’s the goggles, more than anything else!), everyone’s favourite Archaelogist/downright awful human being.

I was tempted to try and add a flying cap too, but thought it would be a shame to lose the nicely sculpted hair - hey, people take hats off sometimes you know!

I read the entire run of comics she appeared in earlier this year, highly recommended for anyone that’s a fan of shenanigans, murder droids, and further shenanigans. There’s also a run drawn by Kev Walker, which is always a win in my book! As previously mentioned, she’s a terrible human being, and I love her.

The miniature isn’t an exact match for Aphra’s comic outfit, so I went for something evocative rather than an exact match. I’d originally intended to paint the jacket a reddish brown, with an orange collar to more closely match her comic appearances, but after putting on a base coat of Mephiston Red I was so enamoured with it I just carried on! I gave the collar a bit of orange detail though as a nod:

Also, she was painted over a grey undercoat, and between that and the delightful Mark Copplestone sculpt was an absolute pleasure. From this experience, I think I’m now sold on grey under coats over black, although even with the light box my pictures don’t quite show the colours properly, so here’s a wonky picture of me holding her a bit closer to the lights in the hopes of showing that I do in fact apply the occasional highlight to my miniatures:

Ah, you’ll just have to take my word for it!

If I see the murder droids that are her sometimes companions, sometimes foes in a bargain bin at a show, I'll grab them to keep her company, but for now she's flying solo, and finishing her brings the Tally to:

2 vs 56 = -54

Next: who knows? There are a variety of odds and ends on my paint palette, but on the other hand, I'm just about to start the Witcher series again, so I may get sidetracked making miniatures from that universe...

Virtual Salute 2020 and lockdown hobby progres

I didn't get to go to Salute last year, as it was to close to my son's due date (spoilers: he ended up being born nearly two weeks late, a good month after Salute!), and having only missed the show once in the last however long I was looking forward to going this year.

Alas, with everything going on the world it wasn't to be, but I thought I'd recreate the experience at home by spending the day ordering myself miniatures instead (thank goodness for enforced lockdown reducing our spending on frivolities to allow us to justify a treat like this!), occasionally tweeting using the hashtag #virtualsalute2020.

Whilst it's not the same (I did especially miss the picnic that my friend Joe normally brings), my children made sure that I was suitably sleep deprived to recreate the 'up at 5 to catch a coach' feeling, and so coffee in hand I placed some orders! Then over the next fortnight (as the postal service is understandably variable currently) parcels of joy started arriving on my doorstep!

First of all was a package from Anvil Industry:

Having been enamoured with Zona Alfa and seeing a lot of cool minis over on the Facebook group, I picked up some PMC type chaps as well as a load of guns, pouches and whatnot that should allow me to convert any number of modern miniatures (as I'd been struggling somewhat, as my bits box is largely fantasy and science fiction based, with a grand lack of AK47s). I also ordered their rat swarm miniatures after seeing them on Ash Barker (of Guerrilla Miniature Games) Instagram (and he was nice enough to respond when I asked him where they were from).


Next, was Bad Squiddo Games:

I have coveted this set of resin foodstuffs for a couple of years now, but generally at Salute by the time Annie's stand has quietened down enough for me to get in there these have sold out, so now was the perfect time to acquire them. They've already seen use, but as props in homeschool math exercises (as daughter didn't want to play a math game, but was perfectly happy to come to 'Daddy's generic fantasy shop' and work out how many pieces of stock had been taken by raiding barbarians...)

Seeing everyone else posting their parcels made me wish I'd bought a few more things from Bad Squiddo, but alas there are only so many hobby funds and I wanted to place orders with a couple of companies...

Next was Crooked Dice:

Essentially, the Militia 2 set that I didn't order on their Birthday, as well as some other odds and ends, including some X-Commandos that I thought would make good stalkers for Zona Alfa with a head swap and some additional gubbins from my Anvil order. Also included was a freebie of a guy holding a crow, which was nice!

Then came Mantic:

As soon as I'd heard that Salute was being postponed, I panicked a little bit, as I hadn't ordered this last year when it was originally available, as I was going to get it from them direct at Salute. Thankfully (after a week or two of tweeting at them whenever I could) Mantic found some stock at the back of the warehouse that they made available to order (and were nice enough to message me to let me know that it was going live so that I didn't miss out). It's a lovely sculpt, so I'm incredibly happy that I was able to get one.

Then came CP Models, who wouldn't have been at Salute but I had been meaning to put in a little order with them for a while:

Some fungus faces (for the long postponed The Last of Us project), Mei-Lin the ex-Statuesque Fembot (for cyberpunk), a Batt-Ball player that I've had my eye on for a training droid for a Scarfworld introductory scenario, and a plague doctor, as a sign of the times. They also threw in a freebie set of alien heads, that I'm sure I'll be able to find a use for.

Still to come is a little order from Fenris of some scenery bits, but there's no miniatures in it so it won't affect the Tally!

Salute wasn't the only thing to affect the Tally though...

As previously alluded to, but not actualy posted about on the blog thus far, I placed a a little Crooked Dice order on their birthday:

Mostly for that cyberpunk girl with a robot arm, which is essentially the perfect sculpt for my feelings towards the genre (I walked out of the cinema after watching Alita filled with a desire to play a game where you buy robot arms). Word to the wise though - although you can't tell in the pictures on the webstore, the miniature has very prominently sculpted nipples, which is an ... interesting choice. Maybe they're also a cybernetic upgrade? I may give them a little file before I undercoat her lest they draw attention away from her aforementioned sweet robot arm... 

As well as this, Uncle Johnny (who lives not half a mile down the road from us) was after a 1/48 scale US Army helmet to put onto a smaller scale miniature to see if it looked better than the existing oversized one, so daughter and I dutifully used our daily exercise allowance to go for a walk and slip the following into their letterbox:

Obviously, as Uncle Johnny is far too generous by half, he left a bag of treats on the doorstep for me:

He'd previously asked if I fancied a sprue of German Infantry when I had bemoaned my lack of non-fantasy miniatures to kitbash bandits for Zona Alfa, and due to hating the idea that I might finish the year with the Tally in the positive he stuck in a whole box! I may have to take just the one sprue and post the rest back through his door to keep the hit to the Tally down... There's also a load of small Star Wars helmets on display stands, as apparently he ended up with a load of duplicates whilst filing gaps in his collection...

So. all in, the Tally stands at:

1 vs 56 = -55

(I only counted one sprue of the germans)

Don't worry, if you know what time of year it is you'l know that there's going to be at least one point put on the other side of the scale very soon...

Due to being furloughed from work during the ongoing lockdown, I've also managed to get some hobby time in. Not much mind, as most of my time is spent homeschooling, cooking, or doing one of the seventeen loads of washing up we apparently produce daily by all being at home, but some nevertheless.

Firstly, I've been sprucing up some Mantic ruins to use for Zona Alfa:

It took a long time to green stuff away the connector holes, but after a couple of weeks doing a little here, a little there, they're now finally ready for painting.

Then, a buddy messaged me about Rangers of Shadow Deep, and I thought 'a solo wargame that I could play using miniatures I already have? that sounds doable' so I find myself making a village:

(the eagle-eyed among you will notice that this picture was taken moments before I realized that I'd stuck the wall on upside down - I only noticed because the gap in the thatch didn't align with the doorway, not the fact that the door didn't touch the ground...)

Whilst technically I would be able to play RoSD sooner than ZA, as I have to paint all the miniatures for ZA, whereas RoSD I can mostly fill the ranks with the generic fantasy miniatures I've painted over the years (although sidenote, I apparently don't have any giant spiders, which is going to be an issue with the first narrative arc of the campaign that comes in the main rulebook), scenery is another matter, as I don't have any rivers, or bushes, or trees, so I'm going to have to make some generic fantasy terrain! To that end, although I have most of the material I'd need, I made some of my own flock:

Sawdust plus paint, simple! Given how much I want to make (and also doing it quarter of an hour at a time means fairly straightforward tasks can take days) it looks like lockdown will end before I get a solo game in, but who knows...

And at first he didn’t hear what this talking key was shouting...

This month’s competition over at the Zona Alfa Facebook group was for a single character miniature, so here is my entry! I spent February thinking ‘I’ve got plenty of time’, then March really spiralled out of control!

Government mandated lockdown has meant I was able to have a natural light photo shoot in the garden, which was nice:

Ah, scavenge-y...

He’s the ten year anniversary miniature for the Post Apoc forum produced by Mattblackgod, with a pistol donated from a Heresy Miniatures ganger. He’d been sat on my desk for the best part of a couple of years, as I’d been indecisive about what to equip him with - originally I’d use him with my Fallout project, and convert him to be holding some sort of rusty pole, but I couldn’t find anything the right thickness to use...

Then Zona Alfa came along and he got expedited up the painting queue! I’m especially fond of what I can only assume is a tactical Camembert hanging from the back of his belt...

Painting him was mostly an exercise in ‘how many different greens can I use?’

He’ll either be a green recruit, or an objective that you have to escort somewhere (for those of you that have read Roadside zpicnic, think of him as a living key...)

So first miniature finished of the year gets a point on the Tally, although since my last post 8 also bought a second copy of the first Mortal Realms magazine to fuel my bits box, as well as a copy of the second issue (because cheap snoopy banshees was too hard to resist!)

Tally:

1 vs 30 = -29

This isn’t the only hobby work that’s been done though - although admittedly, being on government-mandated furlough you’d think I’d be getting a lot more done, but alas I’ve been homeschooling my daughter which has left me only slightly more hobby time than being at work! 

I’ve been sprucing up some old Mantic Mars Attacks ruined building sprues to populate my exclusion zone, using a green stuff mould to cover the unattractive connection points (an idea stolen whole cloth from Tabletop Terrain), as well as digging through my backlog to convert some enemies. The downside to not being able to leave the house is that instead of plastic add, I’m going to use coffee stirrers to cover the corners, and I can’t exactly nip out to grab any more if I run out...

I’ve also been... slightly distracted by Mordheim. I’ve managed to resist starting anything, in order to press on with ZA, but my mind wandered somewhat when I was thinking about what changes you would need to make to run Path to Glory with Mordheim combat rules, which then led to me thinking: wait, Mordheim sure was cool want it, and you have enough miniatures in the game box to make several war bands... also, before lockdown became a thing, my wife and I were prepping just in case, and at my request she picked me up several sheets of foam board so that I could knock up some Mordheim ruins if need be (but again, if I run out of coffee stirrers...j

A short essay on self-control and focus

Me, not long ago: right, I’ve got my projects set for the year, now to scratch that cyberpunk itch with some Reality’s Edge.

Bloodbeard posts A short, informative review of Zona Alfa

Me:

So now we have this:

Initial impressions after a quick flick through are good - nicely thematic, simple enough to get into quickly but not suffering for it, with lovely presentation that’s the standard for an Osprey rulebook. I read an interview with the author this week where he said something along the lines of ‘I want to make games where afterwards you talk about the battle rather than the rules’, which I like a lot...

As well as this, obviously I grabbed a copy of the new Mortal Realms partwork, as £3 for a bunch of conversion fodder was too hard to pass up!

This does however take the Tally down to:

0 vs 13 = -13

Excitingly, my D&D group is back to playing, after taking a hiatus for the birth of my son, and our DM has been making some upgrades in the interim...

2019: a year in review

(Nu Gundam)

Happy 9th Birthday to this blog! There have been times I've been tempted to give it up (due to factors like the increasing difficulty to make posts from mobile devices more than anything else) but I'm glad that it's still around!

As is traditional, here is a look back at the year that was...


Tally

Thanks entirely to an eleventh hour effort as detailed in my last post, the Tally is ending up in the positive for the second year in a row (also ever).

Whilst I may not have painted that much, I also didn't buy much either! I may sell some more backlog miniatures next year to fund splurging at Salute (having missed it last year), so who knows whether I can make it three years in a row...

46 vs 43 = +3

2019: +3 (46 painted)
2018: +52 (52 painted)
2017: -14 (47 painted)
2016: -287 (56 painted)

2015: -96 (59 painted)

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)
2012: -103 (68 painted)
2011: -173 (122 painted)

So, a pattern has emerged - for the last few years, I have tended to paint around 50 miniatures a year!

Posts

19 this year, the fewest since the blog began by quite some margin. As ever, Zomtober was a major pull in getting myself painting and posting! The birth of my son is the main factor in this - I managed 32 posts the year my daughter was born, but two children are an exponential factor, as anyone with children will know! As my daughter got older, we settled into a bedtime routine that allowed for Daddy to have hobby time once she was in bed, so in the next couple of years we may hopefully return to higher levels of productivity!


Challenge

• Finish something  old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board

• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game of Blackstone Fortress with fully painted miniatures
• 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

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics

• Finish a member of the Nextwave team

• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

So, not my most Challenge focused year, but then again it never is! I tend to think of the Challenge as something to guide me when I'm seeking inspiration (hence pulling Tabby out of the painting queue to add another to the list of painted Nextwave members) rather than a routine or stick to beat myself with...

Some people might argue that I should abandon it altogether, as I rarely hit many of my self-set targets, but where's the fun in that?


Projects (according to last year's end of year post)

Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress

A couple of enemy groups finished, with the next one already undercoated and awaiting their turn on the painting table. I got somewhat sidetracked trying to convert additional models for the Traitor Guard, which when I couldn't find heads that I was happy with stalled the whole project. Plan for 2020 - just crack on with them!


ASOIAF

A single wildling. It's odd, this is the project that I find myself thinking I'd like to do things for when idly musing, but it hasn't seemed to translate into finished miniatures. The thirty odd undercoated wildlings sat on my desk might be a daunting roadblock to that though... we'll see if I pick up some of the Fireforge Northern chaps at Salute though, which may jumpstart it again...

Star Wars

I managed to paint a Jedi for May the Fourth and a single engineer, which is double my usual annual Star Wars output! We're currently re-watching all the movies in preparation for going to see the new one, and I've had a hankering recently to go back and read the Darth Vader / Doctor Aphra comics, so who knows if that will translate into enthusiasm for painting...


Zombies

Zomtober is the thing that gets me posting without fail, so I'll pledge now to do it again in 2020! Maybe I'll even go back to my set of work in progress rules and give them another pass over (although they stalled last time because I started overthinking things and ended up trying to completely rebuild one of the core mechanics...)

Hellboy

The Kickstarter showed up the week my son was born, so plans to paint were somewhat delayed. The expansions have also since been delivered, so I've got plenty of material to be working on!

Back Burner

Necromunda - nothing this year.

40K - a Howling Banshee, hopefully some more odd miniatures here and there next year. There's a Sister of Battle sat on my painting tile currently for testing a paint scheme out on, so if that turns out pleasingly I can theoretically work my way through the rest of the backlog all the while resisting the urge to buy the new miniatures when they come out!

Fallout - nothing this year

ROTPOTA - As is now a long-running joke, and I've said it before, but maybe next year is the year I finally finish prepping the apes...

Projects for 2020

Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress

Still looks cool, still want to paint and play it. I'm fairly impressed at myself having not bought any of the expansions yet too. Maybe I'll treat myself if I manage to paint 100% of the miniatures in the set...

D&D

A lot of the miniatures I paint when the fancy takes me seem to be generic fantasy monsters, so I thought I should probably add Dungeons and Dragons to the projects list! A couple of related items have been added to the Challenge to tie into this, as you'll see later on...

ASOIAF 

Maybe if I break the undercoated Wildlings down into smaller batches and tackle them a little at a time I'll get through them... Then again, maybe I should focus back on adding to my Starks and Lannisters with the intention of making them playable forces. And then finish the rules.

Hellboy

'play a game with painted miniatures' is staying in the Challenge this year, and this is another viable contender for ticking that off! The (admittedly first world) problem with having backed the Kickstarter for this is that there is an absolute shed load of miniatures with it - I figure if I polish of a couple of hero types and then batch paint all the frog chaps that isn't an insurmountable goal...

Star Wars

I pledge to do May the Fourth again this year at the very least. Re-watching the prequels in preparation for seeing the new film gave me the urge to paint some battle droids, but I've screwed the lid down on that for now, as starting a new time period in a project is too much even for me! Although I could just do a mini project, Grievous' abduction of Palpatine from the animated Clone Wars series, hmmm...

Zombies

Zomtober is a given. If I find any bargains on the Walking Dead miniatures at Salute that might influence what the theme of this year's entries will be...

The Thing

I need to find a suitable dog head, that's the roadblock between me and motivation on this project. If I can find that, then I should have all of the bits I need to convert a couple more medium sized Things, and I've got a MacReady miniature already (that came in my Christmas stocking a few years back - long enough ago that it must have been pre-children, as I don't think I've had a stocking of my own since then!)

Reality's Edge

I've had a real hankering for Cyberpunk recently. It might have been kick-started by watching Alita, and I'm V excited (pun intended) for Cyberpunk 2077 next year although it's actually this year now! I got a review copy of the rulebook, and whilst in my mind I immediately began envisioning a huge project where I built a whole dystopian cityscape, more realistically I'd settle for painting a couple of suitable miniatures and maybe a little piece of terrain or two to start. If anyone has a blister of Bishoujo Senshi (sp?) from Rezolution in their lead pile that they would be happy to trade off let me know!

Backburner:

40K - I'm not committing to painting an army or anything, but as and when the fancy takes me I'll hopefully ad the occasional model to my Inquisitorial Warbands (maybe I'll even get round to finishing some of the Inquisitor conversions that have been sat half finished for the best part of a decade...)

Necromunda - no concrete plans, bu I still love Necromunda too much to write it off entirely...

Fallout - Weathering is very soothing, so in between other things I may squeeze in the occasional Fallout mini. Last year, I was tempted to dig out the Mass Effect project minis, but didn't get very far with that either...

ROTPOTA - Always. Never. Ape.

Next Year's Challenge

• Finish something  old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a board game with fully painted miniatures
• 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

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pic

• Finish the last member of the Nextwave team
• Complete the classes project (potentially adding the races from the Players Handbook to the mix)
• Add at least 4 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

So, I've got plenty of old things to finish (there are almost certainly still miniatures sat in the painting queue that were undercoated before this blog began), and as ever I've carefully phrased some of the challenges to allow me to weasel my way into a loophole ('paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game', for example). I've already stripped something to be repainted (as I'd originally hoped to cross that off of the Challenge list last year but ran out of time). In hindsight, I should have posted my WIP pics of my Thing conversions last year on here rather than Instagram, as I could have crossed that off too! 52 minis and ending the Tally in the positive are always a doable target though I think...

...

But wait, what is this Monstrous Alphabet Project you speak of, the more eagle-eyed readers cry. Over the last few years, I've painted a variety of monsters just on the off-chance I ever get round to running a D&D campaign, so I thought I'd turn it into a mini challenge and see if I could paint at least one thing for each letter of the alphabet. I'm only counting things with an actual Monster Manual entry, nothing from the appendices or NPC lists (sorry Giant Centipedes and Cultists!)

Going back over previous blog entries, the Monstrous Alphabet currently stands at this:

A is for
B is for
C is for
D is for
E is for Elemental (More than one)
F is for Flameskull
G is for Goblin
H is for
I is for
J is for
I is for
L is for Lich
M is for Mind Flayer, Myconid, Mummy
N is for
O is for Owlbear
P is for
Q is for
R is for
S is for Shambling Mound, Scarecrow, Skeleton
T is for
U is for
V is for
W is for
X is for
Y is for
Z is for Zombie

So, plenty of room to work with! I'm not looking forward to Q though...