2022 Hobby Retrospective

 Greetings all.

It's that time of year again. I'm actually a bit behind on posting some of my new stuff so I'll dump it at the end of this post just to bring everything up to date.

It's been a mediocre year in terms of life and general enjoyment of it, but actually an excellent year in terms of painting output. I've even played a few fun games along the way as well, so not bad at all. In total I painted 171 minis in 2022, which is my best year yet in terms of quantity. There are a few that I'm particularly proud compared to earlier efforts too, so I'd also rate it my highest in terms of quality. Very pleased overall.

My resolutions for 2022 and my progress against them are below:

Paint a Nurgle BB team (kindly gifted to me for my Birthday by my good buddy Alex)

Completely smashed this one right at the start of the year!

Paint my Untamed Beasts for Warcry. I've got several cobbled together warbands I could use, but I'd really like to have a "proper" one.

Flawless victory here as well. I've even managed to have a couple of games with these guys.

Paint some Necromunda Orlocks. Again I've got plenty I could use for Necro, but I'd love a proper house gang. These will no doubt see use in Stargrave as well.

No progress on this one. Necromunda kinda fizzled out but I would like to get to them before long.

Paint a Goblin BB team. Now that I've finished my Skaven, it seems silly not to have an Underworld team too, so I'm gonna paint up a whole Goblin team and mash them together as needed.

I made some really good progress on these right at the end of the year. Should manage to have them done in early 2023.

Probably start on the massive pile of Kill Team terrain I have laying about.

Kinda forgot about this!

Ok so not terrible as far as progress. I have done a huge amount of other stuff as you'll see below:

January kicked off the year with a couple odd bits to get the juices flowing:

In February I finished off my Nurgle Blood Bowl team and painted some long-neglected cultists:

In March I painted a little warband for a 40k/Stargrave style bash, plus a few other Nurgle bits:

In April I painted up my Untamed Beasts for Warcry, plus a few more Nurgle bits:

May was spent assembling various bits, and in June I painted a whole bunch of Nurgle bits for AoS and 40k:

In July I painted up some additions to my Skaven team, some additions to my Untamed Beasts, and of course some Nurgle bits:

August was spent painting up my first Mordheim warband:

September was mostly spent assembling my Goblin team for BB, but I also painted one extra mook for my Mordheim warband:

In October I started my Realm of Warcry warband and added a Plague Cart to my Mordheim warband, plus of course some more general Nurgle bits:

In November I painted more of my Realm of Warcry warband, plus some more Nurgle daemons:

Finally in December I painted another member of my Realm of Warcry warband, a couple random minis for Mordheim and Necromunda, a bloody massive Great Unclean One, and made a start on my Goblin Blood Bowl team!

And with that I think I'm up to date! Painting wise it's been my best year yet. Although I haven't really been blogging about it as much as I'd like, I've been making good progress.

Edit: I completely forgot to add some "resolutions" this time around. There's plenty of stuff that I'd like to get to and ideas that I have swimming around in my head, but I think I'll keep it realistic:

1. Paint the rest of my goblin team and enough extra bits and star players to make an Underworld Denizens team too.
2. Paint my 3rd edition Orc team for BB
3. Paint my now pretty huge collection of Scavvies
4. Paint all of my mounting collection of Darkoath. Essentially these are for Warcry, but they'll make useful generic barbarians (alongside my Untamed Beasts) for various other settings as needed.
5. Paint up the last of my Warcry terrain.
6. As a stretch goal, make a start on my Cursed City box. I don't expect I'll get it done this year even if I do manage to make a start, but it would be good to make a start on it if possible.

Back in the saddle

Greetings all,

Been a while again hasn't it? I've just had zero motivation and not much time to do any painting for a long while now. Well I decided to rectify that recently, sort of. In an effort to force myself to do a bit of painting and remember that I actually enjoy it, I picked up something very simple to ease myself back into it.

I've had these Plaguebearers sitting around for a long time now. They're actually my "leftovers" from doing my two big units of 30, and they were in various states of disrepair. Some were missing arms or weapons (or toes in one case...), but with a bit of ingenuity I managed to cobble together two serviceable units of five. At some point these will be useful for summoning in AoS, but for now they just serve as a handy way to get me back to painting.

They're nothing glamorous but they did turn out ok. I mixed in a few more modern bits that I found in my bits box too.

I have to say though, this year hasn't been a total wash in terms of hobby time, as I have played a fair few games of my new favourite game ever: Blood Bowl! I ran my Orcs in a local league, losing most of my games, but winning best painted and generally having a great time. I was intending to paint a new team for next season, but that didn't quite work out. They're still on the table though and I'll get them done for the one after...maybe.

Anyway, that's it from me for now. Hopefully I won't leave it quite as long next time!

Gaming again!

Greetings all.

Just a super quick post from me, mainly to stay in the habit of posting more regularly. 

At the start of the year I had the best of intentions to play a whole bunch of games. That hasn't exactly happened, though I am pleased to report that I'm finally getting back to gaming again. I've returned to my old club (in its new venue), and this week I got a game of 40k in!

I had meant to take a bunch of pictures, but we were both trying to brush up on the rules still, and my opponent had just started a new army so didn't have much painted (although what was painted looked pretty cool). 

We played 1000 points in a simple maelstrom mission, which was a blast really. In the end I managed a 14-10 win, but the game was back and forth the whole time and always felt very close. The deciding moment came when my flesh hounds and herald (warlord) wiped out the opposing warlord and his retinue: 

At this point the Harlequin warlord is a red smear, while Hatebreed the herald of Khorne grins gleefully...

Great game, and good to be back too. We've got another one planned for Monday, so I'll try and get a few more pics and maybe write up a short report.

Finally painting again!

Greetings all.

I've certainly not been idle on the hobby front, but it has been a while since I actually slapped some paint on something. This week I rectified this!

This poor chap has been sitting on my desk for quite some time. So long in fact that I actually had to dust him off before painting :S

I can't actually remember whether I showed him as a WIP, but he's a Tzeentch Daemon Prince built from a variety of old school parts. His head is from a first edition horror, as are his hands, and the grimoire-toting familiar comes from Arkhan the Black's chariot (proper old school). It's not a great pic I'm afraid, but I hope you like him:

Expect to see something a bit different from me over the next few weeks and months. I mentioned that I've been bitten by the Rogue Trader bug, and the next few posts will certainly reflect that...

Comments welcome!

A little hobby update: All about the base

Greetings all.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of regular posting... I have actually been working on a lot of little projects recently, but mostly stuff that isn't that interesting to look at (in my opinion). However, I shall do my duty and keep you in the loop!

A project that I've been meaning to do (but not really wanting to do) for some time is the rebasing of my 20 flesh hounds. When I made them originally, there weren't any 40k bases supplied with them, so I went with what I thought was best (40mm round, like all other "Beast" type units). Now that the Khorne Daemonkin codex has come out, GW have finally started supplying flesh hounds with 40k bases. Unfortunately for me, they're the newer 50mm rounds. Of course, there is no rule saying that I have to rebase anything, but I'm a weird obsessive type so I knew that, sooner or later, I would. So I bit the bullet and went ahead with it.

I didn't relish the thought of ripping apart my lovely models however, so I looked for other solutions. Thankfully Secret Weapon Miniatures make some very handy "hollow blanks" for just this sort of thing. I picked a bunch up and got to work:

It was actually very simple to do. I glued the old base inside the new base, filled the gap with green stuff and covered with sand, then painted. The only tricky bit was getting the new sand with blend with the old, which I think went well for the most part.

I know there isn't much to see, but comments are welcome! More interesting stuff coming soon, I promise ;)

Hobby update: Tzeentch Horrors & Magic Marker

Greetings all.

I've been busy with real life stuff recently, but I've still managed to be fairly productive hobby-wise. I finished off the last of my Tzeentch Horrors that I've had sitting around for too long:

I'd actually painted half of this unit a few weeks ago, but it turns out that I'd forgotten to take pictures of them. Here they are with the last five. It was a fairly quick and dirty job on these as I just wanted to get them done. I had planned to use them to pop out the portalglyph (D6 daemons on a 4+), but I can't really remember the last time I used it! Nevertheless, I've got them finished up just in case.

Also finished up something else I've had sitting around for a while, my last magic marker:

This one represents the psychic power "Prescience". The model itself is a Reaper minis crystal ball, and as soon as I saw it I knew it was perfect!

I'm still cracking on with my Khorne Daemonkin, so look out for more of them soon. In the meantime, comments are welcome!