Across the line!!

With these last few figures I have finally finished the 365!

The troglodyte set was a quick paint job as I didn’t want to spend too long doing them. I opted to use dry-brushing to complete as much as I can.

Troglodyte Grunts

Troglodyte Leaders

Minotaur

Cockatrice

Dwarf Heroine. She is a bit odd this one. Quite cartoony, more so than the other heroes I think.

Lord Tusk.

I wish I’d used a more contrasting colour for his clothing now as it doesn’t stand out very well against his skin colour.

So this means that I’ve passed my target of 365 for the year and in good time as the deadline wasn’t up until 09/12/17.

Completed this year was:

Epic Iron Warriors:                           95

Epic Orks:                                         49

Massive Darkness figures:                25

30K Iron Hands:                               13

30K Iron Warriors:                           66

30K Mechanicum:                            9

40K Eldar:                                        30

40K Howling Griffons:                    9

AoS Seraphon:                                 56

28mm Container Ship:                     1

Pulp City figures:                             10

Aeronef:                                           3

               

                Total:                                366

A pretty good total but not a wholly accurate summation of what I have done hobby-wise this year. On top of the above I constructed and painted two Spartan Scenery box sets to create the sizeable Anphelion Base. I’ve also almost finished the Spartan 28mm Space Ship (I really should finish that).

As well as all that I also made some Epic woods and a set of blast markers and prepped a shed load of figures such as all the Primaris Marines from the new box set. And, as always I’ve put together a load of MDF kits. Man….I love the MDF.

What is good about the list above is what it represents; sizable changes to the nature of the painting queue. It was good to make some solid progress on the 30K stuff and the 40K items had been hanging around so it was good to get them finished. Clearing the Spartan Scenics after all this time was pretty cathartic as well.

2017 has been a damned good year for painting and hobbying and not too shabby on the playing side either. I’ve slipped on the games blog posts but I crossed the 52 game point some time ago. I think that this year’s tally will end up being in the 70-75 region. That is good but it also represents an effort to play multiple missions and experience more of some of the smaller games we play.

With a month left of the year I’m planning to progress the DL on Mars project, draw together what is needed to get the Pulp City stuff to where I want it to be and to get the Primaris Marines done.

2018’s objectives are all about getting DL and PC to the table in a complete form. It seems now that DL will have a different rules set but it will be good to have the figures out and in use after sitting idle for soooo long. If Warcradle do something with DL as well is DW it could be great to see these forces expand with new releases. I’m quietly hopeful on that!

Lots to look forward to especially the continuation of the Aeronef project!

TTFN

Another 'Nef

I've finished construction on the third Aeronef kit that I commissioned from Blotz.

It has turned out really well and is a really easy kit to pop together. I'm pleased with how much deck space this one has although it will lose some of that once the monitor style gun goes on. The lack of railings at the front will also look less silly once the armament is on. The Roanoke class tug should be ready soonish hopefully and I'll get myself a deck gun when I order that.

I'm going to go with an un-historically early US green as a colour scheme. I think it'll work well with the decking being a mix of browns. Question is: White Stars? I'm not sure when the US started using them but they are quite distinctive so I may well do some.

I found some of the Pulp Figure range last weekend at the Warfare show in Reading. I'm really looking forward to painting them up as crew for the 'Nef. The quandary here is whether or not to paint the uniforms blue with white trim or white with blue trim. I'm leaning towards the latter as I'm imagining my VSF Mars as being a temperate place more suited for the white uniforms.

Rules wise this project is looking decidedly like its not going to be Dystopian Legions but VSF under a completely different rules set. Urn suggested the konflict '49 rules and Junta has kindly donated a rule book with this in mind. It looks, on face value, as a rule set that should be easy enough to tweak to my needs.

Work has also continued on painting Massive Darkness figures. the first tranche are nearly ready and these coupled with some hero figures will take me over my target of 365 for the year. Huzzah!

TTFN

3 More!

Totals up to 341!

This also means that the VSF project now involves paint as these are the first items for the game to be painted. I need to have a snoop around for some embellishments like decals but they are basically finished now apart from the bases.

Oxford Class Skyship.

Aether launches

Perhaps a little drab but that will change when the Scarlet Jackets of the Queens finest are on board!!

I tried, when designing them, to allow for as much deck space as possible. I've got a romantic notion of boarding actions and such nonsense when we finally get round to playing.

Looking over the figures for this, most are prepped but a handful still need filing and sticking together. I will confess to not being hugely excited about the prospect as going back to metal figures after sooo many plastic and resin ones is somewhat onerous. They're a real pain to prep!

TTFN

338! Not too many to go!

I've hit the 338 mark for my painting challenge this year.

33 Epic Ork speed freaks ready for action. Still loads to paint for this force but I'll keep plugging away.

Only 27 figures to go!

These could have been finished weeks ago if I hadn't let myself get soooo distracted by the VSF Aeronef project. Three of the ten kits are finished and on the Blotz site. Three more have been submitted and I'm just waiting to hear back from Blotz on their progress. I still have the Prussian and Antartican ones to do but I'm pretty much settled on how I want them to look so I just need to get my head down and draft them.

My mind is turning towards getting some rules for this VSF game so I'll have to head off to the forums to do a bit of research. In the mean time I'm squeezing in a little time to progress the MDF aeronefs that I have already.

Last night I started the flyers but they will take a while. However I did get to do the Tesla Guns. Black under coat spray and then dry brushed bronze and brass. Simples.

TTFN

A deadline on the horizon

I've allowed myself to get a little distracted by another project of late so must redouble my efforts to get my 365 figures painted before 10/12/17.

Lots of things on the go but I decided to try and finish some half done stuff to get it off of the painting table. First off is a bundle of Ork Dreadnoughts and Killer Kans for EPIC along with an AA wagon. With these finished I've only got 60 left to finish!

 With them out of the way I've moved onto a tray full of Ork buggies, planes and scorchas that had been started. I've slowed myself down, once again, by choosing to paint checker patterns on 6mm figures. why do I make these choices?? Oh yeah! Cos it looks good! ;-)

I'd expect these to take me another week to finish but there is something like 30+ so its more than half of what I need to do before December.

Also on the go are some more Pulp City figures and I've started painting two of the smaller Massive Darkness box sets.

As always I've also allowed myself to be distracted by scenery. No great surprise there as it is a real weakness of mine.

First up a cool phone box and some street lamps from Blotz. Very nice fun little kits to put together!

I'd gotten them at Colours and really wanted to put them together to get them done for my City scenery set. I also got the new tram kit from Warbases as I thought it would look good on the city streets. Sweet kit.

Not quite sure when I'll get around to painting it?

;-)

TTFN

Some Pulp City for a change and more.

I've been doing pretty well tackling the list of figures I drew up for the 365 challenge but there has been a lot of batch painting this year.

Also on the list were some heroes and villains for Pulp City. We've not played this in ages but I have been working on my city scenery with the primary purpose of getting more games of PC. I'm thinking about making it an early hobby objective for the beginning of 2018 to get the scenery ready so now I've got double reasons to paint them. This has afforded me a break from batch painting masses of thing the same colour. A refreshing change.

This takes me down to 76 left to do before December 10th to complete 365.

I've not had the opportunity to paint much at work lately but today I managed to get the first colour on some Iron Warrior terminators for 30K.

30K had gone a bit cold lately partly I suspect because of the prospect of playing it in 7th edition. Not massively appealing since we've moved to 8th edition.

However....you gotta love the gamer fans! Some stalwart fellows have begun to created legion lists for 30K and they have finished the core legion stuff already.

Link to the Heresy 8th project

 Looks like the legion specific stuff is going up too! A truly excellent piece of work from those fellows. So with that on the cards my mind had turned to getting some games of 30K lined up and I also fancy trying some of the other missions from 8th. There are assault scenarios in the book for attacking defended positions and it stuck me that this might be fun to do for 30K.

So I got some walls from TTCombat and some big guns to be emplacements.

This is just the first set of each. Another gun and another wall set to be made. I also want to dress them slightly to make them fit the Grimdark a bit better. I've made some molds of skull bits and light fittings to add to them.

But I need to get some more figures painted first before letting myself get to distracted by that!

Colours 2017 wargaming show in Newbury at the weekend so i'm bound to find even more distractions there!

TTFN!

The end is in sight!

Another 22 figures done!

Additional troops for the Iron Hands and the Mechanicum.

Only 86 left to go to reach the 365 for the year.

TTFN.

A happy little update.

I got these finished finally last night

This takes the tally so far up to 257 leaving me only 108 to complete the 365. I’m particularly please to have finished these as they’ve been sat around undercoated for ages and my Eldar have been a bit short of troop choices but not now!

Next in the queue is some more Horus Heresy stuff as I’m not far off completing all the marines Ive got for the Iron Hands and I’ve got a tray of terminators that I want to do as there are some for both the Iron Hand and the Iron Warriors.

After 15 months my Kickstarter pledge for Massive Darkness arrived! Woohoo!!

Soooo many figures! Now to get them painted but not before the game gets run out for a try!

TTFN

A break from painting figures for....

...a chance to paint even more scenery!!

Lots got done over the last month or so.

My TTCombat cargo ship got finished and weathered with rust.

Jolly good fun it was too!
I'm counting this as a figure because it is a vehicle and besides....I spent ages on it!
Tally up to 227!

Transfers got added to the Spartan Spaceship.

I need to go back and put weathering and wear damage on this now.

Finished off some skips for my city terrain set.

I was pretty pleased with how these turned out in the end. Relatively small and unimportant scenery pieces but nice to have them turn out so well.

A waste tower for either the junkyard or dockside.

The photo is rather washed out by the bad light in the photo but the rust effect powders do look great once applied.

At work I've started putting together some scenery kits that the Silverfox has donated into the group to be used. Not the greatest kits to put together from wargaming model mods but they'll be fine once they've been made and painted.

And.....then back to painting figures.

30 Dire Avengers.

Cos....you know.....you can't have too many Eldar. Right?

I've got 142 days left (To December 10th) to paint 138 figures. These Eldar will come off of that total shortly so I've still got several months to clear the last 109 to reach the magic 365 total.

After these I've got about fifty infantry figures to paint for 30K and then the plan is to get some superheroes painted to use on the nearly complete city terrain.

Lots of progress this year.

I also fallen behind with blogging about the games we've been having so I'll have to redouble my efforts there. With the arrival of nu40K we've been getting a fair few games in.


TTFN

Mostly works in progress.

As part of my planned dockside terrain set I’d bought the TTCombat container ship set. Great set with loads of value as it comes with several containers as well as the ship itself. I finished the containers at the back end of last year but hadn’t progressed the ship itself.

I resolved to get it done and so it was given a blast of undercoat…..

….and then the colours were added with large scale dry brushing.

I’ve recently got hold of some of the Vallejo rust powders and plan to make this a somewhat battered freighter.

Also sat neglected in my study was the enormous Spartan Scenics spaceship that I purchased several years ago. I’ve always liked the idea of having landed shuttles and ships as scenery and that’s why I got it. It too got an undercoat prior to painting.

I wanted to layer up the paint to lighten the look of it up from the base grey so I started with heavy dry brushing of greys getting lighter until I got to white.

Masking went on and I proceeded to orange…..

 …..then red. I’ve printed some special decals for it so those need to go on before I can weather it.

With the threat of a new edition, I decided that the Howling Griffons needed some reinforcements especially as these have been sat in the queue for ages as well.

These boys take my 365 tally up to 226.

In the drive to get things done I ended up letting my eye fall upon the rest of the Spartan scenic sets that I had. It think I’ve been procrastinating somewhat due to the size of the project to get the starter and corridor sets done but the new edition of 40K has egged me on and this will be usable for Infinity, 40K, Infinity, Pulp City and soooo much more so I decided to get stuck in and get it done once and for all.

The kits themselves are a cracking concept that was badly delivered. The design is excellent and looks a treat but the building of them is dogged by the fact that it takes soooo much work to put them together. We are spoilt somewhat these days as MDF kits are pretty awesome but these are hard work. All the slots need significant cutting and filing to enable it to fit together as they were cut too small. I’ve done the bulk of it now so I am methodically spraying, constructing sub-assemblies, spraying again before construction and then the final spray. After that the details need picking out. I’ve prepared some decals for the sections. A long job but once they are done it’ll be a cool set to use and they’ll be enough of it to lay out a pretty big base. This is just the additional corridor set in the photos. the starter set has even more corridors and rooms as well.

I’ve been wanting to get it done so I can use it as the Anphelion Base from the Anphelion Project Forgeworld book. IG and Marines vs Tyranids. Right up my street!

With all these MDF kits I have been gathering (or more accurately hoarding) leftover bits of MDF to the point where I have a box full of them. I’d put together a couple of Epic things from them but nothing bigger. However I was browsing the internet for a radar/comms array for the Anphelion base when one that I saw sparked my imagination and the following monstrosity was born!

Needs some details and paneling but you get the idea.

 I was pretty motivated before but sheesh…8^th Edition 40K has lit a fire under me!

TTFN