2020 retrospective

Greetings all.

It's been a while since my last blog post, partly due to real life stuff, and partly because my heart hasn't really been in it, particularly with everything else going on in the world. It's a little hard to stay motivated when you can't see much of your friends and loved ones, and certainly can't play any games... Enough melancholy though, unfortunately it's just the state of play at the moment, but I suppose it wont last forever.

Despite a bit of a dip in motivation, I have actually managed to be at least somewhat productive. I'll post the few things I've finished recently, and then give a little wrap up of the rest of the year.

Most recently I've smashed out a quick paint job on my Warcry battlefield (Ravaged Land, for those of you who play the game). These little sets are self contained and frankly brilliant, and I'm thinking of picking up another one to expand it. Despite this being a very simple paint job, because I don't paint a lot of terrain it proved to be a bit of a learning experience for me. There were a few ups and downs (including a moment where I was sure I'd ruined part of it), but in the end I'm rather pleased with it!

Before that, I painted up a couple of star players and a new thrower for my Chaos Renegades, The thrower was particularly cool because I did a bit of sculpting work on him to repair him and bring his style more in line with the rest of the team. Nothing groundbreaking but I'm pleased with how he turned out.

Before those chaps, I quickly painted up some generic ghosts for games like Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow Deep. These spooky bois came courtesy of issue one of Mortal Realms, so they were an absolute steal. It was around this time that I rebased all of my Frostgrave stuff to make it more compatible with other games. A bit of a ball ache to do, but well worth it I think (no pics of this, but I basically removed all the snow and replaced it with dead grass, like the bases for these ghosts).

The last things that I haven't yet posted on this blog are two journeymen for my Chaos Renegades. I used some really old school chaos players for these guys and they turned out pretty cool.

That's all the "recent" stuff out of the way, so I'll just do a big photo dump of everything else I've painted in the last year:

Phew. My 2020 wasn't quite as productive as some people's (I've seen people paint multiple armies during lockdowns), but given that work and family life continued unabated for me (for which I'm grateful tbh), I'm actually quite pleased with my output. Not including the Warcry terrain at the start of this post (which was completed in 2021), I've painted a total of 83 individual minis and bits. Not my best year ever, but not bloody bad.

I'll probably do a "2021 goals" post at some point soon, but I've talked enough for now! I do intend to post a bit more often as I find it helpful to document progress and reflections, even if it is mostly just for my benefit.

Till next time, stay safe and roll well.

Garrick Hagar (level one)

Greetings all.

I've got something slightly different to show you today, and that is my character for the Zoom 40k/Frostgrave mashup RPG we've been playing for the last couple months to get us through lockdown. It's all hosted and masterfully written by my good mate Alex, with me, Steve, and Mark bumbling our way through the adventures, failing to unravel the simplest puzzles, and solving most of our problems with violence. Yup, it's bloody awesome.

Anyway so the original intent was to play this out as a series of tabletop battles, but the 'rona put a stop to all that for the time being. We'll probably end up doing some follow-up tabletop based fun though, so we're all making minis of our characters. This is my guy, Garrick Hagar:

Basically he's an underhive scum and brawler type, mostly on the right side of the law, and usually makes a few credits as an escort for trade caravans and whatnot. The twist is that Garrick has latent psychic powers, the full potential of which he was unaware of (or unwilling to think about) until he got wrapped up in the mysteries of Spero Secundus.

The mini is a slightly converted underhive scum from 90s Necromunda, as it just fit exactly what I had in mind. I did a weapon swap to bring it in line with what Garrick carries, and slapped some paint on it. Since putting this mini together though, the party have gone through a number of important changes and level ups, and Garrick doesn't look quite the same! An encounter with a sump witch has allowed his full psychic potential to be unlocked, and the money the party made from harvesting giant spider eyes on that adventure allowed us all to invest in some very cool gear for the final mission. The upshot of this is that I'll be converting and painting an upgraded version of Garrick soon enough!

Till next time.

Pact to the Future: Turn, Score, and Re-Roll markers / Spero Secundus

Greetings all, 

Just a quickie from me today, partly because I don't have much to show. I'm still working away on my Chaos Renegades/Pact team, and I've very nearly completed Phase One. In this case, I've just finished off some cool little markers for the team:

They're made from old school chaos familiars. I kept the integral bases visible and painted them gold, to make them look like heathen idols. Handily, this also ticks off a few more familiars from my "paint all the familiars" project. Unfortunately, I've had a minor issue with the varnish on these guys, but I'm hoping I can fix it. 

Because I always give everything two coats of matt varnish if it's for gameplay, the metal ended up very dull on these, and I wanted them to shine a bit. So I brushed on a little Citadel Ardcoat gloss varnish. Unfortunately, this is still slightly tacky several days later. I'm gonna hit them with a light coat of matt and then brush over some Vallejo gloss, to see if that solves the problem...

On an entirely different note: I'm currently taking part in a sort of Inq28/Frostgrave/RPG mash up, organised by my good mate Alex from Lead Balloony, and taking place on the world of Spero Secundus. One of the most important plot points is a mysterious alien key, so one of the other players, our mutual friend Mark from Heresy Of Us, 3D printed one for all the players as a cool surprise! I went to town on mine with rust effects just to see what I could achieve, and I'm rather pleased with how it turned out: 

I skinned the whole thing in green stuff and sanded it down, then just practised my heavy rust effects. Came out pretty well I think. I can't go without mentioning the excellent blog of our other player and friend, Steve over at Jedicorn.

Till next time!