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

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

Game 48

Massive Darkness again for game 48.

This was a fairly standard mission with no time pressures. As such our characters were tooled up and had advanced skills by the time we got to the Hellhound at the end.

He didn't last long.

TTFN

Games 45 & 46

The Immortal.

Sounds menacing doesn't he. Well in Massive Darkness he bloody well is. Game 45 was a special mission to grab dynamite, lure the bad boss to a subterranean bridge and blow it up to send him plunging into the Abyss.

This was a tricky one. Which is why Game 45 was short lived and a failure. We messed about too long and before we knew it the Immoral, the unstoppable target of our plans, had passed the point where he could be drawn to his death.

Quick Reset!

This time we didn't hang about......no actually we bibbled a bit on this one as well and then happened to notice that the rouge had placed themselves well for a run on the bridge and had the fireworks to lure the bad guy!

Once we cottoned on to what was possible it was an easy matter for the Rogue to tease the horrid ogre onto the ancient stone walkway before using a magic spear to destroy the supports and dispatch the Darkness's lieutenant to its doom!

Fun mission and nicely different to the others we've played so far.

TTFN
 

Game 44

The run of Massive Darkness games continued with game 44 being a mission in which the dungeon progressively collapses as the rounds go by.

We'd found that the game itself isn't that difficult barring an unlucky draw of the cards however...

...adding the time element to the game really steps it up a gear! No more checking every room for cool equipment. This was a race to get out past the inevitable encounters.

Pulling two horrible cards near the end did for us! We defeated the monsters and all of characters got out except for the Stout Dwarf who tripped and fell before being buried beneath the collapsing ceiling of the dungeon.

Technically a loss. Morally? Well I suppose that depends how you feel about dwarves?

;-)

TTFN

Games 39, 40, 41 & 42

Last year I backed the Massive Darkness board game kickstarter and it finally turned up in August.

CMON have a reputation for delivering a lot for their backers on their kickstarters and I have to say I was not disappointed. As well as backing it for what looked like a fun game I thought it would be a good way to start a fantasy figure collection for any future role playing I might end up doing for my kids when they are a bit older. I only went for the base pledge plus one additional box of monsters but this meant I ended up with something in the region of 150 figures! Yoiks!

Ain't gonna to lie, this was fun to unbox!

The game itself is fun and the basic rule book contains ten missions that are very different. The kickstarter exclusive stuff also comes with more tiles and six more missions. Seeing that CMON are good at after sales support with additional releases I'm expecting this to have potential for a lot of games.

Soooo.. game 39 was a test game I played by myself to learn the rules....and play with my brand new toys. It started out well enough open a door, find baddies have a scrap! Usual sort of stuff. At the end of each round an event card is drawn. These can be benign but most cause you more trouble by creating extra mobs or bad guys or wondering monsters like.....

...oh crap. Giant Spider.

It was still early in the game so my adventurers hadn't had a chance to find much in the way of new equipment to tool themselves up so this fight didn't last long. Still a good test of the rules and fun!

mutter mutter fething Giant Spider.

Game 40 was the first multi player go at it and we played the first mission again with more success.
I'd been using three heroes when four seems to be the optimal number. Other people have been saying that five or six heroes makes it too easy so four seems to be the way forward.

Game 41 was a mission to stop......

...yeah you guessed it. The Giant Spider.

We only just managed to kill it on the square before the exit. The time element added loads of pressure to this making it a pretty cool scenario.

Game 42 was called the Chosen One. We had to scour the board looking for elements of an Artifact which a nominated character then had to exit the board with.

We thought we are boned on turn two as the Hellspawn appeared front an event card to make our day more interesting. A cool mechanic of the game is that these monsters get random treasure and if it is weaponry or armour that they can use......they do. It makes things much harder when you randomly kit out an already hard as nails baddie with a shiny set of plate mail!

Thankfully we managed to battle our way though to the end and Brave Sir Owen lofted the artifact high and declared his self the chosen saviour!

Bit of an ego that one!

The next mission looks like a tough one involving a collapsing dungeon! eek!

Now to crack on a get some of the figures painted!

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