2014 in review

Greetings all.

Welcome to my final post of 2014!

This has actually been a pretty good year for me hobby-wise. I've painted exactly 80 models (of various shapes and sizes), which is damn good going by my standards.

Not the best picture I know, but I think you get the idea. Everything you see there, bar the boards, was painted this year. To give you a run down, that is:

• Great unclean one
• Nurgle daemon prince
• 16 flesh hounds
• Portalglyph
• Khorne herald on juggernaut
• 12 1st edition horrors
• Slaanesh daemon prince
• 12 2nd edition horrors
• 14 screamers
• Nine familiars
• Three rocky outcrops
• Two tzeentch heralds on discs
• Three flamers
• Chaos bastion
• Be'lakor
• Fateweaver
• Tzeentch herald on foot

Phew, not bad! I'm pleased with my progress so far, but there is so much to do in the next year :S

My goals for 2015 are:

• Paint 100 models! Specifically that is: 40 daemonettes, eight or so nurgling bases, 20 cultists, two soul grinders, three plague drones, khorne daemon prince (forge world), tzeentch daemon prince, slaanesh daemon prince, chaos knight... Plus a bunch of other stuff that I haven't quite decided on yet.
• Play at least 40 games. I've done a lot of painting this year, but not played nearly enough games. Gotta rectify that in 2015.
• Expand my daemons. I've got about 1850 points fully painted at the moment, but I want to paint a whole bunch more to give me options for different lists. I might also mix things up with some unexpected allies (orks, necrons, maybe even "crone world" style eldar or radical space marines like the Relictors).
• Make a start on my chaos marines/renegades & heretics. I haven't quite decided which yet, but either way they'll work well as allies to my beloved daemons. 

So all in all, not a bad year. Roll on the next one!

Penultimate hobby update of the year

Greetings all.

This will be very nearly my final post of the year (I'll be posting a little retrospective in a couple of days), and I'll keep it short and sweet.

I managed to bash out the last three Screamers, and another psychic marker:

This little guy represents "Forewarning", because he can see what's coming...

Now I've got the two units of Screamers all painted, and very nearly all my psychic markers :D. It's been a pretty good year for me hobby-wise, and I'll sum it up in the next few days.

Bye for now.

Quick progress update: Magic marker, Tzeentch, and more Tzeentch

Greetings all.

I'm just dropping in with a super quick update tonight, before taking care of a bunch of boring grown up stuff like paying my credit card and other tedious tasks that get in the way of hobby time...

Got a few more bits done over the last few days. First up was a magic marker to represent "Warp Speed", a power that gives +3 Attacks, +3 Initiative, and Fleet. Something in 40k that has a bunch of attacks at high initiative... How about this little dude:

I also polished off the last of the blue Screamers, just three more pink ones to go (thank the gods):

Lastly, I finished off the herald on foot that I was working on:

I'm not overly pleased with him tbh, but he's not bad and he'll fit in rather nicely.

That's all from me for now. I'm rolling out the Stormbringers for a game tomorrow night, and if there's time I'll snap a couple pics. It's against Alex's excellent Praetorians, so should look pretty awesome.

Bye for now!

Old meets new (WIP)

Greetings all.

I've chilled out on the hobby front a bit, partly due to rekindling my obsession for Baldur's Gate (if you haven't played it, you should do so immediately). I have been doing a few bits of this and that though, and I've got a couple WIP pics just to keep you lot interested...

First up is something that I actually started aaaages ago, but I don't think I ever blogged about (this was in the early days). I've recently picked this guy up again and he'll be getting some paint on him very soon. I fancied putting together a cool champion for my Plague Drones (Plaguebearers on giant flies, for those not in the know), and I had a damaged palanquin of Nurgle rider in my bits box. Mix in a dash of creativity and a dollop of green stuff, and this is the result:

Bzzzzzz!

I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out actually, and he should fit in nicely with the rest of my gribbly horrors.

I've also been slapping a bit of paint on my screamers, as well as this guy here:

Colours blocked in

He's an old champion of Tzeentch from the excellent range by Jes Goodwin. I've got a pile more of that range, as well as half a mind to collect them all because they really are just flawless, and epitomise everything that makes Chaos great.

That's all for now, comments are most welcome.

Just as planned... Fateweaver finished!

Greetings all.

Yet more progress from me, and this is kind of a big deal actually. I've finally got my Fateweaver finished:

This guy is a bit of a white whale for me. He's been sitting primed on my desk for almost a year now, and I just haven't had the motivation to paint him (no matter how indispensable he is in-game). As my motivation and productivity has been pretty high recently, I thought why the hell not??

Now this is actually the second version of Fateweaver I've painted. The first one was the failcast version and was rife with casting problems. Even once I'd fixed him up and painted him, his staff had *ahem* a bit of a droop to it. This was... less than ideal, so I tracked down a metal version on eBay. Just haven't had the motivation to slap some paint on him until now.

You can see the original version here:

Nothing wrong with the original scheme, but I wanted to change it up a bit and match it with my current models a bit more (plus I don't really like that much blue in retrospect).

As a side effect of finishing Fateweaver, I do in fact have a fully painted and fairly effective 1500 point army (and there was much rejoicing)!

Tzeentch & Nurgle, together at last.

Comments are welcome!

Master of puppets: Be'lakor finished!

Greetings all.

In keeping with my frenzy of activity lately, I've got another little something finished. Not quite as little as the familiars, but still pretty small by current 40k standards. This little beauty is Be'lakor, the Dark Master:

Very sensibly directing the battle from afar

This guy has got to be one of my favourite models, at least from recent years (although he didn't make my top 10; I guess I'm just fickle like that). He's beautifully sculpted, although weirdly small by the standards of other Daemon Princes. 

This model almost got used as a Slaanesh prince a while back, but I'm rather glad I didn't go ahead with that plan. GW have since released a tidy little dataslate (whatever the hell that even is) for Be'lakor, and he's a supreme badass. He provides some great defensive powers, and can chop up even superheavies with relative ease. He costs a big chunk of points, but is well worth it.

Hope you like him.

More Magic Markers

Greetings all.

So it seems that my usefulness around the home and my productivity in painting are inversely proportional... I had every intention of cleaning the spare room out this weekend, but instead this happened:

Now I do apologise for the frankly appalling picture, not really sure what happened there. These little chaps represent "Enfeeble" (left) and "Endurance" (right). The model on the left is "Jinx" from the Hell Dorado daemons range, and probably one of the most disturbing models I've painted (yes that is his umbilical cord that he's dragging along... gross). The guy on the right is from Pendraken. He's not exactly a stellar sculpt but he has a lot of character. I did have to avoid painting him any shade of brown though, to avoid it looking like he was made out of turds.

Now to be fair, these two are no excuse for doing sod all around the house this weekend, given that I painted them both up in about 20 minutes. That's mostly down to the other model I've been working on, but his varnish isn't dry yet so you'll just have to wait for that ;)

Comments are welcome as ever.