Pooch's March- wait, what do you mean we are a quarter done?

So, here we are. Already a quarter done in the year, which I have not yet come to terms with. My progress towards my goals has continued well however, and it's probably about time I painted something for myself that wasn't a Tyranid....

1. Paint something bought before 2024

Tada! Look, it's not a Tyranid!

The Wurmspat are the last Warhammer Underworlds warband that I own, themed all around the gifts of Grandfather Nurgle. I decided to paint these as a palatte cleaners, I was getting really sick of the tyranid colour scheme, and a big commission that I had been completed. I just needed somethign that was small, contained and would be a chance to use a bunch of colours that I hadn't been using.

The three Wurmspat

So much tiny detail!

The first close up....

The second close up....

The third close up....

But not only that, over the Easter weekend I got my airbrush out and finished off some DAK tanks for the first time in..... months. This was to make sure I had the tank options that a friend needed when they borrow the army for an upcoming tournament.

Two Tigers, looking swish in the weathered desert scheme

One of them brought a Panzer III along as a buddy!

And two StuG D for good measure

The Tigers and Panzer III come from Battlefront Miniatures, the StuG Ds come from Zvezda.

2. Paint something bought in 2024

You didn't really think I was going to not paint Tyranids this month right? 

The Harpy. Such a great model, so very bad in the game

I'm super happy with how the wings have worked out on this!

More Barbgaunts!

Even more Barbgaunts!

Trygon!

Back of Trygon!

Norn Emissary

"Do you have a moment to talk about the Great Devourer"

I'm VERY close to the 2,000 point list that I'll be running at Valleycon in a month or so (eeek!) 

3. Play a game of 40k each month

I managed a couple of games this month- it saw the Tyranids fighting the combined forces of the Black Templars and Imperial Knights....

Canis Rex killed many, many bugs

But once the Psychophage peeled back the armoured shell, Sir Hektur didn't last long....

And then the Tyranids decided to munch on some living metal Necrons....

The Norn spreading the good news

Many Necrons!

Imhotek the Stormlord got eaten by a Psychophage. Nom nom nom

The extra special bit about fighting the Necrons was that the army was painted up by McB and I, meaning that this game was the first time they had ever been used, and was a great way to share the brand new army with the person who commissioned it!

Plus, I'd never played vs Necrons before, so it was a blast!

4. Play a game of not-40k each month

The initial plan for this was to play Underworlds, but timing didn't work. So instead, over the Easter weekend the kids and I played Gaslands! 

The kids did some extra paint jobs to some Gaslands cars I had already completed, and we played a slightly simplified (but admittedly not by much) version of the game.

The cars racing!

Missile vs Police Car was.... unfortunate for my police car.....

And that's it, on to April. Yes, April will still have more Tyranids...

Pooch

Rinse and repeat

 Haven't felt much like painting this week so dug in a bit and finished up Morgwaeth's Blade Coven:

Or at least as finished as they're going to be for now. I'm pretty happy with how the hair came out given I decided not to buy a $9 pot of contrast paint to do it. I will have to go back and do a bit more work on the Melusa's tail as I tried the studio scheme but it didn't come out well and I didn't love it. So I threw another highlight on and will look at some snake markings and have another go. I've painted a Diamondback before and I liked that.

I did play a GREAT game of Flames of War yesterday but I'm not going to rabbit on about that. At least not here and not now! 

Next Time

I've been tidying my storage boxes and finding more unfinished projects so will be finishing some projects, that's for sure. Might even be more Underworlds...

Not Flames of War for a change...!

Painting time appears to be in short supply at the mo. Some of that has been a lot of 1:1 scale work around the Casa McZ and some of it was my finally giving in and downloading Baldurs Gate 3. Look, mistakes were made. I know that. 

 So I decided to devote some time to painting and with a bunch of new people playing Warhammer Underworlds at the club I thought it was time to have another punt at painting one of the three Underworlds warbands still sitting in the required to do pile.  So here's where I got up to with a solid day's effort on Morgwaeth's Blade Coven: 

 

 There's still a bunch of detail work I haven't done, the hair is a long way from done, I think I need to lighten the skin tone up some more, the bases still need doing and the tail of the Melusa needs the coloured scale pattern (and her arrow quiver is a mess) but otherwise they've come a long way in a day. I'll aim to polish these off over the next week, assuming Baldur's Gate doesn't do exactly what I thought it would and suck up hours of time! 

Next Time

Some games with the nerds. I'll see if I can get the Blade Coven done this week and give them a run! 

Pooch's February update

And we are back for February!

A short month, but not too short on progress with something completed for each of the goals.

1. Paint a platoon for Flames of War

From the desert to the snow, with some progress into my Late War US Armoured company, which I will be running at our upcoming club competition Valleycon.

The first unit is something painted from start to finish, an M4 Mortar platoon. Cheap and effective, the mortar platoon are there for smoke, and for getting rid of pesky infantry and anti-tank guns.

White-washed, and with a sweet pink air recognition panel

The second is a unit I had previously painted, but needed to update to fit my latest whitewash style- four M8 Scotts! I do so love the M8. Small Stuart chassis, with a big open turret and a stubby wee 75mm gun. What's not to love? 

Not cheap, nor super effective. Luckily they look awesome!

Next up? Oh goodness I have a lot of Shermans to paint....

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

But wait, it's more Warhammer Underworlds Warbands! The first is one I got for Christmas, and I am ridiculously excited by. Grinkrak's Looncourt is Goblins... pretending to be knights. Their objectives and cards are super different to every other faction I have, and part of me assumes that this crew exisits purely for the (k)night goblin pun.....

Goblins!

Naturally, I had to paint them in bright purple and white, like the regal knights that they are...

A close up of three of the characters...

And of the business end of the "squig-a-pult". Because of course we need a squig-a-pult.

The second warband for the month is some more Stormcast Eternals, this time Cursebreakers. Stormcasts with magic! Done in the same golden style as my others, I am quite happy with how they look as a warband.

And of course on Canny Miniatures bases once again!

Second up is maintaining my vague plan of finishing up one Marvel Crisis Protocol miniature each month, trying to work through the back log of miniatures I have sitting there.

This month, is the goddess of death herself, Hela! She was a fun experiment in using the Hexwraith Flame technical paint, coupled with an Army Painter fluro to really get the green to pop. All in all? Really happy with her.

And lastly in this category, we have a bunch of single civilians that I have painted for the Don't Look Back game. I had painted a full set of them as a commission and really enjoyed it, so I bought myself the starter set to the game and set about painting them!

The six survivors from the core box

And four additional survivors

Plus, the game needs a killer, so naturally I had to get a couple of those too!

Three such nice looking faces. Upstanding members of the local town....

And... turns out it's not only terrestrial killers who have turned up in this small generic American town....

I'm sure they come in peace.....

3. Finish up a piece of terrain

Terrain this month is some pieces for the Don't Look Back game (are you seeing a theme now?). Some were pieces I had Potbelly print for me, others were ones which I had in my spares pile.

The Campsite, designed by Black Site Studios, and printed by Potbelly

The Caboose comes from Sarissa, and contrast paints did wonders on painting it!

Look how happy it's one "careful" owner is!

And of course, you can't have Aliens without their crashed UFO, right?

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

The game this month was playing a number of games of Don't Look Back, which were an absolute blast! 

The game is designed by people who clearly love their 80s/90s horror movies. The players take charge of individual civilians, they have a mission to complete, and there is a killer out there hunting them.

As a game it plays like a horror movie. The killer appears randomly, which ratchets up the tension on when they appear, and when they do? Well, they are very murdery. We managed to play four games of it this month, and I am really happy to add it to the stable of games that will be a great one to just play when we are in need of a game.

How cool does the campsite look in situ (thanks Potbelly for printing it!)

The Smiley Face killer finds a victim.....

The chainsaw killer ambushes some teens, just as they are near to the car to escape!

The teens did get away.... not so much the adult they were with....

Maybe... don't explore "abandoned" railroad cars?

For sure more games of this to come!

5. Paint a Hundred Years War French Army for ADLG

This month I actually combined the two sub-goals, painting not one, but two Knights! 

Paint one Knight for ADLG

The single knight for the month:

Two more noble knights for the cause!

Paint one base for ADLG

And now three knights finished too!

Three Knights!

Next up might be some thing far less from the nobility I think, and maybe some basing.... but regardless, on to March!

Pooch

Workbench....

 Bit of a miscellany of 28mm stuff for the last few weeks:

Lets start with a callback. Blogger Scotty has convinced a bunch of us to give the new 40K Boarding Actions a go (alongside giving the second edition of Kill Team a punt) and so I've dug out my Imperial Guard and are bringing them up to date to get into both of these. The new codex (Shocked? Me? No.) has removed heavy weapon teams from Cadian squads so I've managed to cobble together enough spare models with a rapidly approaching out-of-production Command Squad box and my bits box to make up the necessary bits. 

I've added three new special weapon troopers, the same again in regular troopers, a new model to the Command Squad (and noting that, even with new codex blergh vibes, I love the design choice to make the Command Squad an HQ unit with the officer built in) and, off to one side, a Cadian with a Needle Rifle because you can have that in Kill Team, but not in 40K! 

Secondly, I painted a unit of Bullgryns, completing my collection of Imperial Permitted Abhumans (alongside my Ratlings and Imperial Beastmen!): 

These are some of the BEST models GW has in the Imperial Guard range. I have a soft spot for the metal Ogryns that came out in 2e but I don't love the plastic Ogryns in this kit. I do, however, love the Bullgryns. The tracklink armour, jerry cans as water bottles and the sheer mass filling out the volume really gives away the sense of scale of these chonky bois. 

I took them out for a run in a Boarding Action at our last club day but I'll save the thoughts on that for next week!

I'm also working on my fourth to last (!) unpainted Underworlds Warband, The Dread Pageant. 

I'm enjoying building the palette on this one. I'm borrowing pretty heavily from stock but then tinkering moreso than usual when I do that and I like where it's going. This one looks like a really curly one to run as the models in it seem to want to hover between alive and dead for as long as possible. Should be a really interesting challenge to run. 

Next Time

My finished Kasrkin and some thoughts on Boarding Actions as a way to play 40K.

Pooch's January 2023 update

Well, here we are, the first progress post of 2023!

The perks of starting with a bit of leave means that I have made some great progress on all five of my objectives. Will this level of progress be maintained? Absolutely not!

1. Paint a platoon for Flames of War

Starting the year off with a quintessential German unit, an armoured panzergrenadier platoon for my Afrika Korps force.

The models completed this month are an add on to those previously finished- so I actually painted up three new bases of infantry, as well as the awesome plastic 251 halftracks from Battlefront Miniatures.

Not much to say about them except that I continue to be really happy with how the DAK are coming together, and I love how massive this army is becoming!

The full platoon is quite large!

Worn and weathered halftracks, I especially like the crew figures to finish them off

Next up for this category? Might be onto the US to create my army for Valleycon.....

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

First up in this category is no less than two Warhammer Underworlds Warbands, both of Stormcast Eternals. I took them each out for a game and they were..... not great. 

At least they looked cool with their Canny Miniatures bases right?

Farstriders

Steelheart's Champions

And second up in this category is my first Marvel Crisis Protocol miniature for the year. I have a vauge plan to finish up one a month, just to try and work through the back log of miniatures I have sitting there.

But first, Heimdall!

Looking menacing and awesome!

The rainbow bridge effect was created by playing with Contrast paints

But wait there is more! Thirdly in this category is a whole mess load of Thirty Years War Germans, for my Imperial German Army for ADLG-R. These have been in my "to do" pile for a good while, and over the Christmas break I genuinely put in a bunch of effort to make sure that I painted all of the models I had for this army. 

Everything that I finished this month, which included....

...two bases of Late Pike and Shot, with regimental guns....

...two more bases of Late Pike and Shot with regimental guns....

...three bases of Croat Cavalry...

...and two bases of Commanded Shot tokens!

Naturally, now that I have painted all of the models I have for the army, I have now ordered the last of the models from Khurasan to finish the army off!

3. Finish up a piece of terrain

Terrain this month is two Wild West Buildings from 4ground, part of a large order I picked up at the start of last year, that arrived very recently.

The part assembled buildings are some of my favourite from the range!

Only the first floor of Rogan's Bar is new

Sadly for me they had changed the colour of the green they used for Rogan's bar, meaning that when I was adding on just the first floor, it looked just a bit daft. Cue a repaint, and it is now looking great!

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

The game this month is our rescheduled Remember December event, with a group of us getting together to play games of Late War Flames of War, and reflect on our good friend Nick.

I brought along my 82nd Airborne paras, who were really solid. The British Shermans were largely ornamental, and I think I would have been better served in every game with US Shermans or M10s. They looked brilliant tho, so that was a win!

Jagdtigers looking brilliant

Until one Jagdtiger got itself killed by a Para bazooka in assault!

This Jeep was hit by a 128mm shell from a Jagdtiger

My Para HQ walking away after killing two Panzer IVs (or more, capturing them)

This was the Shermans not being ornamental

Defensive position of Paras!

Nick's Staghounds, well run by Bob

All in all, it was a great competition. Timing of games was challenging, 85 points of Late War in an hour in a half encourages some very fast play! 

On reflection, I should really have run tanks, but I can remedy that for the next competition!

5. Paint a Hundred Years War French Army for ADLG

And here we go on a brand new ADLG army! I didn't manage to get the light right for the photos, so I'll have to do a bit better on that front in February.

Paint one base for ADLG

I am not sure what basing I will use for the army yet (that will wait until I have finished a few more bases so I can do them all at the same time), so for now we have six foot knights, which were a great way to start getting my head into heraldry!

The first three, including "ugly rugby jersey" in the middle there.....

And three more to complete the whole base

Next up? Crossbowmen I think....

Paint one Knight for ADLG

And the first knight has been completed too. I deliberately chose a complicated-ish heraldry, I'm going to be challenging myself to get even better at painting it over the year!

Stripey lance? Weird Heraldry? Perfection

And that's it, on to February!

Pooch